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The satin pouch seems to hang heavier and heavier from his waist as Fang Duobing hikes deeper into the mountain. Part of his strategy in looking for Li Lianhua had been to investigate any strange occurrences that were the stuff of rumors in the towns he passed through—after all, hadn’t that been how he and Li Lianhua had met, over and over again? Perhaps heaven would have mercy on him and give him another chance, just this one time.
This time, it’s rumors of a strange mist in the mountains, of foraging villagers going missing and reappearing days later, dazed and with no memory of what they had experienced. Fang Duobing had taken on the investigation out of duty, but with little to no enthusiasm.
“Li Lianhua,” he says wearily to himself as he walks through the forest. “Where are you?”
As he goes deeper into the forest, he notices his vision growing hazy and his head growing heavier. Alarmed, he stumbles to the nearest tree and slides down, trying to get his bearings.
The last thing he remembers before he shuts his eyes is the sound of running water.
He wakes because of a stick tapping his ankles, hard enough to hurt.
“Child! Wake up!” a voice says, and Fang Duobing startles awake. He is greeted by an elderly woman dressed in simple white robes, her hair silver, a glow in her eyes giving her a timeless youth. A scowl adorns her face.
“Are you lost?” she asks crossly, as Fang Duobing scrambles up and gives her a respectful bow. He looks around—he seems to be at the bank of a river, the water flowing dark just a few steps away from his feet. A fog hangs over the river, obscuring his view of the opposite side.
Another tap of the walking stick on his knee makes him yelp in surprise as he gingerly rubs the injured area. “Impolite child,” she sniffs. “How did you get here?”
“I–” Fang Duobing stutters. “I don’t know. I fell unconscious and woke up here.”
The woman scoffs. “A likely story. You’re one of them, aren’t you?” She gestures to his sword. “You aren’t dead yet.”
Fang Duobing blinks. “Dead?”
“Yes, dead. Where do you think you are? Only the dead get to cross my river.” Fang Duobing’s eyes widen as he looks from the river to the woman, and suddenly understands. A shiver runs up his spine.
Wangchuan River. Meng Po.
The woman–Meng Po–clicks her tongue impatiently. “What is your name, child?”
“Fang Duobing,” he answers. Meng Po raises an eyebrow, and her eyes seem to look straight into Fang Duobing’s soul. After a long moment, she hums.
“Why are you here, Young Master Fang?”
“I’m searching for a friend,” he answers honestly, pulling out the parchment of Li Lianhua’s likeness. Meng Po examines the parchment for a long moment, Fang Duobing’s worry spiking. He tries to sneak a glance through the fog to the opposite side of the river—if Li Lianhua had truly passed on, had already walked the Naihe Bridge, had already sipped from the draught of forgetfulness, would he somehow remember Fang Duobing in his next life? Would they ever meet again?
But Meng Po shakes her head. “He hasn’t passed by me yet,” she answers matter-of-factly. “I would know.”
Fang Duobing almost collapses out of relief. So Li Lianhua yet lived! He had been right. Now, he just had to find him.
But Meng Po brings back her searching gaze, and Fang Duobing feels himself shrink under her scrutiny. “But you are not just looking for your friend,” she pronounces sagely. “You are looking for something else, aren’t you?”
Fang Duobing takes a breath, and bows low. “Qianbei. This friend of mine is very sick. We had obtained one of your Wangchuan flowers as a cure, but he gave it away. Please–” he kowtows, and presses his forehead to the ground, “–please, may I have another one?”
Meng Po scoffs. “I knew it. You are one of them. Insolent jianghu fighters, sneaking in and stealing my precious blooms. What makes you think I’d give you one after all your kind have done to desecrate my property?”
Fang Duobing begs, his forehead never leaving the ground. “Please, qianbei,” he pleads. “I apologize, on behalf of my kind. I’ll do anything you want, anything at all.” He takes out his sword, offering it at Meng Po’s feet. “If it’s jade or gold you want, I will fetch as much as you require. If it’s strength and service that you need, my sword is ready for your command.”
