v5c68: Beginning to Feel Like Victory

Gou Ren couldn’t help but smile when he saw Chun Ke and Pi Pa embrace, hugging each other tightly. He had been having a kind of shitty week, all told—his sleep had been troubled, and he had to get up a couple of times in the night to check on everyone just to make sure they were alright.

“They’re cute, are they not?” Xianghua asked, a small smile on her face.

He was lucky Xianghua was Xianghua—he woke her up whenever he woke up, but she never minded. She simply held his hand and checked on everyone with him, a silent shadow. Yun Ren had been fine ever since Nezan had popped back up, Bowu had slept soundly… but Pi Pa had squirmed and whimpered, reliving whatever had happened in her dreams.

Now, the bundled tension she had been holding onto was gone.

“They are,” Gou Ren replied, giving the two their space along with everyone else. After a moment longer the two separated and Chun Ke rose to his full height. He really was huge. And though he looked like a wild bandit, Chun Ke was still Chun Ke. His big smile and warm eyes would dispel any kind of fear his physique would generate. He felt like he always did. Warm, at peace, and happy.

Like Tigu and Bi De, he had a bit of a resemblance to Jin—his brow and his smile.

Pi Pa, on the other hand, looked the closest to Meihua, if he had to choose somebody they knew. Her features were more refined; noble almost, compared to everyone else bar Yin.

Chun Ke took them all in, his grin growing.

“Hello, Friends,” Chun Ke said, his voice a deep, warm rumble.

The dam broke. Chun Ke was impacted by Jin, Tigu, Wa Shi in his dragon form, Bi De, and Ri Zu all at once. The big man took it all without a single step back and he began to laugh, his voice booming off the hills.

Everyone else soon got their turn. Gou Ren leapt up and put Chun Ke in a headlock as best he could, ruffling the big guy’s mane of hair.

“How do you feel, brother?” Gou Ren asked, honestly happy for them. Pi Pa… well, Gou Ren had heard her discussing her fears about having children with Meimei and Xiulan. He was glad they no longer needed to worry.

“Life Good,” Chun Ke declared. His manner of speech was still simple and halting, using few words… but as always, the big guy managed to get to the heart of the matter.

Gou Ren chuckled. “I meant your body. Does it feel any different?”

“Like Wa Shi says, Chun Ke is Chun Ke.” The dragon positively preened at Chun Ke’s words. The man nodded, before reaching into the pocket of his borrowed pants and pulling out his bag of treats. It was big, and definitely made for him when he was a boar. “Persimmon?”

Gou Ren took the proffered treat and stepped aside, letting Yun Ren in to pound the massive man’s back. He turned to Pi Pa, who was watching on with a bright smile on her face, her cheeks pink with emotion.

“Hey, how are you doing?” he asked her quietly. Pi Pa’s eyes widened at the question, before her demeanor softened. She hesitated for a moment, before taking Gou Ren’s hand in both of hers and squeezing.

“I am doing very well, Young Sir…” she paused at his raised eyebrow. “Gou Ren, I am doing… well. Thank you.”

Gou Ren nodded. “I’ll get started on a bed for you guys—the cushions on the floor were fine for your other forms, but let me tell you, a mattress is a lot better. Gonna have to make the ceilings of your place real high, too…”

It was kind of a shame, though. He had gotten used to living with Chun Ke and Pi Pa—he would even say he enjoyed it. They were always considerate housemates, and lazing against Chun Ke after a hard day was really nice—as was having Pi Pa’s help in doing the laundry.

Pi Pa paused and looked a bit hurt. “Ah… you wish for us to move out?” she asked delicately.

Gou Ren blinked. “Well, I just assumed you would want your own place…?”

“Perhaps in the future?” Pi Pa asked. “We would need time to think about such a thing. And it seems a bit of a waste, with how far you went to accommodate us…”

Gou Ren was about to wave her off. Adding the extra parts to the door to make it easier for their Spirit Beast forms hadn’t been a bother.

“Living with Gou Ren and Xianghua and Bowu is good,” Chun Ke stated, adding his thoughts.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like,” Gou Ren replied with a smile… and was internally quite pleased.

