Mengmeng?

Mo Yixuan looked between the woman and the fallen figure on the ground, but neither of them seemed to be joking. This was the so-called “peerless jade beauty” who’d been selected as a child because of high innate talent to cultivate in the Middle Realms? Although his looks were excellent, he was undoubtedly male. With a mental shrug, he dispelled Ghost and moved to inspect the altar, ignoring the surprised yelps of the servants as he all but appeared out of thin air to their eyes.

Nan Wuyue was quick to follow him as master and disciple inspected the ancestral hall. They had seen it once during the daytime while setting it up for the seal array. Nothing else seemed out of place or even touched—the only new additions were the fresh food offerings that Ting’er had prepared before she left, most of which had turned black and rotten. Mo Yixuan leaned down to inspect a collapsed orange but found nothing out of the ordinary besides regular decay.

“Her aura of death is strong,” he muttered. Usually, offerings made to ancestors on the Ghost Festival were quickly eaten or disposed of because it was believed that the spirits spoiled the food. Here was three week’s worth of rot condensed to one tumultuous evening.

“She didn’t touch these,” Nan Wuyue said, pointing to a plate of rice cakes, a traditional offering for one’s ancestors. They had been dyed bright pink for luck and were the only unspoiled items on the altar.

Mo Yixuan recalled the spirit’s pink dress and smiled wryly. “Maybe it’s her favorite color?”

“Shizun?” Nan Wuyue inquired, looking puzzled.

“Never mind, I was just thinking out loud,” Mo Yixuan replied as his smile faded. He takes everything so seriously I can’t even be ironic as a joke.

Nan Wuyue quickly filed away the fleeting smile as another snapshot in his growing archive. These days, shizun gets amused over the strangest things...

The spoiled offerings aside, everything else looked normal. it seemed like the ghost girl really was here to pray. 

“Aside from that demonic qi, she’s quite an ordinary girl,” Mo Yixuan observed. A dead one, but still.

“There is one thing.” Nan Wuyue frowned and quickly brought up the issue of the strange scents between the ghost and Su Shiyu. 

“What does that mean, exactly?” Mo Yixuan asked. He might have read up on cultivation sects, but he hadn’t delved into the supernatural yet. “Don’t tell me that Su Shiyu’s a ghost too.”

“Shizun jests,” Nan Wuyue shook his head. “Ghosts can’t carry scents of their own. If she does, then she must have absorbed it from someone else. Just like you and I take in air to breathe, dead spirits can hold onto certain fragrances if they linger long enough.” 

“You mean to say she’s wearing Su Shiyu’s scent like a perfume,” Mo Yixuan clarified. “You know so much even though you didn’t believe in ghosts?”

“I still read books, shizun…” Nan Wuyue blinked before nodding at his master’s guess. Technically, it’s not wrong. “Though I’m not even sure if that’s Su Shiyu’s scent. It’s too sinister and powerful to be human—unless, of course, he isn’t human either.”

Mo Yixuan sighed. Wouldn’t that be nice and complicated? 

“Sir Su wanted us to call off the investigation,” Nan Wuyue reminded him.

“But he didn’t stop us tonight,” Mo Yixuan pointed out.

“It wouldn’t have helped his case if he did,” Nan Wuyue argued. “Whatever he is, he’s human on the surface so he has to at least play the part. We would have caught on if he tried anything out of character.”

“Yet here we are suspecting him again,” Mo Yixuan finished. “Either Sir Su didn’t have time to cover his tracks, or he’s another pawn in a greater mystery.”

“Maybe letting us make the connection between him and the ghost girl is part of a longer ploy,” Nan Wuyue went on. “We don’t have enough information to guess.”

“We can ask him about it,” Mo Yixuan said after some thought. “Something like this is too obvious to miss, it’d be stranger if we didn’t bring it up.”

Nan Wuyue grew hesitant. “It’s not a common scent…”

“What is it? Do you know?” For his part, Mo Yixuan hadn’t smelled much of anything at all.