Meng Po laughs, and Fang Duobing pauses in confusion. She gestures for him to rise, and he does. “You are a strange and foolish child, Fang Duobing. Keep your riches and your sword–I have no use for them.”
Fang Duobing’s face falls in disappointment. “Then–then what may I do, qianbei, in exchange for one of your precious flowers?”
Meng Po brings up a finger to tap against her lips, as though in serious thought. Her eyes bore through Fang Duobing’s body, as though examining him from the inside out, and he forces himself to remain still.
“Curious,” she finally says, as though her examination had concluded. “You carry a unique energy, child. One that you have used before to make flowers bloom.”
Fang Duobing blinks. Yangzhouman. Of course!
“Yes, qianbei,” he bows again. “It is—an ancestral skill.”
Meng Po regards him once more, and nods to herself. With a flick of her wrist, the fog on the riverbank they are standing on lifts a little more, just enough for Fang Duobing to see along the river shore. Here and there, he spots the buds of growing Wangchuan flowers, scattered across an almost empty bed of soil.
“The thieves have prevented my garden from flourishing,” Meng Po laments, as Fang Duobing begins to see where this might lead.
“Give me a flowerbed of Wangchuan flowers along the river,” Meng Po says, “and you may have one.”
Fang Duobing almost staggers back at the task set before him. The soil bed on the bank of the river stretches almost as far as his eye can see, ending in another hazy wall of fog.
Wangchuan flowers are no ordinary flower, and Fang Duobing knows the toll this will take on his Yangzhouman and his martial arts. “Qianbei,” he begins timidly, “may I ask a question?”
“What?” Meng Po answers, irritated.
“After this task–will I still be able to practice my martial arts?”
Meng Po stares at him again, as though he has just asked the obvious. “I don’t take lives before they walk over to me, Young Master Fang,” she says dismissively. “You have had an eventful life,” she continues, pinning him into place with her gaze. “You have built it yourself. You will live.”
Then she disappears in a blink, and Fang Duobing is all alone.
He sets to his task immediately, focusing on channeling his nascent Yangzhouman into the flower bed—and is rewarded by a line of growing blossoms peeking through the soil.
Ecstatic, he tries again, and again. Again and again, flowers rise to meet his efforts in neat rows.
And yet, by the twentieth line, he can feel the strain. Still, he continues to channel Yangzhouman. By the fiftieth line, sweat soaks his clothes. He continues, taking and taking from his dantian, ladling handfuls of his own carefully-cultivated energy into the soil and coaxing row after row of flowers to life.
“Just a little more,” he whispers to himself, as his knees threaten to give out. By the seventieth line, he can hardly stand. He can feel his energy draining, his childhood weakness returning. His sword hangs heavier and heavier on his hip as he makes a flowerbed bloom.
By the hundredth line, the end before the fog, he is on his hands and knees as Yangzhouman flows out of his fingertips and into the soil. He crawls to the end and collapses as the flowers bloom and his breath comes in shallower gasps. His legs feel heavy and unresponsive, and his heartbeats thud uncomfortably in his chest.
These are not unfamiliar symptoms, Fang Duobing realizes—and he understands, for the first time, what the cost would be.
But he has done it. Wangchuan flowers, as far as his eye can see. He doesn’t know how long he was here; there is no sense of time in this place. He can only hope that he isn’t too late.
With a blink, Meng Po reappears. Fang Duobing pushes himself into a sitting position to greet her. She looks at him with an unconcerned eye and turns her attention to his work, growing visibly pleased as she surveys her newly-flourishing flower bed.
“Well done,” she says, plucking one of the flowers and dropping it into Fang Duobing’s lap. He thanks her profusely, cradling the flower in his hand. Still, doubts abound. Fang Duobing has to be sure this time.
The accomplishment of his task giving him a burst of energy, Fang Duobing asks the question weighing heaviest on his mind. “Qianbei, please forgive this impertinent one,” he says, forehead back down on the ground. “But–my friend has been poisoned with the Bicha poison. It is said to be the deadliest in the world—please, qianbei, will this flower work to heal him?”
