Chapter 13: Little Wretch

The Paper Crane on the table, drained of spiritual power, lay still and quiet at an angle. Ning Yu was silent a long while before finally picking up the message crane and idly stuffing it into the Storage Ring on his thumb.

But the ring held too much. The moment he brushed open the Restriction Barrier, a flood of things came tumbling out, scattering messily across the floor.

On closer look, what had spilled out were message Paper Cranes, each one snow-white, each marked between the brows with two dots of Cinnabar—clearly all from the same hand.

Ning Yu seemed used to it. With an idle flick of his sleeve, countless cranes took wing in a flutter and poured back into the Storage Ring.

Only after he’d tucked away every last one did he notice another had landed on his leg.

He looked down at it for a long time before lightly tapping the crane’s brow. A clear, bright voice came from within.

“Senior Martial Brother, Senior Martial Brother, Shizun is sneaking wine again—over by the clear pool. He gave me two strings of sweet dumplings to keep it secret. Do you think I should take them?”

Young Ning Yu’s voice carried a green, deliberately cold affect. “Make him wait.”

“Okay! Can I eat the dumplings first, then?”

“Eat.”

And then—silence.

Ning Yu listened through it all again, back and forth. Those glacial, glass-like eyes turned complicated—nostalgia, perhaps, or perhaps grief. But he had never been one to let emotion show for long; within moments he was restored to his usual still-water coldness.

Lord Qingchuan chattered on about the Wraith in the Savage Wilds until deep into the night, and Ning Yu had drifted into a rare trance. When he looked up, the sky outside had already begun to pale toward dawn.

Yi Xuefeng was sleeping soundly in his room when he suddenly felt a Chilling Intent creep slowly up along the edge of the bed, like several cords binding themselves around his limbs.

The chill flooded endlessly up through his meridians, and Yi Xuefeng was frozen awake.

Wrapping himself in his blanket, shivering, he crawled up and peered blearily out at the pitch-black window, half unable to tell dream from reality.

Then, two soft knocks at the door, and Ning Yu’s icy voice drifted through. “Get up. Come out.”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

He rubbed his eyes, dazed. “What?”

Ning Yu lost patience at once. “Sword practice.”

Bleary, Yi Xuefeng looked at the Jade Celestial Instrument beside the bed—a quarter of an hour past the Hour of Yin, barely.

Even rising at the Hour of Mao, Yi Xuefeng normally needed a moment to come to his senses—let alone now.

He wanted nothing more than to collapse back into bed. “I don’t want to get up. Just a little longer.”

The wheedling was too practiced. Ning Yu’s brow furrowed, but he thought nothing more of it, knocking again. “I’ll count to three.”

“Then let me sleep three counts.”

“One.”

Yi Xuefeng flung himself back onto the bed, straining with all his might to fall asleep.

“Two, three.”

He’d barely closed his eyes when Ning Yu broke through the door, hauled him up by the collar, and dragged him out into the courtyard.

Yi Xuefeng, clad only in a thin inner robe, stood swaying side to side on his feet, looking ready to collapse at any moment.

Ning Yu said, “Take out Qieyun.”

Instantly, the groggy Yi Xuefeng snapped awake. He scrambled back several steps, hiding his still-swollen hand behind his back, eyeing Ning Yu warily.

He’d been too asleep to remember yesterday’s outrageous deception until now. Given Ning Yu’s vindictive nature, the ruler was surely coming for him again.

Reading his thoughts, Ning Yu extended mercy. “I won’t strike you for now. You may keep Qieyun—but if you don’t return from this Immortal Grand Assembly as Champion, you’ll return the Qieyun Sword to me.”

Yi Xuefeng watched him carefully, half-suspicious of being tricked—then reflected: Linfan had Ascended. If Ning Yu didn’t want Qieyun falling into the hands of the useless Lin Fuyu, surely he needn’t use the word “return.”

As if Qieyun had always been his to begin with.

Still, though Ning Yu’s temperament was vile, he had never once gone back on his word.

Yi Xuefeng didn’t overthink it. So long as no one tried to snatch Qieyun, he’d accept any terms. He darted back inside, threw on whatever clothes came to hand, and came back out gripping the Qieyun Sword.

Ning Yu sat on a stone bench nearby, a single candle on a small side table lighting half the vast courtyard.

Sword in hand, Yi Xuefeng frowned. “You’re going to instruct me personally, Sword Venerable?”

