Hao stood, his hand slammed the window shut. The steam from the boiling cauldron left a moisture like settling dew on his arm, his face a little twisted.

  “What are you doing?” Hao demanded. His fingers wrapped around Meiqi’s entire hand, flipped palm up to look at the red, raw fingertips and worn-down nails.

  “... I have to wash the wound. We need to take extra care unless infection sets in—this is the only way I can think to do it without causing further damage.”

  Hao moved the entire woman with just a tug on her hand. The simple cloth and sponge that fell from her hands floated on the surface of the boiling water.

  “You don’t need to burn yourself,” Hao sighed. “Not to clean a wound like this, on a mountain where old men can walk in the sky…”

  Zhengqi resisted his slight shove. Her entire body weight pressed against his fingers, then his back as he let her hand go and turned around, “Young Master, it’s the only way—”

  Hao pushed his arm down into the cauldron. He had already heard the procedure from her, a lengthy explanation with words he didn’t understand. All of them were delayed.

  The scent of alcohol and rot, flashes of bandages, threads, cloths, and sponges, a dozen things all to distract him.

  Zhengqi was nearly as good as her mother, Meiqi, at toying with him—nearly. She was scared to tell him that much was obvious, but the patience in his bones had dried until it was thin.

  “You don’t need to hurt yourself to treat another,” Hao said over his shoulder.

  He put his hand flat on the cauldron’s bottom. The warmth of the bronze ding started to fade as hot water washed between the gaps of his flesh and fingernails. Bubbles floated between his fingers. It was… hypnotic, the fading heat like the sun in his hand going cold…

  “Young Master!” Her voice came, piercing his skull.

  Zhengqi came around his shoulder, her hands climbed down his arm, and all her weight shifted back to try to pull him.

  Hao felt his hand pulled up. He didn’t falter to Zhengqi, no, but the water was cooler, cold enough to make the cauldron creak. Bronze squealed at the temperature change.

  Zhengqi took up another cloth. As fast as she could, she wiped down the arm while her head leaned down to inspect it. “You flesh… do you—young master, you don’t feel heat?”

  Hao shook his head, “I feel it. But it doesn’t hurt as it did, just boiling water anyway, and fire or wisps of flames—but coals, red ones still burn flesh.”

  He slid out of a shoe and lifted his foot. On the bottom, scars from not so long ago, his foot dipped in ash until he found coals, his arm bore marks from the same source.

  The cloth soaked in distilled alcohol hurt more than the water.

  “How?” Zhengqi looked down the hall. His gaze followed hers to the tall woman, who was coming back down the way after she heard the shout.

  “I think it is a lot of things, the air in the Secret Realm, the World Energy, it stung at first. The days and nights were hot, then cold.” Hao got lost in thought as he watched the tall woman make large steps. “—And then, the mushrooms and the Yellow-Yellow grass and that Demonic Beast Core and blood and bones, the skin I shed was like a cocoon after I ate the core.”

  Zhengqi pulled on his arm as the woman got close. “It didn’t take much for her to come back, did it?”

  “Young Master, you should not bully women.” She let go of his arm and went forward to talk to the tall woman, who promptly turned and walked away, with a glance back.

  Hao didn’t want to wait any longer. As soon as Zhengqi was back, he looked down at her, “Now, while we have a chance, tell me: What has happened?”

  It would have been hard for anyone to notice the change in her face. Even the people who knew her well. The slight shift in the pace she moved, the tilt of her head, and the twitch of her small nose. There were two, him and Meiqi.

  “Young Master, you need a proper bath with nice soap, it must have been a while…”

  Hao sighed; his breath felt cold as it escaped his mouth. “The room was full of dust, ash, and untouched firewood, all of it still stacked. I went around the back of the house and sat in front of her grave for a while.”

  Zhengqi leaned forward, her hand pressed against his stomach. “I am sorry, Young Master, there was nothing I could do. Lady He, she was already old, her time… Then she spent so much time outside in the rain in front of her husband’s grave.”

