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𓆸
Changming Mountain is vast, sparse. Fitting, Ye Baiyi supposes, for someone like him, discontent with his un-life—the pine-topped peaks and snowmelt rivers appeal to his sense for the dramatic, and the ruined temple makes for an appropriately ascetic living space. All in all, an optimal setting for cultivating both his martial arts and his reputation.
Here, he thinks. Here, he will spend the next ten to twenty years in blessed silence and return to jianghu once he’s ready, powerful enough to topple kings if he so wishes. Then he will show that idiot—
Well. Then he will show everyone.
Not a full week passes before the boundary wards are tripped and the rebound jolts Ye Baiyi awake from his meditation with a start and a tinkle of bells.
He recognises the woman caught by the array at first glance. She’s sweating, dirty-cheeked and entirely unlike the pampered girl Ye Baiyi saw last, and on her back—
“Save him,” Wu Xueyan says. “You have to save him.”
Six Harmonies, the jianghu calls it, news of it spreading from mouth to mouth like a scandalous secret. The most powerful form of martial arts a cultivator can dream of.
Rong Changqing had traded the Great Famine sword for the stupid thing. Ye Baiyi can imagine it, the foolish smile on his face the minute he opened the fucking manual and started reading like a man, starved.
Did he stop when things began to go wrong, or did he keep going?
Ye Baiyi stares at the body laid out on the stone in front of him and thinks, no fucking way he stopped.
“What have you tried?” he asks the girl. She pulls out a booklet and hands it to him.
“ Antivenom, acupuncture, the—”
“Seven Needles, Three Flowers Technique, yes, I see it.”
Wu Xueyan nods. “Can you do anything?”
Ye Baiyi shakes his head, hand on Rong Changqing’s pulse, and skims the booklet: tidy characters on white paper, a detailed report.
He tries to think. Minutes pass. Wu Xueyan stares at him without blinking, eyes red and cheeks sunken like a starving street child.
“All right,” Ye Baiyi mutters under his nose, then pulls out a stack of blank talismans and a stick of cinnabar. “Move,” he says, “I have to—”
“Preserve the flow of—yes. Give me that and get the incense.”
Ye Baiyi stops and stares at her for a heartbeat, two.
Hadthis ferocious woman always been there, hiding inside the spoiled Healer Valley princess like a sleeping dragon?
“Hurry up,” snaps Wu Xueyan.
Ye Baiyi hands her the talisman paper.
But nothing he had learned in the course of his long life is enough to help Rong Changqing. He suspects—sweating, bloody mouthed, hours later—not even Healer Valley’s deepest secrets would be enough.
He tries one last thing.
“You will die,” yells Wu Xueyan.
Ye Baiyi scoffs.
So what, he doesn’t say.
Worth it, he doesn’t say.
For him, I—but he doesn’t finish the thought.
(Rong Changqing awakens a week later to find himself lying on a straw mat under a half caved-in roof, Wu Xueyan by his bedside, Ye Baiyi out by the cliff.
He thinks himself quite content in that moment, the fool.)
𓆸
So: love.
Ye Baiyi fell into it accidentally and with much reluctance, truly the most inconvenient thing to have happened to him in this life. He is a fighter and a bit of a brute, really; his only goal to duel his way to the top of jianghu and be done with it for good.
Who would want to be saddled with feelings for an idiot like Ghost Hand Rong Changqing?
And yet.
It was spring, which makes the indignity of the whole affair worse in its fanciful, inevitable collision course. It was spring and the plum trees were in full bloom. Rong Changqing had emerged from the workshop soot-covered and sweaty and truly, truly disgusting, with a smile on his face the size of the Yangtze River and his hands covered up to the elbows with grime.
He’d carried a sword and presented it to Ye Baiyi and said—
Well.
It’s been years since then. Decades. Ye Baiyi’s heart grew around Rong Changqing like a tree around an arrow, or skin around a wound: itchy, irritating, inevitable.
If he comes to this cliff on occasion to stare into the swirling fog and contemplate the choices that led him here, in love with a fool and stuck on this secluded mountain he’d found searching for solitude—what a joke—that is between him and the bobbing grasses and the wind.
He doesn’t expect Wu Xueyan to fucking sneak up on him.
“So it’s like that then,” she says out of the blue. Ye Baiyi is too well-trained to truly startle, but his hand does twitch toward his sword before he reigns himself in.
Bitch, he thinks.
He knows better than to say it.
“What is like what, Lady Wu?”
“You. Changqing-ge. The whole,” she lifts her hand and makes a delicate gesture, something one with a fan might make if she had one on hand, which she doesn’t.
She didn’t bring much of anything when she ran off from Healer Valley with an unmarried man and crossed half of jianghu to seek out another.
Ye Baiyi turns back to face the cliff’s edge. A level below on a sheet of tender grass, Rong Changqing is practicing sword forms half-naked.
(Before anybody asks, Ye Baiyi was here first.)
“What of it?” he asks, more defensive than he’d like.
