Mei Jian stepped away from the woman, raising her hands slowly. "There's no need to resort to blades here."
The sword swiveled slightly, aiming directly at her rather than between them. "I'll be the judge of that."
A snort, courtesy of Wei Feng. He stepped forwards, as though without a care in the world even as the point switched targets to his heart.
"Was your head damaged that badly?" He tilted his head, projecting overwhelmingly fake concern. "Do you need more medical attention?"
Her eyes narrowed. "And what's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean that it would take a major brain injury for you to think that we are somehow your enemies." His lips split into a smirk. "Unless the enemies that you're familiar with dress up your wounds, and then leave you unrestrained in a soft bed, your sword at your side?"
The young master paused. "If they are, can we trade? No, wait, on second thought let's not. I'm only familiar with pretty girls doing that to me, and that sounds like a downgrade."
"Are you making a joke out of me?" The end of her sword twitched. "I'll warn you; this blade is no decoration."
"You've already made the joke of yourself." He sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. "Why must all the beautiful ones be airheads?"
Mei Jian cut him off. "Please try to understand. You were injured in a battle with a demonic practitioner, and ended up here in the Plum Blossom Sect. You were resting here while you recovered. You can step outside and look around to confirm what I'm saying, if your own memory doesn't agree."
The sword slowly came down, but remained out and present, its wielder taking a look out the window. “Certainly, what you say does make some sense.”
Her eyes flicked around the room, taking in the cabin, innocent as could be, the bed she had been laid in, and then went back out the window.
Wei Feng patted Mei Jian on the shoulder. "I should have left the conversation between you two from the start! You really are the same kind."
This time he didn't avoid her strike, letting the weak punch strike his arm in futility.
The woman resheathed her sword. "It really is the Plum Blossom Sect."
"Are you familiar with our sect, senior?" Mei Jian tilted her head. "Have you visited us before?"
"No," she said, letting out a sigh.
"I just refuse to believe that any other place could have such a wasteful glut of plum trees that are all trimmed for beauty rather than fruit." She clicked her tongue in irritation. "So many casks of plum wine left unmade..."
"So you do have some taste!" The young master spread his arms out wide. "Come, let this young master show you all the best places to drink beneath the trees."
That earned him a sharp exhale from her nose. “I could use a drink, but perhaps with different company.”
Wei Feng sighed, shaking his head. “Alas, recently no women can be honest before me. Is my attractiveness in truth so frightening to admit?”
She ignored him.
“I suppose that I’ve been a little rude, opening with a sword. I hope you two can forgive me.” A bow to the half position, hand in fist as salute. “My name is Ming Yue. I’m a wandering swordsman, seeking to better myself.”
She paused. “I guess I owe you an explanation for how I ended up like this. How do I put it simply?”
“Basically, I infiltrated a demonic sect, killed several of their members while the seniors were out, and destroyed their sacred demonic art text. Then I burned the place down and fled. I thought I’d gotten away with it clean too, but….” She gestured to the bandages still wrapped around her.
“Coward got me from behind when I thought I was safe. I couldn’t see them, not until they struck. Then I ended up fleeing through the woods, but they had some way to track me by the blood.”
Mei Jian interjected. “When I fought them, they had some way to control shadows. On their blade, at least, and if I’m not mistaken their clothing as well. Then when they switched to fighting in earnest, they became easy to perceive all of a sudden.”
“You fought them? How did that happen?" Ming Yue looked over her, skepticism written on her face. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you hardly seem the type to be hunting down demonic practitioners.”
The young master made a noise of pain at that, gripping his chest with one hand.
"So cruel," He mimicked wiping tears from his eyes with an exaggerated motion. "And even after she was so smitten with you at first glance as to sacrifice her body to protect you, and her freedom for your recovery."
"Truly, heartless you are, the manner in which you play with maidens. It puts even this charming young master to shame."
Ming Yue pursed her lips. "That's...No, that's the only thing that makes sense. I remember stumbling here, injured. I think I can recall your face as well.”
She took another look at the younger woman, squinting. “Your body and freedom alike, he said?”
He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Not only did she take the same blade that wounded you to her own delicate frame, but she even dragged herself while injured in order to buy you the strongest elixir the sect had.”
Wei Feng covered his face with one hand, placing the other on Mei Jian’s shoulder in an act of seeming sympathy. “So great was her infatuation that she even dragged this noble soul into it, begging with tears in her eyes for another to help her shoulder the needed debt, ruinous as it was.”