  Hao placed a hand on her head, “Her final days, they weren’t disturbed?” He waited for a nod before he continued, “Then what about you, your mother, I know you have a daughter too, has everything been alright?”

  His voice was quiet, but the questions seemed to have the power to melt ice, as tears held back rolled down Zhengqi’s face.

  She kept quiet, her hands went steady. Again, taken by her work, she pulled bleeding flaps of skin together and finished the last stitches he needed in his arm. The hole that was there vanished under a bandage.

  “Young Master…” her voice was nothing but breath and quivering lips, “It will only be trouble for you.”

  Hao watched closely as she lifted her head—the saddest, fakest smile that he thought possible grew into her cheeks. With that smile on her face, she tied off his bandage. She was about to lean back when he put his arms around her. He thought he would choke on something if he didn’t.

  “What trouble could it cause me that I won’t cause myself soon? I’ve killed a dozen people, slain and butchered more beasts than I could count, eaten them, sold them, worn them.” Hao leaned down and whispered a secret that shouldn’t be spoken in the hope that once in this life, the trust he felt was true.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “You remember why I left in such a hurry after I found Grandpa He, beaten to death, for a simple and petty revenge. Revenge against the First Elders’ disciple. I failed. He was the one to stab me through the arm, but I broke his nose, but it’s not enough.”

  Zhengqi sniffled, her face rubbed against his bare chest, tears and snot leaving a trail.

  Hao continued, his voice turning to a silent hum against Zhengqi’s ear. “After Bangcai, I have to find a way to get rid of the First Elder. He wanted me dead for looking at him. He would do the same to you, to Meiqi, even down to the Islands. To any mortal, he saw fit to scatter like birdseed for simply existing in the same air as him.”

  Hao peeled Zhengqi off his chest and looked down at her. “You won’t cause me any trouble. I was drowning before I came to this mountain. All that has changed is how high the waves reach, and how much fire is surrounding me.”

  “If I didn’t want any trouble, I would have run from the mountain at the first chance I got.”

  Zhengqi looked up at him, her face red, her lip pouting. Finally, her head nodded, “It was Ancestor who came. You were gone. No one was going up and down the path to the old servant hall but me.”

  Hao let go of her and walked to the end of the hall. At the last bed, he sat, his hands hidden behind his back.

  She joined him, her hands in her lap. “At first, he just visited. It was summer, and the whole sect was quiet. Then he came and told us—” her voice broke down before she took a breath and switched to a growled imitation. “Dancers, valuable and dangerous blood, hard to control, but every few years one wanders from their clan…”

  Zhengqi went on for a while with her imitation.

  Hao remembered every word. It was hard to keep repulsion from blocking off his ears, but he got a better idea of the Taoyi behind the silver tongue. A man with more status than strength. Each word made it sound like he was one with, or above, the Elders. Perhaps that was how Taoyi saw himself or how he wanted others to see him. His station put him above only the disciples of the lower peaks. That was a fact: He was the king of servants and nothing more, yet Hao felt he should not doubt the man’s means.

  His gluttonous belly hides the greed in his heart. This term, dancer, do I want to know… The term ‘Dancer’ came up again and again, in the context of blood and value. From just Taoyi’s desire for it, it sounded like something special passed from mother to daughter. The only thing Hao knew of it was that Meiqi was a Dancer, whereas Zhengqi was not, as for Zhengqi’s daughter, he had never met her.

  Today was the first day Zhengqi had spoken about her daughter in front of him. As she did, her hand found his again, and she lifted it to her forehead as if his hand were a charm to ward off spirits.

  “He needs us to control her and convince her, so he said, he needs Mother to prove she is what he says.” Zhengqi’s words sounded like they were spat out with a bloody cough.

  “That man thinks we’re stupid, that we’re cattle. He wants to sell her with the promise that she is a dancer. I haven’t even seen her since he got her to join the Sect.”

  Hao put his hand out for her to catch.

  She took it with both hands and leaned down into it, her hands vibrated off his palm as her voice turned to one that resembled her mother even more. In all the soft tears, there was a burning, a fire for revenge, hotter than Hao’s own.

