Ai Mingxia sat cross-legged on her bed, pulling open the small pouch the woman had given her. Nine small pills and a jade slip spilt out onto her bed, making no noise.

 

Inspecting the pills gleaming in the muted morning light, she recognized them as cultivation pills. Powerful ones. The woman had not alluded to this earlier; Ai Mingxia wondered where she had come upon these and why she had decided to refine them with her blood. She held the jade slip in her hand. She’d never used one of those before.

 

Closing her eyes, she focused on the jade and the flame inside her. She could feel the carvings on the jade slip etching into her mind, line by line.

 

Forgotten Flower Melody; it brought to mind fields bursting with colour. Asters and amaryllis, hollyhock and hibiscus. A heart-focused art that gave the user increased energy and steady healing, the tenacity and the sheer life of flora, flowers growing with every footstep finding root in the ground.

 

For Ai Mingxia, Forgotten Flower Melody brought to mind the pain of a stab wound that just missed her heart and white rope tied around her neck being dyed red with blood. It brought to mind Ai Fengge, her nightshade soul, Ai Mingxia’s last moments.

 

…

 

The rest of the jade slip detailed how the pills were to be used. The Gale Wing Pills would increase her ability to open her meridians for a week with each use, and help her learn Wind aligned arts with more ease, as well as being fuel for the fire within her and helping it grow larger. Ai Mingxia remembered Qi Niao consuming these almost religiously before she realised other people needed them more than she did. Then she had doled them out with a scowl that everybody knew wasn’t real.

 

Ai Mingxia couldn’t share these pills. She needed them. She wouldn’t even if she could. Why had the possibility even crossed her mind? She wasn’t like Qi Niao, like Yang Yun, like the rest of them. She wasn’t generous, she wasn’t sacrificial. She wasn’t willing.

 

…

 

She should use them wisely. She’d have to pick weeks where she could devote a lot of time to cultivating. After she checked back up on Changhou to investigate. She’d like to use all nine one after the other in perfect fashion, but… did she even have the time for that? The rot was spreading erratically, if very slowly most of the time, and she needed to grow stronger as fast as she could if she wanted to kill the Si Ma Clan. Unfortunately, she knew from Qi Niao’s experience that she couldn’t use multiple pills at once.

 

Qi Niao had puked all over the floor, and then over Ai Mingxia’s robes. It was unpleasant, to say the least… But what she’d give to be back there.

 

…No matter.

 

“Are you available for lunch today?” Si Ma Zhilian asked from outside the door, her voice muffled.

 

“Alright,” Ai Mingxia called back, tucking the pills and jade slip back into the pouch and then into her ring. The other girl hadn’t been at the house when Ai Mingxia had gotten back after the test yesterday, which still begged the question of just what Si Ma Zhilian did all the time since she didn’t attend lessons. Skulking in the forest and plotting?

 

Ai Mingxia sighed, stood up, and smoothed the wrinkles on her uniform out. With some fiddling last night, she’d figured out how to use the ring in tandem with the knives, the sharp blade appearing already in a perfect grip out of nowhere. Perhaps she'd be able to kill Si Ma Zhilian now. She’d also tried to figure out how to shoot them instantly like projectiles, but she’d had less success with that. The sabre rested at her waist as she opened the door.

 

Si Ma Zhilian stood in front of her, assessing the wrapped gauze on Ai Mingxia. Her gaze was intense; Ai Mingxia felt as though she was being picked apart. “Congratulations on passing the test to continue lessons.”

 

“Thank you,” Ai Mingxia replied. Killing her right now in the privacy of their house was far better than killing her out in the wild. It was harder to cover up, but Ai Mingxia suspected that there were always elders keeping a watchful eye.

 

But should she even kill her before her family? If she really hadn’t done anything to Liu Xiuying, it was possible Ai Mingxia could use her to get to the rest of her family. Even if she had and was planning to continue, well… Killing Si Ma Zhilian first would make it less likely for her to be able to get to the rest of them. She hadn't thought of this before, but it did make sense. It was a risk she should take.

 

“How were your tests?” They walked down the hallway and into the yard. Ai Mingxia locked the door behind her.

