Chương 20: Memories

Dawn snuck into the River-Mist Inn, painting the paper screens with pale green light and filling the room with the damp smell of moss. It found Mingxuan where the moon had left him: sitting cross-legged on the floor, back straight, hands on his knees. He had not moved since Xinyi had finally surrendered to sleep. Her breathing had been the only sound marking the hours, a quiet rhythm against which he had measured his own stillness. The air in the room felt close, but Mingxuan barely noticed.

The phantom stench of burned earth and old blood filled his nose, his lungs, though he knew it was not truly there. He had spent the night wading through the demon's recollections. They were not orderly, the way Liu Wen's memories had been. Liu Wen's past had unfolded like a scroll, one image after another, each one clear and distinct. The demon's memories were a midden heap. Terror and malice and hunger, all jumbled together. He saw villages burning. He felt bones snap under claws he did not possess.

He tasted salt from tears on faces he could never quite see clearly. The memories were not his. Yet they clung to him like grave dirt, leaving a cold residue of disgust that seeped into his own thoughts. It was a hard journey, that night's meditation. It left him feeling hollowed out and stained, dangerously close to understanding a creature he wished had never existed. Through all the violence, a pattern began to emerge. The demon had not been born the way living things were born.

It had taken flesh when it wanted to, but it was not made of flesh. It was woven from the dregs of mortal suffering instead, spite and terror stitched together with hatred. Its existence had been one long act of consumption. The physical form was just a vessel, a shape given to grief and rage and endless hunger. It fed on the very emotions that had birthed it, seeking fear and hatred and despair because those feelings were its native tongue, the only language it knew. Mingxuan wondered if all demons were like this.

The thought frustrated him. For every answer he dragged from the darkness, a dozen new questions arose. He was a boy standing on a shore, holding a single shell to his ear and trying to understand the ocean. His knowledge was a patchwork thing, borrowed from others and pieced together from lonely observation. Liu Wen's memories had given him a map of cultivation, but it was a map of only one country. It offered no guidance to the monstrous territories that lay beyond. The ignorance was a cage.

With every new discovery, he felt its bars press tighter. Mingxuan lifted one hand, palm up. A wisp of smoke rose from his skin, pale as moonlight. He coaxed it, shaped it. The smoke condensed and wove itself into a small figure, a miniature copy of the demon from Seventh Stone, standing no taller than his hand. Every detail was perfect: the oily shell, the limbs that bent wrong, the ember-bright eyes that drifted in the black mirror of its face.

Though it was only made of Qi, silent malice seemed to radiate from its tiny form. He had done this a dozen times during the night. Morbid curiosity drove him to stare into the abyss of its nature. What did he hope to learn from this? He was not entirely sure. The part of him that still felt the phantom stain of the creature's memories simply wanted it gone. He wanted to burn through the demon's Death Qi, to be rid of it. The thought of carrying such tainted energy within him was a constant nausea.

It was an impurity, a wrong note in the quiet song of endings he had learned to cherish. But the practical part of him knew this was wasteful. Death Qi was scarce and precious. The demon had left him a considerable inheritance. To squander it due to mere revulsion was an indulgence he could not afford. Fortunately or unfortunately, the reservoir was vast. His efforts had barely lowered it. The sheer volume was testament to the countless lives the creature had devoured.

He was trying to empty an ocean with a teaspoon. A sudden weight on his knee broke his concentration. He looked down. Yin and Yang were climbing into his lap with determination. Once there, they stared at the miniature demon with an intensity that seemed too large for their small bodies. Their tails lashed in perfect synchrony. Before Mingxuan could dismiss the construct, they attacked. It was a blur of black and white fur, hissing and spitting fury.

Yang launched himself first, batting at the demon's head with paws that were more fluff than claw. Yin darted in from the side, trying to sink needle-sharp teeth into one spindly leg. The shade, guided by some combination of residual malevolence and Mingxuan's own startled reaction, sidestepped and skittered backward. His first thought was to end it and calm the kittens. But something stopped him. Perhaps it was exhaustion. Perhaps it was simple curiosity. Either way, he let them continue.

