"Lost My Memory for Five Years, and Ended Up Having Three Babies with My Archenemy!
I am the foremost Sword Immortal of the Righteous Path. She is the foremost demoness of the Demonic Path.
Five years ago, in the Heavenly Tribulation, we destroyed each other. Both of us lost our memories, and we ended up as a devoted couple in the town at the foot of the mountain.
Today, the memories came back.
I looked at her. She looked at me.
On the floor, three cubs were teething on my Immortal Sword.
I drew my sword, testing her: “How about this… we lose our memories again?”
Chapter One
Morning. Sunlight came into the yard.
I was in the kitchen boiling noodles for the three cubs.
Dabao is four. Erbao is three. Sanbao is two.
The three little things sat in a row at the low table, bib soaked with drool, neat as you like, like quail waiting to be fed.
The noodles had just gone into the pot when something split my skull open like lightning.
Images came pouring in.
Qingyun Peak.
Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Origin.
The Righteous Path’s foremost Sword Immortal.
My title—Sword Saint Qingxu.
That was me.
The spatula slipped out of my hand and clattered onto the stove.
Scalding broth splashed across the back of my hand. I did not feel it.
Something was wrong.
Why was I here?
Why was I boiling noodles in some broken-down little yard?
More images came.
The Heavenly Tribulation. Blood-red thunderclouds. Me and a woman, fighting each other under the Lightning Tribulation to the very last moment—
That woman.
Blood Moon Demon Queen. Jiang Wan.
The Demonic Path’s foremost demoness.
The nemesis I had fought for three hundred years.
The instant the tribulation came down, our strength ran out together and the lightning swallowed us.
And then—
Now.
I looked myself over.
Apron. Slippers. Flour still on my hands.
…This is wrong. This is very wrong.
“Dad! The noodles! They’re burning!”
Dabao was slapping the table outside.
My hands got the pot off the heat without asking me. My head was still ringing.
Footsteps came from the bedroom.
The door curtain swung up and a woman walked out.
She had on a plain little floral dress, her hair pinned up any which way, still soft and stupid with sleep.
—Jiang Wan.
Our eyes met.
Her look changed the second she saw me.
Her pupils shrank to pinpoints. Her right hand came up on instinct, and a wisp of dark red Spiritual Energy gathered at her fingertips.
I moved too.
My left hand went to my waist without thinking—
And found an apron string.
…Where is my sword? Where the hell is my sword??
“Dad! Mom! Hungry!”
Sanbao came crawling over from the low table and wrapped both arms around Jiang Wan’s leg.
Two lines of snot smeared across her skirt, leaving shining trails.
The Spiritual Energy at her fingertips scattered.
She looked down at Sanbao hanging off her leg. Killing intent and something close to collapse flickered across her face in turns, like a Magic Tool stuck in a loop.
My eyes went to Sanbao as well.
Then at Dabao and Erbao by the low table, waiting to be fed.
These three cubs.
Were mine.
And hers.
The silence ran maybe ten seconds.
I broke it first: “…You remembered too?”
Jiang Wan raised her head. The look in her eyes was one I had never seen in this life—no, not in either of them.
“Lu Chen.” She said my true name, her voice shaking.
“Jiang Wan.” I said hers.
Silence again.
“Dad! Noodles!” Dabao slapped the table once more.
I breathed in, scooped the noodles out, split them between three bowls, and carried them to the low table.
The three cubs put their heads down and went at it, slurping, entirely unaware that their parents were living through the strangest scene in the history of the cultivation world.
I leaned against the doorframe. Jiang Wan stood by the stove.
Two people looking at each other across one small kitchen.
“So,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level, “the last five years—”
“Don’t.” She shut her eyes.
“We’re husband and wife.”
“I said don’t.”
“Three children.”
“Lu Chen!”
“The eldest looks like you, the second one looks like me, the third—”
“One more word and I start something right here!”
The shout startled Sanbao. His mouth came apart and he began to howl.
Erbao joined in.
Dabao put down his chopsticks and looked at us, completely unbothered.
“Dad, Mom is being mean to my brother again.”
Something twitched at the corner of Jiang Wan’s mouth.
She crouched down and set about calming Sanbao, hands fumbling at it.
That motion was too well-practiced.
Practiced enough that it stopped her for half a second.
I watched it happen and swallowed.
Five years. Muscle memory five years deep does not lie. She got a crying child settled down smoother than she ever cast a spell.
Sanbao settled, hiccuping against Jiang Wan’s shoulder.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were a little red.
“…What do we do now?”
I dug around under the cabinet and came out with a sword.
Blew the dust off it—my own life-bound Immortal Sword, Qingxu.
Two teeth marks on the blade.
I looked at them without saying anything.
Dabao leaned in close: “Sanbao did that. Last month, when he was teething on it.”
I put the sword back under the cabinet.
“Eat first,” I said.
Jiang Wan glared at me: “Lu Chen, we are enemies to the death.”
“Mm. Eat first.”
“You are the Sword Immortal of the Righteous Path. I am a demoness of the Demonic Path!”
“Cold noodles turn into one lump.”
She opened her mouth, thought better of whatever she was about to say, and picked up her bowl.
I sat down across from her and picked up mine.
In the middle, the three cubs ate with broth all over their faces.
Sunlight came in through the window and landed on the table.
The picture was warm enough to make you sick.
Sword Saint Qingxu of the Righteous Path and the Blood Moon Demon Queen of the Demonic Path, five to a table, eating breakfast. If the cultivation world ever found out, every Dao Heart in it would come apart in the wind.
Halfway through the noodles, Jiang Wan set her chopsticks down.
“I have a proposal.”
“Go on.”
“How about—we get our memories knocked out again?”
My chopsticks stopped.
I gave it three honest seconds.
“…Can you do a forgetting technique?”
“No. Can you?”
“No.”
Silence again.
Dabao let out a belch beside me: “Dad, are we still going to the market in town today?”
My eyes went to Jiang Wan, and Jiang Wan’s came back to mine.
“…Might as well,” I said. “We are out of soy sauce.”
Jiang Wan said nothing. She got up to clear the bowls.
I went to wipe Sanbao’s face.
That was how day one of the reunion between Sword Saint Qingxu and Blood Moon Demon Queen went: rice, oil, salt, soy sauce.
Absurd. Though maybe not all that absurd.
Five years had gone by, when it came down to it.
Chapter Two
Three days.
In those three days after our memories came back, Jiang Wan and I reached an unspoken agreement: pretend nothing had happened at all.
She cooked, I handled the kids.
She did the laundry, I split firewood.
When we ran into each other we were as polite as strangers, and we never held eye contact past two seconds.
The days were harder going than fighting a Heavenly Tribulation.
Nights were the worst part.
Three rooms. One for the three cubs, one for me, one for her.
Back before either of us remembered anything, the two of us used to sleep in—
Stop. Do not go there.
On the evening of the third day, I was out in the yard teaching Dabao his characters.
Dabao has real talent. At four he can already write his own name.
The three characters of Lu Nian’an came out crooked and wobbling, but the stroke order was right in every one of them.
I was in the middle of telling him how clever he was when the yard gate was kicked open.
Before the dust had even settled, a white figure came charging in.
Plain white sword robes, a long sword at his waist, a face like fine jade, eyes like lightning—except those eyes were red-rimmed and his beard had gone to stubble, like he had not slept in days.
“Master!!!”
Bai Wuchen.
My eldest disciple.
Chief disciple of Qingyun Peak, Righteous Path.
A good student. He had spent five years looking for me.
He crossed the yard so fast it blurred, dropped to one knee, and his voice was shaking.
“Master! This disciple has found you at last! These five years, you—”
He got halfway through and stopped dead.
His eyes landed on me.
Apron. Slippers. A tree branch in my hand for teaching a child to write.
Bai Wuchen’s face set like plaster.
Dabao tipped his head at him: “Dad, who is this uncle?”
Something like an earthquake went through Bai Wuchen’s pupils.
“Dad??” He whipped his head around to me. “Mas—Master? He called you—Dad??”
I set the branch down and cleared my throat.
“Wuchen, get up first. The thing is—”
“Dad! Sanbao wet himself again!”
Erbao’s voice came from inside the house.
I was on my feet before thinking about it: “Coming!”
And realized a beat later what I had just said.
Bai Wuchen stayed rigid on his knees, his face like a man who had been slapped eight hundred times in a row.
I looked back at him.
“…Sit down for a bit. I have to change a diaper.”
Bai Wuchen did not move.
I decided he probably needed some time.
When I came back out he was still kneeling, though the shape of it had changed—both hands braced on the ground, bent almost double, shoulders shaking.
For a moment I thought he was crying.
Up close, he was dry-heaving.
“Master,” he said, lifting his head, the rims of his eyes raw, “tell this disciple that it isn’t true.”
“Wuchen…”
“Sword Saint Qingxu of the Righteous Path, a grandmaster of the sword, ten thousand who look up to you—”
Sanbao came running out of the house bare-bottomed and buried himself in my arms.
“Dad! Up!”
The last light went out of Bai Wuchen’s eyes.
I picked Sanbao up and patted his back.
“Wuchen, sit and let’s talk. I’ll pour you some tea.”
“No need, Master.” The words came out squeezed between his teeth. “This disciple wants to know one thing, and nothing else.”
“Ask it.”
“Their mother… who is she?”
The words had barely left him when the door curtain swung up.
