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The village ahead was a dreary thing. Most villages cleared the land they were using of trees before fully settling, both to make space for the buildings and to allow for farmland, but as far as A-Qing could tell, this village had not, or perhaps it was just old enough for them to grow anew. The trees stood tall between the houses, their branches stretching high above and shading the village from the already dim light of the cloudy sky.
Of course, it could just be the dreary weather or the dreary people locking their dreary gazes on A-Qing as they drearily strolled past her, but she digressed.
Thankfully, most of the people didn’t so much as spare her a second glance as she made her way through town. It was odd, to say the least, especially for an area that was supposed to be plagued by fierce corpses or cursed (the rumors weren’t that specific). From the sword strapped to her back to the fine whites of her robes, her status as a rogue cultivator here to help should be obvious. Most were happy to welcome her and point her in the direction of any of their troubles.
Finally, she stopped a man who had firewood strapped to his back.
“Excuse me, sir,” she called.
He ignored her, continuing slow steps forward.
Okay, that did it.
“Sir!” she snapped. She stepped in front of him, which would prevent him from proceeding unless he just blatantly walked around her.
He frowned. “Excuse me, I’m in a hurry.”
“Could’ve fooled me,” she snorted. “I’m looking for information. I’m a cultivator, see?” She pointed to her sword for good measure. “I’m here to help.”
If Xiao Xingchen were here, he would surely scold her for her lack of decorum. Thankfully, he wasn’t, so A-Qing could say whatever the heck she wanted. She had zero tolerance for people being dismissive jerks.
“You?” The man raised an eyebrow at her, his eyes running up and down her form. A-Qing had to resist the urge to punch him. Yes, she knew she was a woman. She knew she was small. She knew she was young. She knew she looked blind. She’d been told being a cultivator was too dangerous a job for her a thousand times, but it didn’t make the thousand and first time any less annoying.
She had trained under Xiao Xingchen since she was twelve, so for nearly a decade now. And for the past three years, he hadn’t even ventured with her on most of her night hunts. He, at least, trusted in her capabilities. She just wished the rest of the world would, too.
“Yes, me. And it’s not like the four big sects care about your little village all the way out here, so if you have any unnatural problems that need dealing with, better tell me now or forever hold your peace,” she replied blandly.
The man stared at her for a moment, his anger plain on his features. Good, she was angry, too. But his eyes kept drifting back to her sword until he finally said, “I hope you know how to use that thing.”
“I wouldn’t carry it if I didn’t,” she retorted.
“The village head’s house. He has a spare bedroom for travelers, too. You should talk to him,” the man replied, though he didn’t sound happy about it. He pointed to a house that was at the village’s heart, one next to a particularly tall pine.
“Thanks,” she replied curtly before turning on a heel to make her way over the indicated house. She heard the man mutter something under his breath, but she didn’t bother to listen.
The village head’s house was slightly larger than the rest, its height indicating a second story, which was a rarity for a town of this size. She’d heard they were experts at gathering forest herbs, living so deep in them, so merchants often went out of their way to visit this village for rare goods. It made sense for them to have a bit of money, despite their size and remote location.
Still, the building had her narrowing her eyes. She wondered what it would be like to have grown up in such a building instead of scrounging a living off the streets, but… whatever. What was done was done, and Xiao Xingchen often said not to covet what was not hers or to ponder what could have been for too long.
She knocked on the door. Some shuffling from inside later, and a homely looking woman with bags around her eyes opened the door to give her a tired smile.
“What can I do for you, little miss?” Her eyes softened when they met A-Qing’s, and of course they did. Everyone with a sense of pity to them always paused at the sight of her eyes. A-Qing had used that fact for years to con people out of their food and money and eak out a living for herself.
A-Qing put on her most pleasant smile, which most likely wasn’t all that pleasant. “I’m a cultivator. My master sent me to this village to investigate claims of fierce corpses in the area. I was wondering if you would be able to provide me with the information I seek.”
The false pleasantries fell from her lips like lead. She was no stranger to turning up the charm on people to get what she wanted, but the formal language always felt stifling to use, no matter how much Xiao Xingchen stressed its importance.
