Daoist Master Guining was languid by nature and never concerned himself with the big or small affairs of the sect. Having made an exception to receive this little disciple, he still had little to say. “No need to be stiff here on Rizhao Mountain. We have few rules, and most of them are carved into the Sect Precepts outside the great hall. Little Ten will take you to look at them in a bit—copy them out once whenever you find the time. Don’t dwell on it.”
He thought a moment more, then added, “As for martial training and morning lessons, whatever you don’t understand, ask your senior brothers. As for your courtyard, we’ll put you in Falling Blossom Residence—”
Before Daoist Master Guining could finish, a voice floated in from outside. “Junior Brother, morning lessons are over for today—today was the Little Shishu’s lesson, right? Was it interesting? Oh, oh, good, good…… Me? I’m here to ask Master for instructions about going to Hundred Swords Mountain next month.”
Daoist Master Guining frowned, seemed to think of something, and changed his words. “……We’ll put you in Wenxian Residence, beside Mingzhu’s quarters. From now on, take all matters, big or small, to your Eldest Senior Brother. Next month you’ll go with Mingzhu to Hundred Swords Mountain to find yourself a suitable weapon.”
At these words, Shen Di’an was immediately stung with envy. In five years at Rizhao Mountain, he had never been permitted by Daoist Master Guining to go to Hundred Swords Mountain—and this new little junior brother, some kind of freak of nature apparently, was being sent the moment he arrived.
Daoist Master Guining waved a hand. “Go on, then. Send your Eldest Senior Brother in.”
Shen Di’an knew Guining’s temperament well. He hurriedly pulled Zhou Fuxue into a bow. “Your disciple takes his leave.”
Stepping out on little quick feet, he softly closed the doors of the hall and slowly let out a breath. Though Daoist Master Guining never easily showed them anger, every visit left him involuntarily on edge, gripped by a fear he couldn’t explain.
The moment the two came down the steps, they saw Mingzhu sitting cross-legged right outside the great hall.
The ground before the hall was carved with rows of patterns and characters, with the words “Sect Precepts” leaping out prominently—and the Eldest Senior Brother sat right beside them, crimson robes and black hair spread across the ground, his tall frame leaning bonelessly against the stone stele at an angle.
Shen Di’an walked over. “Master wants you.”
Mingzhu’s eyes were half open, a bruise still darkening his cheek from the beating Shen Di’an had given him earlier, but he was the type to hold no grudge. He gave an “oh” and stood, and as he passed Zhou Fuxue he abruptly paused, looking down at the boy who barely reached his chest, and said suddenly, “Little Thirteen, is it?”
Zhou Fuxue disliked the nickname. His face stiffened. “My name is Zhou Fuxue.”
Eldest Senior Brother: “Call yourself whatever you like. As far as I’m concerned, you’re Little Thirteen from now on.”
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
Now he understood why Shen Di’an had committed the outrage of beating his Eldest Senior Brother. A person this self-centered—anyone who spent enough time around him would want to land one right on his face.
With this, Zhou Fuxue grew even more certain: the single greatest virtue this man possessed from head to toe was his face. Beyond that, nothing.
Zhou Fuxue instinctively felt some aversion to him, but he never let emotion show—no matter his distaste, not a trace would appear. He stood stiff-faced and cold, allowing Mingzhu to look him over.
That unreliable Eldest Senior Brother simply reached out and lightly tapped a finger to the space between his brows. Zhou Fuxue felt a surge of heat shoot straight into his mind—and vanish in an instant.
He started in fright and instinctively stumbled back a step.
Having finished, Mingzhu narrowed his eyes and smiled. “A meeting gift from your Senior Brother. Keep it safe. No need to thank me.”
Zhou Fuxue touched the spot between his brows, frozen and silent.
Shen Di’an had no wish to linger with this senior brother who was missing a screw, and stood. “Eldest Senior Brother, Master has assigned Fuxue to Wenxian Residence. Everything concerning him from now on is your responsibility. Don’t you forget.”
Mingzhu: “Fine. Get lost.”
Shen Di’an couldn’t be bothered to argue and walked off with Zhou Fuxue in tow.
A few steps out, Zhou Fuxue felt something and glanced back—to see that flame-draped Eldest Senior Brother smiling at him with curved eyes, rubbing thumb and forefinger together, pressing them to his lips in a kiss, then flicking the finger toward him.
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
Shen Di’an, puzzling over why Zhou Fuxue had stopped walking, turned—and saw the Eldest Senior Brother’s flamboyant gesture. Before he could even darken his face, an exquisite little censer came hurtling out of the great hall and smacked dead onto Mingzhu’s still-smiling face.
Mingzhu took the hit full-on; his ramrod-straight figure wavered, and he crashed to the ground with a clang.
Shen Di’an: “Serves him right!”
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
From inside came Guining’s cold bellow: “Make any more of a spectacle and you can go kneel in the Cold Pool! Get in here!”
The blow had split the skin between Mingzhu’s brows. Hissing through his teeth, head swimming, he clambered up off the ground and staggered toward the hall. “Yes, your disciple knows his error. It won’t happen again.”
Shen Di’an was delighted, his lingering laughter trailing behind him as he swaggered away.
Wenxian Residence sat within a camphor forest, the thick canopy shutting out the sky, birdsong endless in the branches. A wooden stairway wound up to the door and, presumably unswept for ages, lay carpeted with camphor leaves.