Jiang Wan walked out with a plate of cut melon, saw Bai Wuchen, and stopped short.
Bai Wuchen saw Jiang Wan and stopped short too.
The air went solid.
The chief disciple of the Righteous Path knew the Blood Moon Demon Queen. Of course he did.
His right hand went to the hilt without thinking, pupils drawn down to nothing.
Then he looked at the melon in Jiang Wan’s hands.
Then at Sanbao, slung over my shoulder.
Then at Dabao in the yard with his characters.
Dabao waved at Jiang Wan: “Mom! I can write my name now!”
Bai Wuchen turned his head, very slowly, toward me.
I will never forget that expression—a man whose Dao Heart is broken, whose picture of the world has come down around his ears.
“Master.”
“Yes.”
“This disciple understands now.”
“You understand what, exactly?”
“The demoness has you under some kind of control, yes?! She must have put a soul-binding gu on you! Don’t be afraid, Master, this disciple will get you out of here right now!”
He drew his sword and started straight for Jiang Wan.
Jiang Wan’s eyebrows lifted. She set the plate down on the table and dark red Spiritual Energy poured out at her fingertips.
Sanbao clapped in my arms: “Uncle is doing sword dancing! Pretty! So pretty!”
“That’s enough.” I reached across and pushed Bai Wuchen’s sword down, shifting Sanbao to my other arm. “Nobody has me under control.”
“Then these children—”
“Are ours. Born of us.”
Bai Wuchen’s sword hit the dirt.
He stood there with his lips working for a long moment and did not get a single word out.
I sighed, put Sanbao down, picked the sword up and handed it back to him.
“Inside. This is a long story.”
I dragged a wooden-faced Bai Wuchen into the house.
Behind us, Jiang Wan let out a cold sound in her throat.
I pretended not to hear it.
And that was only the first of them. If the rest of Qingyun Peak’s disciples turn up as well—no. Don’t think it.
Inside, I gave him the short version.
Heavenly Tribulation. Memory loss. Five years living as Mortals. Three children. Memories back today.
Bai Wuchen never made a sound from start to finish.
When I finished, he sat quiet for a long while.
“Master.”
“Yes?”
“This disciple searched for you five years. The Nine Provinces and the Thirteen Isles, walked through every one. The Four Seas and the Eight Wastes, all of it.”
“That must have been hard.”
“Not hard.” He raised his head, eyes red again. “Every day this disciple thought: is Master shut inside some Secret Realm? Has he fallen into some great formation? This disciple swore an oath—once I found you, I would see you climb back to the top with my own eyes.”
He paused.
“What this disciple never once imagined…”
“Mm.”
“Never imagined Master washing his sworn enemy’s underwear.”
My face froze.
“It was my own.”
“This disciple saw the clothesline.” His voice was calm in a way that frightened me. “Floral print.”
Silence.
“Wuchen, a cultivator should not cling to these things—”
“Master, that is the Blood Moon Demon Queen!” He came apart at last. “The Blood Moon Demon Queen who slaughtered the three cities of the East Sea! Who killed her own master and burned her own line! You have three children with her! Three!”
“Keep your voice down, the children are napping.”
Bai Wuchen opened his mouth and shut it again.
He leaned back in his chair with his eyes empty.
“This disciple’s Dao Heart is in pieces.”
“You’re young. Put it back together and build it again.”
“…Master, this disciple asks one thing.”
“Say it.”
“Don’t tell the other Junior Brothers.”
I had not answered yet.
The yard gate sounded again.
This time it was not one person.
It was a crowd.
Chapter Three
Seven or eight of them stood in a dark cluster at the gate.
The one at the front was an old woman. Her hair had gone half grey, but her eyes were red as if quenched in blood, a black mole at the corner of her mouth, and the smile she wore did not reach anywhere warm.
Chi Po.
Jiang Wan’s personal Guardian.
First among the Demonic Path’s Ten Elders.
They say her temper is worse than Jiang Wan’s.
Behind her came a pack of demonic cultivators, every face dark, killing intent leaking off them.
Bai Wuchen came up out of his chair as though something had thrown him, hand clamped on the hilt.
Chi Po saw him too. Her eyes narrowed.
“Well now. The little cub of Qingyun Peak. So the Righteous Path got here first.”
Bai Wuchen said it through his teeth: “Demonic filth!”
Spiritual Energy swelled on both sides at the same instant, and the mud walls of the yard began to spider with cracks.
“That is enough!”
Jiang Wan’s voice came from inside the house, cold, carrying weight.
The instant Chi Po heard it, her whole body jerked like she had been shocked.
Then her eyes went wet.
“La—Lady Saintess!”
Chi Po rushed the house and dropped to her knees the moment she laid eyes on Jiang Wan.
“This old servant has been looking for you five years! Five years!”
She got her arms round Jiang Wan’s legs and howled, snot and tears together.
Something moved across Jiang Wan’s face. She reached down and lifted her: “Chi Po. Get up, talk to me.”
“Lady Saintess, you have been through hell! These five years you must have—”
Chi Po raised her head, and saw the flowered apron Jiang Wan had on.
The crying stopped dead.
She looked over the room instead.
A low table. Little stools. On the wall, a family portrait Dabao had drawn—four stick people and one round ball (Sanbao was too small to count, and stick people were all Dabao could manage).
Chi Po’s eyes sat on that drawing for three full seconds.
Then she turned her head, slowly, and looked at me where I stood by the stove.
“Who is this man?”
Jiang Wan opened her mouth.
Dabao’s head poked out from behind the door: “That’s my dad!”
Chi Po had not caught up yet. She was still smiling: “Oh, your dad—”
The smile went stiff on her face.
She snapped her head round to me. To Jiang Wan. To Dabao.
“Lady Saintess… this…”
Erbao came running out as well: “Hello, Granny! Did you come to visit us?”
The corner of Chi Po’s mouth started twitching.
Sanbao made his entrance last—one bare foot, dragging my Immortal Sword Qingxu along the ground behind him, the scabbard going clank, clank.
“…”
Chi Po’s eyes went to that sword.
Everybody in the cultivation world knows that sword.
The foremost divine weapon of the Righteous Path.
The life-bound Immortal Sword of Sword Saint Qingxu.
Chi Po’s gaze came off the blade and onto my face. Her pupils shrank.
“Lu… Lu Chen?!”
From the side, Bai Wuchen said in a hollow voice: “Senior. I understand exactly how you feel.”
Chi Po ignored him.
She got to her feet and pointed at me with a finger that would not stop shaking.
“Lady Saintess! He is Sword Saint Qingxu! The one on the Righteous Path who killed brother after brother of ours—”
“I know.” Jiang Wan cut her off.
“Then these children—”
“Are ours.”
Chi Po’s finger stopped in mid air.
The yard went quiet for five whole seconds.
Then Chi Po tipped her head back and rolled her eyes up.
Bai Wuchen was quick enough to catch her.
“Senior? Senior!”
Chi Po muttered with her eyes rolled back: “Five years this old servant searched… five years… and Lady Saintess went and had three cubs with the foremost man of the Righteous Path…”
“What’s wrong with Granny?” Dabao crouched down beside her and poked her face, curious.
The poking woke Chi Po up.
She dropped her gaze to Dabao. Dabao smiled at her.
Erbao came in close too and took Chi Po’s hand: “Granny don’t cry. Erbao will give you a candy.”
A sticky fruit candy, plainly already licked, was pushed into Chi Po’s hand.
Chi Po’s lips began to tremble.
She looked at Erbao. Then at Sanbao. Then at Dabao.
All three cubs were good-looking children—Dabao had Jiang Wan’s eyes, Erbao had my brow, and Sanbao had taken the best out of both houses, round and fat as a little luck doll.
Chi Po’s look softened. Softened so you could watch it happen.
“This…”
She turned her head to Jiang Wan, and her voice had changed shape: “Lady Saintess, these three children… they are truly your own?”
Jiang Wan nodded.
Chi Po looked at the three cubs once more and drew a long breath in.
Then she did the thing none of us had seen coming.
She crouched down, scooped Sanbao up, and weighed him in her arms.
“Ho. This one’s heavy. Well fed.”
Bai Wuchen: “???”
Me: “???”
Jiang Wan had gone still as well.
Chi Po rubbed Dabao’s head: “This one’s quick. Takes after Lady Saintess.”
She looked up at me, and most of the killing intent had gone out of her eyes, with something complicated and measuring sitting where it had been.
“Brat. Are you good to Lady Saintess?”
“…Good enough.”
“What do you mean, good enough?” She slapped a hand down on the table. “This old servant asked you: who does the housework?”
“She cooks. I wash the bowls.”
“Hm.” Chi Po tried again: “When they wake up howling in the night, who gets out of bed?”
“We take turns.”
Chi Po nodded. Her face was a shade friendlier for it.
Bai Wuchen’s jaw was nearly on the floor by that point.
“Se…Senior? You aren’t angry?”
Chi Po gave him one look: “Angry over what? This old servant has followed Lady Saintess three hundred years, and the thing I have wanted most is to see her married to a decent man. Granted the choice of man is outlandish—”
She glanced at me again.
“But three cubs are already born. What is left to do? Cut his head off and leave the children without a father?”
Bai Wuchen opened his mouth and found he could not argue with that.
I opened mine.
What can I say… people of the Demonic Path really are practical.
Chi Po had no intention of putting Sanbao down now. She bounced him as she asked Jiang Wan: “Lady Saintess, were you happy, these five years?”
