Asch the Bloody (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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starwardbestrewn2021-01-13 01:24 am
bloodyashes) wrote in starwardbestrewn2021-01-13 01:24 am
Entry tags:
catch me begging a chinese fan for a name consult later
You find the boy in the mountains.
It's not quite 'in the Burial Mounds,' but it's damn close. It's that unsettling region where Yunmeng, Yiling, and Qishan all blend together, the portion that changed hands three times over the course of Sunshot before Wei Wuxian came out of the Burial Mounds like a ghost and let resentment loose on the Wen army. Not many people lived here then, and fewer since.
You're investigating reports of fierce corpses, because this is still Jiang territory even if there still aren't enough Jiang sect members to properly patrol it (and you're working on that, you are), and you see him.
A flash of black and red, as you fly by on your sword, that causes you to stop and swerve so suddenly that if you were any less practiced than you are, you would have slipped your footing.
You think it's him. You think it has to be him. You don't know if you hope it's him or not.
It's not him.
That much, at least, is obvious when you slow down, because the furl of red too brilliant to be blood on the forest floor isn't a trademark bright red underrobe. It's hair, so out of place that it takes you a moment to recognize it as hair, a shade you've never seen outside of weddings and new year's.
You glide closer on your sword and hop off, risking a closer look.
The boy (he's not that much younger than you, really, somewhere around eighteen or nineteen) is clearly from very far away. His features are exotic in a way you can't quite put your finger on, something about the nose and the jaw and the shape of his eyes, but his clothes are clearly foreign.
He's dead. You figure he must be dead, because now that you're close enough to see, there are huge rents through his clothes, his body, stained the actual dark red of blood. It's fresh enough that you can smell it. There's an empty sheath at his waist, partially hidden under the folds of fabric, but no sword in sight.
You have to wonder how the hell he got out here. Whatever injured him is a danger to the people around here, and you have even more questions about why a Westerner is in such a place. Those questions will probably never get answered, but you might be able to find a letter among his clothing, some indication, even if the only people familiar with the tongues of the West are those of the Lan sect...
Your thoughts race as you bend down, and eventually settle into, At least I can give him a decent burial.
He's still warm, when you crouch to pick him up, to give him some manner of dignity. Eyes already closed, expression gone slack but not rigid -
When you slide an arm under his chest (you'll get blood on your robes, but it's not the first time, it's far from the first time, at this time it isn't the blood of your family), there's a sound. It's so quiet you think you imagined it.
But as you lift him, you hear it again. The faintest gasp of inhale-exhale, of a tiny noise like a breath that someone who has lost this much blood shouldn't be able to make.
You almost drop him in your haste, because it seems impossible, it really shouldn't be, to press a hand to his chest. You feel like you could almost reach in and take the measure of his heart by holding it in your hand if you wanted. The wounds are deep, if narrow.
It's faint, under your fingers. You have to shove aside layers of fabric, and even then the only thing that gives you certainty is the way Zidian twitches in response.
But you feel a stuttering rise-and-fall under your hands, an attempted breath, and you -
(Red is the color of good luck.)
There's no way he'd survive the trip. He can't have more than a few minutes to live.
(How lucky, that you happened upon him at all?)
You get back on your sword and fly anyway, more blood staining your robes from purple to black.
(You're the Jiang sect leader. There's no one else to attempt the impossible but you.)
And so against hope, with a stranger's weight in your arms, you fly.
It's not quite 'in the Burial Mounds,' but it's damn close. It's that unsettling region where Yunmeng, Yiling, and Qishan all blend together, the portion that changed hands three times over the course of Sunshot before Wei Wuxian came out of the Burial Mounds like a ghost and let resentment loose on the Wen army. Not many people lived here then, and fewer since.
You're investigating reports of fierce corpses, because this is still Jiang territory even if there still aren't enough Jiang sect members to properly patrol it (and you're working on that, you are), and you see him.
A flash of black and red, as you fly by on your sword, that causes you to stop and swerve so suddenly that if you were any less practiced than you are, you would have slipped your footing.
You think it's him. You think it has to be him. You don't know if you hope it's him or not.
It's not him.
That much, at least, is obvious when you slow down, because the furl of red too brilliant to be blood on the forest floor isn't a trademark bright red underrobe. It's hair, so out of place that it takes you a moment to recognize it as hair, a shade you've never seen outside of weddings and new year's.
You glide closer on your sword and hop off, risking a closer look.