 

“The first was strange. I suspect you’ll want Guo Qiuyue, Lei Chonglin, or Luo Yanmei to explain it instead. For my second test, I was put on an island and then had to deal with a fox spirit in an underwater cave.” Ai Mingxia kept her explanation as vague as possible while seeming as though she was paying attention to detail. She wasn’t going to reveal her weaknesses.

 

An unreadable look passed over Si Ma Zhilian’s face. “Ah. I am surprised. Did you harm her?”

“No,” Ai Mingxia replied truthfully. “I sparred with her and she seemed to like me.”

 

Si Ma Zhilian seemed pleased, a faint hint of approval crossing her eyes as they walked towards the hall together. “The fox spirits are not as ruthless nor deceitful nor set on destruction as many paint them to be. Most are peaceful, even, and the fox spirits scorn liars. They and we used to coexist in harmony. It is only because of a few notable figures that this opinion has dulled to the point of slaughter in the recent centuries.”

 

“White Snow Seeking Scarlet,” Ai Mingxia said wryly despite herself. Of course it was her. She wasn’t full fox spirit, but she trusted them more than the humans even though she’d spent more time unknowing of her heritage. And now because of her, they were being hunted.

 

“... It is a popular opinion, yes. One that I shared briefly. I rectify what I said back then about her; It came from a place of judgementless anger.” Her blank voice was almost downcast. Had Ai Mingxia killed somebody she held dear before? The one who had given her the sword? Si Ma Zhilian eunicated every next word slowly as if trying to stifle any change of tone. “It is because of her actions that her people are being hunted, and she indeed walked a crooked path. However, I do not think she chose to, nor did she mean for this to happen. From the legends… She loved her country very much, and was she not driven to madness by her powers awakening?”

 

Ai Mingxia was struck senseless. “... But she killed so many. It’s inexcusable, and she would not have accepted redemption even if she could’ve gotten it. She made her choice.”

 

“I think she did what she felt she had to do, and by then, the crooked path was all she had left.”

 

“She could have stopped her slaughter if she was willing to, and she wasn’t. She allowed herself to be consumed by vengeance.” Ai Mingxia could feel her voice speeding up, and she forced herself to slow. “She didn’t fall to temptation, she rose to it. She didn’t plunge into darkness; she jumped.”

 

Si Ma Zhilian sighed, almost wistfully, her steps slowing. “Temptation. Have you heard of the Legend of the Bloodblossom?”

 

Ai Mingxia shook her head. Of course she had. She’d lived half of it, heard it from the Bloodblossom’s own mouth, heard heretics yell it at her in the streets. The Bloodblossom was Ai Mingxia’s own mother, after all. “

 

“I expected as much. It is not well known.” Si Ma Zhilian placed a hand on the hilt of the sword at her waist, on Yueniao, a faraway look in her blue eyes. “The Bloodblossom was born sickly in the Forest of Disappearing Snow, underneath the sign of the Wanderer.” Ai Mingxia was surprised that Si Ma Zhilian knew of the stars the fox spirits were born under and danced under, but she suspected she and possibly her family as well had ties with fox spirits.

 

… Perhaps her ‘dearly beloved’ was one and was hunted for Ai Mingxia’s legacy.

 

“The one eyed wanderer is one that helps the liar more than the honourable. It is rare amongst the fox spirits. It is a sign of the outcast, the inquisitor, the criminal, the trickster. As soon as she was able, she left to wander the world. Eventually, she returned from whence she came and reunited with her family for she had been afflicted by a curse that took away her fox-fire alongside other effects. For the fox spirits, their fox-fire is their vitality, so to speak, so she was troubled. This curse also later caused the fox-fire disease, as when her fox-fire left her in a way that she hadn't commanded, it dispersed slowly into humans. They could not handle that much spirit life in them.” Hadn’t Liu Xiuying’s family died of that? “On the Bloodblossom her family tried any medication they could, but it was not enough. So her mother kowtowed in front of the Ai Sect’s great silver doors for nine days and nine nights, till Pearl Light Lord heeded her call.”

 

Ai Mingxia’s father and his sick sect. She could barely stop her face from tensing and a glare furrowing her brows. If only her mother had never met him. If only they’d gone to a different, kinder, sect for help.

