ZE ZHI WEI (萴智危)

  Day 8, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Shuishang Province, Shanhu Sect

  How on earth did we get away with attempted murder?

  I stared at the table in front of me, flicking aside a piece of cloth without really seeing it. The world was searching for a killer. Guards had tripled across Taishan. I’d been told—firmly—to take leave.

  We came so close to being exposed. Too close.

  I’d been careful. bīnghuǒdú had never left the experimenting room until the day of the banquet. Neither had the monkshood. Every ingredient was accounted for.

  So how had it ended up smeared across the gift box?

  Someone must have tried to frame us. But…how would they even know what to look for?

  I hadn’t told a soul. My mother—well. Even if she had said something, no one in their right mind would believe her.

  That left only one possibility.

  I breathed.

  Ze Yijun.

  I still hadn’t addressed it—the rumour that the Empress had recently entertained Yijun. The thought made my skin crawl. Had she known all along? Had she smiled at us with the same mouth that whispered our names to the executioner?

  Yet no one had come to drag us to prison. No one had come to send us on our merry way to the afterlife.

  No shackles. No soldiers. No midnight sentencing. Just silence.

  It almost felt more threatening than guilt.

  It was absurd of me to suspect my brother. I hadn’t even found a shred of proof that he’d leaked anything. We all knew how unreliable rumours were. Maybe he didn’t even know what I was doing with the monkshood. I sighed, sinking into my chair.

  My gaze drifted to my mother.

  She was seated limply in the corner, staring at the floor like it had once betrayed her and she was waiting for it to apologise. Her hair was dishevelled and greyed at the edges, parted in a strange way that looked like she’d tried to rip it out by the roots. She hadn’t spoken much since I finished refining bīnghuǒdú. She hadn’t smiled either.

  It surprised me how quiet she had become after the public whipping. It wasn’t an unusual experience for her. But even so, her apathy only added to my guilt.

  I should have protected her. I should have done something. Instead, I’d just stood there, watching them strike her again and again whilst I gritted my teeth and begged stupidly.

  My knuckles turned white. Why was I so useless?

  The sound of clay crashing to the ground snapped me upright. My brother stumbled into the room with a half-empty wine jar in hand, sloshing its contents across the floor.

  “Why... she... love...” he mumbled.

  He’d been like this ever since he discovered I had stolen the monkshood from An Lingqi. He never talked about it outright, just slurred her name between sobs and bottles, wailing about how she was his light, his love, his only hope. It made no sense.

  “How shameless of you to be drinking so early,” I said, mostly out of habit. It wasn’t really the drinking that bothered me. It was the way he dragged our family name through filth every time he opened his mouth. I had worked so hard to preserve what little pride we had left, only to have him stomp on it.

  Yijun didn’t answer. He slammed the wine jar onto the table, shattering it into clay fragments. The stench of wine rushed up to choke me. I flinched as he grabbed the back of my neck and forced my face into the table.

  “Shameless?” he growled. “Is that how you talk to your senior, huh!?”

  He was older, by a measly minute. But he always used that to justify everything. My fist flew before I could stop it, connecting with his cheek. He staggered backward, landing against the wall with a grunt. I shook my hand to ease out the numbness of the punch.

  I couldn’t believe him. He hadn’t left a speck of sympathy for our mother, whose body looked as if it went through a mincer, and yet he was content to behave in a vulgar manner all day long.

  My brother crawled his way up to his feet from a drunken mess to an enraged monster. He didn’t look shocked. Just...betrayed.

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  He wiped his cheek where I had hit him. His cheek was slightly pink, and tears reflexively welled in his eyes.

  Then he screamed.

  It wasn’t the kind of scream you’d expect from someone who was drunk or in pain. It was hollow. An animal cry scraped from the throat of a man who had run out of ways to cope.

  I didn’t know what to make of it.

  I didn’t know what to make of him.

  I didn’t know what to make of everything when even my mother joined the howl.

  What happened to us?

  Before I could say anything, our mother moved.

  She rose like a ghost and glided across the room in an instant. Her knife flashed in the air.

  She slashed at Yijun’s chest.

  “Mother!” I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around her waist, dragging her back before she could land another strike.

  “You ungrateful bastard!” she shrieked. “You sold us out! I’ll gut you like a pig, you filthy traitor!”

  “Stop—stop it!” I wrestled the blade from her grip, careful not to snap her brittle wrist. “Calm down. Stop.”

  Yijun didn’t stop.