“Not yet,” Nan Wuyue shook his head. He was sure he’d smelled it before, but it was buried in the memories of his last life. “I recall it from somewhere, but I can’t remember what right now.” Suddenly anxious, he looked up and promised, “I’ll tell shizun as soon as I do.”

When he acts like this, he’s more like the 15-year-old he’s supposed to be. “Mm,” Mo Yixuan nodded. “No rush, we’ll take it one step at a time.” He paused when he realized he’d fallen back on lines he used to say to the new employees at the architect firm. He’d tried to mean them too, though no one had ever elicited his genuine sincerity except for Shangguan Yin.

Mo Yixuan quickly reviewed his feelings and found that he felt perfectly neutral towards Nan Wuyue. What a relief. He never wanted to be so vulnerable against someone else ever again.

Nan Wuyue could tell at one glance that Mo Yixuan was distracted. Whenever his master lost himself in his thoughts, his eyes tended to drift to the left while staring at nothing. It would happen over the smallest comments or the most inane things, such as him offering tofu as a snack one day. There were so many different, inexplicable details to his new master that it inevitably made him a puzzle; for the boy who’d lived through two lifetimes of suspicion, Nan Wuyue was content to sit back and collect the pieces until he had an entire picture.

Perhaps the moment he did would be the day he found a way to slip into all the seams in-between and complete the portrait for good.

—

A small commotion broke out behind them; the next moment, the Iridescent Radiance Sect cultivator was marching their way, sword sheathed and a smoldering glare on his face. His clothes were dusty and bits of rubble rested in his hair, but he ignored everything to make a beeline for Mo Yixuan.

“You—”

Nan Wuyue instinctively stepped in front of his master, who paused before sidestepping him in turn.

“Me,” Mo Yixuan acknowledged.

“Tch,” the youth clicked his tongue before cupping his hands in a bow. “Su Shimeng, Iridescent Radiance Sect. I’m the second son of the Su Clan.”

Mo Yixuan raised a brow. “Is that your real name?” After all, Shimeng was for females.

The other flushed before nodding furiously. “It’s better than my nickname, alright? Look, you—my sis told me to apologize so I’m here for that now. I knew she asked for help, but I thought the worst when I saw the array.”

“Is the ghost really that important to your family?” Mo Yixuan asked. 

“Yes!” Su Shimeng (蘇詩朦) was empathic. “With it the Su Clan struck rare gold—well, jade—multiple times. It keeps the business running. When my sis gets older, it’ll help support a comfortable life in her twilight years!”

“That’s…” A remarkably mundane reason.

“Su Shimeng?” Nan Wuyue’s eyes narrowed. Here was a name he finally recognized. In his last life, Su Shimeng had been an outstanding inner disciple of Iridescent Radiance’s sect leader until he left the sect for private matters one day and mysteriously disappeared. Some reported he went to visit his family, but a search led by the sect leader and his junior sister had yielded nothing except his sword. The mystery had caused ripples across the Middle Realms and remained unsolved up until the last moments of Nan Wuyue’s own life 10 years later.

Now Nan Wuyue felt like he was looking at the key to a decade -old lock. If the Su Manor case is related to Su Shimeng’s disappearance, then...

“Yeah?” Su Shimeng had finally noticed Nan Wuyue and didn’t seem impressed. “You have a problem with me?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” Nan Wuyue quickly cupped his hands and bowed in greeting. “I only seemed to recall that Iridescent Radiance Sect’s leader had a disciple by the same name.”

“Uh yeah, that’d be me,” Su Shimeng nodded smugly before he suddenly coughed and scowled. “I mean, it’s good you’ve heard of me. Since, you know, my master doesn’t go spreading it around.” His face was a wonderful interplay of pride and affected arrogance.

Nan Wuyue kept his expression straight as he bowed again. “My respects to this junior.”

“Junior?” Su Shimeng arched a brow as he loomed over the shorter boy.

