AN LING QI (安泠岐)

  Day 22, 4th Month of the Lunar Calendar, 6000th Year of the Yun Dynasty, Shuishang Province, Huadu Sect

  I stopped death.

  I was na?ve.

  Years of treating common illnesses and petty ailments had lulled me into a false sense of confidence.

  I stirred the bubbling claypot.

  I always found a cure. I promised her and I promised myself. I would protect them. This would not be a repeat of that mistake.

  But Fate always made fools of those who believed they could outmanoeuvre it.

  Her face—lined, pale, etched with exhaustion—was imprinted in my memory. I hoped I hadn’t been too blunt. But I knew I was. After I delivered her prognosis, I found myself speaking on in my usual detached way. Words filled the silence not because they were helpful, but because they were a dam. It was as it I couldn’t control my tongue. Or perhaps, it was to suppress the other fountain of words that threatened to outpour.

  The ones of regret and grief.

  The ones of failure and apologies.

  Su Tang was proud. Not necessarily kind, but deeply considerate. She’d never let the people she cared about know that she felt hurt; she’d always keep that to herself. That’s why she made me promise to keep the truth from the others.

  And I, as the emotionless instrument I had long become, offered no condolences, only quiet assent. After I agreed, her expression changed shifted. Potentially something of regret. But after all she’d endured lately, even I couldn’t read her anymore.

  Death was something Immortals didn’t dwell on. That was for humans—the mortals in the realm below, where there were no elixirs, no spirit-imbued tools, and definitely no magic. For us, reincarnation was the only endpoint we acknowledged.

  Except me.

  I thought about death all the time.

  I feared it.

  I pounded at some lemon-scented herbs.

  Su Tang once told me I was too jaded.

  She was wrong. I wasn’t just jaded. I had long forgotten how to express anything. Expressing yourself was for weaklings. It was for the uncontrolled and uncomposed.

  It was for those wishing an early death.

  An Lingqi, listen to me. Are you listening child? Don’t cry. Don’t smile. Don’t scream. Don’t laugh. If you do, then we’re dead. Okay? I’m not playing now. I’ve never played with you.

  The voice of woman who birthed me returned more often these days. She repeated it endlessly, whenever she caught me slipping. Even on the day she breathed her last, she said the same thing. And I listened.

  After that, I never dared defy her.

  It’s laughable actually, how so many people have trained themselves into emotional paralysis. We told ourselves it was for the greater good—tight-lipped and stony-faced, all in service of something bigger than ourselves. But what was this ‘greater good’ that robbed us of sleep and sanity?

  It was a lie.

  A shared delusion.

  A justification.

  Yet Su Tang, for all her outward expression, never revealed anything real either. Maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe withholding everything was just another illusion of control. And control—that was the true seduction. Control meant freedom.

  And power…well that meant even more.

  I once dreamed of freedom. That’s why I gave my title to Ju Ying. But as soon as I stepped into my house that day and found the Emperor waiting for me, I knew the truth. Freedom was a fantasy I was not allowed to touch.

  I tried to believe another fantasy instead:

  If I saved everyone, if I cured the incurable, if I shielded the weak from death’s reach—then I would be free.

  Then I could redeem myself for all those past mistakes.

  But days turned to weeks. Weeks into months. Years.

  And I could not atone for letting the Liantai Sect fall.

  A dull knock sounded at the door. I glanced at the candlewick: seven o’clock at night. I knew better than to open it. But I sensed a familiar spiritual presence.

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  “shīmèi! Open up! It’s Yijun.”

  Ze Yijun.

  What was he doing here?

  “Hey,” he called again. “I just want to talk.”

  Knock knock knock.

  “I know you’re in there. I know because… look, can you just open the door, please?”

  I poured the finished herbal soup into a ceramic jar, sealed the lid, and wiped my hands clean.

  Then I approached the door.

  I leaned against the wood. “Please leave. I’m not seeing anyone.”

  “Aha! I knew it! My brother said you weren’t here—but he doesn’t know you like I do—”

  “Please leave,” I said again.

  “No. Not today. I have to see you. I won’t leave until I do.”

