Chapter 180 - So Like... Anyone Else Not Entirely Over Their Ex? (Patreon)

Is it obvious that I love writing Hisheng's visits? He's just a really sweet and sincere guy! Now that Raika's solidifying her sense of self and about to embark on the next phase of her journey, he's a really fun mix of challenge and support, and I have a lot of fun writing her mind as she figures out her place in her ideals and gets challenged by Hisheng's good nature and openness.

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Hisheng looks at the kid curiously, as if somehow he’s more surprising than she is in her altered state. He does make sure to spare a look for her too, though. A long, lingering look, which focuses… a bit much on some no-longer-covered parts that match her newly oversized frame.

She shifts back down, Changing her new arms (which she barely even got to test, damnit) back into blood and then dumping that blood into her seemingly bottomless stomach. In a few seconds, she’s back to her… “normal” body. It feels weird calling it that, but it’s her most common one, anyways.

“Eyes up here, pretty boy,” she says. “Didn’t realize you’d be early.”

He gives an awkward chuckle. “I, um. I’m actually a few hours late. I know how cultivation trances can be.”

She blinks, then looks up at the sky. Sure enough, the sun has moved well past early afternoon. Frustrating. Maybe she should make a sub-mind just to track time, set alarms for her. As it stands, she links the two newest subminds to the “Mask”, linking them to physical movement and information processing. And, hopefully, making it harder to overwhelm her when she gets hyper focused on individual muscle groups and such. 

“Sorry, then. Didn’t realize.” With a flicker of Change she grows out her hair to twice its length, using it to gain some degree of modesty. Qen Hou, bless his heart, finally stops blushing, but both Hao Nera and Jin don’t really seem to care, plenty familiar with public bathhouses and the proximity that grows in poverty. She gets up and dusts herself off.

“It’s good to see you, Hisheng. I’m apparently late to start cooking, but we’ve got some leftovers if you’re interested.”

The massive puppy of a man brightens up visibly at that. “Never one to turn down free food, and your friends here have been pretty eager to tell me about just how good your cooking’s gotten.”

“It’s true,” Hao Nera nods. “In spite of your horribly uncouth nature and terrible habits, you make for a delightful home chef for this honored Hao Nera!”

She rolls her eyes at him, but Hisheng laughs. “Your friend here makes a jest of it, but to hear anyone praise your cooking is a surprise. I still remember when you tried to cook a victory barbecue for-”

“Shh! Shush!” she waves a hand at him, picking up her robe to throw over her shoulders. “I can’t believe you’re bringing that up, shush!”

Hao Nera cackles, and this time Qen Hou pops a smile too. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you so flustered, Raika dear! Hisheng, come, you simply must share.” Before she can say anything he has an arm threaded through Hisheng’s and is carting him off towards the cabin, the larger man giving a confused look back but inevitably going with the flow that is Hao Nera.

Qen Hou shakes his head, before giving her a look.

“You alright with this? Him coming to the cabin?”

“Ever the protective specter, Qen Hou. Yeah, it’s… he means no harm. And it doesn’t hurt as much anymore.”

He nods, and she can physically smell the scent of magnesium get a bit quieter. He smiles at her after, a bit of a cheeky grin. 

“Well then, this honorable Qen Hou won’t miss the opportunity to hear of the beginning of your journey as an immortal chef.”

She goes to snarl at him, but he waves her off with a laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Keep an eye on the kid, yeah?”

She huffs. Then looks over at said kid.

Jin has, at this point, settled himself again, experiencing the awkward dynamic of being surrounded by adults with relationships that exist outside of him. He’s decided, in the infinite wisdom of youth, that it’s none of his fucking business. The Blacksteel is once again in front of him, its edges slightly chipped and its obsidian luster just a bit faded as he draws more of its influence into himself. Death enters his body, and rather than poison his flesh against him, cause him to age, cause him to break down and die, it instead seems to pull into a deeper well inside of him. She’d have to touch him to confirm, but she is almost absolutely certain his dantian, and the space around what will be his core, is saturated with that deadly energy.

She’s… probably not gonna give him another one of those. Better to keep him balanced than to flood his system, even though the end in him and the End in the Blacksteel seem shockingly compatible. Still better to keep him more on the human side of things, though, than to drop him off the “deeply inhuman and fucked up alien abomination” cliff right away.