Meng Po laughs. “Ah, you humans and your need for certainty. Let me ask you, child, how is your friend still alive?”
Fang Duobing looks up. “He–he is skilled in martial arts, qianbei. The energy I used–he was the one who taught me.”
An unreadable look on her face, Meng Po gestures to the flower in his hand. “Well then, child, you have your answer.”
By the time Fang Duobing looks back up, she is gone.
Thank you for growing my flowers, says a whisper in his ear, as the Wangchuan River around him fades, and the same unconsciousness threatens to take him again. To find who you seek, go back to the sea.
When he wakes up, Fang Duobing finds himself back on the forest path. His prize seems to glow in his hand, but he can feel his body weakening rapidly.
“Li Lianhua,” he murmurs, “we have another chance.”
Wangchuan flower in hand, he sets off to find Di Feisheng.
Di Feisheng paces like a trapped lion in the abandoned house where Fang Duobing and he had agreed to meet, a regular check-in just in case one of them had found Li Lianhua. His people of the Jinyuan Alliance had so far come up empty, and he himself had seen barely a white robe over mountains and rivers.
But Fang Duobing had sent him a message by hawk that he had found something, so he is here. That boy better show up.
The door to the hut’s room slams open and Fang Duobing whirls in before shutting it behind him, panting as he makes his way to the chair opposite Di Feisheng at the low table. Huffing in annoyance, Di Feisheng sheathes the sword that he drew in alarm at the younger man’s entrance.
“What do you have?” he asks gruffly.
Wordlessly, Fang Duobing lays two items on the table. Di Feisheng’s eyes widen as he sees another Wangchuan flower, as well as a familiar silk pouch.
“This–”
Di Feisheng holds up the flower to the light coming from the window. It looks identical to the one they had, Yin and Yang leaf and blossom both intact. “How did you get this?”
Fang Duobing shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Di Feisheng turns his attention back to him. “What did you do?”
“It. Doesn’t. Matter.” Fang Duobing bites out with much effort, as he sways in his seat, suddenly supporting himself with a hand on the table. Di Feisheng leans forward in alarm. “Fang Duobing!”
“Di Feisheng,” Fang Duobing grits out, an intensity in his eyes that Di Feisheng had perhaps thus far only associated with Li Xiangyi. “You’ll find him near the East Sea. Get him to take it, please.”
Di Feisheng takes up the silk pouch, and Fang Duobing tells him of the beggar, and of how the proximity of the village and the whispers from Meng Po point back to the East Sea. Di Feisheng swallows back the panic in his throat because of course, why not go back to the beginning? Damned Li Lianhua.
But another thing catches his attention: Fang Duobing is flushed and sweat beads down his forehead, sickness in his red-rimmed eyes. His words are sparse, as though conserving his energy, and he holds himself as though he may collapse. A far cry from the energetic puppy that followed after him and Li Xiangyi.
He grabs Fang Duobing’s wrist to check, but Fang Duobing wrenches it away. Not enough time, but Di Feisheng is skilled enough to know that something is very wrong.
“Fang Duobing. What did you do?”
The younger man remains mullishly silent, even as his breathing becomes more labored. “Tell me why I shouldn’t hit your acupoints and keep you here,” Di Feisheng threatens, “while I find your shifu and get him to ask you himself.”
Fang Duobing groans. “We’re wasting time. Please, A-Fei, keep this a secret. You know him. You know what happened last time. He will never take a cure if he knows someone suffered on his behalf.” He takes a deep breath, pushes himself to sit upright. “Besides,” he manages a broad smile, although the demon sitting opposite him isn’t fooled, “I won’t go anywhere. Tell him my mother has called me home, or that the Baichuan Court needs me. Any excuse at all–just get him to take the flower, and you can bring him here when he’s well. Not one day before,” he threatens back.
Di Feisheng doesn’t like it, but he knows Fang Duobing is telling the truth.
“He will be angry,” Di Feisheng warns. Fang Duobing merely shrugs. “He can be angry as long as he’s alive.”
Fang Duobing gets up to leave, very slowly.
“Where are you going?”
Fang Duobing pauses, one hand on the doorway, and answers under his breath. “I’m going to get some wood.”
