Book 3: Chapter 44: What?! |
Shui waited.
The red miasma pressed against the ridgeline in slow, patient waves. Mr. Mo Mo's presence remained behind her the whole time, never once wavering. The crown pulsed between pale blue and soft white in a rhythm that matched her heartbeat. Four thousand soldiers held their positions across every approach, exit, approaching pathway, hideout, and line of sight within a mile.
Nothing moved on the ridge.
Shui's jaw tightened.
Cowards. Ingredient-stealing cowards who won't even show their faces after what they did to my people.
She planted her feet wider and let the miasma climb further up the slope than before. The tendrils split and fanned, probing scrub brush, sliding between rocks, curling around the bases of stunted trees that had given up on life long before she arrived to make it worse.
A branch snapped.
Shui's eyes locked onto the sound.
Figures emerged from behind the boulder line at the ridge's crest. They came in pairs, stepping out from positions she hadn't been able to pinpoint through the ambient Qi noise of four thousand bodies at her back. White robes, grey cloaks thrown over them, and faces that caught the morning sun in ways that made her squint.
Their ears were… not right?
The first pair had ears that sat too high on their skulls. Pointed and covered in fine copper fur that caught the light and threw it back in tiny sparks. Their pupils were vertical slits in irises of burnished gold. Sharp features, angular jaws, and the way they moved… it all came together and reminded her of the foxes that sometimes darted through the forests when they had been in the Silver Mountain Gang.
Fox ears with fox eyes.
Fox everything except the human-shaped bodies wearing human-shaped clothes.
The second pair was broader. Thicker through the shoulders and chest, with white hair that fell past their collarbones and eyes tinged red at the edges. Their ears were longer, rounder, set at angles that twitched independently of each other. Tracking sounds from multiple directions at once.
Rabbit ears.
Shui blinked at them even harder.
More appeared. Twelve fox looking people in total, fanning across the ridgeline in a loose formation that looked rehearsed but poorly executed. One of them had a bruised jaw. Another was missing a sleeve. A third kept tugging at his sash like it was trying to strangle him. The two rabbitkin stood behind them, broad and still, red-tinged eyes sweeping the clearing below with an alertness that their companions lacked.
Those rabbits look like Mr. FluffyBottom. They have the same eyes.
Shui's grip on Mr. Mo Mo's shaft shifted and Mr. Mo Mo’s presence reassured and strengthened her.
The foxkin and rabbitkin parted.
A figure stepped between them.
Nine tails fanned behind her like a silver-white curtain that caught the morning sun and turned it cold and foggy. Each tail was longer than the woman was tall, fur so fine it looked like spun moonlight, tips curling and uncurling in patterns that had nothing to do with the breeze. Her robes were deep violet trimmed with frost that clung to the fabric in crystalline patterns. Her hair fell past her waist in a cascade of silver that matched her tails. Her face was all angles and authority, cheekbones sharp, eyes that swept the clearing with efficiency.
Her Qi signature pressed outward in waves.
Ice and winter and something vast.
Shui's miasma recoiled from it, red tendrils hissing where they met the cold front that preceded the woman like a herald announcing royalty. Frost crept across the packed earth between them, racing ahead of her footsteps, and climbing Shui's boots before she burned it off with a pulse of Qi that made the ground steam… but she did that subconsciously.
Her eyes stuck on the figure before her.
The woman stopped at the base of the slope a few dozen steps away.
Her nine tails settled into a fan behind her. Her violet robes caught the light. Her silver hair framed a face that—
Shui's hammer slipped.
Mr. Mo Mo's shaft slid through fingers that had gone slack. The weapon spirit's hum stuttered as the massive head dipped toward the ground before Shui caught it, fumbled, caught it again, and then just let it hang at her side because her arms had forgotten what they were supposed to be doing.
Her mouth fell open and eyes went wide.
Then wider.
Then wider still as she saw something she had not believed existed in the universe.
The red miasma collapsed. Every wisp, tendril, and screaming frequency of pressure that had been climbing the ridge and filling the clearing and pressing against four thousand soldiers and fourteen spirit beasts and the morning air itself, all of it sucked back into her core in a single violent inhalation that left the clearing silent and still.
