Threads 480-Grudge 4

It was so much easier, now that it was not merely a matter of words and tone and body language, though she kept those tools sharp still. Qi shaped what people saw, and let her disappear in the wake of a feast so much more easily.

Again. She found a man, the son of a mortal headman of a village in the outskirts. He was the second son, overshadowed by his brother.

How easy it was, to curdle a small jealousy into something deadly. Never, never did she tell him what to do. Oh, no. A soft word here, a soft word there, just a little nudge from the sweet girl who held his heart and wanted him to be happy.

His anguish at his brother’s grave was so much sweeter with the shock that bloomed as she slipped a knife up under his ribs while embracing him. She gazed into his eyes until they went dark.

It only took one year this time.

One year’s sweet dream. The price she collected at the end was only fair.

Her cultivation grew. She took out smaller work, while contemplating on the nature of love. A month here. A few there. Her dantian filled, sweet as honey, warm as blood. There was something binding her though, even as fresh channels opened in her spirit, weakening the limits of flesh.

Mortal blood wouldn’t be enough to break this chain she strained under.

Ling Qi felt sick, deep in her stomach. She understood why this was among the lessons offered to her. Ming Xia had touched, in the lowest realms, what she was reaching for in the higher: the power to break people apart, and to twist their bonds and Ways against them.

If they were to touch the crimes of the Hui against their subjects, then a low cultivator’s first unsteady steps along similar Ways was a lesson in and of itself.

“I’m glad you decided to pull back. I don’t want to think of how you’d feel sitting right behind her eyes while she does this. You beat yourself up enough for being selfish and manipulative.”

“I recognize it. I don’t think I’m worse than the average person anymore, but the average still isn’t very good.”

“Heh. When that’s progress.”

Ling Qi felt the hot spray of blood again, distant through Ming Xia’s hands. A different sort of betrayal. A different flavor. The chains of the first realm broke, and Ming Xia was released into the new cage of the second. It was as freeing as she remembered, for all that it seemed so small now.

It was a joy Ming Xia barely even felt. A few seconds of thrill, before it was overtaken by imaginings of bloodied faces. Of Wei Jun, of the wife whose name she did not even know, of the Madam and all the women there.

That startled Ling Qi. Where did that grudge come from? The madam, she understood. The physician, even, but the other women? They didn’t even have faces in Ming Xia’s memory. Why would they? They were just in the background, attachments to the one she really hated. Just property to be destroyed in the course of ruining one woman.

People, even cultivators, had so little self-reflection.

That night, the brothel burned, its women, and customers alike, while Ming Xia held the woman who had been the closest thing to her mother in her arms. There, among the crackling flames and the screams, was the first time Ming Xia felt what Ling Qi could call happiness because as the bonds of the second realm strained and broke on a choking song of smoke and pleas, she felt assured that Wei Jun’s eyes would be hers again.

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With her experience, it was trivial to enter a man’s home and slip into a new skin and new face, no more than a simple maid, brought on to care for the house. The years had gone by swiftly for Ming Xia as she whetted the blade she wielded. And yet, there was still a shock, the first time she saw the boy, Wei Jun’s son.

Her spirit trembled with such rage, it had nearly burst her new face like a bubble of soap.

It was worse when her probing in those first weeks revealed to her that she would not be able to turn Wei Jun’s eyes to her. Wei Jun, she could observe, with senses honed by her contemplations of Love and Betrayal, had no eyes for anyone else. Not anymore.

The pit of venom where her heart had been bubbled and frothed, but she had planned too long to just savage him like an animal now.

No, she had a better plan.