~~~

“Lady Ling is right.”

Liu Jin glances at Lu Mei out of the corner of his eyes. She is not wearing her disciple robes today, a privilege afforded to her by her position as a Core Disciple. Instead, she is dressed in a too-thin white dress with gold accents and a red sash around her waist. While the sight is undeniably pleasing, the circumstances make Liu Jin enjoy it less than he should.

“Somehow, I am not surprised you think that,” he says, bringing back his attention to the materials he is working with: phoenix feathers, blood of a mantis snake, and stoic jellyfish venom. All are highly volatile items and need to be handled with care. Most people would not dare have them so close together, but for someone as skilled as Liu Jin, working with them to create medicine is simply a way to relax his mind.

“Whether you like it or not, she speaks the truth,” Lu Mei says, sitting on his bed. “You may be the Emperor of the Storm Dragon Empire, but your country is still unstable. As much as I’d like to keep you all to myself, you need alliances to solidify your position. That means marriages. Might as well get used to the idea that you will have to let your future wives settle things between themselves.”

“That’s not the issue,” Liu Jin says. The mantis snake blood glows ominously on his table. Liu Jin takes a deep breath and mixes it in. “If it was just you and Xiao Shuang, I would not worry.” Much. “However, it is not just the two of you. It will never be just the two of you.”

It would always be Lu Mei and the Eternal Flame Clan and Xiao Shuang and the Divine Frozen Palace. The Sects would try to work their will on him through the two of them and might even try to poison them against each other. The same went for any other prospective concubines he might end up with, an eventuality that Liu Jin would rather not focus on right now.

“That is a valid concern,” Lu Mei admits, “especially considering how many gifts I have received lately.”

Liu Jin stops working and turns his head to the side.

“What?”

“Oh? Did I not mention it?” The look on Lu Mei’s face is perfectly innocent. “Jewels, dresses, scrolls, and other trinkets. Now that people realize the Eternal Flame Clan wants to push me as Empress, everyone is in a hurry to get in my good graces. Lord Feng Gui and Lord Feng Shang have even sent me a few cultivation pills. I suspect they do not want me to be outdone by your wife.”

Liu Jin’s pupils narrow into slits.

“Those meddlesome…”

His throat constricts with anger. The glow of poison around him is faint, yet the reagents he is working with are instantly obliterated. It is already starting. They want to pit Lu Mei against Xiao Shuang.

He won’t let it happen.

“As much as I appreciate your rare burst of possessive anger, you are missing something important,” Lu Mei says, looking at her nails, not the slightest bit bothered by Liu Jin’s aura. “Do you really think I am the sort of person who’d let herself be manipulated by anyone else?”

Liu Jin’s eyes return to normal.

He takes a deep breath and lays his hands flat on the table.

“No,” Liu Jin admits, “but those with power have a way of seeing their will done. I don’t want you to be in that sort of situation.”

“I already am.” Lu Mei crosses her arms. “I chose to be in it the moment I chose you. I am not running away. I don’t think your wife will either, will she?”

Liu Jin thinks of Xiao Shuang.

“No,” he admits. “She probably won’t.”

“Well, it is settled then,” Lu Mei says. “Rather than worry needlessly, you should trust us to handle this part ourselves. Besides, you are uniquely ill-suited to help here.”

Liu Jin blinks.

“Excuse me?”

“I want you to consider every time someone was hostile to you,” Lu Mei says, raising a well-manicured finger to underscore her point. “Now consider your attempts to prove yourself trustworthy to them. Have you ever been able to convince anyone to get along with you when you’re actually trying?”

Liu Jin opens his mouth.

He closes it.

“Every time you have tried to appear trustworthy, you’re inevitably suspected. Every time you try to clear things up, you end up looking more suspicious,” Lu Mei points out. “Over half the Eternal Flame Clan thinks you’re an insidious manipulator who has tricked his way into power, and the only reason they won’t say anything is that you have managed to impress and bribe all the right people.”

Over half…?

Surely not...

Right?

“Some people are also grateful to me because I saved their lives,” Liu Jin points out, perhaps a bit sullenly.

“My point is someone like you is not qualified to even try to help ease tensions between other people.”

“... that actually hurt.”

“You’ll survive,” Lu Mei says dryly. “Trust us to handle ourselves. That is the only way this will work.”

Liu Jin wants to warn her about the terrifying power that Emperor Realm cultivators can exert when they put their minds to it. However, what would be the point? Perhaps Lu Mei has never felt an Emperor’s power in the same way as him, but she’s neither ignorant nor naive. She knows what lies in her future.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

As much as he wants to shield her and Xiao Shuang from the machinations of their respective Sects, such is beyond his power. It is going to happen. It is already happening. The only thing left for Liu Jin is to let them deal with the issues that might arise between them and trust them to not let themselves be used.

Xiao Shuang and Lu Mei are by no means weak or helpless.

He already knows that.

“You are right,” he says softly.

“That is often the case. By the way, you realize this means I will have to meet your wife sooner rather than later, right?”

Liu Jin suddenly has another reason to be nervous.

~~~

Mud is not one that gives himself to nervousness.

The opposite was true once upon a time. Before he was Mud. However, his master’s teachings have erased such things from his being centuries ago. He no longer feels the pressure of a moment bearing down on him. He is not tortured by the difference between expectations and reality.

However…

Those bothersome feelings have begun to creep back into his soul for some reason.