“Oh… my husband isn’t home at the moment,” the woman replied, her gaze dancing from side to side. “I’m afraid he won’t be back until a few days from now. He’s visiting a neighboring town to buy ink and other supplies.”
A-Qing hummed. Calling the nearest town “neighboring” was a bit of a stretch given the nearest one was three days away by foot, but she supposed this village was just used to such inconveniences. It was dangerous, with no way to send for help quickly without horses that were in sparse supply, but she supposed that was the trade off of being able to live as well as they did off the profit of selling their herbs.
Still, she smiled. “Don’t you remember your husband’s words? If he cannot help me, then surely you must remember if he’s ever complained about unnatural threats while his friends or other dignified men of the village visited?”
It wasn’t a stretch. With no bigger building in the village, most important discussions about village matters with the head would be held in his own home. The wife may claim to not listen or understand the conversations, but A-Qing doubted she couldn’t at least repeat back what they often spoke of.
The woman seemed hesitant, her expression betraying the fact that she was wavering. The door slid shut, but just by a hair of a fraction.
“I don’t have much time,” A-Qing tried again. “No one else will come, not anytime soon. If you want me to have a better chance of helping, you should tell me what you know.”
The woman stared at her, her eyes widening at the stern tone A-Qing took. She almost smacked herself. She let her temper get the better of her again, which is something Xiao Xingchen would surely admonish her for.
Thankfully, the woman finally opened the door fully and stepped to the side to allow A-Qing in. “You seem capable, despite being so young… If there is truly no one else coming…”
“Thank you,” A-Qing replied honestly as she stepped over the threshold.
The woman shut the door behind her and ushered her inside. Before A-Qing knew it, she was sitting at the woman’s table as she put water out onto the stove for tea. She thought about declining, but when she saw the way the woman’s hands shook, she said nothing as the village head’s wife busied her hands.
“My name is Xiao Qing,” A-Qing finally said, after some time of silence. Her words nearly made the woman jump, and she let out a weak laugh.
“A lovely name,” the woman responded. “My name is Yang Limei.”
A-Qing didn’t say anything to that, but even that paltry small talk was enough to steady the woman’s hands somewhat. Yang Limei went about her business unaccosted, until she finally arrived at the table with the freshly made tea and a set of earthenware cups.
A-Qing accepted the tea without complaint, but it was bitter on her tongue. She was too used to the way Xiao Xingchen made it for her, far too sweet for a normal pallet and disgusting to anyone but her. She’d hated it at first, but because it was Xiao Xingchen making it for her, she drank it anyway. Now, she couldn’t enjoy tea without it being sickenly sweet.
Yang Limei settled across the table from her. “I didn’t realize they trained girls to fight, as well. Were there not enough young boys for the masters?”
“No,” A-Qing snorted. “My master just recognized my strength, regardless of sex or gender. I can fight just as well as the boys, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
Something sparked in Yang Limei’s old, tired eyes. Perhaps it was admiration, or perhaps it was jealousy. A-Qing certainly couldn’t tell, and she didn’t care enough about the woman to try and parse it. Whatever thoughts Yang Limei had about it, they would cease to matter the moment A-Qing stepped outside her front door.
So A-Qing continued, “But enough about me. There’s not too much time before nightfall, and I’ll need to set out then.”
“Alone? But…” Yang Limei trailed off, biting her lip. It seemed she wanted to admonish A-Qing but thought better of it. She sighed. “Very well… This village is relatively peaceful, but we do have a problem…”
“What is it?” A-Qing pressed, growing ever so slightly impatient.
Yang Limei bit her lip again. “There was once a girl who studied under an old man, to learn what we believed was herbalism. But we found out the old man was a demon, and a rogue cultivator vanquished him for us. But the girl remained. The cultivator said she was human, but…”
“She’s doing sketchy stuff?” It wasn’t hard to guess. If her instructor had been a demon, then perhaps the girl’s perceptions of what was right and what was wrong had been skewed by her inhuman master’s teachings.
