Zhou Fuxue was nothing if not patient. Unruffled, he asked, “And what about you, Eldest Senior Brother?”
Eldest Senior Brother said, “There are still a few days left over, aren’t there? Your Senior Brother will teach you personally when we get there.”
He finished with a triumphant wink at Shen Di’an. “Well, Old Ten? See? Now Little Thirteen will be versed in mechanisms and swordwork, music and medicine—master of every art.”
Shen Di’an nearly rolled his eyes clean out of his head. “I won’t speak for the other senior brothers, but what exactly can you teach Thirteen? What sleeping positions won’t squish his face?”
Mingzhu, entirely missing the mockery, actually stroked his chin and gave it a moment’s serious thought. “That one’s worth considering.”
Shen Di’an’s face went black. “Eldest Senior Brother!“
Only then did Mingzhu give a dry cough and pat Zhou Fuxue’s head. “Rizhao Mountain has few rules. As long as you don’t leave through the mountain gate, you may go anywhere you like. The Scripture Library Tower is the tallest building at the far north. Hmm…… Old Ten, give him a jade token. He may read whatever’s inside—just be careful with the books, don’t damage them.”
He thought a moment more. “Now, what was it I forgot?”
Watching this half-hearted performance, Shen Di’an felt a chill of dread. At this rate—free-range teaching by the Eldest Senior Brother—we’ll be raising yet another great devil who defects from the sect. He hurriedly stepped forward. “Whoa, whoa, whoa—Eldest Senior Brother, please rein in that death-seeking divine ability of yours. I’ll teach Thirteen. You—just go stand somewhere cool.”
Mingzhu was displeased by this. “But Master said I should teach him.”
Shen Di’an jabbed right back, “Master also told you to stop fantasizing about leaving through the mountain gate, and you still storm it every few days anyway. Do your legs not hurt anymore from kneeling in punishment the other day?”
Mingzhu: “……”
Knocked flat by the retort, Mingzhu ground his teeth, looking sorely tempted to lunge over and bite this junior brother.
Zhou Fuxue watched their bickering with a cold face, and only spoke once both had gone quiet. “Master just told me to follow the Eldest Senior Brother. If he learned I’d gone seeking other senior brothers instead, I fear he’d be displeased. I won’t trouble you, Tenth Senior Brother.”
Mingzhu and Shen Di’an thought, in perfect unison: Master probably couldn’t even be bothered to care.
But since Zhou Fuxue had put it that way, Shen Di’an couldn’t press further. He shrugged, rose with good grace, and took his leave.
Mingzhu suddenly remembered something and chased him to the door, shouting, “Old Ten! Have someone send over some salve for me!”
Shen Di’an walked faster at the words. “Come get it yourself.”
Unwilling to abandon the dignity of an Eldest Senior Brother by sprinting after Shen Di’an in front of his little junior brother, Mingzhu gave a dry cough and turned back with a smile. “Forgive the embarrassment, Junior Brother. Is there anything else you’re missing here? If you can’t manage in time, you can always borrow from your Senior Brother’s courtyard.”
Zhou Fuxue said, “Thank you, Senior Brother.”
The words Zhou Fuxue exchanged most often with Mingzhu were “greetings, Senior Brother” and “thank you, Senior Brother”—beyond those, he rarely said anything else. Mingzhu stroked his chin, gazing at the whorl of his little junior brother’s hair, and thought idly, Someone with this temperament should’ve been handed to Second Brother Yi to raise—guaranteed he’d put that silence to good use. Me raising him—aren’t our elements fundamentally incompatible?
Furtively, Mingzhu tested his own knees, still weak and aching from kneeling. Evidently terrified of kneeling again, he dared not go petition Daoist Master Guining for more abuse, so he instead brought out the thick skin he usually used to tease female cultivators, eyes curving sweetly. “Oh, right—your Senior Brother doesn’t even know which spirit vein you have. I’ll need to know so I can borrow you suitable beginner books from the Scripture Library Tower.”
