鬼揞眼 (gwai2 ngam2 ngaan5) - a ghost covers one's eyes, i.e. blinded by our prejudices, we fail to see the truth
Two months later, with the chill of winter once more starting to grip the country, Gong Lau Jan once more stood on the rolling hills of Chūn, gazing out towards the city. The country lay peaceful under her eyes.
She had still not found Zyu Ji-sang.
When she had visited Jyun Mei, Chūn Zéyì was gone.
Desperately scrambling from one thing to another, she hoped for a respite yet had no idea where to find it. If she couldn't find it here, then there was only one place left to go - back to her aunt's palace. Somehow, the thought of retreating to that last refuge brought her a sense of despair.
Please... let me find what I need here.
The cold streets of Qiānbàn were remarkably busy. There seemed to be some kind of festival occurring, with food and craft stalls lining the streets in colourful abandon. Ordinarily, Gong Lau Jan would pause to take it all in, but her thoughts were a mess as she pressed on towards the palace. At the main gate, the guards did a double-take at the sight of her face.
"It's Miss Fén!"
"Please, enter! The Regent has been waiting for you!"
For me? Zéyì, what have you done?
Servants raced back on forth ahead of them as one of the guards proudly escorted her towards the throne room. As they approached, a woman slipped from inside, hooded, but Gong Lau Jan could clearly see the healing gashes on her face. The woman bowed silently and hurried away, although she seemed slowed by something. Injury, perhaps?
The guard knocked on the door and entered with a flourish.
"Miss Fén is here, Your Majesty!"
He stood to one side to allow Gong Lau Jan to enter.
At the far end of the room was a large throne, and a figure stood beside it, clothed in rich dark fabrics, with her hair pulled into elaborate loops. She looked up from the documents she held in her hands, and nodded at the guard. "Thank you, you may go now."
The guard bowed and retreated, leaving the two women to face each other across the room.
Zéyì sighed softly and gave Gong Lau Jan a rueful smile. "You look tired."
The loong approached slowly, taking in Zéyì's appearance. “Your eyes...”
“My powers have mostly stabilised. I'm almost at Third Dantian Expert. Not bad for someone who never met their Master! Sit down, I have some tea here.”
Gong Lau Jan sat on a low wooden chair, and a cup of some fragrant green tea was poured out for her. Zéyì sat on the chair beside her.
“Is it good?”
“Yes, thank you... Your Majesty?”
“... How did your search go?”
Gong Lau Jan's silence answered for her. She took a sip of tea. “And you, Your Majesty? I turn my back for a few months and suddenly you're the Regent of Chūn. How did that happen?”
“Ah, that would take a while to explain. Lady Gong, why don't you rest for a night, and we'll talk about those things tomorrow. There's a lot to discuss, and you look exhausted.”
“Yes... alright...”
“Have some more tea, Lady Gong.”
They sipped tea silently together, closer than they had been in the past four months, yet farther apart than ever. Gong Lau Jan cleared her throat.
“I need your help, Zéyì.”
“I'll give it to you, Gong Ze.”
“So easily?”
“Of course! Why do you think I... I mean, I can do that now. I have the resources of a whole country at my fingertips. Of course, I'm still stabilising my reign and working through a few things but I can certainly lend aid to a benefactor of mine.”
She thought she heard a tiny click, but Gong Lau Jan made no indication of noticing any sound.
“That's... Thank you.”
“Of course. Have you travelled a long way? Would you like to rest now?”
“Yes please.”
“I'll have someone show you the way. I would do it myself, only...”
They both looked at the piles of papers stacked beside the throne. Some had slid down behind it.
“I understand.”
When Gong Lau Jan had gone, Zéyì picked up the cup that the loong had been drinking from. A fine crack ran all the way under it from rim to rim, and it fell apart in her hands, the tea soaking her robes.
Zéyì stepped to one side, easily avoiding the nine-section whip. She felt a hot dryness rush across her skin, but unlike that nightmarish day at the age of twenty-four, cowering at her mother's feet in a ruined wedding dress, there was no fear.
Who is stronger? Who is faster?
Clenching her fist, she stripped all of the water from Mǎn Jiāng's body in a heartbeat, then replaced it a second later. An ordinary person would have gone into severe shock.
But Mǎn Jiāng was essentially a long-dead corpse powered by demonic energy. Without blinking, she flicked the whip again, this time aiming for Zéyì's legs.
Zéyì flowed between the loops of the whip, driving her fist into the base of Mǎn Jiāng's sternum. The woman flew across the room, crashing into the throne and crumpling into it. And then she stood again.
“Lián, it won't work. The Gods love me too much. Let's not argue any more, and get back to looking after Chūn, okay?”
It won't work. Power over Water was power over life. But what if the opponent was someone who no longer needed the usual things to keep existing?
Anxiety was rising up in her like a fist around her throat. She had one other option, the powers she had barely dared to even think of, that she had only ever properly used once, and even then she had been out of her mind and hallucinating that someone else had done it.
That moment outside the palace, when she had saved Zyu Ji-sang and thought that Fàn Bì'ān had acted.
He wasn't real. It wasn't him.
Zéyì had been the one to click her fingers and reduce a living, breathing human being into a pile of ash.
She didn't even really know how the power worked. Was it the power to age things? It had worked on the lock of her cell, and the bandit. Why had she not tested the power before? Learnt about it, how to control it?
Now she had no time to think.
The whip screamed again, and Zéyì slipped between its coils again, her hand grasping the hand that wielded the weapon.
Concentrate. Focus.
It only took a moment. The hand crumbled to dust.
The nine-section whip clattered to the floor with useless brutality.