The boy (he's not that much younger than you, really, somewhere around eighteen or nineteen) is clearly from very far away. His features are exotic in a way you can't quite put your finger on, something about the nose and the jaw and the shape of his eyes, but his clothes are clearly foreign.
He's dead. You figure he must be dead, because now that you're close enough to see, there are huge rents through his clothes, his body, stained the actual dark red of blood. It's fresh enough that you can smell it. There's an empty sheath at his waist, partially hidden under the folds of fabric, but no sword in sight.
You have to wonder how the hell he got out here. Whatever injured him is a danger to the people around here, and you have even more questions about why a Westerner is in such a place. Those questions will probably never get answered, but you might be able to find a letter among his clothing, some indication, even if the only people familiar with the tongues of the West are those of the Lan sect...
Your thoughts race as you bend down, and eventually settle into, At least I can give him a decent burial.
He's still warm, when you crouch to pick him up, to give him some manner of dignity. Eyes already closed, expression gone slack but not rigid -
When you slide an arm under his chest (you'll get blood on your robes, but it's not the first time, it's far from the first time, at this time it isn't the blood of your family), there's a sound. It's so quiet you think you imagined it.
But as you lift him, you hear it again. The faintest gasp of inhale-exhale, of a tiny noise like a breath that someone who has lost this much blood shouldn't be able to make.
You almost drop him in your haste, because it seems impossible, it really shouldn't be, to press a hand to his chest. You feel like you could almost reach in and take the measure of his heart by holding it in your hand if you wanted. The wounds are deep, if narrow.
It's faint, under your fingers. You have to shove aside layers of fabric, and even then the only thing that gives you certainty is the way Zidian twitches in response.
But you feel a stuttering rise-and-fall under your hands, an attempted breath, and you -
(Red is the color of good luck.)
There's no way he'd survive the trip. He can't have more than a few minutes to live.
(How lucky, that you happened upon him at all?)
You get back on your sword and fly anyway, more blood staining your robes from purple to black.
(You're the Jiang sect leader. There's no one else to attempt the impossible but you.)
And so against hope, with a stranger's weight in your arms, you fly.
comes back to this months later
He can't fly on a sword - you're damn certain of that, from the way he stared at them on the journey to and from the cultivation conference, the obvious nervousness to the way he clung to your new first disciple. But he isn't some mundane, either.
The healers have been all too willing to tell you that no one but a cultivator, and a strong one at that, could have survived his injuries. You scoffed at the time, but now...
When you return to Lotus Pier, you don't waste time having him spar through the ranks of lower disciples. If he has any technique to match that strength, then he's going to be miles ahead of the mostly fresh faces in your sect.
Besides which, it's not your way. If you're going to get an idea of his strength, then it's going to be by testing it yourself.
So the day after you return, you make your way to the sparring grounds, and offer him a choice of practice blades.
Yan Hui assesses them carefully. These are blades for beginners who haven't bonded with their own yet, and you think he can tell they're not of the greatest quality the sect can offer. But they'll work for anyone who draws them rather than responding only to an owner's golden core, which is unfortunately what you need here.
After regarding most of the blades, Yan Hui turns to you, says, "These are mostly too thin for my style," and pulls the widest jian from the pile anyway. While you're thinking something to yourself along the lines of Too thin? What did you use before, a fucking saber?, he crosses the courtyard and settles into a ready stance. It's no stance you've ever seen before, but there's no mistaking the 'come at me' in his expression.
So you put everything else to the side, draw your sword, and go at him.
Yan Hui is not a cultivator of any sect you know of. That becomes almost immediately obvious, from his stance and more importantly the way he holds his ground. There's a certainty to it, something you've seen among some of the Nie, and that's the closest you've seen to whatever the hell this is, the sheer unrelenting power behind the downward strikes, and the upward ones that come back from those aren't exactly an opening. Yan Hui swings the heaviest practice blade in the yard around like it's a bamboo beater and you are the unfortunate dirty rug it has an appointment with. It rattles your arms, it's almost certainly going to break the practice sword eventually, but the truly baffling thing is that Yan Hui does it all one-handed.
You are having to work to parry blows from a man who uses his sword with only one hand. And while you have obvious acrobatic superiority, letting your blade help pull you up into the leaps and flips of a cultivator battle, Yan Hui just marches forward, feet on the ground and barely seeming to even track you with his eyes. Even when you flip over him and lash your blade at his back, he knows where you are enough to spin out of the way and -
You learn, very hard, why Yan Hui uses only one hand with his sword, because in the opening left when he dodges yours, he swings that empty hand around and punches you in the gut hard enough to send you sliding.