“That’s not true!” She slapped his hand away, feeling heat rise to her cheeks again. “How shameless can you be? Spreading rumors and false gossip about me everywhere you go! Do you have any idea what others are saying already?”
The sniffle that came in response was shockingly not from the man, though her eyes went to him at first. No, instead it was Ming Yue’s turn to fake emotion, though she made only a minor effort to hide the smile that had twitched her lips upwards.
“To think, love at first sight could be so strong.”
As she trailed off, she covered her face with her hands, as though too embarrassed to show it. “Ah, I’ve been reduced to a simpering maiden again.”
Her eyes peeked out as she squirmed. “We can’t! Not when we just met, but….I suppose, if you sacrificed your body for this one’s life…..then I can only repay you with my own.”
“Oh.” Her hands lowered, opening the tattered strips that remained of her robe. “Tch. How am I supposed to do a striptease like this?”
“No stripteases!” Mei Jian felt her arms shoot out on their own, trying to prevent the motion even as Ming Yue cut it off.
“I see, I see.” A coy smile as she sucked air in through her mouth. “You’re the type who prefers to tear a woman’s clothes off with your own hands. How aggressive, though I suppose such boldness is to be expected from my savior….”
Wei Feng let out a laugh, putting his hand to his chin. “To think, you could be so overcome with lust as to forget this young master was before you. It’s not a feeling that I’ve ever tasted before, being forgotten by a beautiful woman, much less two at once. Or does my gaze only serve to incite your lower passions further, rather than quenching them by shame?”
The realization struck Mei Jian like a hammer, and she felt her eyes widen slightly even as the blush continued to color her face a brighter pink. “You two are really alike! The same kind!”
“I am nothing like her!”
“I am nothing like him!”
“He’s just a lustful pig, trying to force himself into pure talks of love! Inserting his own filthy proclivities into a romance he already admitted existed, overstepping the bounds of relationships!”
He leaned forward to reply. “You’re the one stripping for a woman you’ve not yet learned the name of, and calling it pure love! Not to mention, she owes a debt to me, while you owe a debt to her! Who exactly is overstepping the bounds of relationships here?”
“I was wrong. You aren’t just merely the same kind, you’re exactly the same.” Mei Jian let out a sigh. Is it my fault? Is there something about me that attracts these kinds of people?
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“Though, I suppose she does share my attractiveness, to some small degree. Not many have been so blessed by the heavens, even if only second to yours truly.”
Ming Yue paused as well. “At the least, our tastes in women align. He has decent eyes, even if he uses them as a toad coveting swan flesh.”
To the girl caught between them, the lack of a response was a heavenly blessing. The formerly injured woman took another look at her ragged clothing and stained bandages. “I don’t suppose that I could lean upon you for an outfit? And a trip to the baths?”
Wei Feng snorted. “Shameless. You’re already begging for more, without even learning our names?”
“I introduced myself. Why didn’t you do the same?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you just accustomed to a lack of courtesy?”
“I’m Mei Jian, an initiate of the Plum Blossom Sect, and this is my sect brother Wei Feng.”
“Ah-ha.” The young master snapped his fingers. “So that’s what it was.”
Her voice rose an octave. “I thought you were calling me farmgirl as a jest! You just didn’t remember my name?”
“It can’t be both?”
Mei Jian stammered out a response as both of her conversation partners let loose laughter.
“You-” He was already gone, slipping out the doorway in her second of distraction and leaving the two women alone in his cabin.
************************
The sect baths, the true baths, required water to be drawn, heated, and cleaned, and bore a corresponding cost in points. But for the sake of the sect's cleanliness, there were stalls along the river where it met the main grouping of buildings, just large enough for one to step into and clean themselves with a bucket of the frigid waters. Mei Jian led Ming Yue into one, still clothed half in the blanket, while she herself headed to the store near it.
A new robe was three points, points she could almost feel slowly trickle out of her meager supply. There it was, nearly a day’s work gone in an instant. Through gritted teeth, she doubled the price with three sticks of incense.
There were three deities enshrined in the sect, and in theory her desperate prayer could have gone to any of them. Or perhaps all of them. Either way, it had been answered, and she now bore yet another debt as a result of that night. At the moment, incense was all that she could afford, but she silently noted the need for a greater offering whensoever she had the ability. Hopefully the heavens would be patient for her in this regard.