The kittens were relentless. They moved with surprising grace, coordinating their assault. They harried the construct, flanked it, drove it back across the landscape of his crossed legs. To his astonishment, they won. With a final unified pounce, they swarmed the tiny spectre. It dissolved with a faint hiss, unraveling into harmless wisps that faded into the morning air. The kittens stood where their enemy had been, chests puffed with pride, letting out triumphant mews.

Mingxuan stared at them, and a slow smile spread across his face. He scooped them up, one in each hand, and they purred against his palms. His curiosity, lighter and more pleasant now, grew. He set them back down and conjured another demon shade with a flick of his wrist. The effect was immediate. The purring stopped. Low growls replaced it. They launched themselves at the new target with the same determination. This time, Mingxuan put more effort into the construct's defence.

He guided it in evasive patterns, letting it leap onto the low table and scuttle behind a pack. The kittens adapted. Yang would distract from the front while Yin stalked from the shadows, pouncing from the blind side. They were shockingly effective together. He watched, fascinated, as they cornered it against the bed leg and, after a brief struggle, dispelled it again. He repeated this several more times, ordering the construct's movements more complex each time. The kittens never faltered.

They learned and adapted, their tactics growing more sophisticated. Their ferocity was absolute, strange to see in such small, soft creatures. A thought pricked at him. Had their mother been more than a simple stray? Perhaps a spirit beast? It would explain their instinctive understanding of combat, the force of their small wills. Or maybe they were just cats. He had known cats to be ruthless, clever things before. Mingxuan paused. Had he known cats before?

No specific memory surfaced, but there was a feeling there, something he could not quite grasp. After a moment, he let the thought drift away. Finally, after the kittens had vanquished their tenth spectral foe, he ended the game. He let the last of the demon's Qi dissipate and drew the two small warriors to him. They climbed into his lap, purring like tiny storms, and immediately began grooming themselves with an air of satisfaction. He stroked their soft fur.

The grim weight of the night's meditations lifted for the first time.

"You find amusement in the strangest things." The voice, soft and rough with sleep, startled him. He looked up. Xinyi was propped on one elbow, watching him from her bedding. Her hair was a mess of sleep-tousled tangles. A smile played on her lips, holding both fondness and quiet disapproval. The morning light caught in her dark eyes, and for a moment Mingxuan felt like a boy caught stealing sweets, though he could not say what crime he had committed. Her eyes narrowed on his face.

"You haven't slept. Again."

"Yes." His voice rasped. He winced at the sound of it. He glanced at the spot on the floor where his phantom had been.

"Though I spent the entire time with nightmares anyway." She sat up, wrapping the quilt around her shoulders.

"Did they tell you anything worth the price?"

"Some," he said.

"I have a theory about what demons are, for example." Her eyes narrowed further.

"That was what kept you up?" Mingxuan blinked.

"Yes?"

"I expected you would fret about those two Soaring Crane cultivators until your brain leaked out of your ears." Ah. She had seen through him.

"I suppose I sought a distraction."

"Most people distract themselves with pleasant things when they want to avoid something unpleasant."

"Only something equally unpleasant could have held my attention." Xinyi shook her head.

"You ridiculous boy." A hint of affection softened the words.

"I left you to your own devices, hoping you would be ready to talk about your worries in the morning. Instead you have only scrambled your head more." She studied him for a moment, then spoke more softly.

"What am I to do with you?"

"My apologies," Mingxuan said with a smile.

"I wish I knew what to do with myself." Xinyi pushed herself from the futon. The quilt fell away as she moved to the low table where cold tea waited. She poured a cup, then turned back to him. The amusement had left her face, replaced by quiet gravity.

"Soaring Crane disciples," she said.

"They ask about demons in town, then head west. West, toward a village where a demon was just killed. A village where people whisper about a strange boy with a knack for being near endings." She laid out the pieces with calm precision.

"They will find Seventh Stone. They will hear the stories. And they will come looking for a heretic." Mingxuan watched condensation trace a path down the side of the teapot.

"I know."

"You fear they will brand you a heretic. Hunt you." He met her gaze.

"My concern was not only for myself." Her hands stilled on the teacup. For a long moment she just looked at him. He thought he saw something wounded flicker in her eyes.

"I see."