They appreciated the things he had built. They liked him enough that they wanted to stick around with him.

Jin clapped Gou Ren on the back, smiled, and nodded. He guessed this was how Jin felt when they all first arrived.

“I think this calls for a picnic in the greenhouse,” Jin announced, pitching his voice to carry to everyone present.

They had been having a lot of little celebrations recently, Gou Ren noted… but he certainly wasn’t going to complain.

=================================

Soon enough, everyone was in the greenhouse. It never ceased to make Gou Ren grin when people complimented the design. Yushang, Han, Shao Heng, Fenxian, and Yingwen were especially enamoured with the place, but none of them knew if a glass house would be able to survive in the mountains. Ice storms and more limited sunlight were apparently issues, according to Yingwen.

It still felt a bit weird talking to Yingwen, now that they weren’t enemies. They had spoken a bit, after Tigu had talked with them. He was just… a guy. All of them were. Yushang was a hoot and a half, Fenxian was boisterous, Han quiet but considerate, Shao Heng was the amused uncle of the group, and Yingwen? He was a bit stuffy and reserved, but he wasn’t a bad person from what Gou Ren could tell, and he had an interest in architecture himself.

However, Gou Ren was not thinking about architecture for once. Instead, Chun Ke’s transformation had made him curious about his own—so he found himself sitting with his brother, Xianghua, and Nezan beside the blooming sunflowers, bees buzzing around and pollinating them.

“How does a bloodline work, anyway? And why would mine just activate?” Gou Ren asked Nezan. The small, slightly transparent fox considered his question for a moment.

“A bloodline is, as the name would suggest, an inherent ability passed down from one’s ancestors. They are created by inventing a new technique, cultivation style, or are the product of children born from Spirit Beasts with human forms. They can be beneficial, neutral, or even detrimental in their nature.”

“Detrimental?” Yun Ren asked curiously, cutting in.

“Yes. However, they’re generally beneficial or at least neutral—I know not what Gou Ren’s does, nephew, but ours provides an affinity with illusions, a long life, and senses far above a normal man. But say, if your body was aligned with fire, and your bloodline was that of water, it suddenly activating could douse your cultivation completely, rendering you back into a normal mortal. In other cases, it could cause the bearer to explode if the reaction is particularly bad.”

Gou Ren grimaced at the description. “Explode?”

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“Oh, yes. It’s quite rare, but it does happen to those poor, unlucky few. As for yourself…? Well, the higher one goes in cultivation, the more likely they are to activate a latent bloodline if they have one. I would guess the surge of Qi you mentioned during the fight forcefully awakened whatever had lain dormant within you. Unlike your brother, whose bloodline was first activated through the presence of my Qi and the techniques of his ancestors… well, yours was brute forced. And it still is not fully active, if I were to guess. Your cultivation feels more physical than Yun Ren’s—thus, your physicality changed first, and the spiritual aspects of whatever your ancestors were is still not fully developed, while Yun Ren was the opposite.”

That made sense to Gou Ren… but it also opened up a lot of questions, like how exactly he could learn about his bloodline. Maybe Huo Ten? His tail did look like the other monkey’s…

He sighed. “I’m annoyed that people were right all this time. We really are a monkey and a fox.”

Yun Ren chuckled. “It’s been one hell of a thing to come to terms with, Little Bro.”

Gou Ren looked at his brother for a moment. “And, well, my other question is how do you… put it away? It’s inconvenient.”

Xianghua turned to him. “But I like your tail,” she said, looking a bit put out. Gou Ren flushed while Nezan started to laugh.

Xianghua did indeed like playing with his tail. The fur on it was really soft… but she had also asked Huo Ten on how to properly groom a monkey’s tail, and then the two of them had spent nearly an hour picking at him like… like…

Well, like he was what he was. Gou Ren blinked as he thought about it. Somebody calling him a monkey wasn’t an insult anymore, it was the truth. And besides, shouldn’t he be thankful that Xianghua didn’t dislike it?

“Having a tail can be inconvenient,” Yun Ren came to Gou Ren’s defense. “It catches on things. It’s not like he’ll never bring it out again…”

Xianghua turned her eyes to Gou Ren.