Completing her purchase, she placed the remaining pittance onto her debt, trying her best to ignore the look on the face of the clerk as he observed just how little of an impact it made. It was an exercise in futility.
With that done, Mei Jian placed the robes in the basket outside and slid it through the curtain of the doorway in the stall. A poor design, she couldn’t help but note, with nothing holding the cloth doorway in place should the winds pick up. Perhaps part of the purpose, to encourage moving up and gaining access to real baths as quickly as possible. Although, those were shared as well, so if anything it would be a decrease in privacy. Perhaps the curtains were simply a design preference of whomever had built the stalls?
Her mental rambling was broken off when Ming Yue emerged.
Mei Jian hadn’t noticed it before, but the older girl was beautiful. The flawless skin that so many martial practitioners seemed to carry was honed even further on the features of her face. Speaking of which, they may well have been meticulously sculpted for the sole purpose of offering a refined, mature beauty. Full yet delicate, strong yet subtle. Even amongst the noblewomen that had passed through her village on occasion, faces coated with all manner of enhancements, she had never seen such a perfect balance.
The dark hair, made even darker by the water that saturated it, framed said face like a portrait, only drawing out the color of her eyes, the smoothness of her skin, the redness of her lips more. Long, smooth and mostly straight, but with just enough of a disheveled touch that it didn’t seem too out of place, too fake.
Beneath Ming Yue’s new robe her well-toned body had been concealed once more, but from the way it filled out and from where it hung in, it gave an impression that somehow seemed to imply far more than her previous state of undress.
Rather, it was more likely that both the previous times Mei Jian had seen her in full, more pressing matters had occupied her mind; matters of assassins and swords and imminent death. Now free of those distractions, and with the grime washed from her companion anew and the life refreshed from her injuries at last, said beauty was on full display again.
It was only a few seconds that she took in the attractiveness of Ming Yue, but those few seconds may have well been an eternity. An eternity that didn’t go unnoticed by the target of her ogling, unfortunately.
“What a shame it is, that the baths should be private rather than shared.” Her ever-present grin mutated into a smirk. “Or perhaps a blessing, one that saves my innocence from such ravenous eyes?”
She bit her lip to silence a protest, though it did nothing to stem her reddening cheeks. What was she doing? This wasn’t the time to become entranced by some stranger’s appeal, even if the same stranger was determined to plant such thoughts in her head firmly.
“What do you plan to do now?” she asked, changing the topic. “You don’t have a place to head directly, right? And have your wounds fully recovered?”
“Just about.” She twisted back and forth, feeling her torso out and wincing as small shocks of pain disrupted her bright smile. “Or not really, but enough to move. As for your question…”
Ming Yue hefted the sword at her side. “It’s already halfway through the day, if not more. I need to get my training in, so that I don’t fall out of practice. Get the edge back after a break. You happen to know where a girl could do that?”
That was a conundrum. Sure, the lower training grounds were open to initiates, but could a total outsider really saunter in and start using them? Something told her it would be frowned upon, at the very least. “There’s a private enough area if we go back to Wei Feng’s cabin,” she said. “There’s no real equipment, but it should be enough to at least start getting back into shape.”
She replied with a wink. “You really are helpful, Mei-Mei~”
“It’s Mei Jian, actually.”
“You can’t handle a nickname?” The older woman pouted. “You know, most girls would consider it a sign of affection.”
“You’ll have to forgive me, but I was of the impression that nicknames were assigned between friends, and had some kind of personal relevance.”
“Should I call you savior then? Or I could steal your lover’s term, since I already plan on taking you from him. What was it again? Farmgirl?”
Her voice rose as loud as it could without disturbing the others nearby. “He’s not my lover!”
Stepping in closer as they walked, Mei Jian lowered it again. “If you and he both keep saying ridiculous things, what’s going to happen to my reputation? Someone I met already thought that he and I had gotten together by the first night in the sect, thanks to that. I don’t want to be known as that kind of woman. Especially not with him.”
“Oh? Well, I suppose I can understand. You’re looking for someone a little prettier than him, right? That’s what made you fall for me.” She stepped in close in kind, causing their shoulders to brush and the younger girl to recoil.
“I didn’t do that either!”
Mercifully, the conversation was cut short by the end of the walk, trees opening up into the clearing before the young master’s private cabin. Ming Yue stepped out into the middle, and then stopped before one of the thicker trunks, taking a look. “This should do.”