"Xinyi—""My fear," she continued, "was not that they would find you. It was that I would wake this morning and you would be gone. That you would have slipped away in the dark, telling yourself it was for my own good. That you would face them alone to protect me." She set the cup down with a soft click that sounded loud in the quiet.

"Promise you will not do that. We left Seventh Stone together. We walk this road together. Whatever comes, we face it together. No quiet sacrifices. No noble departures in the dead of night. Promise me, Mingxuan." Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. He looked at her then, took the stubborn set of her jaw, the fierce loyalty in her eyes. There was a quiet strength to her that had carried them both through more than one kind of wilderness.

"I promise," he said. A slow breath escaped her, and the tension left her shoulders. She picked up the teacup again, her hands steady now.

"Good. Because we always knew this was a possibility. We knew you would need a new name, a new history. This just means the performance begins sooner than we planned." His shoulders slumped.

"You make it sound simple."

"It is simple. We leave. We travel to Ironhold as we intended. A large city is the best place to become invisible. A new face in a crowd is just a new face. It is not an event." Mingxuan considered her words. The path ahead was still dangerous, but it was not a path he had to walk alone. The thought was a strange comfort, a small point of warmth in a world that had suddenly grown colder.

"Then we should leave soon," he said.

"As soon as we have eaten." Xinyi's smile returned, small but genuine.

"And as soon as you have had at least an hour of sleep."

"If that is your condition, we may not leave here until next week." Xinyi rolled her eyes.

"Do not think I will not find some way to knock you out, young man. I am sure even cultivators can be poisoned."

"Well, wait until the town is behind us. Once we are out in the fields where no townsman can point to our location, I might be able to rest."

"I will hold you to that." They moved about the small room after that, a quiet dance of shared purpose. Xinyi coaxed the inn's small stove back to life and set water to boil for thin rice gruel. Mingxuan folded their bedrolls, smoothing the wrinkles from the wool. The kittens supervised from atop a pillow, their heads turning in tandem as they tracked the morning rituals. He worked in a haze of fatigue. His thoughts drifted back to Seventh Stone.

He pictured Elder Kao laughing about a mouse that turned into fireworks. He remembered Granny Willow-Knot's strange, kind wisdom, her talk of compost and roots. He thought of all the quiet souls whose hands he had held, whose stories now lived inside him like small points of light in the vast darkness of his cultivation. He had learned so much from them. More, perhaps, than any scroll could teach. He tried to hold onto that thought, to let gratitude be the final word on the village that had sheltered him.

But it was hard not to feel the prickle of resentment. The memory of Miller Hao's face, twisted with suspicion, the whispers that followed him like biting flies. These soured the kinder recollections. He had saved them, and yet some of them, he knew, would still celebrate if a Soaring Crane disciple's sword found his heart. The injustice was a bitter thing to swallow.

"You are a thousand miles away." Xinyi's voice drew him back. She had set two bowls of steaming gruel on the low table. He came and sat across from her. The scent of cooked rice was a small, grounding comfort.

"Just thinking," he said.

"I know that look." She studied him.

"What were you doing earlier? With that… thing?" Mingxuan hesitated.

"The demon's Qi from Seventh Stone. It is still with me." He saw her hand tighten on her spoon.

"It is not corrupting me, if that is your worry. But trying to examine its memories proved rather unpleasant." She was quiet for a moment.

"What did it feel like? To end it?" He considered the question.

"It was not a living thing, not the way we are." He looked down at his hands, half expecting to see them stained.

"It was necessary. But I would not wish to do it again."

"I would," she said, her voice so low he almost missed it.

"I think I would. Just once. To see if it would make me less afraid." The quiet admission hung between them. They had spoken of demons rarely, and only in hushed tones when they did. Ghosts that lived in the corners of their shared history, ghosts they had seldom dared acknowledge.

"The ones I remember from that day," she began, her gaze fixed on the steam rising from her bowl, "were not like the creature you fought. They wore skins of flayed muscle or cloaks of cold fire. They were legion. An army. Some moved like men, but where their faces should have been, there was only a smooth mask of bone with a single weeping eye that bled red light. Others loped on all fours, things that might have once been wolves, but their fur had been peeled away.

