Book 3: Chapter 46: Cake Stuffings |
Meng Li's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
This was becoming a theme.
She stood inside the warehouse watching the Red Demon, Shui, her name was Hu Shui, the direct descendant of the being she had been hiding from and learning to bake for, bounce on her toes and clap her hands together while six lemon cakes sat on the makeshift table between them. Six perfect lemon cakes that Meng Li had poured her soul, cultivation, fears, months of practice, and roughly forty-seven failed attempts into creating.
They were the best she had made so far.
Ascended Heavenly Flour, phoenix Eggs from an adolescent two thousand years old, and even crystalline frost layered across the tops in patterns she'd spent forty attempts perfecting.
Offerings meant for a being so far above her that attributing intent to his movements was like an ant trying to divine purpose from the direction a mountain faced.
And she'd just handed them to his twelve-year-old granddaughter because the girl had looked at the spatial container with eyes so wide and hungry that Meng Li's survival instincts, pride, centuries of aristocratic training, and every ounce of self-preservation she possessed had crumbled like wet sand against a tide. She had no idea why she pulled them out when they were her main trump card for survival.
"Can I try one?" Shui had asked.
Meng Li's mouth had said "Of course" before her brain could scream: “No! Those are for your Ancestor, the Ancient, you fool! Those are your survival strategy! Those are the only thing standing between you and complete oblivion–
Shui grabbed the nearest cake with both hands and bit into it.
Meng Li watched the girl's face cycle through expressions faster than her foxkin could shift forms. It started off with confusion, brow furrowing as the flavour hit her tongue. Then her eyes went round and the chewing slowed. Her pupils dilated until the red irises were thin rings around pools of black that reflected the lantern light. She looked like… a cat that locked on a target.
Shui’s jaw stopped moving entirely.
Meng Li's fingers found each other and squeezed. Her tails curled inward and breath caught somewhere between her lungs and her throat.
She hates it. She hates it and she's going to spit it out and tell the Ancient and the Ancient is going to—
Shui's eyes filled with tears that welled up in her eyes before the began spilling over her lower lids and cutting tracks down her cheeks that caught the lantern light and turned gold. Her nose scrunched and lower lip trembled around the mouthful of cake she still hadn't swallowed. The crown on her head tilted as her chin dipped, shoulders drew inward, and whole body compressed into something small and shaking.
Meng Li's blood went cold.
Shit. Oh shit!
The tears fell faster the longer the moment passed. Becoming two rivers that dripped from her jaw and landed on the pale red silk of her robes, darkening the fabric in spreading circles.
Shit shit shit! I made her cry! I’m so dead!
Meng Li lunged forward. Her tails fanned wide and her hands reached for the cake, trying to take it back and undo whatever catastrophic damage her baking had inflicted on the Ancient's most cherished person on the entire planet. "I-I'm sorry! Was it bad? Did it hurt? Is your tongue burning? I can fix it! I have antidotes! I have seventeen different antidotes for Qi-infused food reactions and five more for—"
Shui swallowed the bite, and then she shoved more cake into her mouth with no ounce of decorum she had carried herself with so far.
Crumbs stuck between her fingers that she refused to let fall. Crystalline frost cracked and scattered across her cheeks, mixing with the tears in a slurry of sugar and salt that she didn't bother wiping away. Her jaw worked in massive, desperate chomps that made her cheeks bulge and her eyes squeeze shut as more tears leaked from the corners, streaming down her face, dripping from her chin, and soaking the front of her robes.
"Ih tashts sho good," Shui sobbed around a mouthful so large her words came out as muffled, wet, barely intelligible sounds
Meng Li froze mid-lunge, her hands hung in the air between them. Nine tails locked in their fanned position. "W-What?"
She had said that same word a dozen times now.