“You good out here, kid?” she asks.

He looks at her, then at the house. She can almost feel the struggle as he considers someone new having access to their food supply, but in a lovely little show of growth, he ends up just giving her a nod.

“I’ll be alright here. The pond is safe. And I feel like I’m close to something.”

“Alright. Stay safe, and try to pull in something other than just that Blacksteel. It’ll last longer if you balance it, as will you.”

“Yes, master,” he says. She’s… surprised to see that he’s serious.

“Yeah, yeah. Anything goes wrong, just… yell. I’ll hear.”

He nods, giving a bit of an awkward little bow. The kid is way too serious for his own good, in spite of his upbringing. She… expected him to act a lot more like JiaJia, she realized. Maybe not the same, but he’s not nearly so jovial or so willing to insult her. It’s consistently surprising, even if he’s not exactly some prim and proper little apprentice. 

He’s a good kid.

Dink vibrates lightly against her collarbone, and she gives it an encouraging little pat. Yeah, yeah. Her second-oldest friend hums contentedly on its little chain, enjoying the attention and the approval. It’s good to see it agree with her, even if it probably has no idea what’s going on.

She walks into the cabin to the sound of laughter as Hao Nera gets his fill of stories about her.

“-and that’s why to this day, my honored sister Ji Kira refuses to eat anything on a wooden skewer.”

A fresh round of cackling breaks out from Hao Nera, and even Qen Hou has cracked a smile. Hao Nera, it seems, didn’t hesitate to break out the good meat or the booze. Whatever hesitation he had with Hisheng before, it would seem that their soon-to-be exit from this place has loosened him up a bit.

“Sister! We were just talking about how wonderfully your first ever experiment with barbecue went! A masterful exercise in the use of torturing one’s enemies with splintered meat.”

“It was shitty wood in the first place. Hardly my fault. And I see you all enjoying pork and chicken at my expense.”

“A celebration of your true growth,” Qen Hou says with a grin.

She shoots him a betrayed look that sets Hao Nera and Hisheng back to laughing this time.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I guess none of you assholes want scallion pancakes then?”

“Well now I didn’t say that-”

“Honored sister, it was not my intent to disrespect, I merely-”

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A few hours (and a few drinks) later, the conversation winds down. Jin came back inside once the sun came down, and eventually Qen Hou dragged Hao Nera off to sleep, the lesser cultivator well into his cups despite his tough metabolism. And, of course, making for a convenient excuse for Raika and Hisheng to have some time alone.

He coughs lightly at the pipe she lights. They’re sitting out of the cabin now, away from prying ears and under the stars. For some reason they always seem brighter in the valley, like they’re looking more closely, maybe.

“I didn’t realize you kept up the habit,” he says.

“Sometimes. Few times a week, maybe. A Witch gave me some drugs that helped me out a while back, and she gave me the recipe.”

“I… thought it smelled different. You use to smoke those gods-awful cigarettes.”

“I still miss them. Gods bless those little cancer sticks. But weird blue cave moss, hemp and blood make a decent substitute, and they still numb me a bit. I can control it, but when I’m feeling overwhelmed or don’t want to have such a broad focus, it can be a good way to relax.”

“I can see how that might be. Adjusting to one’s senses as your cultivation advances can be… difficult. Supposedly, that’s where closed-door cultivation started.”

“Mmh. Didn’t know that.”

“Heh. Yeah. It’s…”

Silence falls for a bit. Starlight and wind through the grass.

“Why do you keep visiting, Hisheng?”

He laughs, looks at her in surprise- and then sees she’s serious. He goes quiet. Tan skin and dark tattoos stand out in the dark of the night, and he gives a long, quiet sigh.

Silence again.

“You already helped us,” she says. “We haven’t been dating for… years now, really. I understand you have your guilt, but you don’t need to keep visiting. It’s a risk, for both of us. Even if you wanted to keep helping, you could just do what you’ve been doing with the letters. We could arrange a drop.

“Why come here?”

He looks at her with… what looks like genuine confusion.

“Why… why wouldn’t I?”

She blinks.

“I- you’re my friend. We were friends before we were… intimate. And you’re my honorable junior in our sect. You’ve grown by leaps and bounds, and you asked for my help. Of course I’d visit. To, to check in, to see if you’re alright. To offer more, if I can.”