For a while, Jiang Wan said nothing.
“…I don’t remember.”
“Then you were happy,” Chi Po said, flat certain. “The unhappy things are what a person remembers clearest.”
Quiet again, the yard.
I leaned on the doorframe and looked over everyone in it.
The chief disciple of the Righteous Path. One of the Ten Elders of the Demonic Path. Three cubs crawling over the ground. And a demoness in a flowered apron plus a Sword Saint in one of his own.
It was a picture strange enough that you would want to screenshot it and put it on your feed.
“So,” I said, “here is the problem. How do we account for this to both sides?”
Bai Wuchen and Chi Po looked at me at the same time.
And spoke at the same time, the same sentence:
“No one else can ever find out.”
They looked at each other. A rare thing happened: they agreed.
Noise came from the gate again.
The demonic cultivators Chi Po had brought were stretching their necks to see in.
“Elder, what is happening in there? We heard a child crying—”
Chi Po whipped round and glared: “What are you gawping at! Out. All of you, out, and wait out there. This old woman will not say it twice.”
The cultivators pulled their heads back out.
A vein was jumping at Bai Wuchen’s temple: “Master, I advise you to return to Qingyun Peak with me this minute. As for… as for those children—”
“You want to leave them with her, to raise alone?” I threw it back.
Bai Wuchen choked.
Chi Po sneered: “The Righteous Path truly has no loyalty in it. Beget children and then run away?”
“You—!” Bai Wuchen went red to the ears.
Jiang Wan rubbed her temple: “Nobody is shouting. Both of you.”
She looked at me with something in her eyes that five years of waking up in the same house had worn into place—though she would rather have died than admit such a thing existed.
“Lu Chen. You say it.”
I thought about it.
“Keep it covered for now. Both sides, covered. Say that you found me, badly hurt and needing quiet to heal. Give us some time… to get things straight.”
“Straight how?” Bai Wuchen asked.
My eyes went over the three cubs.
Dabao was teaching Erbao her characters. Sanbao was chewing on fingers in Chi Po’s arms.
“Straighten out… how the three cubs get divided.”
Jiang Wan’s eyes changed on the spot.
They went dangerous.
“Divided?” Her voice came out light as air. “Lu Chen. Divided, did you say?”
Bad. Wrong thing to say.
“That is not what I meant—”
“All three came out of me. Divided by what right?”
Chi Po took her side at once: “Yes! By what right?”
Bai Wuchen jumped in as well: “Master’s children belong with Master, of course—”
“Shut your mouth!” Jiang Wan and Chi Po said as one.
Bai Wuchen shut it.
I took a deep breath.
“Fine. No dividing. Nothing gets divided. They stay with you.”
Jiang Wan glanced sideways at me and said nothing, though the line of her mouth went a little flatter.
Sanbao yawned in Chi Po’s arms: “Dad… sleepy…”
He held out two fat hands and grabbed at the air in my direction.
Something shifted in Jiang Wan’s face.
Chi Po looked down at Sanbao, and then across at me, sighed, and handed the child over.
Sanbao folded into my arms and had his eyes shut inside two seconds.
The yard was quiet again.
Bai Wuchen and Chi Po stood on either side, and between them stood me with the sleeping child, and Jiang Wan in her apron.
Nobody spoke.
But every person there knew one thing—
This was a harder mess to clean up than a Heavenly Tribulation.
Chapter Four
Bai Wuchen and Chi Po stayed on for the time being.
One took a room at the inn on the east end of town, one took the woodshed on the west end.
Chi Po drove off the pack of demonic cultivators, keeping back only two she trusted, posted somewhere out of sight.
Jiang Wan and I went on living in the little yard.
On the surface things were calm again.
Underneath it, things moved.
On the morning of the fourth day I was working through a set in the yard—not cultivating, nothing but plain calisthenics. Five years without touching Spiritual Energy: the Meridians were all still there, but pushing power through them felt stiff, like water through a rusted tap.
Bai Wuchen stood and watched with the face of a man at a funeral.
“Master, your Cultivation Base…”
“Still there. It needs rebuilding.” I closed the set. “Three to six months, give or take.”
“And Jiang Wan?”
“Hers should be about the same.”
Something lit up behind Bai Wuchen’s eyes: “Then while her Cultivation Base is still gone—”
“Wuchen.”
“…This disciple will be quiet.”
He was quiet a while, then asked: “Master, there is one thing this disciple does not understand.”
“Say it.”
“After the Heavenly Tribulation five years ago, the Righteous Path and the Demonic Path both believed the two of you had destroyed each other. In these five years, righteous and demonic have kept up their small frictions, but a fragile peace has held. If the two of you return at the same time now—”
He did not say the rest.
I took it up for him: “The war between the two sides starts over.”
“Yes. And this time it would be… more tangled.” He picked his words. “If word got out about you and the Blood Moon Demon Queen, the Righteous Path would come apart from the inside first.”
I leaned against the wall and watched Erbao chasing butterflies round the yard.
“I know.”
“So what does Master mean to do?”
“I have not worked that out yet.”
“Could you consider—pretending not to know her?”
“Wuchen. Dabao calls her Mom. He calls me Dad. And he looks like both of us.”
Bai Wuchen shut his mouth again.
At noon Jiang Wan made a table full of dishes.
A habit left from the years she cannot remember—she is a very fine cook. Red-braised pork especially.
The three cubs sat in a row and ate themselves shiny-mouthed.
Chi Po turned up as well, sat off to one side, ate, and kept dabbing at her eyes.
“Food made by Lady Saintess with her own hands. In eight hundred years of living, this old servant has never had the like.”
Bai Wuchen sat in the corner with a bowl in both hands and had not taken a single bite.
Jiang Wan gave him one look: “Not eating? Then go outside.”
Bai Wuchen put his head down and shovelled a mouthful in.
Then stopped dead.
Then took another mouthful.
He looked up at Jiang Wan. Something complicated was happening behind his eyes.
“…It’s good,” he said, in a voice the size of a mosquito.
Jiang Wan paid him no attention.
I ate on quietly beside them, turning one thing over in my head.
What to do about three children.
If I go back to Qingyun Peak and Jiang Wan goes back to the Demonic Path, who do they go with?
With me? The Righteous Path raising three children of half-demonic blood—they would be branded monsters before anyone thought twice.
With her? The Demonic Path raising three children of half-immortal bodies. Worse nonsense by half.
And then—
I looked over the three cubs.
Dabao was putting food into Erbao’s bowl, muttering “eat more, sister” under his breath.
Sanbao had rice smeared across his whole face and grinned at me, four tiny teeth showing.
Somewhere in me went soft.
It went hard again soon enough.
No. I am Sword Saint Qingxu. I cannot throw away everything the Righteous Path means over a few cubs. I cannot—
Sanbao held his spoon up: “Dad! Aah—”
He was feeding me.
The rice on that spoon had already been chewed once. It was gluey, and wet with spit.
I opened my mouth and took it.
Bai Wuchen set his chopsticks down, stood up, and walked out.
I thought he probably needed some time by himself.
That night, with the children asleep.
Out in the yard we sat, Jiang Wan and I.
The moonlight was bright.
Neither of us spoke.
I went first after all.
“All three of them have Spirit Roots.”
Jiang Wan did not look surprised.
She must have felt it already.
There is a faint stir of Spiritual Energy in Dabao. Erbao throws sparks off her fingers when she loses her temper sometimes. And Sanbao—right now Sanbao only eats and sleeps, but his innate Spirit Vein is stronger than either of the other two.
“Righteous Immortal Spirit Root blended with demonic blood,” Jiang Wan said, very quietly. “There has never been a case of it.”
“No.”
“If someone found out—”
“Nobody is going to find out.” I cut across her. “I will not let anyone hurt them.”
Only after I said it did I hear how hard it had come out.
Jiang Wan turned her head and looked at me.
In that moonlight her eyes were very bright.
“…That line just now. It sounded like something a father would say.”
I looked away: “I am one.”
Silence.
Jiang Wan laughed suddenly.
Very quietly, almost too quietly to hear it.
“Lu Chen.”
“Yes?”
“Five years ago, if anyone had told me the day was coming when I sat in a yard with you discussing our children’s Spirit Roots—”
“You would have cut that person in half.”
“I would have cut him into eight pieces.”
I laughed too.
“So,” she said, putting the smile away and turning to me, “what is it you actually mean to do?”
It took me some thinking.
“Not going back, not yet. Neither side. We tell them I need time to Heal.”
“How long can that hold?”
“Not long.” I gave her the honest answer. “Qingyun Peak and the Demonic Path will both send people, sooner or later. But at least—give me some time.”
“Time for what?”
“To get my Cultivation Base back. To plan for the worst.”
Jiang Wan looked at me for a good while.
“Lu Chen, do you understand what you are saying?”
“I do.”
“You, a Sword Immortal of the Righteous Path, meaning to protect three children carrying demonic blood, against what may turn out to be the whole Righteous Path.”
“It may turn out to be the whole Demonic Path instead.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
I looked down at the ground. One of Sanbao’s little shoes had come off and lay crooked below the step.
I bent, picked it up, and set it by the door.
“Maybe.”
Jiang Wan stared at me for a long time.
Then she got to her feet as well, took the broom propped against the wall, and started sweeping the yard.
“If you are rebuilding your Cultivation Base, I will stand Guardian over you.”
I went still a beat.
“What?”