Ning Yu drew a pot of tea from his Storage Ring and poured a cup with leisurely grace, not raising his eyes. “You are not yet worthy of personal instruction. Today, you’ll begin with ten thousand sword swings.”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

“Ten thousand?” Yi Xuefeng was certain he’d misheard.

Ning Yu said, “Begin. Back straight. Grip the hilt tight. Swing with force.”

Yi Xuefeng took the stance on instinct, still craning his neck in disbelief. “Sword Venerable? Sword Venerable! I really have to swing ten thousand times? Are you sure you didn’t misspeak? I think a hundred would do perfectly fine. Sword Venerable? Adoptive Father!”

Ning Yu said impatiently, “Swing. More drivel and I’ll add a thousand.”

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

Yi Xuefeng began swinging, grief and indignation burning in his breast.

Qieyun, still deep in sleep, was jolted awake by the shaking. Eyes glazed, he felt the wind whistling past his ears and mumbled, “Dad… what are you doing?”

Watching Ning Yu sip tea with total unconcern nearby, Yi Xuefeng ached to swing the sword straight into him but didn’t have the guts, so he could only keep swinging, humiliation written across his face.

“Sword practice.”

Qieyun was silent a moment. “I thought he was just saying that.”

“Since when does he ‘just say things’? My arm is killing me—even back when he made me practice, he was never this cruel. Ten thousand swings! Why doesn’t he just take my arms off entirely?”

“How did he make you practice back then?”

Yi Xuefeng hadn’t gotten the Qieyun Sword until he was thirteen. Before that, he’d trained with a wooden sword Ning Yu had carved for him.

“…About arm’s length, carved from Snow Mountain Cold Cypress Wood, supposedly. I never understood it much. Shizun said that wooden sword was a peerless blade, impossibly rare.” Yi Xuefeng frowned. “You know how my Shizun was—thought everything was one of a kind under heaven. That wooden sword was never as divine as he claimed. Ning Yu dragged me up to practice every morning, but he was afraid I’d cry about the pain—at most it was two hundred swings.”

No wonder your swordsmanship is bad enough to make people want to beat you, thought the Qieyun Sword.

“So where’s that wooden sword now?”

Yi Xuefeng thought for a moment. “Broke.”

Qieyun: “…”

“Dad!” Qieyun gnashed his teeth. “You’re even more of a wastrel than Lin Fuyu!”

Yi Xuefeng didn’t follow, but couldn’t be bothered to ask. “Can you make your body lighter? You’re heavy.”

Qieyun made an affirmative noise and lightened himself. “You’re exhausted—how many have you done?”

“Seventy-eight… seventy-nine…”

Qieyun: “…”

Yi Xuefeng panted faintly. “This body is utterly spoiled rotten.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Yi Xuefeng frowned. “Since when?”

Just as the two were about to start bickering, Ning Yu’s eyes suddenly lifted. “The wind’s changed. Don’t slack. Qieyun—restore your original weight.”

Qieyun jolted in fright and instantly restored the weight he’d shed. Caught off guard, Yi Xuefeng nearly snapped his own arm.

Furious beyond words, Yi Xuefeng ground his teeth, longing to leap over and take a bite out of the man.

Try as he might, he could not understand how, in a mere hundred years, Ning Yu had turned so pitiless—even more maddening than back at Returning Swan Mountain.

As a child, Yi Xuefeng had been kidnapped by traffickers. When Returning Swan Mountain’s Qiu Manxi found him, he was five years old, his tiny body locked inside an exquisite cage, being escorted by a whole company of people toward the Savage Wilds.

Five-year-old Yi Xuefeng was remarkably sweet and lovable. Even in ragged coarse-cloth clothes, little face smudged with grime, the prototype of his future beauty was plain to see. He sat curled in the corner hugging his knees, like an exquisitely made Puppet doll.

Between the Savage Wilds and the Three Realms and Four Regions ran a secret trade route—but one had to cross a treacherous natural barrier known as the Sea of Sand to reach it. For hundreds of years, traders seeking goods had streamed back and forth through that place, a motley mix of every kind of person, and the goods traded were strange and various—but even so, this was the first time anyone had delivered a child through it.

The caravan pressed on, bone-weary, toward the boundless Sea of Sand stretching ahead.

A scar-faced man squinted at the distance, wiped the sweat from his brow, and called back, “Hold on a little longer. Half a day’s journey left.”

