Hao dragged the skinny man across the courtyard with a single hand.

  Both Meiqi and Zhengqi had just woken; the scent of morning fire swelled as he approached the door, mixed with the rich scent and loud sizzle—it was almost irresistible. His heart was near a flutter, but a sullenness from the puppet of a man seeped into him, making his hands and heels heavy.

  He tried to think of other things. Anything but the idea that the food pills that he ingested could somehow be linked or lead to one being a slave in their own body.

  Anything else.

  The smell of fire and food. It was time to start a small larder; they were easier to manage in the constant cool air of winter than the hourly jumps and drops of summer. All three in the house had to learn to manage one, especially him.

  He was even more responsible for the two women, three if Penqi was added. Yet he felt he had failed them once already. To make things harder, Zhengqi was feeling the pressure of Taoyi urging her to save her daughter, while Meiqi was trying to find a way to swim above the surface of her guilt.

  This was the home he had built, a place of desperate fear and pressure… A strange thought he was building at home. He was only a boy, a man, just one person. Barely old enough to marry on the island, too young to have a child in any part of the South Tip.

  Why was he responsible for the world?

  He was about to step up onto the creaking porch in front of the door when a wide-mouthed, tongue-out chuckle made him flinch. It was one of the women in the house. He thought.

  “It seems I chose our little lord well.” It was Meiqi. From the sound of her voice, she was near the fire or the water basin. She loved a soak, even on an icy morning.

  He could imagine the lowered brow and pressed lips on Zhengqi’s face, almost hidden under her unkempt morning hair as she looked over at her mother. She wasn’t a morning person.

  “I’ve only had this robe for a few hours, and I can’t imagine a morning without it. Food too.” Meiqi said more, with no one but her daughter around, she let out a crude, loud laugh.

  Hao had certainly never heard her laugh like that. It was usually bells and chirps, not a cat with a leg injury.

  It relieved him, just a little. In the thirty seconds it took for him to grab the bastard and get over here, the pressure of the world mounted on him, but that ugly laugh made it melt away.

  “Senior! What…”

  Hao looked back. The moment his head turned, his eyes were on the pupils of the Hawkish woman; her long strides in his direction stopped, frozen in place.

  “No one should approach this place. No matter what or why, or how, don’t approach unless someone who lives inside tells you to approach.”

  “Senior…”

  Hao turned away and opened the door.

  Smoke and vapor struck him in the face. The smells of meat, boar—he knew the smell and taste of Demonic Beast Boar meat. He would never forget it—Millet, perhaps a little old and stale, but it enhanced the scent of sizzling boar fat.

  He hoped the smell didn’t entice anyone to come and investigate, disciple, or servant.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Meiqi’s mouth was wide open in her laughter. A few wrinkles on her cheeks that he had never seen before were on display. Her hand was sprinkling grains into a steam cloud above the cookpot they had, and Zhengqi hummed.

  “Check out the window… Too much noise,” Meiqi said, not noticing the door open over the fire's crackle, as the last bit of millet left her hand, she threw a large fist-sized berry.

  The fruit sailed across the room. Zhengqi flinched as it came at her, but it bounced off her shoulder.

  Meiqi laughed again, more crudely than the last. It was hard to find an animal to compare it to, more like a stick striking the spokes of a spinning wheel.

  The two women really were too beautiful for their own good, but if they could make faces like that, maybe they could chase off a bandit or two with just a scowl and a laugh.

  Still, the servant in his hand didn’t drool at the smell of food, smile at the feeling of the fire, or grin at the sight of beauty. No dreams to pursue, nothing a soul can do. If such a thing happened to Hao, the only things in this world worth enjoying would have no value anymore—just a shell with dull eyes and no resistance.

  Taoyi had to die.

  Everything creaked as Hao dragged the man behind him.

  Meiqi was quick to cover her face with her hand, drifting up to cover the bottom of her eyes as the fluffy white sleeve of her robes hid her mouth.

  “Hao-Young Master? What is this?” She stood, stepping back from the cookpot, nearly knocking it over with the tap of her toe.