In Mingzhu’s view, a child barely half-grown arriving in a strange place was bound to be frightened and anxious. Release a little well-timed kindness, and he’d surely be able to mold this hedgehog bristling with spines into a soft, docile little rabbit.
Zhou Fuxue had carried an air of cold detachment all along—as if he could politely say “thank you, Senior Brother” even while someone pointed at his nose and called him an ungrateful wretch. But the instant Mingzhu’s words landed, fury flashed across that childish face. The brand-new scripture books in his hands were crushed in a death grip, his jaw clamped into a hard, sharp line, and the words nearly squeezed out through his teeth: “No…… no need to trouble yourself, Eldest Senior Brother.”
Mingzhu blinked blankly, unable to fathom how his heartfelt kindness had been received so poorly. A moment later, he found himself vaguely shown the door by Zhou Fuxue.
He stood outside the tightly shut courtyard gate, racking his brains for ages without discovering which sentence had gone wrong, and finally went off to Shen Di’an’s place for medicine.
The courtyard where Shen Di’an lived held an herb garden; most of the medicinal plants on Rizhao Mountain came from him, and in summer the overwhelming smell of herbs carried a long way.
Mingzhu: “Hss—Old Ten, Tenth Brother, Tenth Brother! Can you be any gentler? This is a head, not a rock.”
Shen Di’an pressed him down onto a stool, frowning as he dabbed salve on his forehead, and snapped, “So you do know what pain feels like? You’ve only yourself to blame, volunteering for your own demise.”
The skin between Mingzhu’s brows was swollen red; even the lightest touch sent pain lancing through him, and his eyes flooded with tears. “I didn’t! Don’t slander me. You know Master’s temper better than anyone—he spends all day looking for excuses to beat me. Hss, gently, gently, I’m begging you.”
Mingzhu wasn’t old, and his beauty bordered on the unearthly. Sitting still and silent, he was gorgeous enough to steal souls—but he almost never sat still for a single day of the year. Perpetually clambering and cavorting, he threw the whole of vast Rizhao Mountain into chaos. In ten years, every soul on the mountain had suffered his mischief; no one had any appreciation left for that devastating face—they all wanted to scratch it raw.
Once the salve was applied, Shen Di’an stuffed the bottle into Mingzhu’s sleeve, delivered a round of instructions, then said, “And here I thought you’d linger a while with Zhou Fuxue. How did you get driven out so fast?”
Mingzhu was baffled himself. “No idea. He threw me out for no reason at all.”
Mingzhu possessed a heaven-given talent for offending people while never once realizing it. Shen Di’an said, “From what I can see, our little junior brother is perfectly easy to get along with. You must have said something stupid.”
“Nonsense!” Mingzhu slapped the table. “This time I really didn’t say anything wrong! I was kindly offering to borrow books for him from the Scripture Library Tower, and just casually asked about his spirit vein. Is that worth flying into a rage over?”
Shen Di’an turned and looked at him with an expression of sheer disbelief—so unnerving that Mingzhu’s skin crawled. “What? What did I say wrong?”
Shen Di’an said, “My dear Senior Brother, did you eat the Little Shishu’s words from morning lesson the other day along with your breakfast?”
Mingzhu declared righteously, “I never attend morning lessons anyway—what did the Little Shishu say?”
Shen Di’an sighed. “It doesn’t strike you as worth wondering why Zhou Fuxue is surnamed Zhou?”
“Obviously he’s surnamed Zhou because his father is surnamed Zhou. What’s to wonder about?”
Shen Di’an thought, Eldest Senior Brother, you truly are a decorative vase of unprecedented caliber.
Dipping a fingertip in tea, Shen Di’an lightly traced a short pattern onto the red sandalwood table, lowering his eyes and his voice. “Zhou Mingzhong of Jianglou Kingdom—capable of summoning wind and rain. Wherever he goes, blood rains and storms follow; even the other four kingdoms fear him somewhat. Senior Brother, children of three have heard their dreaded name. Don’t tell me you’re worse than a child.”