After Di Feisheng leaves, Fang Duobing starts to build.
True to Meng Po’s words and Fang Duobing’s guidance, Di Feisheng finds a white-robed man by the East Sea.
Only when he approaches, light on his feet like the trained assassin he is, Li Lianhua does not seem to recognize him.
Trepidation twists in his gut, and Di Feisheng tests his theory by deliberately unsheathing his sword, the golden rings clanging. Li Lianhua’s face seems to relax, but he does not look up.
“A-Fei?”
Di Feisheng steps closer, but it is only when he is close enough to reach out and touch him does Li Lianhua look into the approximate direction of his face, and Di Feisheng gets his answer.
The once-bright eyes are dull and unseeing, and Di Feisheng has to restrain himself from feeding him the Wangchuan flower now.
“Li Lianhua.” His own voice is rough and unsteady. “Come home.”
The other man remains silent, turning his head away from Di Feisheng and towards the sea. Di Feisheng has a sudden urge to get him away from the water’s edge.
“And why should I, Di-mengzhu?” Li Lianhua asks, his voice steady but faraway, as though speaking in a dream. “Isn’t the sea beautiful?”
“I have had enough of the sea to last a lifetime,” Di Feisheng growls in response. “Come.” He places a hand on Li Lianhua’s wrist, subtly angling his fingers to check the pulse points, wincing to find the evidence of decay in the other man’s meridians.
Li Lianhua gently but firmly wrenches his wrist away. “I’m afraid there is nothing for me to come home to, Di-mengzhu.”
“Lies,” Di Feisheng says immediately. “What of your house? Your dog? Or that puppy of a disciple? Fang Duobing wants you home.”
The mention of Fang Duobing brings another pained light to Li Lianhua’s face, and Di Feisheng can read a million emotions in those unseeing eyes. “Fang Duobing has a mansion on a mountain, A-Fei. I doubt he would want to stay in Lotus Tower again.”
Di Feisheng bites his tongue. “What if I told you my people in the Jinyuan Alliance had found another Wangchuan flower? Li Lianhua. What if I told you that you could be cured?”
Something like hope flickers across Li Lianhua’s face, but only for a moment. All the same, Di Feisheng thinks he has won.
“I would tell you that you’d be lying,” Li Lianhua says slowly. “The Wangchuan flower is beyond rarity.”
“How arrogant you are, Li Xiangyi,” Di Feisheng replies, the prospects of another chance taking shape right before his eyes. He places another gentle hand on that wrist, and pulls. “Come, let me prove you wrong.”
The edges of Li Lianhua’s lips pull up into a slight smile, unseeing eyes finally turning away from the direction of the sea as he takes a few tentative steps towards Di Feisheng. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Under the rickety roof of Lotus Tower and Di Feisheng’s watchful eyes, the Wangchuan flower takes effect.
Li Lianhua turns his head around sometimes, ears perking just like Hulijing, and Di Feisheng knows he’s looking for his other puppy, that incorrigible annoyance that is Fang Duobing—but Li Lianhua, all the same, seems to accept Di Feisheng’s halfhearted explanation that Fang Duobing has been called home by his mother, and even seems to muster up satisfaction at these circumstances.
It is one indication, Di Feisheng reflects, that Li Lianhua is not yet in full control of his faculties—because if he was, he would have caught the lie. Li Lianhua would have (should have) remembered that Fang Duobing would have never left his side.
The Wangchuan flower works slowly but surely, as Di Feisheng records the improvement for Fang Duobing, working his messenger hawk to the bone as he send frequent updates of stabilized temperature, strengthened meridians, and recovered organs.
Li Lianhua’s vision, however, does not yet seem to return. And yet, it is a small price to pay for all the things he can already do. Li Lianhua at ten percent of Li Xiangyi’s strength had already been amazing; with the flower, Li Lianhua feels his strength increasing rapidly, as though his Yangzhouman itself had been enhanced at its source.
It is when he feels well enough to actually cross swords with Di Feisheng in a short sparring match that he declares he wants to visit Tianji Hall.