“But why?”

This time it’s her that breaks eye contact first as he gives her a look like she’s an absolute idiot.

“Do I need a reason to give what I can to those I care about?” He snorts. “If I do, then my reason is that I choose to.”

“That’s-”

“If the world and the Heavens demand that I become a recluse that hoards his help only to those who earn it, then my rebellion against the heavens shall be to choose how to share my generosity. If the whole world is to tell me I must keep my strength for only myself, then I shall kindly tell the world to give its unwanted advice to someone else. I am Ka Hisheng, and my will is my own. I swear it now beneath the Heavens; I offer what I can because I think it will help. And my choice, if given said choice, is always to help.”

She looks at him there, under the moonlight. His eyes burn, the passion in them enough that they nearly glow, and she can hear his heartbeat, his breath, the twitching of every muscle.

He fucking means it.

She lets out a long, slow breath she’s been holding.

“I didn’t deserve you,” she whispers.

He sighs, leaning away. For a moment, he just looks out at the valley around them, thinking in the quiet.

“Maybe not. You weren’t a very good partner, and you had your own demons. But you don’t get to choose how I wield my will, or who I deem deserving.”

It’s not a Truth, not by a long shot, but… it rings against her vocal chords. It sounds… almost like Truespeak.

She takes a long draw on her pipe, exhaling slowly so that the thick, whitish-blue smoke drifts to the ground around them.

And then, in her real voice, the one that carries the weight of her Qi and of every true thing she’s ever thought, she turns to Hisheng.

“I hope to prove myself worthy of your grace.”

He blinks.

“I… that was new.”

She shrugs. “It’s what my voice sounds like when I’m being honest, I think. Same Qi saturation that lets me breathe my own body weight’s worth of air changed how I sound unless I alter the pitch.”

“It was beautiful.”

She- no. She doesn’t need to look. He’s serious. 

“Yeah, well, it’s a pain in the ass. I’ve thought about using that voice to lie, or be… unclear? And it sets off my danger instincts something fierce. And I’m growing a bunch of loose brains in my body and wearing a prosthetic made of literal death metal.”

He laughs at that, loud enough that he flinches and looks worriedly at the cabin like he thinks he might’ve woken someone up. Then he relaxes, shaking his head.

“Best not to do that, then. Your instincts have always been second only to your ability to make hard-headed decisions, so if they’re acting up that hard, better to listen.”

“Fuck you, I’ll have you know what you call hard-headed I call determined and true to my ideals.”

“And I love that about you.”

She feels his heart speed up and stutter at the admission.

She feels at least one of hers do something similar.

She sighs.

“We’re leaving. Soon.”

She throws it out like a punch, or a swat. Something to push him away, at least for a moment. Some small nugget of disappointment to taint his perception of the moment.

He fucking nods instead. “I figured. Didn’t think you’d stay here forever. Not in you to stay still too long.”

She growls at that. “Fuck! How the hells are you always so fucking understanding about everything?”

He shrugs. “I accept what I am, and the world I am in, and seek only to change what coincides between the two.”

“Yeah, well, I want to change everything.”

He looks at her as she pauses, wondering why she says that. Instead of pushing he lets her think for a long, quiet moment.

“Fuck. I… I want things to be better. I want the deaths of the bastards that lord their power over the world and can do whatever they please. I want the freedom to go where I choose, how I choose.  I want to be strong enough that I can never be chained ever again. I don’t want to accept the things I can control, I want to Change until I can control the things I can’t accept. I’m not…

“I’m not content.”

Hisheng laughs, a quiet thing full of affection.

“Then go. Find better enemies. Get stronger. I saw what you were doing when I arrived, and I think you’ll be strong enough to be someone real. I want to hear fucking legends about you someday, Raika. And you can’t do that by staying here.”

She takes a long, painful pull of her pipe, turning what’s left in it to ash.

She looks up at the night sky above, as tired and as awake as she’s ever been.

“When will you be leaving?” Hisheng asks.

“End of next week, I think.”

“Good. But… before you go wherever you’re going, I’d appreciate it if you could visit the sect.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Really? What does the Hungering Roots sect want with me? And why would I take that risk?”

“Because Honored Researcher Boriah left very clear instructions about what would happen if anyone talked about you. And because my master asked of me, with all respect, that I invite you for tea.”