Not denial, no. What for? Wu Xueyan is not stupid.
“He wants to marry me,” she says, nonchalant like she was chatting about the weather and wholly uncaring of the dull ache that rears its ugly head in Ye Baiyi’s chest.
Maybe not wholly, he corrects himself when he glances at her again and finds her looking at him with a cutting gaze that seems to want to pull him apart to examine what’s inside, like she’d find an answer between Ye Baiyi’s guts faster than his mouth can move.
It’s disconcerting. Appealing, in a way venomous snakes are: cool, beautiful, dangerous; entirely deserving of one’s respect.
“Congratulations,” Ye Baiyi says, and hopes to fuck it is the right thing to say.
“He’s an idiot, of course,” Wu Xueyan adds. “Truly impressive for a genius, don’t you think?”
“What do you want?” Ye Baiyi asks helplessly.
Are all women so petty? Did Wu Xueyan come here just to gloat?
“It’s not a bad deal, all things considered,” she continues, arms crossed as he watches Rong Changqing spin into a blur below, pensive and neutral: a remark of no consequence.
Ye Baiyi considers himself above beating up defenseless women, most of the time.
Wu Xueyan seems to have been put into this world to test his patience.
See, here’s Rong Changqing’s genius idea. He came up to the ruined tower three days after he was allowed out of bed to share it, spill it all over Ye Baiyi like it was sweet wine—they would stay here, him and Wu Xueyan, they would stay here and keep Ye Baiyi company as thanks, they would stay here and be together forever.
(Wouldn’t that be nice, wouldn’t that be just the best, he asked, expression open and excited and hopeful. We could fix the roof over the east room and I can start a workshop, and you can see what the Six Harmonies can really do, and A-Yan—)
“I wish you the best in your marriage,” Ye Baiyi says coolly, then turns around and walks away.
“Wait,” Wu Xueyan calls after him.
Her qinggong is laughable. Ye Baiyi leaves her behind faster than a blink, a heartbeat.
Further. Further.
He stops when he hits the snow line. Above him, the mountain looms, unforgiving.
Ye Baiyi knew Wu Xueyan to be spoiled, to be haughty and beautiful and clever. He watched Rong Changqing’s infatuation with her grow each day like a slowly festering wound—Rong Changqing had been like that since time immemorial, fascinated by clever, beautiful things; clever, beautiful people.
Would he have stayed? Ye Baiyi didn’t know. He wasn’t afraid then, not yet—it was too soon to be afraid, he was too certain that Changqing would stick to him forever like barbed seeds stuck to Ye Baiyi’s trouser leg.
The calculation on Wu Xueyan’s face hurt more than anything else.
There was once an immortal man—a dead man, really, with a pretty title—who saved a life and fell in love and decided it was too much work to do anything about it, in the end.
Ye Baiyi returns to the temple at sundown. He finds Changqing sitting by the fire, two cups and a full wineskin in front of him on the table .
“Where did you get that from?” Ye Baiyi demands, greedy for it—the wine, Changqing’s company, who can tell the difference? The wine smells floral, fragrant. Wu Xueyan’s words sit in his belly like a handful of stones.
Changqing smiles and pushes a cup toward him.
“Let’s drink!”
Hours later, Ye Baiyi is still sober.
Don’t get married, stupid, he thinks, watching Changqing doze on his folded arm like a teenager. The night is dark, the wind that creeps through the holes in the wall biting cold.
They could fix the roof over the east room.
Rong Changqing could have a workshop.
“Don’t marry her,” he says softly, barely audible to his own ears let alone anybody else, least of all the man folded over the table in peaceful sleep.
Changqing doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything.
Ye Baiyi sleeps up the mountainside on a tree for the next week. It isn’t to avoid either of them—he doesn’t need to avoid anybody and isn’t generally in the habit of doing so, either. It’s only that it’s nice to breathe in the wet air and see the stars pass by slowly, singing the song of a universe too large to care about the trifling matters of human lives, small and fleeting like ants in comparison.
Even ones like him, seemingly endless.
This, too, will fade. It will.
But what does Ye Baiyi, dead man, swordmaster and known brute, know about love?
Here, the tension that builds and builds until Ye Baiyi’s body is full with it to bursting. Will it break his ribcage inside out when it explodes, or will he be able to swallow it all if he tries hard enough?
It takes the damned woman a week to track him down. It’s impressive. Irritating.
“Madame Rong,” Ye Baiyi nods from his perch. It’s satisfying, looking down at her from such a height, even if the sentiment is more fitting for a child than a man who’d lived countless years and evidently turned out no better for it.
Wu Xueyan scoffs and kicks the tree.
“Are you done sulking?”
“What, are you coming up to drag me down?”
“I could.”
Ye Baiyi laughs, mirthless. Wu Xueyan glares furiously up.
“Changqing was ready to assemble a search party for you, you ass. He scared the village elder half to death when he came with the supplies two days ago, did you consider that, o wise Immortal Monk?”