“Are you deaf? I said I will stand Guardian.” She never turned her head. “Do not misunderstand. I am only worried your Cultivation Base will come back too slowly and drag my children down with it.”
“…You said ’my children’.”
Her hand stopped on the broom.
“Ours.” The word came out between her teeth.
I said nothing more.
Moonlight lay across the yard, falling into the arc she had swept clean.
Under that moon an alliance was made between the Righteous Path’s foremost Sword Immortal and the Demonic Path’s foremost demoness.
It did not come out of any great cause.
It came out of three cubs crawling about on the ground.
Chapter Five
We kept it covered for half a month.
Half a month later, people from the Righteous Path and people from the Demonic Path turned up on the same day.
What came was much bigger than anything I had pictured.
Three from the Righteous Path—Xuanqing, Grand Elder of Qingyun Peak, a full generation above me. They say he is one thousand two hundred years old, and that his temper is foul enough to choke a Demonic Beast. Behind him came two Discipline Hall disciples.
Two from the Demonic Path—Blood-Eyed Yama Lord and Viper Saintess, both among the Four Guardians under Jiang Wan.
Chi Po got word a day ahead and came tearing over to tell us.
“Lady Saintess. The Demonic Path has run out of patience. Blood-Eyed Yama Lord has brought people to take you home.”
Bai Wuchen came running at almost the same moment: “Master! Martial Great-Uncle Xuanqing is here! He says he means to see your condition himself!”
Jiang Wan and I looked at each other.
“Here they come.”
“Yes.”
I looked the yard over.
Dabao was drawing. Erbao was teasing the cat. Sanbao was sitting on the ground chewing a building block.
“Get the children out of sight first,” I said.
Jiang Wan nodded: “Chi Po. Take all three to the cave outside town. Nobody sees them.”
Chi Po hoisted Sanbao up and waved Dabao and Erbao along: “Go on, go on, Granny is taking you to catch rabbits.”
Dabao’s whole face lit up: “Really?”
“Really, really. Go on, let’s go.”
And the three cubs went off with Chi Po.
In an instant the yard stood empty.
I untied the apron, kicked the scattered toys into a corner, peeled Dabao’s family portrait off the wall and pushed it into the cabinet.
Jiang Wan changed out of the floral dress into black fighting clothes, hair loose on her back, and pulled maybe three parts in ten of the Blood Moon Demon Queen back into her bearing.
Three parts.
Because pinned at her chest was a cartoon hair clip—Erbao had begged her to wear it, and she had forgotten to take it off.
I reached over, took the clip out, and put it in my pocket.
She went still a beat, and said nothing.
The people of the Righteous Path arrived first.
Xuanqing came down at the gate. White hair, white beard, the manner of one who has put the world behind him, Spiritual Energy rolling off him like open sea.
His first reaction to the sight of me was to weigh me.
From the top of my head to my feet.
I stood as straight as I knew how, ran the thin Spiritual Energy I had, and held up the shape of a great expert around myself.
“Martial Great-Uncle.”
“Hm.” Xuanqing nodded. “Colour is acceptable. Better than I expected. Wuchen tells me you took grievous hurt?”
“I did. Backlash out of the Heavenly Tribulation, power gone clean out of me. Now I am rebuilding.”
Xuanqing walked into the yard, and his gaze went over every corner of it.
His nose twitched.
“There is Demonic Qi left here.”
My chest pulled tight.
“Picked up when we destroyed each other under the tribulation. It has not cleared entirely.”
Xuanqing did not push at it. He sat down on the stone bench.
“Chen’er. This old man came for two reasons. First, to confirm you are well. Second—to take you back to Qingyun Peak.”
“Martial Great-Uncle, my Cultivation Base is not restored—”
“What difference does it make where you rest? The Spirit Veins at Qingyun Peak run rich. A hundred times better than a Mortal town like this one.” His tone left no space at all. “The Righteous Path cannot be without its Sword Saint.”
I was about to answer when there was noise outside the gate again.
A heavy wash of Demonic Qi coming close.
Xuanqing rose sharply, his eyes going cold on the spot.
Two people appeared in the doorway.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord—a lean man somewhere past his middle years, both eyes raw red, a thin red mist hanging over him.
Viper Saintess—a young woman built to be looked at, pupils slitted like a snake’s, the tip of her tongue flickering out.
The two of them saw Xuanqing and checked as well.
“People of the Righteous Path?” Blood-Eyed Yama Lord’s voice was ground gravel.
“Demonic filth.” Spiritual Energy came up around Xuanqing. “You dare show yourself in front of this old man.”
The air went to drawn swords in half a breath.
“That is enough.”
Jiang Wan’s voice came out of the house.
The door curtain lifted and she walked out.
Black clothes, hair loose, every part of her switched on.
Xuanqing saw her and his pupils contracted hard.
“Blood Moon Demon Queen?!”
He snapped his head round to me, shock and accusation written over him.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord and Viper Saintess had stopped dead as well—clearly neither of them had expected Jiang Wan to be here, and still less expected the Righteous Path.
“Lady Saintess!” Viper Saintess was beside herself with joy. “You are alive!”
Jiang Wan lifted a hand and told her to be quiet.
Then she looked across at me.
My mind started running.
“Martial Great-Uncle,” I said, “it went like this. After the Heavenly Tribulation five years ago, Jiang Wan and I lost our cultivation together and ended up washed into this town. I picked up her trail, and I have watched her in secret ever since, so that when her power came back she would not be in a position to harm the world.”
Jiang Wan took the line from me: “And I did the same. I found Lu Chen’s trail and watched him in secret, so that the Righteous Path could not finish me off while I had nothing to fight with.”
We both finished at the same moment.
Silence for two seconds.
Xuanqing looked from her to me, and back again.
“So… the pair of you kept watch on each other for five years?”
“Yes,” said Jiang Wan and I, in one voice.
Xuanqing’s brows drew themselves into a knot.
He was puzzled clean through his eyebrows: “Lady Saintess, you watched the Righteous Path’s Sword Immortal alone for five years? Why not send word to us?”
“I had lost my memories,” Jiang Wan said without changing colour. “They came back recently.”
“And once they came back—”
“I reached Chi Po.”
It held up logically.
But Xuanqing’s face said he did not believe much of it.
He stood and paced the yard. Passing the cabinet, his foot knocked something.
A baby bottle.
I had missed one baby bottle.
Xuanqing looked down at the bottle on the ground, then up at me.
“What is this, then?”
My mind went round three times.
“Er—that is… a medicine pot. Specially made. For holding Spirit Medicine.”
“A medicine pot?” He bent and picked it up.
There was a cartoon piglet printed on it.
Xuanqing stared at the cartoon piglet for five full seconds.
“Lu Chen.”
“Yes?”
“There is a pig on this.”
“…Martial Great-Uncle, that is ornament on the medicine pot—”
Outside the yard came a clear child’s voice.
“Dad—!”
Dabao came over the wall.
Behind him, Chi Po, gasping for breath.
“Lady Saintess, forgive this old servant, Dabao ran too fast and I could not—” Chi Po’s voice stopped in her throat.
She had seen Xuanqing.
She had seen Blood-Eyed Yama Lord.
She had seen Viper Saintess.
Dabao ran to me and got his arms round my leg: “Dad! Erbao says there’s a snake in that cave! Sanbao got scared and cried!”
The whole yard went quiet.
Dabao looked up, took everyone in one by one, and finished on Xuanqing.
“Dad, this grandpa has so much beard!”
Xuanqing looked at Dabao, and then at me.
He set the baby bottle down carefully on the ground.
“Lu Chen.”
“Martial Great-Uncle—”
“Is this also ornament on a medicine pot?”
“…No.”
“Then what is it?”
I breathed in deep.
“My son.”
Xuanqing’s right eyelid jumped three times.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord’s mouth went into an O.
Viper Saintess’s slit pupils flared wide.
In the corner, Bai Wuchen buried his face in both hands.
Dabao pushed his head out from behind my leg and grinned at everybody.
“Hello, uncles and grandpas!”
Xuanqing’s voice was very even. Even in a way that frightened a person.
“Who is his mother?”
My eyes went to Jiang Wan.
Jiang Wan had her eyes on me.
Dabao, helpful as ever, ran over to Jiang Wan: “Mom! I want candied fruit!”
Xuanqing shut his eyes.
The pulse at his temple was hammering, white beard quivering slightly.
The most venerated Elder of the Righteous Path in all the cultivation world stood in a Mortal’s little yard, and beside him stood the Demonic Path’s foremost demoness, the Righteous Path’s foremost Sword Immortal, and the child the two of them had made.
I thought his Dao Heart might be about to go.
Chapter Six
The next shichen was the longest shichen of my life.
Five grown-ups sat in the yard.
Dabao sat on my lap, eating candied haws.
Erbao and Sanbao had been brought back by Chi Po as well. Since we were out in the open now, there was no point hiding them.
Xuanqing sat on the stone bench. One cup of tea, filled eight times over, and he was close to crushing the cup in his hand.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord and Viper Saintess stood on the other side, their faces gone from shock to something blank.
Bai Wuchen kept his head down through all of it. He might as well not have been there.
I told the story again from the beginning.
This time it was the true one.
The Heavenly Tribulation. The lost years. Five years of being husband and wife among Mortals. Three children. And my memory coming back half a month ago.
When I finished, the yard stayed quiet for a long while.
Xuanqing was the first to speak.