Shui grabbed a second fistful of cake as more tears poured down her cheeks and crumbs flew. Her nose ran and she wiped it on her sleeve without breaking stride, cramming more lemon cake into a mouth that hadn't finished processing the first experience. Her shoulders shook with sobs that had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with a girl who had spent two years without the ability to taste anything sweet at all because they tasted like mud… Then again the last time she had an sweets were back before the Silver Mountain Gang as they passed a village to there.
"Ih tashts sho good!" Shui repeated. "Thish ish the besht–” she gulped, choking for a second, before it went down properly. “–cake I've ever eaten in my whole life and I've eaten Ancestor's rice every day for two years and nothing tasted this good except his rice and—"
She hiccupped which launched a fragment of lemon cake across the gap between her and Meng Li.
Where it bounced off the spatial container and rolled to a stop against Meng Li's toes.
Meng Li stared at it.
Her tails dropped to the floor one by one, nine separate thuds against frozen stone. Her hands lowered to her sides and shoulders sagged. The tension that had been holding her spine rigid since she'd first sensed the Ancient's absence on this planet released in a cascade that left her feeling hollow, light, weak, and slightly dizzy.
She likes it. She's crying because she likes it. I made the Ancient's granddaughter cry tears of joy with my lemon cake…
I might survive this.
A hiccup escaped Meng Li's own throat before she could stop it, then another but for a completely different reason to Shui’s.
Her eyes burned and she blinked hard a dozen times, pressing her lips together until the muscles in her jaw ached. Her fingers found the edge of the crate and gripped until the wood creaked. She would not cry. She was Meng Li. Daughter of the Nine-Tailed Fox Sovereign, Ascendant of the Upper Realms. She did not cry because a twelve-year-old girl liked her baking.
A tear escaped her left eye and raced down her cheek, cutting a line through the layers of rouge and powder Shui had applied earlier.
Damn it.
Shui looked up from the decimated cake. Her face was a disaster. Crumbs in her hair, frosting on her nose, tear tracks cutting clean lines through the dust and grime. A pulse of Qi originated from her dress and cleaned her up from head to toe in a moment. Her red-rimmed eyes found Meng Li's wet ones and she grinned so wide the remaining cake in her mouth became visible.
"You're crying too!"
"I am not—"
"You are! Your face is leaking!"
Meng Li's hand shot to her cheek and came away wet. The makeup smeared across her fingers in a streak of rouge and tears.
Her hiccup came back with reinforcements.
A few in a row, each one louder than the last, echoing off the warehouse walls and making the copper-haired foxkin in the doorway exchange a look of pure bewilderment. Their mistress, the nine-tailed fox ascendant who could freeze planets and command spirit beasts with a flick of her wrist, was hiccupping and leaking tears in a smuggler's warehouse while a child ate her cake.
The rabbitkin scratched their ears in unison.
Shui reached for another piece.
"Wait!" Meng Li's hand shot out and grabbed Shui's wrist gently. "T-Those were meant for your Ancestor. All six of them. If you eat them all—"
Shui pulled her wrist free and grabbed the next piece anyway. "I won't eat them all! I'm saving some for Jun and Ancestor. See? I'm very responsible and fair."
Meng Li looked at the table.
Two and a half remained from Shui's current demolition, plus the untouched three.
"That's... that's only five and a half left."
"Thats plenty for everyone! I… just need to make sure it’s not terrible or poisoned! That it!"
Meng Li watched her eat and felt something shift in her chest. The coal of terror that had been sitting behind her sternum since she'd first sensed the Ancient's presence on this planet, the one that had driven her to bake hundreds of cakes and cultivate foxes and rabbits and hide in a mountain cavern for months, that coal didn't go out.
It changed temperature.
Still hot and present. Still capable of burning her alive if she made a wrong move, but it was warmer now.
Less like a brand and more like a hearth.
If his granddaughter cries over my cake, maybe the Ancient won't kill me on sight. Maybe the cakes are enough. Maybe—
A pulse of Qi slammed against the warehouse walls.
