I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved to see the girls back to full strength and health. And I rarely bother lying, it’s usually not worth the effort.
Which is why I could only laugh over Kaoru’s suffering as the girls intentionally tormented her continued convalescence.
She’d finally gotten back to the regular calisthenics level, but her muscles were still all but gone. Still, the shadows from the massacre were finally fading, so I trusted she’d learned her lesson from the recent near-death experiences and would be more careful with her health.
And I’d be watching the kids more closely. I couldn’t ethically prevent conception, but I’d know if one of my own was taking a furtive turn down a back-alley or heading up to the inn’s “special” rooms for a little bit of fun. I didn’t discourage it, provided both sides were consenting, but I made it pretty clear that we would not be having a repeat of what nearly happened with Song.
Chang nodded, and the rest mostly shrugged it off. Well, I couldn’t force the issue if I wanted things to actually work out. So I’d just have to be more careful with myself and try to lead a better example in my own practices.
Annoying, but I knew the only thing keeping me from Kaoru’s position had been a difference in general affinity. I’m strong, but not invincible.
Xiang had started cultivating potted trees, which I was grateful for. She’d always loved those two she’d had to kill, and they’d been handy power sinks for emergencies in the past. The ones she was raising would take decades to be even modestly useful for the same, but she was also teaching the art to others, bringing back what had previously been lost during the Tortoise King’s reign.
The apothecary was a mess, when I got back to it. All my prepared medicines had to be made fresh, and the herbs and plants re-planted. Thankfully, though Song and Chen weren’t the only teens to end up pregnant around that time, they were the only two who’d also been carrying multiples. So none of my current patients were anywhere near as high-risk.
We had quite the little population bump that spring and summer. I could only hope they’d grow up to appreciate what their parents fought to give them, but I rather doubted they would. Humans are quick to forget the lessons of their history, from my experience and studies.
Still, I wasn’t going to borrow worries when I had enough to deal with now. Things hit a lull around autumn, and our first crop came in since the Vermilion Queen had perished. Meager yet, but the towns and cities were mostly rebuilt, and the armies were holding within easy reach of the border as we trained yet more soldiers and built defenses.
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Having checked on the Dragon King, he was mostly doing the same. Didn’t even bother with the Tiger King, I knew what he was doing. The southern lands were little more than a vast plain of salt now, devoid of all qi for miles. He’d drain his land and people dry, then bide his time until the next war, where he’d strike against the winner in his bid to devour the land.
Such a useless glutton. I could only imagine what he was like before becoming the Tiger King.
The others, interestingly, I had records on. Even accurate ones written by contemporaries who neither worshiped nor hated them. The Tortoise King had actually been quite the looker in his prime, before centuries of hedonism and sloth had turned him into my beach ball. He’d been one of the proponents of isolation while cultivating, encouraging the idea of closing off cultivators from the world altogether. Hence why the borders had always been closed. His fighting style had been one of unbreakable defense and unstoppable offense, taking hundreds of blows before snapping out quickly and powerfully to decisively end a fight. This, combined with his tendency to kill his opponents even when it wasn’t needed, was what earned him the title of “The Heavenly Black Tortoise King of the North.”
His birth name, like the others, was lost to time.
The Vermilion Queen, or “The Heavenly Vermilion Firebird Queen of the West,” had been a beautiful, if vain, young woman with a talent for fire endurance. She hadn’t been known for her combat ability so much as her political acumen, and her rather notorious habit of “never sleeping alone, nor with the same partner twice.” It was also noted that many of the more influential partners she’d had died under mysterious circumstances while she’d been confirmed pregnant with their heirs. And often those heirs were heirs because anyone else between that child and the throne or title had similarly died.
She’d taken the whole of the western lands through such methods, only fighting directly when she’d reached Elder rank and could throw around flames the way she had with Kaoru. Utterly wasteful.
“The Heavenly Azure Dragon King of the East” was perhaps the most notable. Born in a poor fishing village where his citadel now stood, he’d watched his whole family starve and ended up on the streets in a small city by age twelve. He’d stumbled across cultivation accidentally, and never received formal training, but learned to fight with all the ferocity of a storm, and raised his whole society in the same manner, believing that those who suffered or died were simply weak, and therefore didn’t deserve to live.
“A whole society of beasts and monsters who’ll do anything to kill you and take what you hold dear. I can’t imagine how such a culture can hold itself upright with such a rotten foundation.”
Li held me close, kissing as we relaxed together in bed. We didn’t need sleep, and were holding off on mating, but the physical closeness and warmth were nice regardless.
“And won’t it be satisfying, when we make it collapse and replace it with a society that actually works?”
I nodded, and drifted off into sleep anyway. I could dream of days long after, when Li and I could retire and let all of this go.
When I could just go back to being a slightly-less-than-ordinary rabbit.