Though Mingzhu’s head was stuffed with waste paper, even he had heard of the famed Zhou Mingzhong of Jianglou Kingdom.
Zhou Mingzhong of Jianglou Kingdom—born of royal blood, towering in status, revered and enormously wealthy. He could have contentedly lived out his days as an idle playboy throwing gold by the fistful, but somewhere his brain had gone astray: he’d set his heart single-mindedly on the pursuit of immortality, and in barely a century he had actually money-hammered his way into producing a Mighty Figure of the present age—the cultivation world’s textbook case of more money than sense.
“Ah—so he’s a Zhou family son. Wait, that’s wrong. Why would someone of the Zhou Family come to Ximu Kingdom and enter Rizhao Mountain? Shouldn’t he be back home having cultivation money-hammered into him by Zhou Mingzhong?”
“Master probably has some history with the Zhou Family.” Shen Di’an wiped the Zhou crest from the table. “The Little Shishu says that although Zhou Fuxue was born of the direct line, he’s utterly despised within the family—surviving to this age at all was heaven taking pity. Supposedly Master saw him poor and alone and brought him to Rizhao himself.”
Here Shen Di’an lowered his voice further. “All because…… he has no spirit vein.”
At last, Mingzhu understood.
In a clan as vast as the Zhou Family, the strength of one’s spirit vein determined one’s standing. In that realm where the strong devoured the weak and family affection ran thinner than ice, having no spirit vein was a sin beyond forgiveness.
Mingzhu nodded slowly. No wonder Zhou Fuxue had reacted so violently when asked about his spirit vein. Mingzhu was broad-minded and not one to hold grudges; he magnanimously signaled his understanding, and magnanimously forgave his poor, tragic little junior brother.
Zhou Fuxue passed a sleepless night, and only in the hour before dawn managed half a shichen of broken sleep. He woke drenched in cold sweat, sitting dazed on the bed and staring at the unfamiliar surroundings—for one instant he almost believed he was still in that lightless hovel in the Zhou household.
The abuse from his nightmare still rang in his ears. Eyes rimmed red, he glared at the empty air with something close to savagery, fists clenched until the joints creaked.
“The Fourth Young Master? Him? He’s a good-for-nothing with no spirit vein. If the Family Head weren’t mindful of his bloodline, he’d have been left long ago to live or die on his own—why else would……”
“Not just spirit-veinless—his brain’s not right either. The servants in his courtyard used to beat him black and blue, and he swallowed it all and never dared breathe a word to the Family Head. Why would anyone fear a piece of trash like him?”
“Trash……”
In the little room, a half-grown child crouched in the corner with a hand clamped over his mouth, listening to the malicious cursing outside as tears fell without a sound.
Footsteps seemed to approach the door. He startled, burrowing wildly under the quilt, his small body trembling faintly.
A beam of light poured through the crack of the door. The child watched, near-greedily, as that rare, precious light dimmed and dimmed, squeezing at last into a thin line—then slowly faded away.
Zhou Fuxue jolted all over. Before he could even grasp where he was, the door beside him was pushed open with one palm, and in strode Mingzhu in his crimson robes, moving like a man who knew every inch of the room. The young man’s eyes were bright as he looked at him—brighter even than that sliver of light from his nightmare.
Barging in without ceremony, Mingzhu greeted him with easy familiarity: “Little Thirteen, no more sleeping! Up, up—your Senior Brother’s taking you to morning lessons.”
Zhou Fuxue stared at him, stunned—and at the commotion, his muddled thoughts abruptly settled into order, and he understood that he was no longer in that lightless Zhou household.
Watching him sit there blank, Mingzhu found him more and more amusing. He stepped forward and ruffled his hair. “What’s the matter, did you sleep yourself silly? Remember who I am?”
Every last shred of the grievance and sorrow from his dream surged up in Zhou Fuxue at once. Looking at the smiling young man before him, radiant as blazing light, he—seized by who knows what madness—reached out on some possessed impulse and threw his arms around him.