“Lu Chen.”
“Here.”
“Do you know how the Righteous Path deals with one who turns his back on it?”
“I do.”
“Cultivation Base destroyed. Expelled from the Sect. Put to death by the sword formation.” His voice was like chips of ice. “This Old Man asks you: which of those has your conduct earned?”
Dabao was gnawing on his candied haws. He tipped his head to look at Xuanqing. “Grandpa, why do you talk so mean? Are you sad?”
Xuanqing closed his eyes a moment.
I set Dabao down off my lap. “Go on. Go to your mom.”
Dabao ran to Jiang Wan.
I stood up and faced Xuanqing.
“Martial Great-Uncle. What happened while my memory was gone was never my intent.”
“But the children are fact.”
“They are.” I let that stand.
“How do you mean to handle it?”
“I don’t.”
Xuanqing’s eyebrows twitched.
“What does that mean?”
“They are my children. I will not abandon them, and I will not let anyone hurt them.”
“Even if it means breaking with the Righteous Path?”
I did not answer.
The silence was answer enough.
Xuanqing’s face sank as far as it could go.
On the other side, Blood-Eyed Yama Lord was pressing Jiang Wan just as hard.
“Lady Saintess. The Demonic Path cannot go on without you. This subordinate begs you to return at once. As for these children—”
Jiang Wan looked at him. “As for these children, what?”
He picked his words with care. “They could be… entrusted to Mortals to raise—”
“Say that again.”
Very quiet, her voice. Blood-Eyed Yama Lord’s back was soaked through in an instant.
“This subordinate… spoke out of turn.”
Viper Saintess said, small-voiced, from the side: “Lady Saintess, why not bring them back with us? The Demonic Path has no law against it—”
“Bring them back for who to raise? You?” Jiang Wan threw it back at her. “You couldn’t keep three snakes alive.”
Viper Saintess shut her mouth.
Chi Po, Sanbao in her arms, put in from the side: “Enough, all of you. Wherever Lady Saintess and the children are, that is where this old servant will be.”
There the deadlock sat.
Xuanqing finished his ninth cup and set it down on the table with a thud.
“Lu Chen. This Old Man gives you three days. When the three days are up, you owe Qingyun Peak an accounting.” He stood, and glanced at Jiang Wan. “As for her… the Righteous Path will not let the Demonic Path’s chief culprit roam free.”
He turned and walked out. Two Discipline Hall disciples followed close behind.
Out he went as well, Viper Saintess in his wake, throwing one last line over his shoulder. “Lady Saintess. As for the Demonic Path side of it… this subordinate will hold it down. But I cannot hold it down for long.”
The yard belonged to us again.
Bai Wuchen lifted his head. His face had exhaustion written all over it.
“Master. Three days. That is all we have.”
I knew.
In three days Xuanqing would carry the news back to Qingyun Peak.
And once word spread, every sect and school of the Righteous Path would boil over.
Not over Jiang Wan and me, though that alone would have done it. Over the three children.
Children born of demonic blood stirred into a Righteous Immortal Spirit Root.
In the eyes of the Righteous Path, that is taboo.
In the eyes of the Demonic Path, taboo all the same.
Neither side has room for them.
Jiang Wan lifted Dabao into her arms and looked at me.
“How much Cultivation Base can three days get back?”
“Two parts in ten.”
“Near enough the same for me.”
“Two of us at two parts in ten, against a crowd of them at ten?”
She smiled. It was a thin smile, but there was an edge in it.
“No. But enough to teach them what pain is. That will do.”
Three days.
From that moment on, Jiang Wan and I stopped running from this.
We started getting ready to fight.
By day Jiang Wan took the children, and I worked on my Cultivation Base in the hills behind.
By night I took them, and Jiang Wan sat in the yard to circulate qi.
Chi Po kept watch. Bai Wuchen’s job was agonizing over it.
He came to me eight hundred times a day.
“Master. Are you truly going to stand with the demoness of the Demonic Path?”
“Wuchen. That is your Master’s wife.”
Bai Wuchen’s face twitched. He turned and walked away.
Three steps on, he came back.
“Master. This Disciple cannot bring himself to call her Master’s wife.”
“Nobody asked you to call her anything.”
“But if she really is—” He swallowed, with difficulty. “ought this Disciple to change how he speaks to her?”
“What do you think?”
“This Disciple thinks dying in battle would be easier.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
The three days passed in the turn of a head.
On the evening of the third day, Jiang Wan and I sat in the yard.
The three cubs were already asleep.
Chi Po stood guard outside the door.
Bai Wuchen leaned against the wall and said nothing.
Moonlight came down.
I felt the Spiritual Energy in my body. A little more than two parts in ten. Not three.
Enough to use the sword, though not for long.
Jiang Wan was much the same.
“They’re here,” she said suddenly.
I could feel it too.
From the north, a great wash of Spiritual Energy was closing in.
Not one person.
A crowd.
Far off in the sky, sword light came down like rain, covering sky and earth.
The sword formation of Qingyun Peak.
And at the same time, along the southern horizon, blood-red spirit light heaved like a tide.
The great army of the Demonic Path.
Two directions. Closing in together.
Bai Wuchen snapped upright, his face drained of color. “Master! Both sides have come at once!”
Chi Po came bursting in as well. “Lady Saintess! That bastard Blood-Eyes sold us out. The Demonic Path has called up the Six Elders!”
I looked north. Then south.
The Righteous Path. The Demonic Path.
Two powers bearing down on this one little town at the same time.
And their target—
Was the same.
They had not come to fight each other.
They had come to “deal with” us.
Chapter Seven
Spiritual pressure, heavy as a mountain.
Sword light came down out of the north. Seven figures stood on the slope above the northern end of the town.
Xuanqing at the center of them, the six Elders of Qingyun Peak on either side.
Behind them came several dozen Discipline Hall disciples, and the sword formation had already spread half open, black and heavy behind them.
The red light came down in the south too.
The Six Elders of the Demonic Path appeared one after another, Blood-Eyed Yama Lord at their head.
More demonic cultivators behind him, cold in the breath, killing intent running off them unchecked.
The two companies faced each other across one small town, and the ripple of their Spiritual Energy set every Mortal window in the place humming.
Xuanqing’s voice came down from the north, wrapped in Spiritual Energy so the whole town could hear it.
“Lu Chen. This Old Man asks you once more, and for the last time. Will you come away with This Old Man?”
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord spoke up from the south as well: “Lady Saintess. The Demonic Path asks you back to your place in all sincerity. Leave that traitor of the Righteous Path!”
I stood in the middle of the yard.
Jiang Wan stood beside me.
Chi Po stood behind me with Sanbao in her arms. Bai Wuchen stood on the other side, holding Dabao and Erbao by the hand.
“Dad, there’s so many people up in the sky.” Dabao rubbed at his eyes. The light was too much for him to keep them open.
I put a hand on his head. “Nothing to worry about. Just watch the show.”
Jiang Wan looked back at the three cubs, then turned to me.
“Ready?”
“You?”
She raised her right hand, and dark red Spiritual Energy poured out from her fingertips. Weak still, but the weight of it was exactly what it had been three hundred years ago.
“Talk less.”
I reached for my waist. This time it wasn’t an apron string.
Qingxu came clear of the scabbard.
The ring of the blade went through the whole town, bright and hard enough to hurt the ear, and even the sword formation overhead shivered with it.
Five years sheathed. Sanbao’s tooth marks were still on the steel of her.
She was sharp as she had ever been.
Xuanqing’s expression changed.
He had not counted on me drawing the sword.
He had counted even less on Jiang Wan standing shoulder to shoulder with me.
“Lu Chen! Have you gone mad!” There was anger in his voice at last. “You would betray the whole Righteous Path over a demoness of the Demonic Path?”
“Martial Great-Uncle.” My voice was level. “I am not doing it for her.”
Sanbao woke in Chi Po’s arms, startled by the pressure, and began to wail.
I looked back.
“I am doing it for them.”
Xuanqing followed my eyes. The child in Chi Po’s arms first, then Dabao and Erbao at Bai Wuchen’s side.
His mouth pressed into a line.
“Those three abominations—”
“Martial Great-Uncle.” I cut him off, and my voice went cold all at once. “I honor you as my elder. There are things, though, that you do not get to say.”
Sword qi flared up.
Two parts in ten of my Cultivation Base and no more. Qingxu is my life-bound Immortal Sword, though, and she magnifies everything I have.
Killing intent included.
Xuanqing felt it.
His pupils drew tight.
“Good. Very good.” He nodded. “Then there is nothing left to talk about.”
He raised his whisk and poured Spiritual Energy into it until the light around him stood out like a blaze.
“Lu Chen! If you will not turn back, then This Old Man will clean our own house, in the founders’ name!”
The northern sword formation opened out to its full extent. Seventy-two Flying Swords hung in the air, every one of them trained on us.
Down south, Blood-Eyed Yama Lord moved as well.
“Lady Saintess. Since you will not be brought to reason, do not blame this subordinate: the Saintess’s judgment will be carried out in your place.”
The Six Elders of the Demonic Path cast together, and red Spiritual Energy drew itself into one enormous formation.
Caught between two sides.
The Righteous Path wanted me dead.
The Demonic Path wanted Jiang Wan dead.
Each of them wanted to deal with the other in passing.
But what they had to deal with first was us.
North she looked. Then south.
“Mm. Call it ten-odd masters between the two of them. You and I together do not come to half a part in ten.”