  “No one knows if Penqi is a dancer or not, but he plans to use his mother to give a guarantee that she is. Young Master, the servants trust him, and the people he has tea with… They are real Elders…”

  Penqi? Is that her name, her daughter, and she is part of the Sect? Hao processed, he understood the meaning underneath her mention of real Elders sitting down with Taoyi for tea. How far will Taoyi and the Elder bend for a copper piece? If I had more status than Taoyi, I could just mention his need to die, and someone would do it for me… They would forget about him after he was gone, after what value would he have if his head was parted from his shoulders?

  Hao stopped, his head snapped to Zhengqi, whose teeth found the meat of his thumb. “Wait, what do you mean by using Meiqi?” His voice shook, as if he were alone in that dark cave. All he could do was wait, wait for his soul to be lashed. “How would she be used as proof, like—like a dance or some sort of performance, a ritual?”

  Zhengqi’s teeth dug harder into his palm. “No—” She spat, her saliva running down his wrist, her head tilted, side to side to side, like a wolf trying to tear a chunk of his flesh. “No—Mother is more stubborn than she is old. She would resist. Even if she gave in, there are old, barbaric ways to see if a woman is a dancer. Cultivators have the worst way of them all, because they covet a dancer’s endless primordial Yin—”

  That was enough for Hao to know. The hair all over his body stood, and the yellow stones that worked as lights in the medicine hall flickered.

  Hao could hear the man closest to them. A few beds down the way, the man started to fumble on the ground. The man repeated the words, “Cold, Run, Bloodlust.” It could have been the warmth of spring, and it still would have felt like winter in the medicine hall.

  Hao looked around, his expression faded to a blank nothing. He was awake, but it felt like he was in that meditative void—no, it was slightly different. The world in front of him was unchanged, every color and temperature all the same, yet far away. In front of him, coating his five senses, it seemed like an invisible wall.

  His voice came out, half-stuck in his head, with a loud echo. “Taoyi, he plans to have Meiqi raped.” That voice. It sounded like his, but it was cold as ice in his head. How it sounded outside, he could only imagine.

  Zhengqi nodded, her teeth releasing and clenching again onto his palm. She spat words, but everything was loud and buzzy, including her voice. He could hear, but his head seemed to have turned itself off.

  Hao didn’t live in the world in this brief moment. He just watched it from the body he was born in, from the vessel fate had placed his soul.

  In a breath, it all went away, the walls around him crumbling.

  Hao felt like he had just woken up, as he did, the world seemed itself again, even the man with the broken leg was calm again, servants helping him up into his bed.

  “Don’t worry, I will do what I can. I won’t let such a thing happen.” He said, his voice as calm as if breakfast was being served.

  Hao wrestled his hand from Zhengqi’s teeth and lifted her head. With a cloth that was nearby, he washed Zhengqi’s face.

  “Young Master?”

  Hao stood Zhengqi up, a smile on his face. He didn’t know how he managed that smile, but his body forced it on. Another mask on, one of many he almost forgot he had to wear while he was killing in the Secret Realm. This one, he thought, could fool Meiqi. The world reflected in Zhengqi’s eyes suddenly looked lighter.

  “You can return to the house if you like, or you do not have to leave here,” he said, “just tell me where Taoyi’s residence is, and I will take care of this.”

  Zhengqi was like a rag doll coming to life, leaning against his arm. “A plan. I won’t say unless you have a plan.”

  Hao’s smile turned to a chuckle. “Don’t worry, I will be as peaceful as possible at first. I think just this talk has given me even more reason to live and persevere on this mountain.”

  Whether that makes me a better or a worse person, I don’t know.

  Zhengqi stayed, her back pressed against a pillow, her hand jingling with cold coins.

  Hao rarely found use for normal coins anymore. He left a few with Zhengqi, for herself, and the servants who had put him back together, for the tall woman, too, whom he passed as he left the Medicine Hall.

  He now knew the path he had to walk. Whether for good or bad, either way, it was nice, freeing almost, the silent walk to the den of the one called Taoyi.