 

“Pearl Light Lord asked for treasures in exchange, but most the spirits care not for that. When the Bloodblossom’s mother had naught to give, he asked for either the Bloodblossom’s name or childhood instead. Unbeknownst to them, the fox spirits do not believe in names nor titles, but her family were not tricksters, so they had only her childhood to give. Before they made their decision and told this to Pearl Light Lord, the Bloodblossom drew them close and told them to give her name instead. He would not know. They did so, and that is where the knowledge of the fox spirits end. They remember this fable as so.” Her voice was smooth and level, perfect for storytelling. If only this was where the legend ended. Her mother tricked the greedy cultivator and lived on without him.

 

“But there is more. Pearl Light Lord too was a trickster, as many of us are. With the shedding of the Bloodblossom’s ‘name’ null, she became Pearl Light Lord’s wife instead. She was bound to him for the next few centuries until ascension or death.”

 

Si Ma Zhilian paused before they entered the hall momentarily, staring at the arched doorway, as if surprised they’d reached their destination. Crowds of disciples milled about in a sea of blue, rippling and rolling. They parted as Si Ma Zhilian forged ahead, Ai Mingxia trailing beside her at her heels.

 

Luo Yanmei waved to them enthusiastically, gesturing to two empty seats. They were sitting in the same place they had last time; Ai Mingxia suspected they’d staked a claim to it.

 

Si Ma Zhilian slipped into her seat. “No Wu Jianzhu?” The four that had participated in the test exchanged looks as Ai Mingxia sat down between Lei Chonglin and some other disciple that edged her chair away from her.

 

After a few awkward seconds, Lei Chonglin began to stammer out an answer. Luo Yanmei mercifully interrupted him, and he sighed in relief. “Turned out to be an ass. Had a fight. Dropped him.”

 

“Ah.” Si Ma Zhilian stirred at her tea. “I hope you make up.”

 

“I don’t,” Guo Qiuyue grumbled. “He hurt Luo Ning in a way that’s hard to recover from.”

 

“Even if he kowtowed and apologised, even if he showed he’d changed… I don’t think I could really forgive him and be friends again,” Luo Yanmei affirmed. “Don’t think I could.”

 

Ai Mingxia felt a twinge of something in her at how well they knew each other. How Guo Qiuyue could speak of what Luo Yanmei thought and be right every time. How fucking understanding they were of each other.

 

Si Ma Zhilian stared at them for a scant second, something rueful in her eyes. “I see.”

 

Lei Chonglin averted his eyes and picked at his rice. He could, because he wasn’t as entangled in this as them and there weren’t years of hurt, and if Wu Jianzhu apologised, he would take him back. Ai Mingxia wondered… If Lei Chonglin hadn’t been there, if Luo Yanmei and Guo Qiuyue had told him of the events after it happened… Would he still have done the same if he hadn’t had to see Wu Jianzhu’s cruelty right in front of him?

 

It didn’t matter. “Are we heading to the cave later?” Ai Mingxia questioned, lowering her voice. “And…?”

 

Guo Qiuyue nodded, and whispered to Si Ma Zhilian, who nodded back. It worried Ai Mingxia that she couldn’t be sure of what Guo Qiuyue was saying, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. If only she had her ears.

 

Si Ma Zhilian turned to Ai Mingxia and spoke, sentences punctuated by long breaks where she ate. “As I was saying, the Bloodblossom was bound to Pearl Light Lord for the rest of her long life.”

 

“Do spirits live, really?” Luo Yanmei wondered, tapping a spoon to her chin. Ai Mingxia felt a sharp pang in her heart despite herself. Of course they did. She’d given everything to live until there really was no chance left for her at all.

 

“Just because you cannot die does not mean you are not alive,” Si Ma Zhilian countered. “Nevertheless, the story then folds into White Snow Seeking Scarlet’s. She was the first and only child of their accursed union.”

 

“It’s, ah, strange to think that Distant Flower and Proud Frost were bastards,” Lei Chonglin added. Ai Mingxia’s sister and brother. Bitterness welled in her heart. “But, uh, I think it’s good that they rose to the positions they did. Empowering, y’know? Shows that heritage isn’t everything — imagine if they hadn’t been able to rise! Then their country would’ve fallen.” Ai Mingxia almost gritted her teeth. He had it all wrong.