“Do you need a training sword? I have one with a blunted edge.”
A shaken head was her only reply as the outsider drew her sword. It looked rather dull, if of a slightly higher make than that of an initiate, but plain and unremarkable. That is, until it started to move.
Ming Yue’s blade was like lightning. That was the only way to describe it, a sudden flash of brightness that cut through the sky, beating a jagged trail that seemed to flow in multiple paths at once, already having struck before one’s eyes could register that it had begun.
Mei Jian watched her practice, watched the technique, and then watched it again, and again. She couldn’t see it; the direction of the blade, the movements of her body as she threw it, the moment it arrived at the target, none of it. It all seemed to just happen at once, a single instant.
It all flew into a haze, and if she was asked, she couldn’t say if she had watched the older girl’s practice for minutes or for hours.
It was only when someone beside her began to earnestly and powerfully clap that she broke free from her stupor, the sudden noise causing her to jump in place ever so slightly as the trace snapped. Ming Yue lowered her sword with a smile and turned towards the two of them. She traced her gaze back to the source of the applause besides her, finding the weathered, thick hands she had already come to associate it with.
“Impressive,” said Zhihao Chen. “That’s a nice technique you have.”
The dark-haired woman grinned at him, opening her mouth to reply when she was cut off.
“One question though. You see, I know every member of the sect, and I don’t recall ever having made your acquaintance.” He scratched his head while pretending to think. “Am I going senile in my old age? I could swear that the only ones allowed onto sect grounds were sect members…”
She gave a laugh, voice clear and rough in the air. “Maybe you should have some better security?”
Master Chen joined her in laughing, both raising their voices. This continued for a second, the two sharing their mirth, until his arm snapped out and a dark projectile streaked towards Ming Yue, faster than Mei-Jian’s eyes could follow. Her free hand, the one not holding a blade, plucked it from the air before it struck her face, with a casual nature as though she were picking an apple from a tree.
For a moment she held it still, then her arm buckled slightly. It came up just as quickly, but now she looked at her hand in surprise. It held a palm-sized circle of dark wood, a plum blossom freshly engraved onto it in a bright, vibrant red.
“Impressive indeed. This brat here looked like she was dying when she engraved the token.” He indicated his side, and Mei Jian turned her head to look before the realization dawned, sending a blush coursing to her face.
“You sneaky old bastard.” Ming Yue took a few steps closer, sword still held loose at her side. “You’re trying to pull me into your sect by force?”
“You’re on the sect grounds, using the sect’s elixirs, charming the sect’s initiates. I figured if you were acting the part, why not go ahead and make you a member of the outer sect?” He shrugged, then pretended to pause while thinking. “I suppose I can call you a trespasser and settle this with swords instead?”
“You’d put me in the outer sect?” She tilted her head. “Are you sure?”
“You’re too skilled to be an initiate, and besides,” he said. “It’s still only the outer sect, at the end of the day.”
“Exactly.” Her sword came up, now resting on her shoulder. “The outer sect? Not the inner? Are you saying that you think you’re stronger than me?”
Zhihao Chen turned away, chuckling under his breath before giving a reply. “I don’t go around telling people that grass is green, or that the sky is blue, do I?”
He paused for a second, letting only his head swivel back. “Oh, and Mei Jian, right? The sect has awarded one-hundred and fifty points towards your debt for the demonic invader you slew. Next time though, turn such things in yourself. It gives a bad image to have your lover collect the reward for you.”
His words didn’t register for a minute, not until after it was already too late for her to dispute them, not that she would have had the courage to publicly call out an elder of the sect anyway. Wei Feng...Had the rumors really spread that far already? Or was the old man just playing into the joke?
Master Chen did seem the type to take some sort of dry, twisted pleasure from such things.
But his words and actions had made two things very clear regardless, reality that carved itself into her mind in a manner more pressing than even the perverted murmurings that currently sullied her reputation. She faced Ming Yue, swallowing down her hesitation.
“You said that you had a desire to repay me, correct?”
“Yep.” A beaming smile. “I suppose you want me to replace this lover of yours? Or perhaps…” She paused, raising her hand to her mouth in a scandalized reaction. “It can’t be, to join the two of you?”
Mei Jian didn’t acknowledge the jest, teasing washing over her as she bent into a bow, hand clasped in fist.
“Then, please accept me as your student.”