“Just a visit,” he declares lightly, even as Di Feisheng can see the obvious longing in his face. “Just to show that brat of a disciple that his shifu isn’t dead.”
Di Feisheng rolls his eyes, even as he hooks up the horses. If he moves a little quicker than usual, well–Li Lianhua couldn’t see it yet.
“Very well.”
Inexplicably, the Lotus Tower stops after only some time on the road. Li Lianhua knows that they are nowhere near Tianji Hall. Di Feisheng offers no explanation, merely leads him outside the Lotus Tower.
“It will storm soon,” Di Feisheng says stoically as Li Lianhua keeps up a barrage of nonsense protests. “I need to get supplies.”
“Supplies? Wei, Di-mengzhu, how much do you eat? Because I could have sworn that we still have two sacks of rice–”
“I will be back.” A wooden door slamming is all Li Lianhua hears, as he’s shoved inside what must be another house. “Lao Di!”
“A-Fei, is that you?”
Li Lianhua may be blind but his recovery means that his other senses are heightened by Yangzhouman, and he hears the grind of wood on wood from outside the house on the other side. It sounds like machinery. And that voice—that voice is a dead giveaway. Li Lianhua starts to feel like something is very wrong.
The grinding of wood on wood comes closer, inside the room, as if in contact with the room’s floor, and Li Lianhua feels the absence of footsteps with a sense of foreboding.
“A-Fei, I told you to just send a hawk—oh.”
Li Lianhua turns to the sound of that voice. “Fang Xiaobao.”
A breath. “Li Lianhua.”
Li Lianhua takes a step toward the voice, and the sound of wood creaks frantically, as though a chair has been pushed back from the table.
A chair.
“How are you?” Fang Duobing chirps brightly, as if Li Lianhua’s heart wasn’t already shattering. A current of nervous energy is woven in his tone. “How are you feeling? Did it work? A-Fei said it did, but he didn’t say much about your martial arts, how—“
Li Lianhua crosses the room as fast as he can, his body responding with a speed and lightness that he hadn’t experienced for ten years. The wood creaks faster, as though trying to avoid him, and Fang Duobing keeps chattering incessantly, but the room is small, and Li Lianhua used to be Li Xiangyi, and there was no one who could run from him.
Especially if, Li Lianhua thinks despairingly, they couldn’t run at all.
The wood is at the tips of his fingers. Fang Xiaobao is deathly quiet.
Li Lianhua falls to his knees. His fingers trace the smooth wood, the circular outline resolving itself into a shape in his mind’s eye. The chair’s occupant is still, but Li Lianhua’s recovered ears can hear the labored breathing.
His hands reach for a wrist, thinner than he remembered, and his fingers brush against a pulse point before the wrist is gently but firmly pulled away. Barely a second, but the contact is enough for Li Lianhua to confirm what he did not want to believe.
Tears start to stream from his unseeing eyes as his fingers grasp at the wood. “Fang Xiaobao,” he whispers brokenly, as Yangzhouman flows easily through his own meridians, as his body heals without a care, oblivious to the suffering that bought its health—
“Fang Xiaobao, what have you done?”
Fang Duobing can hardly breathe. Here is his shifu, his zhiji, bright and whole and recovering, an energy in his lithe frame that Fang Duobing had only seen ten years ago. Death does not hang over him anymore, and Fang Duobing feels like he could levitate out of joy.
“This…this…”
He watches, wearing a soft smile, as Li Lianhua feels out the wheelchair that Fang Duobing himself had built. His fingers ghost over Fang Duobing’s still legs. His eyes are unseeing, but Fang Duobing can see the anger and sorrow war across Li Lianhua’s face. The tears fall slowly down flushed and healthy cheeks. Fang Duobing cannot stop himself from reaching up and wiping them away with his own sleeve.
“Aiya,” he whispers, “Li Lianhua, don’t cry. It’s hardly the first time you’ve seen me in a wheelchair.”
A swat comes for his arm, as if almost on instinct, and guilt immediately blooms across Li Lianhua’s face. Fang Duobing laughs. The strength in that blow—ah, Meng Po was right. His shifu would recover.