She nodded. “Several of the children she brewed medicine for grew very sick, and once they were taken off the medicine, they recovered. It was suspected that she poisoned them, and she was chased out of the village. But she’s not gone. She took up residence close by, and ever since then, the villagers claim to see monsters in their shadows and death in their dreams. Everyone is worried that the girl, though she must be older by now, is out there plotting her revenge.”
“Has anyone been hurt?” A-Qing asked.
“...No. Not since the children, but we haven’t let her close to the village since then, either,” Yang Limei answered, her grips tightening on her cup.
A-Qing groaned and leaned back, which wasn’t proper form but whatever. Just her luck that this case didn’t sound at all straightforward. It could be nothing, or it could be something—but just a person trained once upon a time by a demon and the fear of retribution wasn’t anything for a cultivator like her to deal with. That would be the villager’s own problem, unless this girl was using demonic cultivation or the like. Only then would it be A-Qing’s problem to deal with.
For once, she wished her issues could be just as simple as killing a few fierce corpses and being done with it.
A-Qing straightened and downed the rest of her tea in record time. She may have scorched her throat in the process, but that was fine. “I make no promises until I investigate the matter myself, but if the person you’re talking about is planning any unnatural harm to your village, I’ll put a stop to it.”
“Thank you.” At her words, the woman smiled, finally seeming relieved for once.
“In the meantime,” A-Qing continued, “is there anything else you can tell me?”
-/-/-
Yang Limei didn’t have much else to offer in terms of information. A-Qing learned that no one had seen the girl in question for more than a decade, and she was unflatteringly referred to as “the witch” by the people of the village. Yang Limei told her the location of “the witch’s” home, which no had dared venture to in years, and A-Qing begrudgingly set out as the sun sank low on the horizon.
She worried this was just going to be a wild goose chase, after all. If no one had seen this “witch” for such a long time, then there was no guarantee that she actually still lived within the same woods as the villagers. There also wasn’t much evidence that she was anything more than a herbalist who happened to train under a demon, maybe with a bit of a child murdering streak in her.
Still, A-Qing was very well aware of the fact that humans could still have a large impact on the unnatural. Look at the Yiling Patriarch—he had summoned armies of the undead to do his bidding during and after the Sunshot Campaign. While Xiao Xingchen hadn’t been personally involved in that conflict and had never met him, he’d still heard horrors from other rogue cultivators who’d claimed they had. None of the tales were good and served more as warnings than anything else.
If this “witch” was of the same ilk, a human using demonic cultivation, then perhaps the villagers were right and she was too dangerous to be left alone.
Dusk was eaten by the night, and darkness fell with no moon in the sky to light it. A-Qing debated the merits of lighting a fire talisman to ease her way, but that was practically asking any nearby nasties to flock to her. Besides, what did a blind person need a torch for? She’d give herself away in an instant, and upholding the charade was a habit too ingrained in her.
In times like these, she almost wished she truly had the skill set to fully function without her sight, but she’d make due. Her master had such skills and hadn’t shied away from teaching her to use senses beyond her sight, once he’d learned of her lies.
With careful steps, she proceeded deeper and deeper, using all her senses to navigate the dark and forested terrain. The villagers and animals had worn little dirt paths that wound through the woods, which helped her somewhat, but they couldn’t always be trusted. While the villagers would know which were the animals’ and which were theirs, she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to end up walking into some creature’s den.
And then.
Growling.
A-Qing rested a hand on her sword. A presence was nearby, but it didn’t feel like it belonged to one of the undead. Rather, it was probably just some wolf that thought it could make an easy meal of her.
The growling grew louder, and A-Qing felt it sounded more and more like a wolf. She wrenched her blade from its sheath and held it aloft, spiritual steel glinting in the darkness.
“Well, tough guy?” she mocked. “Gonna come and try to take a bite out of me?”
Then, the growls stopped as whatever creature had made them abruptly retreated.
A-Qing didn’t relax, though. A new presence had made itself known, in the rustling of the leaves and the snapping of twigs, and it was nearby. In fact, there were more now, and the hair on the back of A-Qing’s neck stood on end. Something told her the new threat was far more dangerous than a simple wolf.