“A little more than three parts in ten now,” I corrected her.
“Three parts in ten. Against ten. And still dozens to our one in numbers.”
“Mm.”
“How invigorating.”
I laughed once.
Then I turned to Bai Wuchen. “Wuchen. Take the children into the house.”
What showed on Bai Wuchen’s face was hard to read.
He stood where he stood and did not move.
“Master.”
“Yes?”
“This Disciple is not going.”
He drew his sword.
“This Disciple’s sword was taught to him by his Master. If his Master stands here, this Disciple stands here.”
His hands were shaking.
The sword was steady.
Chi Po handed Sanbao over to Bai Wuchen, rolled her sleeves up, and walked to Jiang Wan’s side.
“Three hundred years this old servant has followed you, and not once had a proper fight with anyone of the Righteous Path.”
She glanced back at Bai Wuchen. “Brat. You watch those children.”
Bai Wuchen took Sanbao into his arms, took Dabao and Erbao by the hand, and fell back into the house.
Dabao looked back at me.
“Dad, are you going to fight those people?”
“Yes.”
“Can you win?”
I gave him no answer.
Dabao thought it over, and dug something out of his pocket. A candied haw, wrinkled and squashed, the one he had not been able to talk himself into eating.
“Here, Dad! Eat it and you’ll get strong!”
I took it and put it in my mouth.
Hawthorn. Sour and sweet at once.
I chewed twice and swallowed.
Then I lifted the sword and turned.
Jiang Wan on my right hand.
Chi Po behind Jiang Wan.
Three of us.
Against several hundred, righteous and demonic, joined together to wipe us out.
Xuanqing’s whisk was up over his head already.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord’s formation had taken its full shape.
The wind stopped.
“Begin,” Xuanqing said, low.
Seventy-two Flying Swords descended together.
The red formation hammered out a pillar of light in the same breath.
I went forward with the sword.
Qingxu Sword Art, first form. Ten Thousand Swords Return to the Origin.
Even at three parts in ten of Spiritual Energy, that stroke was enough to tear the vault of the sky.
Sword light shot heavenward and took the seventy-two Flying Swords full in the face.
Iron shrieked on iron. Sparks scattered.
I was beaten back three paces, the web of my thumb burst open, blood running down the hilt.
But of those seventy-two Flying Swords, six were knocked apart by that single stroke of mine.
Xuanqing’s expression changed at last.
“Three parts in ten of Spiritual Energy… and that much force out of it?”
Not three parts in ten.
Three parts in ten, with five years of settling laid on top.
Through the five lost years my Physical Body was being worked over the whole time by Mortal labor. Splitting wood. Carrying water. Turning the fields. Minding children.
My Foundation Depth was never cut away.
It was ground finer.
On Jiang Wan’s side it had started too.
Her dark red Spiritual Energy turned into blood threads, thousands upon thousands of strands of them, and wound itself around Blood-Eyed Yama Lord’s formation.
Meeting force with force was never her way.
She used the finest control she had to shift the Spiritual Energy nodes of that formation out of true, one after another.
This is what she is best at: breaking strength with finesse.
The formation came apart with a crash.
He reeled back a step. “Lady Saintess’s control art… finer than it was five years ago?”
Chi Po, off to one side, slapped a demonic cultivator who had tried a sneaking blow and sent him flying, then grinned. “It would be, wouldn’t it. You think raising three cubs comes easy? Look at the handspeed it takes!”
The battle was locked.
Jiang Wan and I stood back to back, one of us holding off the Righteous Path, one of us holding off the Demonic Path.
Spiritual Energy was draining out of us fast, and the wounds kept piling up.
Neither of us gave ground.
Sanbao started crying again inside the house.
Jiang Wan’s shoulder jerked.
“Keep your head in it,” I said.
“It is.”
“Your left shoulder is shaking.”
“Shut up and fight your fight.”
I turned an Elder’s strike aside and knocked his sword clean out of his hand.
One stroke back, and two Discipline Hall disciples gave way before me.
Xuanqing finally came in himself.
His whisk swept round, Spiritual Energy behind it like a mountain coming down.
I met it head on—
And was flung away.
I hit the yard wall. The wall went down.
There was blood in my mouth.
Jiang Wan too was pinned under the Six Elders striking together.
Chi Po took a blow meant for her and was hurled off.
“Chi Po!” Jiang Wan cried.
Chi Po waved a hand from where she lay on the ground. “This old servant is fine… still able to fight…”
She could not get to her feet.
It all turned, quickly and hard.
I crawled out of the broken wall, blood at the corner of my mouth, the point of my sword trailing on the ground.
The three parts in ten of Spiritual Energy were spent, every scrap of it.
Near enough to the same for Jiang Wan.
Down on one knee, her Spiritual Energy all but dry.
Xuanqing walked over and looked down at me.
“Is that enough?”
I rose on the sword.
“Not yet.”
“You can hardly stand.”
I spat blood and water.
From inside the house came Dabao’s voice.
“Dad! Are you all right! Dad!”
Bai Wuchen held him and would not let him run out.
I looked round at it.
In the window, Dabao’s face was nothing but tears.
Erbao was crying as well.
Sanbao was howling in Bai Wuchen’s arms.
Jiang Wan saw it too.
Her fingers bit into the dirt.
“Lu Chen.”
“Mm?”
“I don’t want them to watch us lose.”
I closed my hand on the sword.
The Spiritual Energy was gone.
Something else was not.
Living as a Mortal for five years taught me one thing. Protecting the people you mean to protect does not take Spiritual Energy.
It takes the one breath in you that will not kneel.
I lifted the sword and went at Xuanqing one last time.
No Spiritual Energy. No sword qi.
A sword, and a man who is somebody’s father.
Xuanqing’s whisk came up to turn it—
“STOP!”
A voice came from the rim of the sky.
Everybody stopped moving at the same instant.
A thread of golden light came down out of the heavens.
An old man came walking along it.
He wore the plainest robe of grey cloth. His hair was going white, his face was all wrinkles.
But in the moment he arrived, all the Spiritual Energy on that battlefield went quiet.
Like somebody pressing pause.
Xuanqing’s face changed sharply.
“…Supreme Elder?”
Chapter Eight
The Supreme Elder.
The head of the Righteous Path.
The first man under heaven.
An old monster who had lived three thousand years.
He had gone into Closed-Door Cultivation a hundred years ago, and everyone had taken him for a man who had Passed Away in Meditation.
And now here he was.
The old man came down in the middle of the yard and looked around him.
He looked at the broken wall scattered over the ground. At Jiang Wan on her knees. At me, blood from head to foot. At Chi Po lying where she had gone down, further off.
Last of all his eyes came to rest on the window of the house.
Behind it, Dabao lay across the windowsill, watching out with his eyes swimming.
Dabao got three seconds of him.
Then he turned to Xuanqing.
“Xuanqing. What is it you are doing?”
Xuanqing cupped his hands. “Senior Brother. This Disciple is cleaning our own house. Lu Chen has turned his back on the Path—”
“I asked you what you are doing.”
The tone had not changed. The weight of it had.
Xuanqing’s mouth closed.
Slowly the old man came over to me, crouched down, and looked at me.
“You are Lu Chen?”
“I am.”
“Sword Saint Qingxu?”
“I am.”
“The father of three children?”
“…I am.”
A laugh broke out of him.
“Good. More spine in you than I had imagined.”
He stood and slapped the dust off his clothes.
Then he turned to face them all: the Righteous Path, the Demonic Path, every one of them.
“Get back. All of you.”
No weight of Spiritual Energy. No threat.
Five words, and that was all.
But every one of them took a step back. Xuanqing. Blood-Eyed Yama Lord. The Six Elders.
That is what the first man under heaven weighs.
He walked over to Jiang Wan.
Her head came up, and there was wariness in it.
“You are the Blood Moon Demon Queen?”
“I am. What of it?”
He looked her over for a while.
“You razed the three cities of the East Sea. You killed 1,673 of my Righteous Path.”
Jiang Wan did not argue it.
“That business. Do you regret it?”
She was quiet a beat.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Of those 1,673, eight hundred had taken part in hunting down civilians of my Demonic Path. The rest were the price of war.”
He only nodded.
“Then let me ask you one thing more.”
“Ask.”
“If someone were to do the same thing today, to your three children, what would you do?”
Something changed in Jiang Wan’s eyes.
It was not killing intent.
It was older than killing intent, and worse.
“Anyone who lays a hand on my children: I will put an end to their whole house.”
He looked into her eyes for a long time.
Then he laughed again.
“Good.”
He turned to face everyone.
“Today’s business ends here.”
Xuanqing tried to speak. “Senior Brother! They—”
“I said it ends here.”
The words stopped in Xuanqing’s throat.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord had something to say as well, but once he met the old man’s eyes he forced it back down.
Hands behind his back, unhurried, the old man said:
“Righteous and demonic have been at each other for ten thousand years. How many dead? Does anyone still keep count? We parted into two roads because we did not agree on what the road was for. Is disagreement a reason to fight until the rivers run red?”
Nobody answered.
“These three children, Righteous Immortal Spirit Root mixed with demonic blood, are the first in ten thousand years.”
He paused.
“What you see in them is taboo.”
“What This Old Man sees in them is hope.”
Every face in that yard changed.
He looked down at Dabao on the windowsill.
Dabao had stopped crying.
His head was on one side, watching the old man, blinking, curious.