 

“It fell in the end anyways,” Luo Yanmei cut in. “It’s a shame. Because of Snow White Seeking Scarlet’s bitterness. Guess fox spirits do remember grudges for centuries.” She snorted. “Funny when they’re all tricksters and thieves.” … Humans. Fox spirits were far more honest and worth trusting then they'd ever be. It was jarring whenever Ai Mingxia thought of how the humans saw the fox spirits. The fox spirits didn’t lie. The humans did, and yet…

 

“My father said that White Snow Seeking Scarlet threw everything she had away for power and still found it wanting,” Guo Qiuyue added. “And she was driven to madness guided by naught but her own hand.”

 

“I disagree. She was the leader of a sect already, and even if she could not cultivate, she was still a terror on the battlefield. What more power could she gain by scorning the world?” Si Ma Zhilian sipped her tea. “I think her story, in the end, is a tragic one. Somebody that loved her country even though she had been exiled once before so much that she walked onto the crooked path for it, and after that, it was set for life.”

 

“Is there a way she could’ve turned back?” Ai Mingxia found herself asking despite herself. Her voice was weak. She hadn't thought so, but hindsight was always stronger and other's untarnished gazes stronger still.

 

Si Ma Zhilian sighed. “No. When the world is trying to devour you, what else can you do but slay them instead?”

 

“She could’ve gone into hiding in the ordinary realm,” Luo Yanmei refuted. “Can’t the fox spirits shapeshift? And since when was she an exile?”

“Since a millennium ago. It’s a lesser known detail. Snow White Seeking Scarlet was only half fox spirit, so she could not do everything the full blooded could. and by then she already looked especially conspicuous.” If only. But even then, would she have run? She’d wished for it often, but it didn’t mean she had been willing. “I do not doubt she wished she could.”

 

Ai Mingxia almost sighed. They were all wrong. Her story wasn’t tragic, nor was it as vengeful as they made it out to be. It’d been a millennium - long chain of mistakes — though she’d long accepted she wasn’t the hero, nor did she wish to be. Her last day was one of the only ones she didn't regret.

 

“Snow White Seeking Scarlet was a monster,” Lei Chonglin added darkly. Ai Mingxia looked down and swallowed hard despite herself. And though the fox spirits shed names, there was still something jarring about how they hadn’t mentioned her name once. Only her title. “I get that she had to survive… But isn’t a century already enough?”

 

Si Ma Zhilian shook her head so slightly even Ai Mingxia barely noticed it. Ah. So she thirsted for eternal life. If she got there, she’d realise it wasn’t all it was cut out to be. After the first few centuries, you tend to forget how long you’ve lived already and it just becomes a step after the other. “I don’t think it’s a matter of being ‘enough.’ People are different. Some want to die. Some would like to live. Some have almost died so many times that their goal is to slight fate. And I myself cannot blame them, nor Snow White Seeking Scarlet.” Despite her blank tone, there was an underlying tint of vivid emotion. Ai Mingxia picked at her vegetables.

 

Si Ma Zhilian sighed. “Nevertheless, the Bloodblossom lived in misery. When Distant Flower and Proud Frost were born, she knew the future her daughter would have if she continued to say. So when her beloved, only daughter was exiled, she did nothing to stop it, nor did she reassure her. The fox spirits do not exchange words, and Snow White Seeking Scarlet then was too young and too human to understand the spirit language.” Ai Mingxia hadn’t realised it at the time, but her mother had loved her so much. To the ends of the earth. “After her daughter left, the Bloodblossom poisoned her skin so every time Pearl Light Lord touched her he’d grow weaker, and then she burnt it away every time.”

 

“... Really?” Luo Yanmei’s voice was weak. She bit her lip, and Guo Qiuyue squeezed her hand tight.

 

“That’s horrible — !” Lei Chonglin cried, rice falling out his spoon. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand at all.

 

Si Ma Zhilian levelled him with a flat gaze. “Is it, really? Did he not deserve it? Is it not justified?” She stacked her clean bowls and plates together, the sound quiet. “This is why she was named the Bloodblossom. After years, Pearl Light Lord fell and then ascended, and Snow White Seeking Scarlet, though not called that yet, returned to take his place.”