“That’s not funny, you damned brat. What…what—“
Fang Duobing sobers, reaches for his Li Lianhua's hand and holds it gently, feeling for himself the strengthened meridians, the strong and steady pulse. Grateful tears fill his own eyes. Alive, alive, alive.
The hand turns into his hold to grip his wrist tightly, and Fang Duobing cannot pull away. Not this time.
“What have you done?”
Li Lianhua presses for answers, a heaviness in his chest. “Fang Xiaobao…the flower, Lao Di said that the Jinyuan Alliance found it, he said you had gone home to Tianji Hall. Please, answer me—“
He begs, and pleads, and reaches up from his kneeling position to cradle that precious head. With one hand on that thin wrist and the other cupping a sunken cheek, Li Lianhua puts together the picture for himself—an erratic temperature, labored breathing, and weakened qi. Even the Yangzhouman he had passed on seems only a whisper of its former self.
“Xiaobao,” he whispers again, his voice cracking, “please, please…tell me, what did you do?”
“Would you believe me if I told you that I was out in the mountains, fell off a cliff, and met a fairy godmother who gave me the flower? I kowtowed too, you know.”
“Fang Xiaobao.”
Fang Duobing sighs, sobering after his attempt at humor, taking the other man’s hands back in his own and holding them loosely in his lap. “Sit down, will you? The floor can’t be good for your knees, you old fox. There’s another chair just behind you, to the left.”
Li Lianhua stays still and silent, one thumb stroking Fang Duobing’s palm, face angled plaintively upward. “Will you not tell me now?”
“Not while you’re kneeling,” Fang Duobing says sharply. “You need never kneel to anyone now, least of all to me.”
Li Lianhua closes his blind eyes in silent anger. “I’m not moving.”
Fang Duobing makes a noise of protest. “Fine. I’ll carry you.”
Li Lianhua stands, more out of surprise than anything, as he feels Fang Duobing exert more effort than he should. He hears a chuckle from the brat as he moves of his own accord to sit down in the chair behind him. Wood creaks on wood again as Fang Duobing wheels himself closer, and Li Lianhua turns his head in the approximate direction of the younger man.
“Explain.”
Fang Duobing snorts. “You sound like my mother.”
“Explain, or I tell her. You’re in a hut in the middle of nowhere—your mother would never have let you stay here if she knew.”
A sigh. “You always did fight dirty.”
“Fang Xiaobao!"
“Li Lianhua.”
His only disciple’s voice is calm and almost beatific, as though he has not ripped out Li Lianhua’s heart.
“How do you feel?”
“No.” Li Lianhua says coldly, shaking his head. “No, don’t do that—I won’t accept this.”
Fang Duobing chuckles, damn him. When he speaks, his voice sounds light and almost-happy. “You can’t take it back," his foolish disciple says triumphantly, as though he has won whatever twisted game of sacrifice this is. Li Lianhua wants to weep.
“Whatever you did—I’ll undo it. It isn’t worth it. I’ll purge Yangzhouman back out of this body, give it to you—“
Li Lianhua raises a hand to try to reach one of the younger man’s acupoints, but he is swiftly blocked by a raised arm. Still, with his newfound strength, Li Lianhua knew that he could force his way through, if need be. The defense that greets him is shaky, worn-out. Li Lianhua feels sick, and takes back his hand.
“I knew you would be angry,” his disciple says softly, a cruel mimicry of Li Lianhua’s own last words to him.
Li Lianhua lets out a bitter laugh. “Angry? You don’t know the half of it.” He lets his fingers reach out again until they touch the chair’s unforgiving wooden frame. “You were so small, back then.”
Silence, as though Fang Duobing is holding his breath. Good , Li Lianhua thinks bitterly. Let him listen for once.
“I had forgotten, until you told me.” Li Lianhua continues, tears threatening to fall again as he runs his hand against the wheel. Wordlessly, Fang Duobing takes his hand away from the wooden frame and holds it again, his own fingers on Li Lianhua’s pulse. A slow exhale, as though relieved. Li Lianhua doesn’t have the heart to pull away; even now, even in his anger. “That young boy; that wooden sword. I didn’t know that you had grown up.”