“Mm, I’m shizun’s core disciple,” Nan Wuyue explained simply. Although there was no strict hierarchy between sects, it was common knowledge that ranking was based on status, not age. As a core disciple, Nan Wuyue did carry a degree more importance than inner disciples.

Su Shimeng looked between them both before choosing to be the bigger man and acknowledging Mo Yixuan. “Senior Ouyang, please accept my formal apology for acting rash.”

Mo Yixuan gracefully accepted with a bow of his own. “Then may Junior Su accept my apology for my deceit.”

“Huh?”

“My surname is Mo, not Ouyang.”

“You gave me a fake name?”

“It’s real enough, it’s just not mine.”

Su Shimeng felt a vein twitch in his forehead but suppressed it magnanimously. “Then Senior Mo Che—”

“Ah.” Mo Yixuan instantly looked troubled. “My given name is Yixuan.”

“You gave me two fake names?!”

They’re all part of the same name… Mo Yixuan kept that thought to himself, however.

—

Half an hour later, Mo Yixuan and Nan Wuyue were back in the guest hall again with a pot of tea between them. Across from them sat Su Shimeng, who was pointedly ignoring the duo as Bai Tingyao gave explanations.

“When Mengmeng was three, he fell so ill that he nearly lost his life,” she explained out loud. “They say he was born with resentful yin energy, so we gave him a girl’s name to appease the spirits. He’s been perfectly healthy after that.”

“But you didn’t have to nickname me Mengmeng,” Su Shimeng grumbled.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Bai Tingyao smiled at him. “My Mengmeng’s the cutest, after all!”

“S-stop it!” Su Shimeng retorted, though his red-tipped ears had long betrayed him as the woman smiled and ruffled his hair.

Mo Yixuan was familiar with such superstitions. Humans had all manner of ways to make peace with beings beyond their own realms. Moreover, the name of a child was a very special gift that granted certain blessings; changing it could affect their fate in life.

“When I reach Nascent Soul stage, I’ll choose something different,” Su Shimeng vowed. By then he should be strong enough to shake off the effects of petty yin-yang imbalances.

“Whatever you like,” Bai Tingyao soothed, “but you’ll always be Mengmeng to me.”

“Sis!”

“Here now, take another sip,” Bai Tingyao fussed by his side as she offered him a spoonful of soup. “I made this for you to prevent the bruises from leaving any marks!”

“They’ll fade away on their own,” Su Shimeng muttered.

“Don’t waste your sister-in-law’s hard work,” Su Shiyu snapped. He was seated in the host’s chair again, his hair loosely tied despite the proper robes he’d dressed in for the middle of the night. Obviously, the commotion had taken him straight out of bed. “Finish every last drop!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Su Shimeng was grumbling, but his expression was soft as he let Bai Tingyao wait on him.

“Leaving that aside,” Su Shiyu said, “why are you back, Shimeng? You should be properly cultivating at Iridescent Radiance Sect.”

Su Shimeng shot his older brother a glare. “I wanted to ask you! Why didn’t you tell me my mother was ill? Were you waiting to send me the invitation to her funeral?”

“Mengmeng!” Bai Tingyao scolded in shock, but the boy only shook his head.

“You too, sis! I heard you wrote to the Middle Realms for help, so why didn’t you write me? Aren’t I a cultivator too?”

“Don’t be angry,” Bai Tingyao coaxed as she patted his shoulders. “How could I make you worry? You’re still a student studying hard after all. You see, didn’t we find someone in the end?”

“I’m already an inner disciple of the sect leader,” Su Shimeng sputtered back. “Did you know how I felt when my junior brothers told me that the Su Clan of Stonecut Valley was being plagued by a demonic spirit?!”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out...” Bai Tingyao trailed off with a sigh.

“How could I not? All of the rival sects to Iridescent Radiance got a letter of appeal! Every single one! When I thought of someone else doing what should rightfully be my responsibility—”

“What responsibility?” Su Shiyu cut in. “You’ve already stepped onto the Way, so clan matters here have little to do with you now. Even without ascension to immortality, there’ll come a day you leave us all behind. Better to prepare for it early!”