“Great-Grandpa?”
Everyone turned to stone.
He checked a beat, then the laugh came roaring out of him.
“Fine, fine. Great-Grandpa it is, then.”
He turned to Jiang Wan and me.
“This Old Man will handle your affair. As for the Righteous Path, This Old Man will do the talking.”
Then he looked at Blood-Eyed Yama Lord.
“As for the Demonic Path, she will do her own talking.” He pointed at Jiang Wan.
His mouth twitched. He did not dare argue.
One last look he turned on me.
“Brat.”
“Here.”
“Mind those children well. And stop fighting. They are watching.”
With that he stepped off along the light and was gone.
Quick to arrive. Quick to leave.
Like a gust of wind.
The yard went quiet again.
Xuanqing stood where he was, his face grey as iron.
But he did not dare go against the Supreme Elder’s word.
He looked at me, and said it one word at a time. “Lu Chen. Our Senior Brother can shield you for a while. After that, look to yourself.”
Then he took his people and went.
His demonic cultivators fell in too, and one long look went to Jiang Wan before he went.
“Lady Saintess. The Demonic Path… is waiting for you to come home.”
Jiang Wan said nothing.
Everyone went.
It was the lot of us in the yard, and nobody else.
Bai Wuchen got Chi Po up off the ground. Her hurts were not heavy ones.
Dabao came running out of the house and threw himself into my arms.
He did not say anything. He only held on and would not let go.
Erbao came out too and wrapped himself around Jiang Wan’s leg.
Sanbao sat in Bai Wuchen’s arms and burped.
The moon had climbed overhead.
The yard had been turned upside down.
But everyone was standing in it.
I looked down at Dabao in my arms and felt him shaking.
“Scared?”
He shook his head.
“Not scared.”
“Then what are you shaking for?”
“Dad’s all blood. It’s cold.”
That stopped me. Then I laughed.
Jiang Wan stood watching us, the edges of her eyes a little red.
“Lu Chen.”
“Mm?”
“Those wounds on you—”
“Nothing. Scratches.”
She came over and shoved my sleeve up.
A long cut down my arm, blood still seeping out of it.
She set her fingers beside the wound, and the dark red Spiritual Energy, the power that should by rights have been killing somebody, turned into a faint warmth and moved slowly along the cut.
It closed at a speed you could watch with your own eyes.
Dabao watched it, spellbound. “Mom’s amazing!”
Jiang Wan let go, her face blank. “Don’t read anything into it. I simply did not want your blood all over the children’s clothes. It is a nuisance to wash out.”
“…Right.”
Bai Wuchen had been watching all of this from a corner, quietly.
He opened his mouth. He wanted to say something.
At last he only sighed.
“Master.”
“Yes?”
“This Disciple is going back.”
“Back where?”
“Qingyun Peak.” He hesitated. “This Disciple will go and… tidy up after you.”
I looked at him.
The collapse I had seen on his face before was gone, and so was all the agonizing.
What had taken their place was calm.
“Set your mind at ease, Master.” He smiled a little. “This Disciple’s Dao Heart is broken. But a thing broken and glued back together holds harder than it did before.”
He cupped his hands to me.
Then he cupped his hands to Jiang Wan.
“Sist… sist—”
He wrestled with it for a long moment.
“Sister-in-law.”
Jiang Wan raised an eyebrow.
Bai Wuchen went red to the roots of his hair, turned, and ran, faster than he would have run for his life.
Behind him, Chi Po slapped her thigh in delight. “Hahahaha. That brat of the Righteous Path is a treat!”
I stood at the doorframe and watched until the back of Bai Wuchen disappeared into the moonlight.
At some point Sanbao had crawled to my feet, and there he was hugging my leg, looking up at me.
“Dad. Hungry.”
“…Come on, then. Dad will warm you some milk.”
After tonight, the cultivation world will likely turn over.
But for now—
The milk still has to be warmed.
Chapter Nine
Three months later.
It went better than I had expected. It also went louder than I had expected.
The Supreme Elder did hold the Righteous Path down.
But holding it down is not the same as everybody accepting it.
Once Bai Wuchen was back at Qingyun Peak, his Junior Brothers and Junior Sisters crowded round him and questioned him for three days and three nights.
His answer never varied. “Master has his reasons. Stop asking.”
“What reasons?”
“Things I can’t say.”
“Is Master under the control of that demoness of the Demonic Path?”
“No. It’s worse than that.”
“Then what is it?”
“…You are better off not knowing. Once you know, you won’t sleep at night.”
The more he said it, the worse the curiosity got on Qingyun Peak.
Until one day a loose-tongued disciple of the Discipline Hall let it out.
“Sword Saint Qingxu and the Blood Moon Demon Queen lost their memories for five years, and had three children.”
It took the news half a day to go through the entire cultivation world.
In that half day, by all accounts, seventeen Elders came down with Shaky Dao Heart, three Sect Masters went into Closed-Door Cultivation to Heal, and one Rogue Cultivator achieved Ascension right where he stood. It was not real Ascension. He fainted clean off his Flying Sword, and somebody had to reach out and catch him.
The cultivation world split into three camps over it.
The first: “Impossible! Absolutely impossible! The light of the Righteous Path and a demoness of the Demonic Path? I won’t believe it!”
The second: “Tsk, tsk, tsk. The Sword Saint and the Demon Queen. The two of them, how do I put this, they do suit each other rather well.”
The third: “What about the children? What do they look like? Is there a portrait? Let me see it, quickly!”
And there were a surprising number of people in the third camp.
The Demonic Path side was better fun still.
In her capacity as Blood Moon Demon Queen, Jiang Wan called a long-distance meeting of the Six Elders of the Demonic Path, over Voice Transmission Jade Slips.
There was one item on the agenda: the matter of This Venerable One’s marriage to the Sword Saint of the Righteous Path.
Blood-Eyed Yama Lord spoke first. “Lady Saintess. This touches the dignity of the Demonic Path—”
Jiang Wan cut him off. “This Venerable One spent five years in the Mortal World washing clothes, cooking, and minding children. Do you think the dignity is still in it?”
Silence was his answer.
Viper Saintess asked, small-voiced: “Then… will the children inherit the seat of the Saintess?”
Jiang Wan thought it over. “If they want it.”
“But they carry the blood of the Righteous Path—”
“They carry the blood of This Venerable One. That is enough. Who objects?”
Nobody objected.
Not that the maneuvering behind our backs stopped.
A few Elders who would not swallow it banded together with a batch of demonic cultivators and decided to strike at the town in the night and “rescue” the Saintess.
Chi Po got word of it in advance and came to warn us that same night.
There were twelve of them that night.
This is what they saw when they crept up to the gate of the little yard:
Me in the rocking chair out in the yard, Qingxu laid across my knees, Sanbao asleep in my arms.
Jiang Wan on the roof with the moonlight behind her, dark red Spiritual Energy moving around her like a tide.
Chi Po crouched at the foot of the wall, sharpening a knife, humming a little tune to herself.
The Elder at their head had only begun to gather his Spiritual Energy when a stroke of sword qi knocked him clean out of his chair. It went straight through the whole town and split the stone tablet at the town gate in half.
Sanbao rolled over in my arms and went on sleeping.
The other eleven looked at the Elder who had just gone flying, then at the child in my arms who had not woken, exchanged a glance, and turned to run.
Two steps on, Jiang Wan’s blood threads took their legs out from under them, and they went down all in a heap.
Chi Po went over and went through them one by one. Seven Magic Tools. Three bottles of poison. And a letter urging surrender, the sort that begins Please, Lady Saintess, return from your wandering.
Jiang Wan read it through and burned it in front of them.
“Go back and tell whoever stands behind you. It is not for them to say whether This Venerable One has strayed.”
The twelve went scrambling and crawling into the dark.
Nobody came after that.
And things went quiet on the Righteous Path side as well. The Supreme Elder called a grand assembly of the Sects himself, and they argued it out for seven full days.
The conclusion they came to: “Righteous and demonic are divided by the teaching each holds, and not by blood. The children are guiltless. The marriage is their own affair. Lu Chen must, however, guarantee that no secret of the Righteous Path passes to the Demonic Path.”
Bai Wuchen went to that assembly in my place.
When he came back he told me: “Master. The fiercest objector there was the Sect Master of the Cangwu Sect. He stood up and made a stirring speech about it. Then the Supreme Elder asked him one question: that Saintess of the Demonic Path you went chasing in your youth, what was her name again? And he shut his mouth on the spot.”
“The Supreme Elder knew?”
“The Supreme Elder knows everything.” Bai Wuchen sighed. “He said one thing more. This Old Man has lived three thousand years and watched ten thousand years of righteous and demonic fighting. Fight and fight, and afterwards the ones standing side by side are always the ones who said it could never be.”
I smiled at that.
By the end of the third month my Cultivation Base was back to seven parts in ten.
Six-tenths back to herself, Jiang Wan had.
We were still living in that little yard.
The wall had been built up again.
Dabao had started training. Basic sword forms, taught by me.
Erbao every so often throws sparks from her fingertips with no say in the matter. Jiang Wan is teaching her to control it.
Sanbao. Sanbao has learned to walk.
Sanbao walking is a disaster.
He grabs everything. He chews everything.
Once he got up onto the roof, and when Chi Po found him he was sitting astride the ridge beam, spitting down at the ground.
Chi Po nearly had a stop of the heart over it.