Changqing, calling for a search party. Ye Baiyi scoffs.
“I went to Nanjiang to fight somebody once. Five years, I was gone. When I returned, you know what he said? ‘Oh, you’re back, look at this book I just got, isn’t it the most interesting?’ Search party. My foot.”
“I told him,” Wu Xueyan says.
There is a pause. The air itself freezes into an ominous silence broken only by the crack of the branch that was Ye Baiyi’s bed for the past week as he launches himself off and presses Wu Xueyan up against the trunk, tight enough to bruise her under her collar.
“Told him what,” he asks, humiliation burning in his throat like acid.
“That I told you, idiot. About the wedding.”
Ye Baiyi lets go and turns around, kicks a rock hard enough that it topples off the cliff and disappears with a series of rattling clangs against the rockface.
“I like him,” Wu Xueyan croaks, “you never let me finish. I like him. He’s a good man, for all his faults, and he adores me, which is a nice enough start for a marriage, I suppose.”
“Why should I care what you think? You can have him. Take him back to Healer Valley while you’re at it, and leave me in peace.”
“Will you listen to me, idiot?”
Ye Baiyi whirls around. Wu Xueyan leans against the tree with her arms crossed.
“What?”
“He’s in love with you,” she says, like it’s nothing.
Ye Baiyi gapes at her. Wu Xueyan smiles—grins, really, cheeky and dimpled and full of mirth—and spreads her arms in a dramatic shrug.
“So what if we try making the most of it?”
“Are you drunk?” Ye Baiyi asks, bewildered. Offended.
Minutes pass. Wu Xueyan pulls out a wineskin and throws it at him.
“Not yet.”
This isn’t how… this isn’t how he…
Not imagined, no.
But in his heart of hearts—in his quietest, most tender parts where the possibility of Rong Changqing lived like a seed taking root between the paving stones—not once did he think a girl, this girl, would come to him and offer to share him like he was a box of pastries.
Does he even want—
Does Changqing even—
“Figures that the only man I’d consider marrying will ask me to proposition another man on his behalf,” Wu Xueyan mutters sourly.
𓆸
“I don’t want to touch you,” Ye Baiyi says. They sit cross-legged on the cold grass, a leather mat and a roll of paper between them.
Wu Xueyan wrinkles her nose like she’d seen something disgusting and nods. “No. It’s best if you don’t, I think.”
“And I’m not anybody’s sidepiece.”
“Who’s going to enforce rules of polite society here?” she asks, gesturing around them—the mountains are vast, cold, empty. All that lives around here are rock doves, insects and not much else.
“We make our own lives,” she adds, soft like Ye Baiyi has never heard her before. “How many women in the world can say the same?”
Ye Baiyi takes a long sip and passes the wineskin back.
Rong Changqing makes a pitiful figure, waiting by the ruined doorway of the temple like a nervous housewife. He rushes forward as soon as Ye Baiyi and Wu Xueyan appear on top of the path, hands out to grasp Ye Baiyi’s hand the second he gets within touching distance.
“Baiyi, I was wrong,” he starts, words spilling from his mouth like pebbles from a basket. “I really thought it would be better if it was Xueyan, she’s much better at talking than I am when it matters, you see, you and I are so useless when it comes to such things. I was wrong, truly wrong.”
Ye Baiyi yanks his hand back and scoffs, nose full with the scent of sweet spring grasses and woodsmoke, his heart with the sight of Changqing, teary-eyed and hesitant with hope.
A pathetic sight, in truth—or would be if it didn’t make Ye Baiyi feel content to the point of discomfort: here, Rong Changqing; begging for his forgiveness. With it, all is turned right in the world.
“I’ll have to teach you a lesson,” he says. “Getting married under my nose, asking your bride to be your matchmaker. Had you no mother to raise you? Did your father not beat you up enough? Did you lose your brain somewhere, or boil it again with another fucking manual?”
He fights off Changqing’s touch, the reputable Immortal Ghost Hand determined to grab onto whatever part of him he can reach: his sleeve, his shoulder, his waist. He catches hold of Ye Baiyi’s elbow eventually—Ye Baiyi wasn’t fighting especially hard—and holds on tight, reaching for Wu Xueyan with his other hand. She allows herself to be pulled closer until Changqing is cushioned between the two of them in the most undignified manner possible.
“I like you both so much,” Changqing says, muffled by Ye Baiyi’s shoulder, “I’m so fortunate, aren’t I? Truly the luckiest man in the world.”
“The most pitiable, perhaps,” Ye Baiyi croaks. He pushes Changqing off, firm but not unkind. “Look at you, crying like a child. What’s wrong with you?”
Rong Changqing looks up. His eyes are rimmed with red and his cheeks are shiny with tears.
“I’m happy,” he says.
Wu Xueyan and Ye Baiyi scoff at the same time, then glare at each other above Rong Changqing’s head, affronted.
Rong Changqing’s delighted laughter echoes back from the cliffside like the looping verse of a song.