An unfamiliar rattling, more ominous than the wolf’s growls, confirmed her fears. At least before, she had known what she would be facing.
“...Are you a traveler?”
The voice was soft and low, with a hard edge to it. It was definitely the voice of a woman, though it almost sounded otherworldly.
“That depends,” A-Qing replied, “are you the one they call a witch?”
To that, she was met with silence.
A-Qing sighed. “Thank you for driving off the wolf.”
“...Now you are thanking me, after insulting me?”
“Well, I don’t have a name for you, and even if I did, I don’t have a face to put to the name,” A-Qing shot back. “If you’re going to accuse someone of being rude, better make sure you’re the paragon of manners first.”
“Very well. My name is Ban Yue. If you need to refer to me, I’d prefer that over ‘witch.’”
It was still dark, but A-Qing had been squinting in the direction her voice was coming from long enough that she thought she could make out the dark outline of a person. Ban Yue, huh?
A-Qing lowered her sword, but she didn’t sheath it. Not yet. “My name is Xiao Qing, disciple of Xiao Xingchen. I’m a cultivator, not a traveler.”
“I suppose you’re here to fight then,” Ban Yue sighed.
“No,” A-Qing denied. “I’m here to investigate. I know better than to trust rumors. I’ll only fight you if you force my hand.”
Perhaps she should have chosen the smart route and tried to flatter her way into Ban Yue’s good graces, but she was sick of liars. She didn’t want to make herself into more of one than she already was. Since Xue Yang, she prefered to play things brazen, bold, and honest. At least, where she could.
But more than anything, A-Qing trusted her gut, and her gut told her not to lie. At least, not here.
“If you’re here to investigate, then come to my home. You can decide for yourself whether or not I’m your enemy,” Ban Yue said, and there was heaviness to her tone, like she’d already resigned herself to the worst possible outcome.
A-Qing raised an eyebrow. “Alright, then. Lead the way. I hope you don’t mind if I keep my sword at the ready, though?”
“...Do what you must.”
The crunching of foliage filled the air as the outline of a person grew near. Ban Yue seemed to be just taller than A-Qing, and she wore sweeping sleeves and larger skirts than what A-Qing prefered. They wouldn’t be easy clothes to run or fight in, further supporting A-Qing’s theory that close combat wasn’t her specialty. She seemed to have a staff or walking stick in one hand, too.
Then, as they walked, they were slowly engulfed in a warm glow. A modest cabin came into view, one with racks of drying herbs lining the outside of its walls along with several barrels. The light came from inside, filtered through the windows, and it filled the surrounding forest in its welcoming light.
It was a fairly quaint residence, actually. Not too shabby.
“Did you build this yourself?” A-Qing wondered, as Ban Yue opened the front door for her.
She shook her head. “No. It was a residence my former master had outside of the village. After they drove me out, I borrowed it. He said I was free to use it, if needed.”
A-Qing hummed and stepped inside. Ban Yue followed her in, closing the door behind them both. The inside was just as cozy as the outside—a stone hearth, a small wooden bed, a low-lying table, a small desk, shelves of mysterious bottles and herbs. A-Qing found it quite pleasant.
The hearth was lit, the source of the warm light. A pot sat in it, and A-Qing was tempted to go over and look into it. Except, as she sniffed the air, she could tell it must be some sort of stew.
“Sorry,” she said, “I must have interrupted your dinner.”
Ban Yue shrugged, striding across the room to stir the pot’s contents. “You had no way of knowing. Though I did not invite you here, you are still my guest, in a way. I suppose it would be rude not to offer you some.”
“Nah, I’m not taking food from a specialist in herbs,” A-Qing replied bluntly. “Can I search your home?”
Ban Yue looked almost affronted by the idea, but any person should be. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable thing to have a stranger rifling through your home. “...Do what you must. Just please, don’t break anything.”
“I’ll be careful,” A-Qing promised.
Ban Yue sighed and ladeled some of the contents (A-Qing was right about it being stew) into a bowl. She crossed the room and sat at the table, but she kept her gaze on A-Qing even as she started eating, as though she was intent on looking as unbothered as possible.