Shui's arm rose. One finger extended and it trembled as she pointed at the nine-tailed fox woman. Her mouth worked for long seconds before sound emerged. "Y-You!"
The woman stopped mid-stride. Her nine tails went rigid and violet robes settled. Her silver hair caught the breeze and held it. Her eyes, which had been sweeping the clearing with calculated precision, locked onto Shui's extended finger and then tracked upward to find the face behind it.
"M-Me?" The woman's voice cracked on the single syllable.
"Buxom!"
The word detonated in the space between them.
Every foxkin on the ridge flinched. The copper-haired one's bruised jaw dropped open. Two others exchanged glances that communicated volumes of confusion in the universal language of subordinates who had no idea what was happening. The rabbitkin's ears flattened against their skulls. Long Ti, who had been standing a few paces behind Shui in his usual position of resigned acceptance, made a sound like a man swallowing his own tongue.
Meng Li's composure shattered.
Her nine tails unfurled from their fan and whipped outward in nine separate directions, each one expressing a different flavour of shock. Her cheekbones, which had been carrying the weight of aristocratic authority since she stepped onto the ridge, flushed pink and shattered from its controlled visage. Her eyes went round and mouth mimed words and produced a sound that started as a word and ended as a wheeze.
"What?!"
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Some time had passed since the "What?!"
Meng Li sat on an overturned crate inside the warehouse and stared at the wall across from her. Her nine tails lay flat on the frozen stone floor behind her, limp and motionless, arranged in a fan that took up more space than multiple of the wounded gang members combined. Her hands rested in her lap and fingers hadn't moved in several minutes.
She couldn't quite piece together the sequence of events that had brought her from "terrifying Upper Realm ascendant preparing to face the Red Demon in a clash that would determine the fate of the northern docks" to "sitting on a crate while a twelve-year-old girl applied rouge to her cheekbones with the focus of a Battlefield Saint WarMaster."
The transition had involved shouting.
A lot of shouting.
Shui had crossed the twenty paces between them in a couple bounds, grabbed Meng Li's sleeve, dragged her past fourteen stunned spirit beasts, through four thousand soldiers who parted like the sea before a natural disaster, into the warehouse, past sixty wounded fighters who pressed themselves against walls to avoid the fox woman's tails, and deposited her on this crate.
Then she'd produced a makeup kit from somewhere.
Meng Li's brain had been trying to catch up ever since.
The scarred man, Fao Wen, stood in the corner with his cracked spear and his reopened scar. His mouth hanging open. His blue cape, stiff with frost from Meng Li's previous visit, dripped meltwater onto the stone. He stared at the scene before him and his brain had clearly decided to stop processing new information until further notice. That happened to every single person in the area.
The foxkin crowded the warehouse entrance.
Fourteen pairs of vertical pupils and red-tinged eyes watched their mistress get her face painted by a child. The copper-haired one kept trying to say something but would eventually think better and stay quiet. He had done it a dozen times and te rabbitkin had noticed and were not very pleased. They moved away and had tilted their heads so far to one side her ear touched her shoulder.
Shui hummed as she worked.
A brush moved across Meng Li's left cheek in short, precise strokes. The girl stood on the crate beside her, balanced on her toes, tongue poking from the corner of her mouth in concentration. Her crown sat crooked. Mr. Mo Mo leaned against the wall behind them, the weapon spirit's hum reduced rumble that Meng Li only now noticed and was beyond thankful for the series of events because she doubted she could fight a Weapon Spirit that powerful.
Meng Li's cheeks burned beneath the layers of powder and rouge being applied to them.
The Ancient loved buxom, voluptuous women.
The thought sat in her chest like a hot coal in her hands.
She'd spent months baking lemon cakes. Months hiding in a mountain cavern, cultivating foxes and rabbits, perfecting recipes, agonising over ingredient quality, and building herself into a nervous wreck over the prospect of approaching a being that could unmake her with a thought.
And the solution had been this the entire time?
Meng Li's tails curled at their tips. Her fingers pressed together in her lap. She could feel the heat spreading from her cheeks to her ears, down her neck, across her collarbones, and filling her entire body in a single wave. Her violet robes suddenly felt too tight and silver hair felt too messy. Her nine tails suddenly felt too many. Did he like nine tails? Or did he prefer eight, seven, two? No tails? A hundred tails? Were nine tails the one thing he hated above all things in the universe and would smite her the second he saw them?
