The small child, no older than six began to tremble, tears welling up in his eyes.
“Waaaah!” Being Meilu’s brother cried, his shoulders shaking and snot dripping from his nose.
Bing Meilu, faced with a sobbing child for the first time in what could very well be eons, stood stock still, unable to decipher the proper approach to console the crying adolescent.
“What’s going on in there?” came an irritated voice, a voice that could only be Bing Meilu’s mother.
The older woman entered into the room Bing Meilu and her brother occupied, staring at the little girl sternly.
“Meilu! Don’t tell me you made your brother cry again?” the woman asked.
Bing Meilu looked up at her mother, staring nostalgically. Soft wrinkles adorned Bing Wuying’s face, her skin tanned dark from her life labouring in the boiling sun of the Bird Talon Continent. In her hands lay a large wicker basket, formed of some strange, coiling green.
Bing Meilu’s shoulders began to tremble slightly, as she looked around.
Logically, she knew she had gone back to the beginning, but it had not yet registered with her emotionally. Bing Meilu looked around at the small bedroom she shared with her only sibling. Her small, dirt brown bed greeted her, atop which lay a small handwoven dove-doll that had accompanied Bing Meilu for much of her childhood.
Harsh sunlight streamed into the room through many cracks and breaches in the construction of her home, the shoddy and subpar quality all too common amongst the mortal masses that lived and died in the outback of the continent.
It was home, her old home. A place she had not seen since her own youth, a place she never imagined she would see again. A deep feeling of nostalgia filled Bing Meilu.
“Sorry, mother,” Bing Meilu apologized, voice blank, forcing herself to bow her head respectfully. “I spoke in haste and was insensitive. I accept responsibility for my actions.”
It had been so long since she had been forced to bow her head to a living being that she had almost forgotten how to do it. It was not an enjoyable feeling, bowing one’s head, and Bing Meilu resolved to recover her cultivation as quickly as possible in order to avert having to bear it once more.
How embarrassing would it be for her to be forced to kowtow in obeisance to people who had once been so below her that she could eradicate them with but a half muttered word?
“Oh, my little Meilu,” Bing Wuying sighed. “Only nine and already speaking like a frozen tuna fish. How will I get you married at this point?”
Bing Meilu’s eyebrow began to twitch uncontrollably as her mother began to lament her efforts in marrying off Bing Meilu.
‘So I’m nine,’ the cultivator thought to herself, resolving to ignore her mother’s rant as best she could.
As Bing Wuying began to calm down the crying boy, Bing Meilu began to leaf through the few things she could remember from her time in the Bird Talon Continent.
For the first ten years of her life, Bing Meilu had lived on a farm with her mother and maternal grandparents, her father’s line having died off from plague. Bing Meilu had never been forced to do hard labour or work on the farm instead, being sheltered and kept from the sun. It was a bid to preserve her good looks and pale skin to attract a nice husband, perhaps a wealthy merchant or local official.
In the end, Bing Meilu’s rapidly growing beauty had been noticed by a local lord and she was hired as a servant in the Jiang Manor. For the next four years, she had lived as a maid, until a fateful night right before her fourteenth birthday.
A passing cultivator from the Moon Crying Swan Palace, a branch of the Twelve Headed Bird Sect had noticed that Bing Meilu’s body possessed an unusually large amount of Yin energy, making her perfectly suited to cultivate the secret arts of their sect. Thus had begun Bing Meilu’s journey of cultivation, and the last time she had ever seen her mortal family.
“I can’t wait that long,” Bing Meilu muttered, remembering the four long years she had spent in service of the Jiang Family.
Indeed, she was sure her sanity would not last four years of work, serving mortals as if they were somehow her betters, nor did she wish to start her cultivation so late.
Normally, the earliest a Mortal could begin to cultivate was the age of twelve, but with the proper expertise, expertise that Bing Meilu had more than enough of, one could commence far earlier.
Only one obstacle stopped the woman from awakening her cultivation immediately.
‘Resources.’
To being the process of cultivation, of elevating one’s being and divesting the self from the restriction of the world, would require the help of a senior, or in lieu of that, resources. Rare herbs and ores, the blood of Demon-Beasts and other such elixirs. With her near-infinite knowledge, she could easily substitute such rare substances with normal, mortal materials, at the cost of weakening their effectiveness, but the same problem still faced her.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
As a nine-year-old from a peasant family, Bing Meilu could not gather even the most mundane artifacts, her wealth non-existent. For a moment, Bing Meilu considered attempting to gather money, perhaps sing her musical talents or her knowledge of the other fine arts.
“It is better to wait,” Bing Meilu decided, discounting the idea.
It was not worth weakening her future cultivation by being overzealous in her haste. Bing Meilu could endure until she reached a suitable age of twelve, and she could seek out her old Sect by her own accord, without having to subject herself to the indignity of lowering her head to mortals.
To show recognition to one’s own mother was not unusual, but Bing Meilu’s pride would not allow her to bow her head to any petty nobles simply because they believed that land or wealth placed them above her in status.
“And I will train,” Bing Meilu pronounced.
While she could not yet begin the process of cultivation nothing stood in the way of her training her body and mind. Even to a cultivator, prowess in the martial way was still imperative to one’s success.
Bing Meilu’s small, underdeveloped body was too juvenile to pursue any strenuous programmes, but there was still much she could do to develop her flexibility, agility and dexterity.