It wasn’t a bad strategy. If she had nothing to hide, she shouldn’t be worried. In fact, A-Qing was starting to doubt that Ban Yue was as dangerous as the village made her out to be, given how helpful and accommodating she was. Either she was innocent, or she was playing a dangerous game.
Still, A-Qing didn’t have time for ‘what ifs.’ She’d be basing her decision on evidence.
A-Qing knew little of what demonic cultivation tools looked like beyond what was used widely within the cultivation world, like luring flags and compasses. Still, resentful energy at least wasn’t too hard to sense, and where there was demonic cultivation, there was resentment.
She flipped through each book, opened each bottle, and rifled through every box. She even wandered the grounds outside for a bit, looking for any signs of distrubed human remains used in demonic cultivation.
She found nothing. She couldn’t even sense any resentment beyond what was normal.
Sighing, she marched back into the hut and sat across from Ban Yue. The ‘witch’ was mostly finished with her meal, and when A-Qing joined her, she smiled.
“I trust you’re satisfied now?” Ban Yue said.
A-Qing frowned. “If not demonic cultivation, then what exactly does a demon teach a young human girl? What did you learn from your master?”
“Just herbology. And…” She pursed her lips, glancing to A-Qing. “This, as well.”
That was when A-Qing heard the hissing again. She’d thought she heard it in the woods before, but as far as she knew, snakes should be a rarity in this region. She dismissed it as something else before, but as she watched a snake slither out from a nook in the cabin and coil itself around Ban Yue’s arm, she realized she hadn’t heard wrong.
“Snakes?”
Ban Yue nodded. “I can control them, to some extent. The secret is one my master didn’t use, but he said I had the aptitude to learn it.”
“And the poisoned children from the village?” A-Qing pressed.
Ban Yue shook her head. “The medicine wasn’t poisoned. There was only one child, as well, but his health was dire. Of course he would grow sicker before he recovered. That his recovery coincided with stopping the medicine was a coincidence. I know it is only my word against theirs, but I swear it was only medicine.”
“I believe you, actually,” A-Qing sighed. Really, why had the village sent her on a wild goose chase like this? Being able to control snakes was a bit weird, as was being the apprentice to a demon, but she had no evidence of any actual harm done to the villagers. She had about an equal amount of evidence that Ban Yue had or would do anything against them.
It seemed the villagers’ claims were unfounded. Save for a few stray wolves and a young woman, there was nothing to these woods. A-Qing really had come here for nothing. It was a waste of a trip.
At the very least, she could state her own curiosity.
“And? Why would a demon take you under his wing?” It didn’t really make all that much sense. Aside from potentially scaring people, or maybe attacking en masse, there wasn’t much use to the ability. Besides, none of the villager’s complaints included anything about snakes. What purpose was there in taking in a young girl and teaching her such a skill?
“I’m not sure,” Ban Yue replied. “I never asked him. I had no parents or extended family. The village didn’t want to care for me because no one had any blood ties to me, so to them, I was just an extra mouth. They still took care of me to some extent, but I spent my childhood eating scraps and sleeping in storage sheds. When my master arrived, he took up residence to study the rare herbs of this forest. When he spoke with me and learned of the villager’s treatment of me, he said I could stay with him instead. Then, as I stayed with him, he taught me the things he was learning. I’m still not sure why I was offered such kindness.”
It was a story that sounded all too familiar to A-Qing. She knew what it was like, to have nothing but to be taken in by the kindness of a stranger who becomes family. She wondered, if she learned Xiao Xingcheng was a demon, would she actually care?
“And? How do you feel, knowing your master was a demon?” A-Qing pressed, curiosity overwhelming her.
“Before I answer your question,” Ban Yue shot back, “may I ask you one of my own?”
“Shoot.”
“What difference do you think there is between demons and humans? Or, rather, do you think beings are without fault just because they call themselves human? And do you think creatures lose this right to be without fault just because they no longer call themselves human?”
If Xiao Xingchen were a demon, would A-Qing care?