Master Xun sits in the middle of his meditation chamber surrounded by smoke of changing colors. It is a familiar sight. Mud still remembers the first time he’d been brought here. He’d been nothing more than an Outer Disciple, and the smoke got in his throat and irritated his eyes. He’d hated it, and no matter how much he complained, his master would not change his habits. At some point, he’d even started thinking Master Xun smoked so much for the sole purpose of making him uncomfortable.

Mud has since outgrown such thoughts. His body can no longer be bothered by mere smoke.

If his throat feels a little tight right now… That is simply an oddity that must be overlooked.

“It has taken you quite some time to visit me, disciple,” Master Xun says.

“This Mud apologizes,” Mud says, kneeling before his master and bowing his head. “Many things happened to this disciple in the Storm Dragon Empire. Due to the state of my cultivation, I thought it best to isolate myself after arriving to the Eternal Flame Clan.”

Master Xun smiles.

“Disciple, why do you lie to me?”

Mud flinches.

It is not, strictly speaking, a lie. His cultivation was in a very fragile state after the battle with the Fleshcrafter. The proper thing to do back then would have been to immediately seek seclusion, but the situation was not right for it. Things still needed to be settled between the Eternal Flame Clan and Storm Dragon Empire. Young Qing Jin’s ancestry, combined with Young Master Feng Zhi’s mental state, and the presence of a Renegade made it entirely necessary for Mud to remain active.

In other words, Mud had been walking around in an unstable state, and he had made the trip back in the same poor condition. For that reason, as soon as he was safe inside the Eternal Flame Clan, Mud headed for the isolation chambers and stayed there until he could stabilize properly. That is no lie.

It just happens to not be the full truth.

After all, Mud had been walking around with an unstable cultivation for several weeks. Why not wait a few more hours and present himself to his master before entering isolation? That should have been possible for him.

He hadn’t.

He’d been scared.

“This Mud apologizes,” Mud says, looking down.

“I did not ask you to apologize.” A puff of purple smoke is blown into the air. It swirls and becomes an owl that flies in a circle around the room before landing behind Mud. Its head twists as it stares at his back. “I asked why you lied to me.”

Mud’s hands clench around his robes.

“Master… I…” He breathes. “Master, why ask me if you already know? This Mud has changed. I am not how you made me anymore. Is it any wonder I was hesitant to see you? If a painter comes home and sees lines hastily drawn over one of his masterpieces, won’t he be angry?”

Master Xun chuckles.

“You call yourself a masterpiece. I guess you truly have rediscovered your ego.”

“Master, I did not mean-”

“Do you remember how you were when we first met?” Master Xun asks him. “It might have been three hundred years ago, but I remember it clearly. You were quite pathetic, a mere child who’d barely managed to become an Outer Disciple. The years had passed, and you had barely made any progress. It was only a matter of time until you gave up.”

He nearly had.

Back then, he’d been completely frustrated at his own patheticness, repeatedly outdone by everyone around him. Year after year, he watched new prodigies join and soar past him. They bloomed while he withered in anonymity.

It was an all too common story.

“I was thinking of leaving…” Mud says. His voice is a barely audible whisper. “I didn’t wish to be faced with my own failures any longer… Then I met you, Master.”

“You did.” Master Xun nods. “Do you remember what I told you?”

Mud wants to laugh. How can he not? Those are the words that changed his life. The words that were etched in the very core of his consciousness ever since.

“You are Mud,” Mud repeats.

“I will make something out of you,” Elder Xun finishes softly. “Disciple, I told you that, and I did. However, why would you hide from me now that you have finally made something out of yourself?”

“I… I feared, Master,” Mud says.

It is one thing to be bold in front of someone like the Fleshcrafter. Though he shrugged off his accusations in the heat of the battle, they had not exactly been unfounded. Now that he is facing the one who made him, Mud cannot help but fear being a disappointment.

If his Master looks at him and says, “No, that is not it,” what is he supposed to do?

“Disciple, oh foolish disciple,” Master Xun says, shaking his head. “You have discovered your pride and use it to feel shame? That will not do. Why are you the way you are now? Think carefully.”

Why is he the way he is now?

Mud lets the question echo inside his consciousness. When he was fighting against the Fleshcrafter... When he was losing against the Fleshcrafter… When he had lost and was at the random mercy of strangers…

He hated it.

He hated it so much that he twisted and bent himself until he became something else. No matter what, he wanted to be something else, even if he broke.

… Living in any other way would have been unacceptable.

What has changed?

Mud’s eyes clear. He straightens his back and meets his master’s stare through the smoke. The turbulence in his Qi fades away. A sliver of fear remains, but that will not stop him.

“Master, this disciple could not stand to remain as he was any longer, so he has broken himself to become something else,” Mud says. “You said one day something may grow from me, master. The form you see before you is what has grown from me.”

“Good.” Master Xun nods. “That’s how it should be. A man who is sure of his ways should make no apology for them. You are no longer a child who needs my approval or my teachings. You have outgrown them, and you have outgrown me.”

“Nevertheless, master,” Mud says. “I ask if I have it.”

“You ask? You still need to ask?” Master Xun shakes his head. “Disciple, you have surpassed my expectations. I could not possibly be happier for you. You have outgrown your mediocrity and stepped into your own path. You are Mud no longer.”

There is suddenly too much smoke in the room. There is so much it is making his eyes sting.

Surely, that is what is happening right now.

“Mud no longer,” he echoes slowly. Can such a thing be real? It is true that the label has been feeling less true lately, but then… “What am I, master?”

“Is it not obvious? You are a flower rising from Mud.”

The answer comes to him right away.

Lotus.

It feels right.

~~~