It hurts like a bitch. It isn't just a punch. There's a burst of qi in it that burns like fire - you're not making that up, either. Your clothes are warm like they've been passed over an open flame, when you automatically press your free hand to your stomach, trying to catch your breath.
You swear. You look up, see the smirk that's almost a grin on his face, and say, "Fine. Time to quit holding back, then."
Purple sparks tingle over your fingers. Time to give as good as you got.
no subject
Yan Hui channels that same power of the elements, but through his own body (as well as any blade that happens to be in his hand). And it seems to take no more out of him than Zidian does from you, even though he doesn't seem limited to only the one.
By the time the spar ends, with - much as you predicted - the practice blade bending in such a way that it will have to be sent to a smith to be reforged entirely, you're aware of the entire sect gathered around the courtyard, as well as the fact that most of them are near to terrified, even the veterans of Sunshot.
You can't exactly blame them. It's a more localized kind of destruction than what Wei Wuxian and his demonic cultivation were capable of, and the psychological impact isn't as big, either. But if it's a cultivation method that can be taught...
Yunmeng Jiang's disciples are middling when it comes to more overt qi techniques. But you haven't had the time to teach those techniques properly, and you know it. This, on the other hand, could put you on par with the Lan. It could save your sect, still tilting dangerously on the edge.
Even if it can't be taught, you can still deny it to the other sects.
When you bow to Yan Hui after the fight, it is deep with your thanks to whatever god brought him to your doorstep.
He only hesitates an awkward moment before bowing back. You suppose it would be too much to ask if he were perfect.
no subject
Yan Hui can't rightly be considered a cultivator, because he doesn't have a golden core. This you were already aware of. However, he can't be considered a mundane person, either. The spiritual energy that a cultivator keeps in their golden core is used to enhance his meridians directly, with a particular focus on the eyes, throat, and hands. It's always present, rather than being something he has to actively call upon.
It's damaged by his injuries right now, of course. The places where his body has to repair itself have accordingly weakened meridians; he gets short of breath easily, as you'd expect from someone with such dramatic lung damage. But it also explains why his body was able to accept and use spiritual energy while unconscious, without being in a healing trance; his body is always using spiritual energy. His qi circulates the whole of his being.
It also explains why he seems largely unbothered by the loss of his previous weapon, when a cultivator who lost their sword would suffer a serious setback in their development. Yan Hui cultivated his body directly in a way more in line with the Lan, who use spiritual instruments in addition to their swords, but to an extreme beyond that of the Lan.
It also explains his awareness, which is on a level you've never seen before. Rather than focusing qi to sharpen his senses, they are always sharpened, because his eyes and ears and even sense of balance are full of qi at all times.
That's the part that seems most exhausting to you. It's no wonder that Yan Hui is the first to react when Jin Ling starts to cry; the sound of unhappy toddler must be downright hellish to his ears. His usual response is to pluck your nephew up and rock him while murmuring or humming, often in his own language. You can't bring yourself to deny him that, even as Jin Ling starts to mix unfamiliar words into his babble; it's the only time Yan Hui gets to speak in his own language at all except to curse.
Truthfully, he's the best bodyguard you could ask for; his loyalty seems to extend to you and Jin Ling and then stops there. You actually had to intercede in order to convince him to hand Jin Ling over to his grandmother.
Only most of this do you explain to Jin Guangyao when the matter comes up in conversation between you. You don't tell him about the fiery punch or the time you witnessed Yan Hui freeze a portion of one of the ponds with arm-sized icicles. You don't trust the man that far, and even if you did, you don't trust the rest of the Jin. Let any would-be assassins find out for themselves.
"An unexpected asset," Jin Guangyao agrees, thoughtful. "I suppose in lieu of a wife, a dedicated protector serves your household well."
You can't help but grimace. The matter of your marriage comes up regularly, since your sect doesn't currently have an heir. Rather than rise to the bait, you say, "I have my hopes it can be taught, but Yan Hui still gropes for words in our language, so I haven't asked. That he's willing to protect Jin Ling is enough for me."
"Your mother's sect has a tradition of such protection, does it not? If anyone objects, perhaps that is something you can call upon," Jin Guangyao says, and that's an actually helpful thought. You were the Jiang heir, so you don't know much about the Yu practices. You'll have to look it up. For now, you nod and thank him for the suggestion.