“Right this way, master.”
“My name is Mu! Gao Mu!”
“This lowly one is honored to hear it, master.”
“Urgh!”
With a straight back and her arms awkwardly folded in front of her An leads her new master through the marketplace. Before long they arrive at a stand with a bored looking vendor picking at his nose. An loudly clears her throat receiving naught but a glance from the man before he waves the unwashed street rat off with the clear implication of a threat should she not leave fast enough. She bristles, clearly the crooked merchant didn’t notice her glorious master. Puffing her chest An decides to correct this immediately.
“You dare! Apologize for your rudeness to my master, cur. Hand over a sack of rice at once.”
The man’s eyes widen upon seeing Mu. He rakes a hand through his hair and another through his scruffy beard to smooth them both out while bowing deeply before the cultivator. Straightening back up he rubs his hands together and quickly puts on a mercantile smile placing his crooked teeth on full display.
“This lowly one humbly greets the venerable cultivator. How might this lowly one be of assistance?”
“You dare address my master directl-”
“It’s fine, An! It’s fine.” Mu cuts her off and aims an apologetic smile towards the man. An has to stop herself from letting out a relieved sigh after the brief moment of panic upon being interrupted, glad she isn’t mad at her.
“Uhm, how much for…” She sees the cultivator counting on her hands while muttering numbers. An is thoroughly impressed she remembers the exact amount despite what can’t be more than a few quick glances while the children scattered to perform their given tasks. “...rice for seventeen people?”
“For what period of time in particular, venerable cultivator?”
“Please leave these negotiations to me, master. This lowly An swears she shall not disappoint.” An says while kowtowing to Mu, jumping whole-heartedly on the opportunity to show her usefulness to the short woman. She turns up her nose at the old merchant and keeps her tone as steady as she can while she commands him.
“Sufficient rice for but a single meal is required. Prepare the correct amount at once!”
“Of course, of course. That’ll be seventy-si…” The man trails off when An surreptitiously clears her throat. “Fifty-six, venerable.”
“An!” Mu chides and digs through her pouch, grabbing eight large silver coins and placing them down on the counter of the man’s rickety stall. The young girl pales, how could she have possibly made a mistake like that? She tried so hard to convince the man he should lower his price that she failed to consider the fact that the very act of haggling may be an insult to Gao Mu’s wealth and status. An only hopes she isn’t digging a deeper hole when she decides to speak up again.
“Uhm, Venerable Gao. The rice here is of low quality, worthy only of copper, not silver.” She swallows anxiously when she sees Mu’s cheeks turn red in anger, thanking the spirits for the woman’s continued patience and generosity as she courteously enlightens An as to the real reason for her actions.
“...I don’t have any smaller coins, Master didn’t give me any for this task. This is what I meant to do, I didn’t make a mistake! It’s fine, master must’ve meant for this to happen.”
Eager to repay the cultivator’s generosity the man hurriedly scoops almost twice the amount of rice she ordered into the finest bag he has -one only patched up with random fabrics in three place!- and An immediately takes the heavy bag in her arms, refusing Mu’s offer to carry it instead with an offended expression.
“This lowly one could never let her wise master bear a mundane burden such as this! Please allow this lowly An to serve you this way.”
“..Okay, just this once.” Mu speaks quietly with a nod, not meeting the girl’s eyes as her cheeks flush further. “An?”
“Yes, master?”
“I’ll trust you to handle payment for today.”
“Yes, master!” An’s chest swells with pride. Her plan is working! Everything is just fine.
-----
Everything is not fine. That one thought races through her mind as she watches the blonde venerable that makes her instincts scream casually saunter their way. A prospect that only gets worse when she sees the man walking next to her, someone she recognizes from the drawings in her mother’s books on etiquette and the local powers. Jin Fu. Young lord of the Jin clan, rulers of this very territory she’s in and all 320 million of its inhabitants. Somehow she gets the impression that the woman next to him is far more terrifying still. Keeping her head down and clutching the basket full of Mu’s herbs to her chest she can’t think of a way this could get worse.
“Ah, Master! Over here!”
As she chases after the excited pugilist An realizes how very wrong she was. Even if she can convince Gao Mu to take her along with enough time there’s no way she’ll be able to convince the woman’s esteemed master. She grits her teeth and works up the determination to try anyway. A brief glance at Suwan and the power practically shimmering around her makes her heart drop further. As she hears Mu exasperatedly beg the venerable her mood sinks even harder, realizing she’s vastly overestimated her own capabilities.