Su Shimeng sprang to his feet. “The Su Clan is my home and family!”

“Yes, yes, and you’ll always be big sister’s one and only Mengmeng,” Bai Tingyao tutted before shooting her husband a look. “Yu-lang, if you’re going to be so irritable, you might as well go back to bed!”

“Cultivators will outlive a normal human lifespan,” Su Shiyu didn’t back down, turning to the Star Pavilion duo next. “Sir Daoists, it’s surely common sense to give up kin and kith in the cultivation world?”

“..........” Both Mo Yixuan and Nan Wuyue were silent. The former had already lost his life and family, while the latter was made an orphan when he was still a child. They couldn’t really give an opinion on this topic.

“You stubborn man, have your extra white hairs gone to your brain?” Bai Tingyao was merciless. “Mengmeng’s still young, as are we. There’ll be plenty of years ahead of us yet! There now, don’t listen to your older brother. You know he can’t talk half an ounce of sense when he’s sleep-deprived.”

She tugged gently at Su Shimeng’s sleeve, finally convincing him to sit back down. In the ensuing silence, Mo Yixuan and Nan Wuyue finally had a chance to clarify the events of the night. 

“The demonic qi wasn’t originally part of the ghost’s body,” Mo Yixuan finished. “We hadn’t prepared for that possibility, but our array formation was meant to trap the spirit until we could deal with her aspects separately, not send her directly to the Netherworld.”

He looked towards Su Shimeng, who raised his hands and admitted, “Yeah, my mistake.”

 “When we confronted the ghost, she had the appearance of a teenage girl,” Nan Wuyue continued the story. “Daoist Su, you seemed to recognize her?” He hadn’t forgotten how the other froze in his tracks as soon as he saw her face.

Su Shimeng stiffened before turning away. “Maybe. I just thought she reminded me of someone.”

“Who?” Mo Yixuan pressed.

“Just someone,” Su Shimeng’s answer was noncommittal.

“Answer the question properly,” Su Shiyu broke in. “We’re trying to solve a case, not play guessing games.”

Su Shimeng scowled at him next, but finally relented and muttered, “...my mother.”

—

{extra}

Ruyi: Let’s have our main characters re-name themselves for fun today!
Nan Wuyue: Nan Wuhui (無悔) for “no regrets.”
Mo Yixuan: Mo Suiyi (隨意) for “whatever goes”.
Ruyi: Nan Wuyue’s choice isn’t bad, but Mo Yixuan...you’re really treating this assignment casually, aren’t you?! Ahhh, so uncultured...
Mo “Whatever” Yixuan: I’m doing whatever I want though?
Ruyi: Tch, checkmate. What about you, Shi Feng?
Shi Feng: Mo Feng. 
Ruyi: You’re not supposed to change your last name.
Shi Feng: Oh, I see. Then I pick Shi Yixuan. 
Ruyi: 
Shi Feng: It’s fine if it’s Ah-Xuan’s last name, right?
Mo Yixuan:
Nan Wuyue: 
Mo Yixuan:  Excuse me?
Nan Wuyue, qi deviating: Dammit, why didn’t I think of that first?! Shi Feng you bas—
Ruyi, pushing him offstage: Annnd we’re out of time again folks! See you next episode hahaha!

Ruyi

Real Reader Bonus! as mentioned in my profile, i'm (trying) to make an MV for cultivation retirement plan. currently it feels more wuxia than xianxia because i can't find appropriate footage for the actors i cast in the MC and ML roles. i guess you can consider it a wuxia alternate universe setting...

i also have no real video skills and zero time to find the most perfect 1080 HD footage, so some of the clips are kinda blurry, sorry about that!

but TL;DR i've done 50% of it so far and i'd like to thank all readers new and current with a special sneak peek of the video here. i'll delete it and replace with an actual MV link once i'm finished. the MV is done and will be linked in c40. enjoy!

last but not least, you can hang out with other BL readers + authors in the BL_Palace Discord here. c'mon c'mon, it's fun~