Bai Wuchen comes once a month, and every time he brings a load of the spirit fruit Qingyun Peak grows.
He can call Jiang Wan “sister-in-law” now without his face changing. Though afterward he will find himself an empty corner and retch for three minutes.
That is real progress.
One evening I took Dabao out into the yard to put him through his cuts.
He was serious about it. Following me stroke for stroke, one move at a time.
“Dad. Am I Righteous Path, or Demonic Path?”
That stopped me.
“Which would you like to be?”
Dabao thought about it for a long while.
“Can I be both?”
I put a hand on his head.
“You can. You can be anything.”
“Then I’ll be a dad!”
“…What?”
“When Dabao grows up he is going to be a dad too! And protect his little brother and sister, same as Dad!”
I crouched down so that we were level.
Four years old, and his eyes were bright as stars.
My throat went tight.
“All right.”
Jiang Wan stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Food. Stop practicing.”
“Coming, coming.”
Dabao put his little wooden sword away, took my hand, and ran us into the house.
Four dishes and a soup on the table.
Red-braised pork. Greens fried in season. Steamed egg. Sweet and sour fish. Tomato and egg drop soup.
Sanbao was in his high chair already, banging on the table. “Eat! Eat! Eat!”
Erbao was helping Jiang Wan set out bowls and chopsticks, very grown-up about it.
Chi Po came in carrying a jug of wine. “Lady Saintess. This old servant bought the best osmanthus wine in town.”
“You and your drinking,” said Jiang Wan, with a look at her.
“Just a little. Only a little.”
The family sat down to eat.
Into my mouth went a piece of red-braised pork.
Jiang Wan’s cooking keeps getting better. It makes me uneasy.
Because it means she is living this life in earnest, with everything she has in it.
And so am I.
“Lu Chen,” Jiang Wan said suddenly.
“Mm?”
“There’s rice on your mouth.”
I wiped at it. “Gone?”
“No.”
She leaned across, and her thumb brushed the corner of my mouth.
Quick as a raid in the night.
Then she sat back, expressionless, and went on eating as though nothing at all had happened.
Chi Po bent over her soup. Her mouth had nearly split to her ears.
Dabao and Erbao looked at each other.
Sanbao smeared steamed egg over his whole face.
I stared at the rice in my bowl for three seconds.
The tips of my ears were warm.
Chapter Ten
One year later.
The cultivation world had finally accepted one fact: Sword Saint Qingxu and the Blood Moon Demon Queen were a pair. With three cubs in tow.
It went from news that blew up to something to chew over beside the teacup, and from that to an ordinary part of the day.
Human beings, the cultivating kind included, adjust to things shockingly well.
My Cultivation Base was fully restored.
So had Jiang Wan’s.
We still lived in the yard in the little town, though it had been done over, and two rooms built onto it.
Once a month I go up to Qingyun Peak to see to some Sect business.
Jiang Wan handles the Demonic Path end of things from a distance.
We keep one rule that neither of us ever had to say out loud: whatever the righteous and demonic are doing out there, none of it comes home through our door.
“Once you are inside this yard, you are Lu Chen and I am Jiang Wan. Not the Sword Saint. Not the Demon Queen.”
That rule is Jiang Wan’s.
I think it is a good one.
Dabao is five years old now. This year he formally came under my door to learn the sword.
Jiang Wan is teaching him the Demonic Path’s arts of controlling the spirit behind my back, though.
I walked in on him once with a sword in his left hand and dark red Spiritual Energy running off his right. The sight of him cultivating both paths very nearly cracked my Dao Heart a second time.
“Did your mom teach you that?”
“Yes! Mom says there’s no loss in having one more trade to your hand.”
I turned my head toward the kitchen.
Jiang Wan was cutting vegetables and did not look up.
“Other children learn music and chess and calligraphy and painting. Can’t you teach him something normal?”
“What’s not normal about cultivating both paths?” she threw back at me. “His father is Righteous Path, his mother is Demonic Path. It stands to reason that the boy cultivates both.”
I found I had no answer to that.
Which is the trouble with quarreling with Jiang Wan: her crooked reasoning always carries more weight than your straight reasoning.
Erbao is four. Her control over her Spiritual Energy has come a long way.
She runs to fire in her nature. The sparks off her fingers can be shaped now into a small steady flame.
One time Chi Po’s stove went out, and Erbao reached over and touched it alight again.
Chi Po was so moved she lost two teeth on the spot.
Sanbao is three. He has stopped chewing on everything at last.
But he has unlocked a new skill. Talking.
And once started, he cannot be stopped.
“Dad, why is the sky blue?”
“Dad, why do fish live in water?”
“Dad, why do you and Mom shut the door at night?”
“Dad—”
“Go and ask your mom.”
“Mom said to come to you.”
Raising three cubs wears you out worse than facing a Heavenly Tribulation.
Though, truth be told, there is more in it than there is in a Heavenly Tribulation.
Bai Wuchen still comes every month, and by now he can say “sister-in-law” as though it were nothing.
Sometimes he even brings gifts.
Last month he gave Erbao a set of Magic Tool building blocks, and she was so pleased that she called him Uncle Bai.
Bai Wuchen’s eyes went red over it right there.
“Master. This Disciple has a generation of his own in this family now, at least.”
“What generation is that?”
“Uncle.”
“You are my Disciple. Dabao ought to be calling you Senior Brother.”
“…So Erbao calls me Uncle and Dabao calls me Senior Brother? Three generations of seniority in one household?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
Chi Po has gone and become a grandmother on the permanent staff.
She takes Dabao to school every morning and brings him home again. Yes, school. Dabao studies at the village school in town.
An eight-hundred-year-old Elder of the Demonic Path turning up at the school gate on the stroke of the hour every day, waiting for lessons to end, has become one of the sights of the town.
Once the schoolmaster asked Dabao: “Your grandmother. Why are her eyes always red?”
Dabao answered him in perfect seriousness. “My grandmother has bad eyes. They go red whenever the wind blows.”
At the gate, Chi Po dabbed at a tear that was not there. “Quite right, quite right. This old servant’s eyes are bad.”
So the days go.
One night, the three cubs were asleep in there.
Jiang Wan sat out in the yard with me.
Our old places. Her on the stone bench, me against the doorframe.
“Lu Chen.”
“Mm.”
“Have you ever thought about what would have become of us, if neither of us had lost our memory?”
I thought about it.
“We’d have gone on fighting.”
“Gone on until when?”
“Until one of us had won.”
“And after there was a winner?”
“The one who won would have been very lonely.”
For a while she said nothing.
“How do you know?”
“Because I fought three hundred years, and there was only ever the one opponent. If you had died, I wouldn’t have had anyone left even to quarrel with.”
She bent her head and turned a strand of hair around one finger.
“Lu Chen. Are you telling me you can’t do without me?”
“I’m telling you a fact.”
“You won’t say it plainly.”
“Neither will you.”
She raised her eyes to me.
Moonlight on her face.
Three hundred years of being each other’s enemy.
Five years of being my wife.
The mother of three children.
There are too many things she answers to.
But here in this yard, in this moonlight, she is only Jiang Wan.
“Lu Chen.”
“Mm.”
“There is one thing I never told you.”
“What?”
Her eyes moved off me and up to the moon.
“Those five years gone, I wasn’t empty of everything. Now and then there were blurred pictures going past. Pictures of the two of us fighting.”
That pulled me up short.
“You never said.”
“I thought I was dreaming. Dreaming of a man in white, and of fighting him until heaven and earth came down. Every time I dreamed it, I woke with my heart going fast.”
She paused.
“Back then I took it for my heart moving.”
I said nothing.
“When my memory came back I knew better. It wasn’t my heart moving. It was the body answering a threat.” The corner of her mouth bent, just a little. “Although it wasn’t… altogether different, either.”
I leaned in the doorframe and looked at her.
“Jiang Wan.”
“Yes?”
“Are you making a declaration at me?”
Her face went stiff all at once.
“Nobody is declaring anything. I am stating an objective fact.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you ’oh’ me. What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Lu Chen!”
“Fine, fine.” I walked over to her and took something out of my pocket.
A cartoon hair clip.
The same clip Erbao had put into her hair more than a year ago, the one I had taken back out again.
I had been carrying it in my pocket the whole time since.
She looked down at it. Her eyes blinked twice.
“Why have you kept this?”
“Forgot to give it back.”
“Liar.”
“Yes. I lied.”
I clipped it into her hair, at the temple.
A small cartoon butterfly, sitting crooked in the hair of the Blood Moon Demon Queen.
She did not take it out.
From inside the house came Sanbao’s voice.
“Dad! Dad! Got to pee!”
I sighed.
And Jiang Wan laughed. Not the faint smile of hers that you can barely see.
A real laugh came out of her.
“Go on, then, Great Sword Immortal. Your son is calling.”
I turned to go in.
Two steps on, I looked back at her.
In the moonlight she sat on the stone bench with the cartoon clip at her temple and the smile still on her mouth.
Three hundred years of being each other’s opponent.
Six years of being my wife.
The mother of three cubs.
This life, no, the next one, and the one after that, I don’t suppose I will ever get clear of her.
“Lu Chen, what are you standing there for? Go! Sanbao is about to wet his trousers!”
“Coming, coming!”
I pushed the door open and bolted inside.
That is how a day of Sword Saint Qingxu ends, to the sound of a child wetting his trousers.
Tomorrow will be the same day again.
And I think that suits me well.