  Hao kicked the door closed behind him, swinging the man like a rag to get his feet into the building. His sleeve hiked up—a rapidly cooling strand of drool fell on his exposed forearm resting in the separations of his muscle.

  Already on the far side of the room, Hao pulled the man around to face him as the door clicked shut. He kicked the man’s legs out and put his ass on the ground. The click of a protruding spine was loud and clear as Hao rested the bag of skin and bones against a long wall-to-wall storage chest stacked with spare clothes and blankets.

  Hao felt like he was dealing with a sack of berries, not a fully grown man.

  “I don’t know why I brought him here,”—Hao said, an image of Zhengqi’s young daughter, Hao’s age, walking stiff-backed and mindless—“You can eat first if you like, but if you can, find out what is wrong with him.”

  He could say it, tell them the youngest of their family, the person they had been enduring all this hardship for, was in the same condition, if only slightly better than this man who brought such horrid expressions to their faces.

  Zhengqi was already at Hao’s back. Her haste surprised him, but she worked in the Medicine Hall; for all he knew, she may have had to put limbs back on people while she was half asleep. She stitched him back together a few times already.

  A few of his wounds still stung. The threads of her needlework were still in his left arm. He had grown used to the discomforting itch. The rest of him was still in tatters, but everything was fine after he stopped vomiting blood, thanks to his visit to the Fifth Peak. His strength had gathered enough to make a normal disciple at the Eighth Rank of Reclamation like him seem weak in comparison.

  Small fingers pulled on his shoulder, “Young Master, I can look now.” Zhengqi pulled him back and took his place, throwing the extra blankets off the emaciated creature of a man, inspecting him with the boldness of a wolf in a rabbit's pen.

  “This could take a while…” She whispered, speaking to herself as much as Hao.

  He looked away after watching the man blink. All he could see was a glassy, opaque marble brushed with water.

  “Hao… Did they tell you how many people would gather outside?” Meiqi had her face pressed against one of the creaky windows. The warm and cold chased each other in and out, creating a draft that pushed his hair into his face.

  He pulled his hair aside to see Meiqi turning pale.

  “I don’t know. I warned them to stay away already, but…” It was a weak reassurance.

  “They won’t listen, not to anyone, even you, Little Hao…” She whispered, leaning back from the window. Her head turned, she pulled her own hair straight—salt and pepper, more black than white—tucking under the back of her new robes. She faked a smile. Thin lips pulled up and wrinkles formed on her slight cheeks, but the grin didn’t reach her eyes.

  “With so many, and more still coming, disciples might come up to check on them. Perhaps Zhengqi and I should move to the unfinished buildings.”

  He sighed; she thought him unreliable after all. He shook his head. “I’m not going to make you camp out in buildings without roofs or doors. Don’t worry, I will figure something out, even if it's as simple as scaring them off. As for disciples, I will do what I have to.”

  Meiqi looked at him, her eyes getting softer as she looked back out the window. “Hmhm,” she chuckled, “I might have to stop calling you little Hao during dinner, you sound like a cultivator, maybe even a man, but you should speak more… your voice is still a little high, but soothing.”

  Was that supposed to be a compliment? What's a little high mean? Hao squinted his eyes at her as she turned around. Whatever it meant, he must have done something right, because the color was back in her face, though still a little grim when she glanced at her daughter's work behind him.

  “Whatever you did,” Meiqi pushed the window closed.“It must be working so far. There is a woman with wide eyes standing at the well; every time she lifts her foot, it goes back to the same place.”

  She walked over and placed a hand on Hao’s chest. It was weird how small she was now, or was he just taller after nearly two entire seasons in the mid-summer cave?

  “You've gotten stronger.”

  Hao didn’t freeze. He reached up and grabbed her hand, feeling her pulse through thin skin as seafoam green eyes stared up at him—they weren’t lonely or hopeless, not anymore, only worried.

  He didn’t flee from eye contact; he hadn’t in a long time since those first weeks of brutal social torture he got from Meiqi. “I’ll…” he started.

  “Young Master.” Zhengqi called, her voice was empty of her usual subtlety, “I think I have found a few things. Do you know if this man has died before or not?”