He had grown up, and grown stronger–all because of Li Xiangyi’s words, even if Li Xiangyi hadn’t been there to see it. And now—and now. All of those years, all of that effort–of small bones and muscles built from the sheer force of will, refined into a fighting style that ranked among the top skills of his generation—all of that, gone.
He shakes his head, shoulders bowing as he comprehends the payment for which his life has been bought, closes his unseeing eyes. “Li Lianhua can’t take this away from Li Xiangyi’s only disciple. Fang Duobing—how could you?”
Fang Duobing sighs. “When will you think of yourself as one and the same? To me, there is no difference.”
“Will you stop changing the subject?” Li Lianhua asks desperately.
“I had the best teacher,” Fang Duobing quips, and Li Lianhua doesn’t know whether to slap him upside the head or gather him in his arms.
“Please,” he whispers. “Please…Xiaobao, please.”
Fang Duobing sighs again, more heavily, and tells him of stumbling upon the Wangchuan River. He tells him about Meng Po, and her request of making flowers bloom–along with the toll that it took. But he glosses over how using Yangzhouman for that purpose, at his minor level of cultivation, took more than he had to give. He does not need to belabor the point—the creaking wood floor tells Li Lianhua all he needs to know.
“You–your martial arts…”
“Ah,” Fang Duobing exhales, putting on a careless tone. “It seems as though I have returned to the skills and health of my ten year old self. But don’t worry, Meng Po said I would live. As long as I live, there’s a chance that I can train again.”
There’s cheer in his voice to mask the reality of his words, but Li Lianhua of all people knows exactly what his wayward disciple means.
Regardless of his childish admiration for Li Xiangyi, Fang Duobing had trained himself. The formidable fighter that Li Lianhua would someday meet, one that would make even Di Feisheng take a second look in grudging acknowledgment, had been built by the determination of a child.
He Xiaohui’s stories float through Li Lianhua’s memory. He imagines, just for a second, a young Xiaobao immersing himself in cold streams and taking bitter medicines, pushing himself to stand and fainting as he tried and tried again, holding a wooden sword and ordering his frail muscles and fragile bones in approximations of sword forms—all out of sheer tenacious will.
Li Xiangyi had no part in forming that. Fang Duobing had built himself.
And now, he had to do it all over again—go through all of the excruciating, humiliating pain of rebuilding what he had worked so hard to attain. All because his failure of a shifu could not have saved himself.
“Fang Xiaobao,” Li Lianhua murmurs brokenly, hands feeling out the wheelchair in front of him once more, coming back to rest on immobile legs. “I–”
“You weren’t supposed to know,” Fang Duobing says hurriedly, as though Li Lianhua is the one that needs comforting. “I was supposed to cultivate and train in seclusion, while Di Feisheng brought you somewhere else to recover. As usual, that demon didn’t follow our plan.”
Ah, Li Lianhua can almost hear the scowl in his voice. “You would keep this from me?” he asks, pained.
Fang Duobing snorts. “You wouldn’t have taken the flower if you had known!” Under Li Lianhua’s hands, Fang Duobing’s own fingers clench into fists. “We weren’t taking any chances.”
And well–what can Li Lianhua say to that?
“And don’t you dare apologize!” his rebellious one-and-only disciple says immediately, indignant ire in his tone. “This was my choice, Li Lianhua. You make your choices, and I make mine. You don’t get to take this away from me."
Gentle hands curl over Li Lianhua’s and push them away, presumably to keep them as far away from his pulse points as possible. “Please,” his infuriating, self-sacrificing disciple pleads. “If you want to apologize, heal. I’ll only accept your apology if you regain at least fifty percent of your strength and all of your sight.”
Li Lianhua is, once again, stunned silent. “Wei, you brat, you don’t even know if—”
“It’ll work,” the younger disciple asserts. “Meng Po told me so.”
“You young fox,” Li Lianhua says, shaking his head. “Fine. If you insist, I shall only cultivate if you allow me to stay here, and train along with you.”