-----
Months later, Bing Meilu was seated under the shade of a tree in meditation. Even under the cover of the plant, the ever-present heat that defined the Bird Talon Continent still irked her, casing beads of perspiration to blossom on her skin.
Even in a place as far to the north as Jiang City, the heat was still far beyond what was comfortable to Bing Meilu. However, this did not impede her meditation, rather it enhanced it. The harder it was to reach that state of pure emptiness, where one’s soul began to faintly touch upon the attainment of nirvana, and the world ceased in one’s perception, the more beneficial it was to attain.
So entranced in her meditation was she, that Bing Meilu failed to hear the sound of fighting approach her, nor see the group of boys roughhousing in her vicinity. Bing Meilu was still habitually adapted to a state where her very soul could see all that was, and she had failed to consider how undergoing such deep meditation might cripple her senses.
So Bing Meilu did not awaken, even as the tumbling, brawling boys neared her tree.
It was only when a drop of blood flew onto her skin that the girl's eyes snapped open and she stood up, gazing cooly at the group of boys, who had too failed to sight her.
Bing Meilu looked down, at the drop of blood that had landed on her, staining her skin, then at the group of mortals, still roughhousing before her with impunity.
She hadn’t been disrespected like this in epochs…
Bing Meilu wiped the droplet of blood from her skin, sneering in disgust as she saw the trail of stained crimson that ran across her fingertip. The old, and yet so very young girl stood up, clearing her throat loudly.
The group of boys, five to be exact, still fought in front of her. Had Bing Meilu been more cognizant, less blinded by anger, she might have realized this was not in fact a free-for-all tumble between boys, but a fight where several had grouped up on one.
Several of the boys stopped fighting, turning around to see, unexpectedly that behind them stood a little girl, clothed in a tawdry brown dress. The girl gazed upon them coldly, her eyes looking at them with faint disdain and ambivalence.
“And what exactly?” Bing Meilu drawled, her tone emotionless. “Do you think you’re doing here?”
One of the boys, a brunette dressed in sandy shorts stepped forwards, unconsciously assuming the role of speaker for the group.
“Nothing. We were just playing around-”
“Shut up, wretch,” Bing Meilu interrupted. “I could not be less interested in your petty excuses. Immediately remove yourself from my presence or-”
“Or what?” sneered the boy, anger filling his gaze.
“Or you will Die,” Bing Meilu responded coolly, narrowing her eyes.
The boy froze in place, not from ice nor temperature but with fear, a paralyzing primal fear that lay within the depths of all men when faced with a great predator. The boy’s legs trembled as if he were standing before the maw of a great lion, with razor teeth and crimson eyes, and not a pale-skinned little girl who looked like she had never worked a day in her life.
For Bing Meilu, was old, so very ancient. She had killed so much that oceans was not enough to describe the amount of blood on her hands, she had witnessed the births of stars and watched as galaxies were rendered into ash and ground into dust, and with that age came prestige, an unconscious aura that surrounded her.
Perhaps it was in the way she carried herself, or the sheer confidence in her tone, but to any who watched, what stood in her pace was indeed not a little girl but an apex predator.
Bing Meilu closed her eyes, and within moments, of the boys, four of them began to run away, too scared to even bother screaming. Only one remained, a thin, almost sickly looking boy who lay on the ground, bruises and lacerations covering his face and arms.
“T-Thank you,” the boy said. “You saved me.”
Truth be told, Bing Meliu had not even noticed the stick-thin boy, too concerned with the fact that a group of mortals had stained her august self with dirt, but if her actions had aided someone, Bing Meilu did not mind.
Bing Meilu turned away from the boy, sitting back down in meditation, completely disregarding him.
“My name is Zhang Yi,” the boy introduced. “What’s yours?”
Bing Meilu attempted to ignore the mortal, but from the sound of his breathing, she could tell he was not leaving. Eventually, an irritated Bing Meilu stared back at Zhang Yi
“I am called Bing Meilu,” she responded. “Now, I am attempting to meditate, so please leave.”
For some strange reason, the mortal did not obey her order, instead electing to gaze at her strangely, with an almost infatuated look.
“... Why did you save me?” Zhang Yi eventually asked, staring at her intensely.
“I didn’t,” Bing Meilu said. “I was merely attempting to send them away so I could resume meditation.”
“...Oh,” the boy eventually said, looking down at his feet.
Bing Meilu closed her eyes, attempting to once more mediate. Yet, the boy still remained. Eventually, Bing Meilu opened one eye to see the boy still gazing at her.
“... Why are you still here?” she asked.
“If I stay near you, they’ll leave me alone,” Zhang Yi reasoned. “Since you scared them off.”
“Do they give you trouble often?” Bing Meilu asked, watching the boy nod. “Then, how does a bargain sound? I will teach you how to deal with them, and in return, you leave and let me meditate.”
After a moment of silence, Zhang Yi agreed.
Had Bing Meilu retained her cultivation, she might have noticed the dusky copper coin hanging from a necklace on Zhang Yi’s throat.
She would have perhaps realized that the seemingly unimportant mortal boy before her was enshrouded in a great destiny, a destiny that she had just been entangled in, the threads of karma wrapping around her even as she spoke to him.
---
And so Bing Meilu has become the ‘childhood friend’ trope character to her first protagonist! What will happen next? Find out next time!