“Master! Please help, she keeps following me saying she’ll do anything to serve me.”
“Wow. That must be really annoying.”
“It is! I don’t know what to do!”
An knows not whether she imagined the amused undertone to the powerful senior’s words but latches on to the faint hope anyway. Especially when she notices the mischievous gleam in her eyes while the grandmaster feigns contemplation.
“Fate. It is a thing few understand, for it works in mysterious ways. It is a thing beginners learn to trust, experts disregard in exchange for expertise and true masters once more learn to follow. While we may not comprehend it, our intuition allows us to use it, to tell apart the random happenstances from the fortuitous encounters. Some meetings are fated to happen. Perhaps ours was too. Do not spur such things, welcome them. Gao Mu. Introduce your new companion.”
The roller coaster of emotions she’s going through reaches new heights when out of nowhere her goal is achieved just like that. It feels sour. All her efforts invalidated, everything she strove to achieve gained simply due to a cultivator’s whim. Because someone stronger came along and said it would be so. Still, even as she grits her teeth and bites her cheek An decides not to look the gift horse in the mouth. One day she’ll be the stronger one.
-----
As she stands at attention to serve her new master An realizes what those soldiers that oft visited her mother meant when they said the wait is often worse than the fight. Watching the short cultivator sigh for the hundred time in the past hour and swing her legs while sitting atop Zhi’s desk she desperately hopes something, anything, will happen. She regrets those words not a moment later when she hears the door splinter as it's kicked in and a gruff voice shouts. Sneaking to the stairs she watches Mu take down the thugs with ease, more hindered than helped by Zhi’s assistance as she makes the gang leader look like an inexperienced whelp by comparison despite the fact that Zhi seems a lot stronger than An remembers her being.
Her eyes nearly bulge out of her head when she looks outside through a window and watches Mu flit from one thug to the other, her eyes tracing Mu’s every move as she knocks each one down with a single blow. Her mind replays the entire scene over and over, burning each and every last sight into her memory. So lost in thought is she that she only vaguely registers Zhi and Mu’s argument until they move to the room next to her. She’s about to press her ear to the wall when she notices a brightly colored speck approaching in the distance. She rushes out front to greet her grandmentor, hopping down the two steps in front of the door and freezing in terror when she lays eyes upon the girl Suwan is holding. No, not a girl, just a doll. Convincing herself her mind is playing tricks on her and that the doll definitely does not feel wrong she respectfully greets Suwan with a deep bow and leads the pair… no, her grandmentor and the doll upstairs, ignoring the way the hairs on the back of her neck raise all the while. The last thing she remembers before everything goes black is an evil, monotone voice saying ‘Boo.’
-----
“Anyway, you three come at me.”
An looks at Zhi to see if she’d heard it too or whether those words were simply her imagination. No way. Absolutely no way. She’ll die. She’ll die for sure. Somehow salvation comes from an unexpected place as the lord of the Jin arrives and stops the yellow haired monste… master from slaying them where they stand. While she certainly intends to keep him away from Mu she feels grateful for his interference and even more so for his lessons. What interests her most however is his conversation with Suwan. She wonders what the mysterious master’s true identity is for him to be treating her so casually and permitting so much disrespect from her, enough to make any young master spit blood and challenge her to a duel to the death! She almost wishes he would take offense, to think he’d rope her master into fighting on his clan’s behalf!
Then again that does provide her with an opportunity. She’ll do anything she can to aid Gao Mu and ingratiate herself further. At this exact moment she can do little however so she simply memorizes every last word spoken by both Jin Fu and Suwan, vowing to figure out as much as possible from their words. All those thoughts pale compared to the horror of the thing she feels next to her. The wooden doll carved so intricately as to seem lifelike. Perhaps that is even exactly what happened, carved so realistically the work of art came to life, she now roams this plane to haunt An’s dreams.
She pales at the crick she hears next to her as the doll’s head turns slightly towards her as if hearing her thoughts and relishing in her suffering. By the time Jin Fu leaves she’s not entirely sure what makes her most happy about his departure, the fact that the man is gone or that there is no longer any reason for the demonic puppet to sit next to her. Regardless of which it is, the honor of being instructed personally by the powerful grandmaster in front of her is a close second, even if it’s just reiterating what Lord Jin already said. And isn’t that a funny thought. Weeks ago she was still but a street rat and now receiving a lesson from such a high-ranking figure counts as ‘second best’.