Xiaobao, ah, Xiaobao—you won’t accept my apology, but I will spend all the lifetimes you bought for me in paying you back.
Fang Duobing takes his time to answer. If Li Lianhua’s eyes could see, they would behold his shuttered expression, and the way his features rearrange into a visage that looks very much like shame. The way his mother told it had been a sanitized retelling of the story, one smoothed over by many family gatherings, made easier to tell and retell because of the distance of years. But he alone, more than anyone else, knew what those early years felt like. This was not something that he wanted Li Lianhua to know and see; even back then, he had resolved to appear at Sigu Sect and finally meet Li Xiangyi with his wheelchair abandoned, a worthy disciple at last. Alas, that childish dream never came to pass.
“I once said I would buy you the most expensive medicines if you needed them, didn’t I?” Li Lianhua continues. “If you don’t agree,” he says lightly, in that suave dangerous tone that Fang Duobing had come to associate with veiled threats and harebrained schemes, “then I will make you unconscious right now and feed all this Yangzhouman back into your body–"
“Fine!” Fang Duobing says finally, distraught. “Fine. You can stay. But–” he sighs. “–we train separately. I can’t–I can’t let you see me, when your vision returns. What I was…it’s–no one really saw that, growing up. Not even my mother. I never–I never wanted to be a burden.”
Almost immediately, Li Lianhua’s face breaks into something emotional—even with those unseeing eyes, Fang Duobing ducks his head at being the object of such sincere fondness. There is no pity, only understanding; for a moment, Fang Duobing allows himself to wonder if this was just how it might have felt like, if a softer world had indeed allowed him to live and grow under Li Xiangyi’s tutelage.
“Xiaobao,” the soft whisper comes, as a hand moves up again to cradle his face, a gentle thumb running over his cheek. Fang Duobing cannot help himself–he leans into the touch, as frustrated tears of surrender fall from his eyes. He had done this willingly and wholeheartedly, with no regrets—but that did not mean that he was relishing the arduous journey ahead.
Li Lianhua’s heart breaks just a little bit more as he feels those bittersweet tears fall into his palm. He dabs them away, and then surges forward to envelop his one and only disciple in his arms. Fang Duobing hides his face in his neck, and the tears keep coming as he shakes in silent sobs. Li Lianhua feels the dampness in his collar, and doesn’t say a word.
Only when he feels Fang Duobing start to pull away—in embarrassment, no doubt—does he speak again, his arms holding even tighter. There is something about the way that Fang Duobing almost collapses weakly again in his hold, a far cry from the strong young fighter who gamely pulled Li Lianhua from danger more times than he could count. It was a reminder of how far they had to go—only this time, Li Lianhua vowed, they would go together.
“Li Xiangyi was unworthy of such a devoted disciple,” he says softly into Fang Duobing’s ear, shushing the inevitable protests that the younger man mumbles into his chest. “Xiaobao—whatever may come, whatever it may look like, I will never be ashamed of you. You will never be a burden. Not to me. Never to me.”
There’s a tiny sound of disbelief against his chest, but Li Lianhua just smiles brokenly and holds on tighter. “I know, I know. Forgive me, for what I said before. But you did this for me. I cannot leave you alone to bear the consequences. I could not be your shifu then. Will you let me be your zhiji now?”
Fang Xiaobao, let me carry you, this time around.
Fang Duobing pulls away again, and this time, Li Lianhua lets go. He scrutinizes the older man once more—there is no trace of grudging duty, like the servants and healers that Tianji Hall once hired to help him live from day to day, the ones who scrunched up their noses in disgust at his weakness. There is no trace of patronizing pity, like his teachers or his age-mates who left him out of games or assigned him to another lesson that was apparently more manageable for someone like him. There isn’t even a look of well-meaning doubt and worry for his welfare, like the one he sometimes saw on his parents or his aunt, although they tried their best to hide it.
There is only a quiet belief, a steady devotion, and an all-encompassing fondness so great that Fang Duobing can hardly stand it.
“Okay,” he breathes, reluctantly. “Okay.”