I'm not that well made. Mother always said I was too thin. Father said my tails lacked volume compared to the matriarchs of our line. My cultivation form is serviceable at best. My human form is—
Shui leaned back and studied her work. Her head tilted left, then right as she squinted. Reaching forward and adjusted something near Meng Li's temple, then she leaned back again.
"Perfect!" Shui declared.
Meng Li's fingers tightened against each other. "A-Are you sure about this?"
Her voice came out smaller than she intended. Smaller than any voice belonging to the daughter of the Nine-Tailed Fox Sovereign had any right to be. Her face was caked with makeup. Layers of it made of foundation, powder, rouge, something shimmery near her eyes, a dark line along her lashes that Shui had applied with the steady hand of someone who had done this before and the artistic sensibility of someone who absolutely should not be doing this ever again.
She looked like the lead performer in a travelling theatre troupe. Caked in makeup. The kind that played the tragic heroine who dies in the fourth act and gets carried offstage by ten men in matching costumes while the audience weeps into their handkerchiefs.
"Yep," Shui said. She hopped down from the crate and circled Meng Li, studying her from every angle. "Though you have to wear a scarf and cover your face. Maybe even long clothes and loose ones too."
Meng Li's tails twitched. "W-Why do you say that? Isn't showing my…" She swallowed and ears burned. "Blessings good?"
Shui shrugged with both shoulders in a gesture so casual it could have been discussing the weather rather than the strategic deployment of physical assets in the pursuit of an Ancient Being's favour.
"The last time I found a buxom spirit, she had showed her shoulder and had a ton of makeup. Ancestor loved the makeup…" Shui paused. Her brow furrowed and her lips pressed together as she tapped her chin. "But I think it was her showing her shoulder that got him upset at me. There is no other reason why. He even banned me from playing with the spirits and chasing after them. That was when we hadn’t entered the Bleak Forests… Have you been to the Bleak Forests?"
Meng Li blinked. “No. I’ve never had the honor–”
“Not an honor. It was a lovely place! Fun and exciting! Not honorable cause thats old and boring… but the days before that? When master took away my privilege to play with the spirits and have fun in the inky fog?” Shui looked down, voice dropping low and expression turning sullen. "That was a sad day."
Meng Li's hands separated and found the edge of the crate. Her fingers gripped the wood and tails lifted from the floor, one by one, curling inward until they wrapped around her frame in a cocoon of silver-white fur. Her cheeks, already flushed beneath the layers of makeup, darkened by another shade.
Cover up. Scarf. Loose clothes. Makeup. Don't show skin. The Ancient prefers modesty with effort. He wants someone who tries to look beautiful but doesn't flaunt it. He wants—
He wants someone who brings gifts.
Gifts like—
"It's okay!" Meng Li's hands shot up, palms out. Her tails unfurled and fanned behind her in a display of earnest enthusiasm that made the copper-haired foxkin in the doorway take a step backward. "I'll listen to everything you tell me to do! I promise!"
Shui beamed at her.
Meng Li's heart hammered against her ribs.
Her fingers found each other again and squeezed.
She could feel the makeup drying on her skin, the powder settling into the fine lines around her eyes, the rouge sitting heavy on her cheekbones, and everything playing a part just as the little girl had intended. She looked ridiculous and she knew she looked ridiculous. The foxkin knew she looked ridiculous. The rabbitkin knew. The man with the blue cloak knew. The old man with the trembling hands and the ledger knew. Every wounded gang member propped against the warehouse walls knew.
But she didn't care.
If this was what it took to survive, she would paint her face every morning and wear a scarf in a desert and wrap herself in so many layers of loose clothing that she looked like a walking laundry pile.
"Also…" Meng Li's voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. She leaned forward on the crate, silver hair falling across her painted face. "Do you think… that he might, you know… err…"
Shui tilted her head. “Out with it! I know my Ancestor best. Anything you say I will have an answer for, trust me.”
"...like sweet cake?" Meng Li finished.
Shui's eyes went wide and her face drained of colour, then flooded back twice as bright. Her hands flew to her cheeks. "I-I forgot about the cake!"