 

Neither Guo Qiuyue, Luo Yanmei, nor Lei Chonglin asked what Snow White Seeking Scarlet’s name was. She didn’t know why she pointed this out.

 

“Why, uh, not Distant Flower and Proud Frost?” Lei Chonglin asked. “Ah, I mean, that was how it turned out.”

 

“The prevailing theory is that they were too young, and Snow White Seeking Scarlet was never exiled officially. Pearl Light Lord gone, the twins too young to protest, and the Bloodblossom revealing they were bastards… Of course Snow White Seeking Scarlet, nineteen then, could return.”

 

Ai Mingxia shut her eyes tight and drank all her soup in one gulp, letting it wash down the rising bile. It was good that not a single name was ever mentioned after all. It let her detach a bit more, pretend it was a story that wasn't hers.

 

“Wasn’t the prevailing theory that Snow White Seeking Scarlet tricked the Ai Sect into letting her come back?” Luo Yanmei questioned. She wouldn’t have, even then. In a way, she was glad that wasn’t how it had turned out. Then it would’ve meant that it had been her choice entirely.

 

She should’ve run away as soon as she had the chance, patriotism be damned.

 

“My prevailing theory, then,” Si Ma Zhilian amended. “As soon as her daughter returned, the Bloodblossom was overjoyed. But even though she had burnt it away, the poisons had still taken a toll on her; She had grown weak and sickly.” Ai Mingxia half expected somebody to say she had deserved it, but there was nothing. “They say the moment mother and daughter reunited was a moment to be remembered for centuries.”

 

“They do?” Luo Yanmei asked. They didn’t. It was true that it had been a moment she had remembered for centuries, and still did to this day — her mother’s faint perfume, the pipa she had been holding being pressed to Ai Mingxia’s side, her cool skin, her coughs, her crooked back — but the historians nor the storytellers didn’t, nor would they ever care. It was humanizing, and Snow White Seeking Scarlet and her Bloodblossom mother were not to be humanized. Didn’t deserve to. They were right about one of them.

 

“Some do,” Si Ma Zhilian replied softly. “As Snow White Seeking Scarlet fought her battles, it is said the Bloodblossom grew sicker and sicker, and despite the two’s best efforts, the Bloodblossom was relegated to eternal rest. The fox spirits do not die, but perhaps that is worse. They speak with movement and live with movement. To stagnate is the worst fate.”

 

Ai Mingxia had never stopped moving, but after the first century or so, she hadn’t changed. Was that also a sort of worst fate?

 

“Eventually, on the thousandth year of her life, she ascended and joined the many fox spirits before her,” Si Ma Zhilian finished. “And that is the tale of the Bloodblossom.” It had been surprisingly accurate. Ai Mingxia didn’t know how she’d even learnt of it.

 

“I’ve never heard of the Bloodblossom’s story before,” Guo Qiuyue remarked. “Snow White Seeking Scarlet, definitely, but never the Bloodblossom’s. Is it well known?” “No,” Si Ma Zhilian conceded. “Not many know about her tale, nor would they care. It is not recorded particularly well, either.”

 

“Where is it recorded?” Luo Yanmei asked, cracking her knuckles as she stacked her bowls and plates.

 

“Family secret,” Si Ma Zhilian replied. “Apologies.”

 

“Ah, um, how? Wasn’t the Si Ma Sect completely uninvolved in that war?”

 

“One of the people who were eventually joined it,” Si Ma Zhilian explained. “That is how.”

 

“I think it’s no wonder Snow White Seeking Scarlet ended up, ah, the way she did with a mother like that,” Lei Chonglin commented. “I, ah, guess it’s kind of her mother’s fault for raising her like that, then?”

 

Ai Mingxia wanted to scream. Her mother had not walked the crooked path. She had been misfortunate. Ai Mingxia had been too, but she had chosen. She was the one beyond redemption, not her mother. And what did he mean by ‘like that’?

 

“Liu Xiuying, are you alright…? You seem tense,” Guo Qiuyue asked.

 

Ai Mingxia unclenched the fist she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding. “Apologies. Yes. I’m alright.”

 

She was not.