  Persistent. Irritating. A hair's breadth from harassment.

  “It’s really important. Please. Just this once, hear me out.”

  “I heard you. Now go.”

  “No…for real. shīmèi, I’m begging you.”

  I exhaled and tilted my head back.

  The wood creaked faintly. I could sense his physical presence leaning against the other side, as if we were back-to-back.

  “If it’s because you’re being faithful to my brother, I get it. You won’t see other men. I understand.”

  Faithful? To Ze Zhiwei? What a delusion.

  “But I need to tell you the truth. You need to know who he really is. He’s a liar. And you’re too beautiful and too good for him. You deserve someone better.”

  “I believe you are confused, Ze Yijun,” I said coldly. “I am not romantically involved with your brother.”

  Silence.

  I am not avoiding you for his sake. I am avoiding you. Because I know you are with the Empress.

  Before the Empress demanded me to make bīnghuǒdú, she revealed that had a special visitor from Shuishang. Ze Zhiwei was a fool for trying to replicate bīnghuǒdú with a fake recipe.

  But he was not foolish enough to side with the Empress.

  Only you had the ambition and stupidity to believe that the Empress was a worthy partner. The Empress only used people.

  His voice came sharply, loudly: “Then why? Why won’t you open the door?”

  “Ze Yijun. I won’t ask again. Leave.”

  “What can I do, then? What must I do for you to trust me? To look at me the way you look at him?”

  He must be pressing his head against the wood now.

  He wore his brother’s face, but not his restraint.

  And that was why my mother was right.

  Emotion led to chaos. To confusion. Misinterpretation.

  Weakness.

  I slid down the door and stared at my hands.

  But he really was pitiful.

  And that was my fault.

  He just didn’t know it.

  Yijun, there’s a reason I don’t trust people. My trust kills people. It gives them hope where there is none. It buries them with the burden of my mistakes.

  “If—An Lingqi, please listen, please please listen—if I told you a secret, a real one, something that could kill me…would you finally trust me?”

  I said nothing.

  The pressure on the door eased. I heard him shift, perhaps taking a seat on the stairs outside.

  “I’ll tell you anyway. That day you treated my brother…he stole something from you.”

  This was old news. Still, my chest tightened.

  I was there again. At that moment before the Emperor’s birthday. Before the Crown Prince was poisoned. Before the Empress appeared. I saw the open drawer. The four missing phials of monkshood after Ze Zhiwei left. My own hands closing it shut.

  A miscalculation.

  “He was stupid. And so was she—my mother. She never thought practically. Just wanted to be poetic, like the dramatic loser she was. ‘Let’s poison Yun Hui the same way we all died,’ she said.”

  The bitter edge in his voice cut through the quiet.

  I heard the sharp jab of something digging into wood.

  “She never thought what it would cost if we were caught. And my idiot brother just went along with it.”

  Stop talking.

  Stop saying it.

  “He never said it, but I knew. I knew. When he was making that foul thing—bīnglěng? bīngdú?—whatever he called it. He used monkshood. Your monkshood.”

  Just shut up, Yijun.

  I curled my knees.

  I had wanted to be a healer.

  But I had become my mother instead.

  A poisoner.

  I don’t want to be like you, mother.

  “Don’t you understand what that means?” Yijun’s voice softened. “He’s going to throw you to the wolves. But I won’t. I’ll protect you. He doesn’t love you. He never has.”

  I knew. I had known for a long time.

  The burns on Zhiwei’s arm.

  The missing monkshood.

  The Empress’ timely visit.

  The fact that the poison used was some variant of bīnghuǒdú.

  “Please, An Lingqi. Open your door.”

  I would’ve liked to believe in another fantasy: one where he was wrong. Since he was wrong about my relationship with Zhiwei, then it was fair to believe that he was wrong about other things.

  But what was the point of lying to myself?

  The facts were clear. The truth was out.

  “If you open the door, I can save you,” he said. “The Empress offered a pardon. You just have to testify. Marry me. Please.”

  Save me from who? Myself? I cannot bend Fate…my mother’s legacy rings true in these blood-soaked hands.

  He knocked again.

  He was a fool.

  And I was too.