Yes, she intends to do everything she can to ensure she can stay this way. Even if she needs to learn the reason her master insisted on the gutter trash she lived alongside receiving better treatment without her gaining anything from it whatsoever. Truly, why would one invest their time and a favor from a lord of the Jin on a bunch of orphans. Then again… An has to stop her lip from curling at the thought, given her master’s actions with Zhi perhaps she is simply having them raised to a point she can have fun with them too. If so she hopes she can receive an exemption from such acts by the time she’s old enough, as wonderful and worthy of even worship as her new master is An has no interest in her that way whatsoever. Still, thinking it through she doubts it is actually the case. Gao Mu does not seem like one that would scheme that way. Nevertheless she intends to keep an eye on the situation, one can never be too careful after all.
“Not only can one extend their sense beyond their body but one can also affect more than solely themselves.”
The moment Suwan finishes speaking An sees a shimmer in the air pressing down upon Mu like mist falling at the break of dawn. A shimmer that is familiar yet different, less soft than the one she sometimes felt back before she ran away, in moments she sat alone in the dark. She wonders how her mother is doing. No, that time is behind her. She pushes the thought from her mind and squints in Suwan’s direction. Was she training Mu to do things the energetic woman wouldn’t want to do as well?
“This Qi, given that it is purely shaped from yourself is far more malleable, allowing you to infuse even your thoughts into it and send…” <...YOUR WORDS STRAIGHT INTO SOMEONE’S HEAD!>
From the few times she passed by the forges she knows a sound with such volume -especially as all-encompassing as this one was- should leave a painful ringing in her ears. Yet it does not. The sound was not a sound, nor a feeling or even a sensation. It was more. It was meaning, pure and clear, unblemished by passing through the filter of language and interpretation.
…She hopes the connection does not go both ways. Her heart thumps loudly at the thought and the subsequent shimmer covering her completely. She listens to Suwan just a bit more obediently than before, sitting in the lotus pose and doing her best to visualize herself as her venerable grand mentor instructed. Taking a deep breath she inhales an eye-watering scent. Like the smoke left in the wake of a wildfire or the acrid smell of a bonfire blown into one’s face on a sudden, unexpected breeze. Her brow scrunches trying not to cough, somehow knowing for a fact there is no danger of fumes filling her lungs and that she can safely ignore the urge should she wish. It takes her little focus to keep her posture still and her breath going in a steady rhythm, long hours hiding between the ceiling and the roof or the thin space between the walls having long made her accustomed to such things. Her habits are harder to change and she finds herself unable to truly meditate or focus on herself despite her attempts, the instinct to pay attention to her surroundings without appearing to be doing so far beyond her ability to overcome so quickly.
“Zhi, will you become my second disciple?”
Her breath hitches upon hearing Suwan’s words. Guilt gnawed at her for attempting to sacrifice the gang leader for her own gain ever since she did so. The sole reason she could ignore it and move on with her plans was the thought that she would soon part from the woman. Now, her approach has to change. Those words put Zhi on the same level of her master, far above An herself.
…Could she become Suwan’s disciple too? Somehow the very thought repulses her. She has Gao Mu. But can Mu teach her? There’s no doubt she’ll try to if An asks but for all Mu’s talents An doubts she’d be an excellent teacher. She realizes she’s digressing from her original thought. How should she treat Zhi going forth? Her train of thought derails further upon hearing the rest of their conversation.
“Good, good. Teacher Song Suwan greets Disciple Zhi.”
Song Suwan. Song. She’s met a Song. She’s received a lesson from a Song. She is receiving a lesson from a Song. Her mind can’t handle this revelation right now and it takes everything she has to stop her posture from slackening. Somehow the source of the smoke that isn’t there crackles melodiously as if it were laughing knowingly.
“An’s so deep in meditation I could set the hill on fire and she wouldn’t notice. As for Mu, well…”
The crackling of the nonexistent fire intensifies, its rhythm letting her in the joke of Song Suwan’s words. The grandmaster knows she’s listening. Yet… It is not their words that reach her nor does it reach her ears. It’s almost as if the meaning were flowing into her through echoes in the air she breathes, the message filtering through her lungs and whispering inside of her like ants crawling through every inch of her body. She tries to decipher the oddly familiar feeling until the smoky odor is replaced by a scent far worse than anything she's ever smelled before and a loud splash resounds. She’s grateful Zhi’s shout takes all attention away from her as she desperately scrambles behind a tree to hide while retching, her hands covering her mouth as she tries and fails to stop herself from emptying her stomach all over the grass.