Every head in the building snapped toward the entrance.
Meng Li turned as her spiritual perception expanded outward in a wave that covered the ridge, the clearing, the river, and the surrounding terrain in a single sweep.Something powerful pressed against the northern perimeter. It wasn’t anything near her level, but was incredible for the denizens of this world.
She'd felt signatures of this strength before.
Once, when Peng Du had been alive and at the peak of his strength. This carried the same weight and depth.
Even if it was nothing compared to her.
As strong as Peng Du was when I first arrived on this planet.
Meng Li stepped toward the warehouse entrance. Ice crept from her boots across the frozen stone in fractal patterns that raced ahead of her, climbing the doorframe, and coating the shattered hinges. Her foxkin parted without being told making space for their mistress to pass.
She stopped at the threshold and looked out, surveying the surrounding ridge, clearing, four thousand soldiers in their positions, morning sun climbing higher, scrub brush and stunted trees, and the faint shimmer of residual red miasma that clung to the slope like morning dew.
And beyond the ridge, pressing down from the northwest was a golden pressure.
It wasn't aimed at the warehouse, but rather at a different enemy Meng Li hadn’t noticed because she was preoccupied with the second chance at life in the form of a little girl stuffing her small face with cake and Meng Li’s face with makeup.
Meng Li's perception swept wider and noticed two forces grinding against each other like tectonic plates. One golden and imperial. The other a mixture of white flame, green Qi, crimson shields layered around signatures that carried—
Her breath caught.
It was the Greater Dao residue again.
Does everyone have it and I’m just untalented?
Ghostly threads through the green Qi the same way it was threaded through Shui's miasma. A different person, with a different signature, but the same fingerprint.
The same brand left by proximity to the same impossible being.
Another one of his?
The golden force dwarfed it and pressed against it from every direction. Crushing the green, white, and crimson into a shrinking pocket that flickered and strained. A third force, smaller, sat on a rooftop nearby, watching. Its Qi signature was familiar too. That old man had been watching Shui from the rooftops as well. Likely a guardian or protector.
Then the golden force pulled back all at once as though it hadn’t been there in the first place. A mirage as the pressure evaporated.
The smaller force remained, battered but alive.
Meng Li also noticed the three thousand Qi signatures behind them, most of them unconscious. The three started moving toward the warehouse. "Shui. We have incoming."
Shui appeared beside her, another fistfull of cake in one hand, hammer in the other. Her red-rimmed eyes swept the ridge and the clearing and the distant treeline where the approaching force had become visible as a column of bodies moving through the scrub.Her face split into a grin.
"Don't worry." She took another bite. "Ish's Jun."
Meng Li blinked at the little girl stuffing her face. "What's a Jun?"
Shui laughed and crumbs sprayed from her mouth and landed on Meng Li's sleeve. "Jun is my big sister! I saved her some cake too! I split it perfectly in half! See?"
Meng Li turned and looked at the table, three untouched cakes sat on one side.
On the other side sat a a single half-eaten cake, two whole cakes, a scattering of crumbs, two empty spots where whole cakes had been, and a smear of crystalline frost that mapped the trajectory of Shui's feeding frenzy across the wood grain.
Shui's half: three full cakes, plus the half in her hand. Three and a half total.
Jun's half: two and a half cakes.
Assuming Shui didn't get hungry again in the next few minutes, which was an assumption Meng Li would not have bet a single copper coin on.
Meng Li blinked at the two clearly uneven portions.
Her mouth opened to point out the discrepancy, the impossibility of calling this an even split and the sheer audacity of a girl who could look upon a Calamity power and decide that putting makeup on her face was the right course of action, but couldn't divide six by two—
Shui took another bite of her half and grinned up at her with cheeks stuffed full and eyes that dared anyone in the warehouse to say a single word about the division of cake.
Meng Li closed her mouth.
I'm not going to be the one to tell her.