The exhausted people behind him mustered some strength at his words.

Someone leapt down from the cart at the rear and hurried to the scar-faced man, saying low, “The child hasn’t touched a drop in two days. If we don’t give him water, he won’t last to the Savage Wilds.”

The scar-faced man clicked his tongue impatiently. Water was precious in the Sea of Sand; asking them to share with a piece of merchandise—no one would willingly agree. But the child had been named by some great personage of the Savage Wilds, and they dared not let him die so easily.

The scar-faced man waved a hand. “Give it to him.”

The man nodded and hurried over.

Yi Xuefeng lay curled in the corner, hugging his knees, at death’s door. Through blurring eyes he sensed someone enter and pry his jaw open to tip a mouthful of water in.

Nearly unconscious with thirst, he struggled up and clutched the waterskin, swallowing in small sips, wasting not a single drop.

As the water passed down his tortured throat and into his body, a sliver of awareness returned. He opened his eyes and looked blankly at the man before him.

With a slight bow of his head, in his small, milk-soft voice—now hoarse and weak—he said, “Thank you.”

The man froze, apparently not expecting such words from a child.

Meeting those clear, luminous eyes, he felt suddenly exposed, at a loss. Not daring to linger, he turned and fled.

Yi Xuefeng watched the man’s figure vanish from the cramped cart, lightly licked the water traces from his lips, and curled back around his knees to sleep.

When he next woke to the world, the caravan had reached the border of the Savage Wilds.

The cart jolted to a halt. Someone lifted the curtain and climbed in. Yi Xuefeng recognized him as the man who had carried him, and tilted his head back to ask, “When can I see my mother and father?”

The scar-faced man seemed to sneer, and made no answer.

The child tilted his head slightly.

He was still far too young to know what a human child sold to the Savage Wilds would truly endure—far too young to know he would never, in all his life, see his parents again.

The scar-faced man was just opening the cage when he suddenly let out a muffled grunt, a blossom of blood splitting open across his chest, and pitched forward. His body hit the ground with a heavy thud, disbelief and savagery still frozen on his face.

A black-robed young man vaulted onto the cart, entering with unhurried, elegant ease. He spared not a glance for the corpse on the ground, tore the cage open with bare hands, and extended a hand toward Yi Xuefeng. “Come.”

A few drops of blood had landed on Yi Xuefeng’s face. He tilted his head, dazed. “Who are you?”

The black-robed young man’s face was lost against the light. He seemed impatient; without answering, he simply reached out farther and gathered Yi Xuefeng’s frail, half-dead little body into his arms.

Yi Xuefeng didn’t resist. He knew resistance was useless—it would only earn more vicious beatings—so he docilely let himself be lifted.

Once the young man had him secure, he turned and stepped out of the cart.

Locked too long in the dark cart, Yi Xuefeng’s eyes seared with pain at the sudden sunlight. Before he could squeeze them shut, the young man’s slightly cool hand covered them gently, shielding him from the glare.

Yi Xuefeng went still, breathing in the cold, crisp fragrance on the other’s body, wondering blankly what flower it could be.

A voice, gentle beyond measure, spoke up. “Disciple, look at this wine—fifty-year Peach Blossom Snow. Not even Returning Swan Mountain has…”

The young man, still covering Yi Xuefeng’s eyes, spoke toward the person nearby. “Drinking? What wine? Is a whole lifetime of drinking not enough? Save the talk. Rescued a child—you hold him.”

Without waiting for an answer, he tossed Yi Xuefeng over; the man scrambled to catch him in a fluster.

By then Yi Xuefeng had adjusted to the light. He cracked his eyes open—straight into the young man’s cold face.

Young Ning Yu, hair bound by a jade crown, was frowning down at the tip of his own sword.

The ground around them was already strewn with the caravan’s corpses. He seemed to dislike the blood on his blade, glancing about before his gaze settled on Yi Xuefeng’s tattered rags.

Yi Xuefeng blinked. “Hm?”

Ning Yu strode over and, with brutal efficiency, ripped away the last half-shred of cloth on Yi Xuefeng’s body, then began wiping down his beloved sword, slow and methodical.

Yi Xuefeng: “…”

Qiu Manxi, holding Yi Xuefeng, could only marvel. Wrapping the child in his own robes, he sighed, “Disciple, you truly are a scoundrel the likes of which heaven above and earth below have never seen.”