Only muscle remained, pulsing and quivering and utterly foul. They seemed to delight in the sounds people made as they died." He watched her, saying nothing, as she began to speak of the day he was born. She spoke of small things. The way his mother's hand had felt in hers, cool and trembling. The sound of the midwives humming to soothe her through the pain, a sound that was later replaced by screams.

She spoke of Lei and Yun, the two warriors who had guarded them, of their easy banter that fell silent when the first demons appeared on the horizon. A flicker of something almost like a smile touched her lips, a ghost of memory.

"Lei." The way she spoke the name was soft and sad.

"We were camped by a stream once, and he spent an hour slipping on wet rocks, lunging at shadows in the water. He ended up soaked to the bone, covered in mud, with nothing to show for it but a bruised ego." The memory faded. The sadness returned to her eyes, deeper now.

"I have not laughed like that since. Not really." Her voice did not break, but it grew thinner. She recounted the flight, the fall of each guardian, the weight of him in her arms, a small warmth in a world that had turned to blood and fear. When she spoke of Lei's final stand, her breath hitched. It was a small sound of pain that had never fully healed. Xinyi shivered, pulling the quilt tighter around her shoulders. Her next words came out as barely more than a whisper.

"The sky was red that day. The colour of blood. Not like the Blood Qi cycles we have seen since. This was different. Thicker. As if the heavens themselves were bleeding."

"I remember," Mingxuan whispered.

"It hurt to breathe." Xinyi looked at him.

"Yes. I wish you did not. There is no justice in the world when both of us must endure that memory." Quiet settled between them. Mingxuan frowned as he stirred his cooling gruel. The spoon made a soft scraping sound against the ceramic. She looked at him, her dark eyes searching his.

"Do you ever wish you did not remember? Wish you had arrived in this world like any other child, a blank slate?" He considered the question. He thought of a life without the constant hum of endings in his bones, without the phantom weight of a fractured former life he remembered only in flashes. A life where the world was just the world, and not a tapestry of threads waiting to be cut. It would be simpler. Quieter. He might have played with other children in Seventh Stone, learned to mend nets or shape pottery.

His greatest worry might have been a poor harvest or a winter that came too soon. But then the other memory rose, the one that was the bedrock of his entire being. A woman made of twilight and starlight, her eyes holding every goodbye ever spoken. The quiet awe of that meeting, the impossible, heart-stopping moment of recognition.

"No," he said, and the word was as solid as stone.

"I would not trade it. Not for anything." He met Xinyi's gaze and let her see the full force of the vow he had made in the space between lives.

"To forget that day would be to forget her. And I would walk through a thousand battlefields to keep the memory of my mistress." Xinyi's breath caught. Then a slow, sad smile touched her lips.

"I admire that," she whispered.

"To hold onto something so tightly, even when it cuts you." She looked down at her own hands, at the faint scars left by a life of healing and fleeing.

"I am not so strong. If I could, I would scour every trace of that day from my mind. I would burn the memory of their faces, their screams, the smell of blood on the air. I would make it so they had never existed at all. Even if it meant removing the happy memories too." She shook her head.

"What is the point of them? Of creatures that exist only to cause pain? Why does the world need such things?"

"My theory," Mingxuan said when she fell silent, "is that they are echoes, of a sort. Grief, terror, hatred... if enough of it pools in one place, perhaps it gains a kind of life. A consciousness made of pain." He thought of the demon's shrieking memories.

"It was not hungry for life. Murder was almost secondary. Fear was what it wanted. It fed on the same things that created it." Xinyi's eyes turned distant.

"One of my mentors, a woman who had traveled the southern countries and further, told me of a place called Blackwood Pass, deep in the south of Rat Country. An entire imperial legion was betrayed and slaughtered there, left to rot in their iron armor. After centuries, something rose from the mud. They called it the Weeping General. A thing of rusted plate and shattered bone, held together by nothing but sorrow. It patrolled the pass like a duty, and from the empty visor of its helm, it wept.

The tears were black, and anything they touched would rust to dust in an instant, whether it be metal or stone or flesh. Every merchant who traveled that route knew to avoid it at all costs." Mingxuan listened in silence. The image took root in his mind.

"There are other kinds too," Xinyi continued, her voice empty of inflection.