  His fists came down like hammers, his words lost in a whirlwind of curses. I held up my arms to shield her. My body took the blows meant for her head.

  Blood. Screaming. My mother biting and clawing. Yijun kicking and swearing. And me, stuck in the middle.

  I was the rope in their endless tug-of-war.

  “Why didn’t you let me kill her!?” my mother howled, her face wet with tears. “I wanted to squeeze that slut’s heart in my hand!”

  “biǎozi!” Yijun roared. “When the hell did I betray anyone!?”

  “You had to be the one!” she shouted, her hands clawing at her chest. “How else did monkshood get onto the gift box? I was whipped because of you!”

  She tore open her robes, revealing the horrifying mess of her back. Deep, glistening gashes crisscrossed her flesh, some oozing, some crusted with blood and pus. The sight of it made my throat tighten.

  “Whipped?” Yijun’s eyes went mad. “I’ll show you whipped—”

  “Enough!” I boomed, blasting both of them across the room with my magic. My mother hit the wall with a soft gasp, and guilt stabbed me immediately. A queasy feeling filled my stomach at the thought of injuring her, but this feud had to stop.

  “Enough,” I repeated, quieter.

  “Yijun didn’t expose us,” I said. “Mother was whipped seventy times. Those are facts. If you want someone to blame—” I swallowed hard “—blame it on this unfilial son.”

  Silence stretched the room.

  Then my mother collapsed into a sobbing heap. Rocking back and forth like a child, she whispered, ‘monkshood, monkshood, monkshood,’ as if repeating it could undo the damage.

  Yijun stood there, breathing heavily. His eyes were red. Blood clung to his chest like a badge. I hadn’t meant to hurt his qi that badly. He swiped a hand over his lips and smirked, though it wasn’t really a smile. It was the kind of grin someone wore just before falling apart.

  I turned away. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  If only peace existed. If only we hadn’t burned it to the ground.

  ***

  “You failed.”

  The venom in the man’s voice chilled my bones. I dropped to my knees, my hands splaying against the cold stone floor. “My deepest apologies. I’m…I’m incompetent.”

  The man’s face was hidden behind a metal mask; its surface carved with elaborate symbols that caught and fractured the candlelight with every subtle movement. He’d never come to my bedroom before. Until now, it had always been anonymous letters. Sealed instructions. Untraceable missives slid under my door or hidden in the folds of old books.

  The hem of his cloak whispered as he stepped closer. “I cannot protect you if you are careless.”

  I bowed my head lower. “It won’t happen next time.”

  A linen sack landed before me with a quiet thud. After all this time, I still didn’t know who he was. My supposed xiānshēng. But he never let me within a metre. Never revealed his power. Always came to me masked. Always using that voice modulator, which I suspected needed a tier-six pill to maintain. But immortal presence couldn’t be masked, and the one I felt from him was…overwhelming.

  Possibly even greater than a tier-nine deity. And that was already the highest level.

  “There won’t be a next time,” he said.

  I flinched. His voice wasn’t loud, but it didn’t need to be. The calm ones were always worse. I reached for the sack with trembling hands, half-expecting to find poison wine or a dagger, or something silent and efficient to end it all without mess.

  But instead, inside was a single pill bottle. Pale green. It shimmered faintly, like moonlight gleaming off a frozen pond. Carefully, I pulled off the cork and caught the scent: clean, sharp, and rich with spiritual qi. My stomach twisted.

  It was a high-grade qi pill. I knew it was because it sparkled with a shine that could match the sun and there were three lotus-petal imprints on the surface. There was no mistake—only Huadu Sect could refine something this pure. Who was this man?

  He turned to leave. “Take care of Ze Lujin. Don’t lose your life stupidly.”

  I watched the blur of blue vanish into the air, leaving a faint shimmer behind. My fingers curled tightly around the phial. Why would he reward me after failure? Spare me when I was disposable?

  The polished metal of the pill bottle caught my reflection: a haggard, drawn, and unrecognisable.

  There was no more room for mistakes.

  I thought of my family.

  My brother, who hated me with every bone in his body. Hated our mother even more.

  The woman who could turn a glance into a weapon and silence into punishment. An unstable, cruel mistress, screaming one moment, and whispering to shadows the next. She wasn’t meant to be a mother.

  And me, the peacekeeper, the loyal son. The sword at the madwoman’s side.

  We all deserved to die.

  I stared again at the bottle. My heart pounded unsteadily.

  A scapegoat. That’s what we needed.

  I breathed out. “I’m sorry, An Lingqi.”