Mǎn Jiāng stared at the stump where her hand had been. “What...?” And then, she looked down at the pile of dust where her left foot had been. “What?”
“Would you like me to keep going?” Zéyì asked coldly, willing herself not to shake.
“How... to your own mother? How could you do this?”
Zéyì gripped Mǎn Jiāng's shoulder, the one connected to a whole arm. Not any more – the joint aged in an instant and the arm fell away.
“ZÉYÌ!”
A blast of heat enveloped her, but it was nothing.
Hadn't Gong Lau Jan suffered through this for close to two hundred years?
Bending slowly, Zéyì lifted the whip. She flicked it lightly, the end curling around Mǎn Jiāng's remaining ankle and brought her crashing down. The whip felt comfortable in her hand, and at the same time, it burnt her fingers.
“What are you going to do to me, Lián?” Mǎn Jiāng's voice sounded exhausted.
“I'll take you to your room,” Zéyì said distantly, “and we'll talk a little about what happened, back then. And then you'll wait there, until Lady Gong returns.”
Her mother laughed ruefully. “You'll hand me over to her, will you? She'll kill me, Zéyì. Aren't I your mother?”
“Yes, you are. And that's why I'm taking responsibility. Who's my father?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“When Lady Gong pulled me from the lake, I started to have visions. Memories of the past. There was one memory that made no sense. A woman in shining bronze robes. I spoke the Zyu tongue to her. For the longest time, I thought my first meeting with Queen Gong Ming Zyu was on my wedding day, but it wasn't, was it? I first met her when I was a child, which means that I must have been born a few years before Zyu fell... so how could King Shénzhī be my father? Who is my father?”
“Shénzhī is your father.”
“He's not-”
“Shénzhī is your father.”
“Don't make me laugh.” Zéyì snarled. “So you became pregnant to some unknown dog of a man when you lived in Zyu, had a tantrum, destroyed your own home and ran away to Chūn, then your actions caught up with you, but you decided to take advantage of the situation by selling me off to Zháng.”
“You know everything,” Mǎn Jiāng said with a weary smile. “There's nothing else for me to say, Zéyì. Lock me up already.”
They could hear the shouts of the people outside, the sound of Chūn Yili's long-held plans crumbling down around her.
“Mother...” Zéyì's voice was soft. “Did you think I would be safer in Zháng?”
Mǎn Jiāng closed her eyes. Her face pinched.
“How old were you, when Zyu fell? Was it a mistake made in anger? Did you... love my father?”
The desiccated husk that had once been Mǎn Jiāng didn't have had any tears left to cry. The liquid that slowly seeped down her cheek was red.
“Mother, please tell me. Aren't you tired?”
“Yes... but you're here now. I can stop waiting. Shénzhī is your father, Chūn Zéyì, and you're the ruler here now. That's all.”
“I don't believe you.”
Like an old tree, Mǎn Jiāng flopped back, her grotesquely damaged body limp. “That's alright. So long as the rest of the world believes me. The rest of the Chūn family is dead, Zéyì. You're the only one left. If you don't take the throne, who will? What will happen to all those people outside?”
Zéyì's heart weighed a thousand pounds in her chest. Looping the nine-section whip in her belt, she lifted her mother. Mǎn Jiāng's body was as light as an insect shell. The limbs that had fallen from her were withering on the throne room floor.
Not another word was spoken. Zéyì walked out into the night.
“It was a little busy around here,” Zéyì explained the next day, as she and Gong Lau Jan sat together under a pagoda the next day, surrounded by a diligently tended water garden. In spite of the cold, neither of them spoke of going inside. “Allow me to start with an apology, Lady Gong, for what my mother did to Zyu, and to your family.”
Gong Lau Jan turned a cup of hot tea in her hands, her eyes fixed on the swirling liquid as she tried to process Zéyì's words.
“You've hidden something from me too, haven't you?”
The loong glanced up at the sound of lightly clanking metal. Zéyì laid the nine-section whip she had taken from her mother onto the table. The handle of the whip was bound with silken blue and bronze fabric.
“Mother had been using it. But Queen Gong Ming Zyu had far more skill.”
“So you really do remember.”
“And so do you. You knew that King Chūn Shénzhī wasn't my father, didn't you? Why didn't you say anything?”
“I didn't think it was my place. You've already had so many revelations, Meí Guī.”
“Don't call me that.” The tea in the cup by Zéyì's hand began to boil.
“Even if I told you-” Gong Lau Jan's voice cracked. “- where would you go? Are you going to abandon Chūn? Zyu is gone. Just.. you're safer here, Zéyì.”
“Lady Gong...” Zéyì could feel the blood rushing to her head. She gripped the table to try and swallow down her rage and sorrow. “Is my name even Zéyì?”
“Yes. It was Dzak Yat, in the Zyu tongue. Your mother was a 'river', and you were her 'overflow'.”
“Did she love my father? Did he love her?”
“Yes. Very much so.”
“So why would she destroy the place that brought her happiness?”
“I don't know that it's my place to speak,” Gong Lau Jan said helplessly. “Your mother should be the one-”
“She won't tell me.”
“I see.”
“What I can't understand is why you won't tell me, Gong Ze. She caused the death of your sister, brought down the kingdom, and you're just... just...”
“This and that are two different things, Your Majesty.”
“I really don't know anything about you,” Zéyì observed. She folded her hands. “I promised myself I would take the throne of Chūn to help you. And I will. I'll help you find Zyu Ngan Wan. And then...”
Their breaths raised fog in the dark morning air. Zéyì put down her cup without even taking a single sip.
“I'll take you to Mǎn Jiāng.”
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