"Worse kinds. There was a cultivator, long ago. The Sage of Crimson Palace. He was said to be the most brilliant of his generation, a master of Life Qi. He could coax blossoms from dead wood. But he grew to resent the brevity of the life he nurtured. He wanted permanence. He began to study other things. They say he started feeding his own vitality into his creations, then the vitality of animals, then... people. The Life Qi soured. The flowers he grew had thorns that dripped poison.

The fruit from his trees would drive men mad. In the end, his own sect had to hunt him down. They found him in his gardens, part of the twisted forest he had created, a thing of bark and thorns with a heart that pulsed with stolen life." The story chilled him more than the first. A cultivator, a master of an element, twisted into a monster by his own obsession. He saw with unwelcome clarity how thin the line could be between nurturing life and consuming it.

"And then," she said, her voice dropping even lower, "there are the old stories. The ones the elders tell to frighten children into obedience. They speak of the Nine Hells and of the Malevolent Sages who rule them. They say they are beings as old as the world itself, forged in the first fires of creation. They are malice given form, pure and absolute. Their names are poison on the tongue. To even speak of them is to invite their attention." Mingxuan swallowed.

"I admit I have not sought stories of demons often."

"Few do."

"It seems likely I may have to change that. It would be prudent to know more about the enemy that has altered the course of my life so deeply. Liu Wen seemed to think they could be controlled to some degree. There are people who take advantage of this." Xinyi said nothing. She gave only a slow nod that ended with her head lowered, gaze fixed on the tabletop. She was trembling. He did not know when he had moved, but he found himself beside her, his arm around her shaking shoulders.

She leaned into him, her head resting against his chest. For a long time they just sat there, two survivors clinging to each other in the quiet morning. He felt the tremors that ran through her, the unshed tears she refused to let fall. He held her, offering the silent comfort he had learned at a hundred bedsides. The exhaustion of his long vigil pressed down on him. In the warmth of her presence, his eyes began to drift shut. The world dissolved in a flash of white.

Suddenly Mingxuan was elsewhere, drifting, untethered. The scent of rice gruel and old wood was ripped away, replaced by wet earth and something metallic and sharp that clogged the back of his throat. He stood on a muddy cart track. Rain hissed in his ears, pouring thick enough to form grey walls all around him. Xinyi lay in the mud at his feet. Her cloak was thrown back, revealing the simple blue tunic beneath. Her hair, loose from its braid, fanned out in the muck. Her eyes were open.

They stared up at the grey, weeping sky, and they saw nothing. A perfect line of red stood stark at the base of her throat, a brutal necklace that seeped into the collar of her tunic. All sound, all thought, ceased. There was only that line, that impossible stillness. A man stood over her. His robes were a patchwork of filth and faded colors. His face was half-hidden by a matted beard. A curved blade, the kind used for harvesting grain, was held loosely in one hand. Dark droplets wept from its edge onto the mud.

The man's dark eyes found Mingxuan's. A grin split the grime on his face, revealing teeth stained black. The world narrowed. The grin, the dripping blade, the vacant stare in Xinyi's eyes. The Death Qi inside Mingxuan erupted in a colourless torrent of pure negation. A hunger to unmake, to erase the man, the mud, the sky, everything, until only silence remained. The vision shattered. He was back in the room, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs.

Xinyi was pulling away from him, her expression shifting from grief to concern as she saw his face.

"Mingxuan?" she asked.

"What is it?" He could not speak. The image was seared behind his eyes, vivid and terrible. It was a rare and unwelcome intrusion, a stray spark from his cultivation that he had not felt since he was a small child, too young to control the strange currents that moved within him. She straightened, her own sorrow forgotten in the face of his distress. She smoothed a hand over his hair. Her touch was a small, familiar comfort.

"It is over now. We are safe." She gave him a small, watery smile.

"You are a kind boy, Mingxuan. Kinder than this world deserves." He swallowed. The words lodged in his throat. He wanted to tell her, to warn her, but the vision had been a possibility, not a certainty. To speak of it would only bring her more fear. He nodded, forcing a smile that felt like a grimace. She rose, her composure regained.

"Come. Let us pack the last of our things. The road is waiting."