Shen Di’an said, “Wenxian Residence used to be your Seventh Senior Brother’s quarters, but no one has lived there since he defected from Rizhao. It’s a good spot—just terrible feng shui.”
Zhou Fuxue: “Hm?”
Shen Di’an pointed at another courtyard nearby. “There. That’s your Eldest Senior Brother’s place. It lives right next door to ‘Buzhiya’—how could the feng shui possibly be good?”
The two courtyards stood very close together, originally named to echo the phrase “hearing the melody, one knows refinement”—Wenxian Zhiya. But that romance-less Eldest Senior Brother had stubbornly slapped the character for “not” onto Zhiya Residence, as if terrified anyone might fail to realize he was an empty-headed good-for-nothing.
Shen Di’an pushed open the door. Within Wenxian Residence stood a waist-high Dust-Repelling Tree, so the courtyard itself was fairly clean, but the rooms had gathered their share of dust. The moment the door swung open, a gust of musty air rushed out, making Zhou Fuxue wrinkle his nose.
Shen Di’an called over a few little Daoist Attendants, ordered them to clean, and settled with Zhou Fuxue in the shade of a camphor tree in the courtyard.
“The Rizhao Sect Master has twelve disciples, each with a different temperament, and none of them get along. They barely meet in private even a few times a year—that’s why Master gave up on taking more disciples a few years back.” Shen Di’an propped his chin in his hand. “And yet barely a few years later, here you are, entered under Rizhao’s gate—and not just that, you’ve been permitted to go to Hundred Swords Mountain next month with the Eldest Senior Brother. Tsk, tsk. Fuxue, do you have any idea how hard it is to get to Hundred Swords Mountain?”
Zhou Fuxue gave him a cold glance and answered with a question of his own. “What is it you all don’t get along over?”
Shen Di’an narrowed his eyes, thinking. “For the others, probably the Position of Sect Master.”
Zhou Fuxue’s face gave nothing away, but he sneered inwardly. Before he came, his family had told him Rizhao Mountain was an enviable paradise of universal harmony. So it harbored the same filthy scrambling for fame and profit as anywhere else—no different from those worldly people outside.
Shen Di’an idly chewed on a camphor leaf. “None of them want to be the next Sect Master candidate. They’re all trying to shove someone else out in front as the scapegoat.”
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
Oh. So it was different after all.
“So every year at the year-end gathering, you get to watch our senior brothers—the ones who could each fight ten men on a normal day—competing to see who can be the most useless. And honestly? It’s pretty entertaining.”
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
The two sat for roughly a shichen before the little Daoist Attendants finally finished cleaning Wenxian Residence inside and out, and laid out everything he would need day to day.
Shen Di’an surveyed the tidy courtyard and clicked his tongue. “If it weren’t for the Eldest Senior Brother living next door, I’d move in here myself.”
As Zhou Fuxue tidied the scripture books on the table, he suddenly developed a bad feeling about the days to come.
The two were chatting idly when the door of Wenxian Residence abruptly swung open, and Mingzhu drifted in in his crimson robes, calling out before he’d even crossed the threshold: “Little Thirteen! Thir—where are you? Your Senior Brother is here.”
Watching him barge in with not a shred of manners, Zhou Fuxue frowned slightly. “Eldest Senior Brother.”
Oblivious to his little junior brother’s distaste, Mingzhu strode forward and planted a hand on the table, blinking at him with a bright smile. “You’re new to Rizhao, so you must be unfamiliar with things. Whatever you don’t understand, just come ask your Senior Brother—I’ll tell you everything I know, hold nothing back.”
Zhou Fuxue replied flatly, “Thank you, Senior Brother.”
Mingzhu was just winding up to babble on when he turned his head, spotted Shen Di’an, and asked in surprise, “What are you doing here?”
Shen Di’an said, “My apologies, Eldest Senior Brother—your junior brother’s presence offends your venerable eyes. I only came to observe how the Eldest Senior Brother trains a junior.”
At that, Mingzhu’s brows lifted in triumph, and he slung an arm around Shen Di’an’s neck. “Oh, I worked all that out on my way over. By my method, Little Thirteen is guaranteed to become a talent the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Shen Di’an listened with respectful attention.
Mingzhu cleared his throat and addressed Zhou Fuxue. “Little Thirteen, I’m sure you know by now—you have twelve senior brothers above you, though six of them hold their titles in name only and spend the whole year roaming outside, never coming home. Within Rizhao Mountain, only six are worth naming. Master told me to look after you, which obviously means he expects you to become someone great. So: thirty days a month, not one day of slacking. Understood?”
Zhou Fuxue: “Yes.”
Shen Di’an was thoroughly bewildered. The Eldest Senior Brother can actually speak like a human being? The man was too lazy to cultivate even for his own sake and skipped morning lessons twenty-nine days out of thirty—how had he become willing to honestly teach this child?
He was still puzzling over it when Mingzhu continued, “I’ve got it all arranged. Five-day cycles. First half of the month, you study music theory with your Second Senior Brother, and with your Third Senior Brother you study…… tsk. Your Third Senior Brother was born blind; I don’t think he has much to teach you, so you’ll just learn meditation with him. After that, hmm…… your Fifth Senior Brother’s swordwork is decent—you can go pick up some odds and ends from him, will make fighting easier later. Second half of the month, your Ninth Senior Brother teaches you mechanisms and Formation Arrays. Tenth Senior Brother—yep, this little piece of trash in front of you—he’ll teach you medicine.”
Shen Di’an: “……”
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