A-Qing thought back to all the people who had beaten her as a child after discovering her various thefts, heedless of the fact she was starving child with no parents to provide for her. She thought of Xue Yang, who wore a smile as he traveled with them for a year, more lies falling from his treacherous tongue than A-Qing cared to count. She thought of what it cost to them, to be kind to someone not, and how easily that kindness was exploited.
These were acts of humans, all of them.
A-Qing sighed. “I guess you have a point. Humans can be pretty terrible, can’t they?”
“Tell me about it,” Ban Yue replied with a small, sad smile.
A-Qing watched her, and reflected in her eyes was the sorrow of years of loneliness and neglect. A child without parents, forced to scrape by and beg an uncaring people just to live to the next day, who was then later taken in by a kind master.
And in that moment, A-Qing saw herself reflected in Ban Yue’s eyes.
She wondered if her own would look so sad if someone had come and chased Xiao Xingchen away, then forced her out of the only place she had called home to live alone in the woods like this. She wondered if she would be so resigned to loneliness if she then spent a decade living in the woods by herself.
She wondered if there was anything she could do to make that story less depressing. Why had Ban Yue remained in such a depressing place, in a place that despised her, all these years? If A-Qing was her, wouldn’t she at least try to claw her way to a happier end?
Maybe that was where the two of them differed, but A-Qing wasn’t about to stand for that.
“You know, there’s nothing to keep you here,” she pointed out. “You could always just leave. Why stay here when the only people for li hate your guts?”
Ban Yue frowned. “I had… considered the possibility. But… what else is there for me?”
“Your life sounds pretty boring,” A-Qing remarked, causing Ban Yue to raise an eyebrow at her. “You know what’s not boring? The life of a cultivator.”
Ban Yue froze at that, and her eyes widened. Had she been holding her cup, A-Qing suspected she may have dropped it. “Xiao Qing… You’re not suggesting I come with you, are you?”
“Call me A-Qing, Xiao Qing still sounds weird.” A-Qing paused. Was she inviting Ban Yue along? “I mean… Yeah sure, why not? I think you’re a little old to learn cultivation, but I doubt having an extra companion would hurt anything, and having someone who knows medicine better than I do would be helpful. But honestly, you don’t have to come on a permanent basis. You’ve spent your whole life here, so your world is tiny. Traveling around a bit might help broaden your horizons, and then maybe you’d know what you’d wanna do with your life. Not a bad idea, huh?”
A-Qing had spoken everything on the fly, but… She really wasn’t opposed to it. She’d actually enjoyed speaking with Ban Yue to a surprising degree, and it was rare that she took so quickly to other people. If possible, she’d like to spend more time with her and learn more. So, perhaps, the proposal was also a selfish one on A-Qing’s part, but she really did think traveling a bit would be good for Ban Yue.
She glanced to Ban Yue to try to gauge her reaction, and… she seemed to be considering the idea? She was chewing on her bottom lip, a tick A-Qing knew Xiao Xingchen did when he was considering something.
“I… I would like to meet my old master again, if possible,” Ban Yue said. “If I travel with you, would it be alright for me to search for him as well? As long as it doesn’t interfere with your travels?”
“Sure, I’ll even help you look. Gathering info from villagers in preparation of a night hunt is something I do a lot, so I can just ask about your old master at the same time,” A-Qing replied. She doubted her own master would like that, but hey, he was the one who taught her not to judge people based on their origins. Should apply to demons too, right? She’d have him eating his own words.
At that, Ban Yue smiled, causing A-Qing heart to stutter for some weird reason. “Very well, A-Qing. I accept your offer.”
Was Xiao Xingchen going to like that she picked up a companion? Maybe not, but in her eyes, he’d been too antisocial all these years, isolating himself from everyone but A-Qing after the Xue Yang incident. It was time his horizons opened up to, and if that meant forcing some extra family members on him…
Well, it’d be worth it. For those reasons, and because A-Qing desperately wanted her own little family to expand, as well. And she had a good feeling about Ban Yue.
Little did she know, this ‘good feeling’ of hers was the bud of a newfound love.