The Year ‘35, 4th Month, 17th Day
– Fei Cui, Jae-dyn
Wong’s Laundry, The Red District
6:55 PM
*Five Years Later*
“You, I— to the fields we sow.” Sunren sang, voice warbling. The man’s fingertips tapped at Kizuna’s forehead to the marching rhythm of his old folk song. He sang them to pass the time as he parted through the physical veil and led the stubborn xi through Kizuna’s body. “Thousand days, we count.”
Supine, Kizuna laid, naked and back arching as though he were a tiger unfurling for an attack within the ten-by-ten feet wide box of crosshatched aluminum.
“Thousand days we drink, hoho.”
He had lost his tongue an hour ago, spit and gold ichor gurgling down his chin in fat dollops. There was a thin piece of stained fabric caught between his teeth, tied to the back of his head. A simple gag.
He coughed, a sad little gurgle of noise amidst the endless rattle and churn of the laundry machines. The stench of lye and castile hung from the cylindrical drying sieves, standing as though they were tin soldiers across the concrete and mortar walls, whirring with xi to keep themselves spinning.
The grand symphony of titters and bumps and their sharp, stinging assault on the senses coalesced wonderfully. None could catch the lingering stench of blood and gore Kizuna was spewing, nor the pained screams that forced themselves out of his throat.
“Thousand days, we…” Sunren trailed off as he fell back to the second stanza. He smiled down at Kizuna, all too kindly for the remnants of the boy slathered across his butcher’s apron. “It’s our thousandth day tonight, Kizuna.”
Four of Kizuna’s toes had already been broken at the joints, little bits of knuckle-bone jutting from the torn flesh. Sunren whirled closer again, brandishing his knife. “You’ll tell me later that you didn’t know— but I bet you’ve been counting.”
"A thousand days since the Triads started siphoning your xi..." Sunren whispered. Kizuna hated the man's phrasing. 'Siphoning his xi' meant only one thing— the boy's own death, every sundown. All because Kizuna had met that man. Kizuna would never forget that wretched bastard's name:
Shen.
He used to whisper it in vain, years ago. Kizuna had wished and prayed that these meetings with Sunren would go horribly wrong. So that Kizuna may die, at last at peace. But those wishes faded long ago. Now, he merely attended and met with Sunren with the graceless care of a machine. Either way, he was terribly afraid of death.
After all, he had survived Long Shore's civil war. Had seen the way children starved in the streets. Flies buzzing atop the wrangled bodies of women. Men with limbs chopped or bludgeoned. Seeing their bodies, lifeless and limp... it was a horror that Kizuna still carried with him to this day.
He would not die. Could not allow the maggots to writhe into his body. Just the thought of it made him want to cower and hide.
All these years of pain and torture, and yet he was still a coward toward the imagery of death. What a fool he was.
"Time flies... huh?" The crows feet lining Sunren's milky, opalescent eyes folded with a hint of pity as he peeled away at the woven cotton bandages that were wrapped tight around Kizuna’s torso.
The wounds had doubled, tripled— perhaps more, ever since that night the Red District Massacre had occured.
“We ought to drink for a thousand days as well, to make up for it,” Sunren laughed at his own quip. “Well, if you weren’t so young.”
A stroke, and the knife’s tip dragged down his sternum— making Kizuna thrash so violently, the cage rattled. Above them, the cage’s ceiling of linked bars screeched, solid aluminum grinding like teeth at the joined rivets.
Sunren took care not to flick his knife towards any of the freshly pressed clothes, sheets, and table linens; stocked high upon the westward shelves and labeled for collection with their little brass tacks.
The process of siphoning xi using this mangled curse of a body was a simple one. One that Sunren had perfected, a few years after Duri's death. He was the new doctor that Master Banzai had given Kizuna only a few months after the Massacre.
Sunren was meant to be Duri's replacement, as if the latter had not even existed at all.
There were only two steps, to siphon Kizuna's xi:
The first—
Deliver pain until Kizuna was on the brink of death. And now, it was nearly done.
It was as though he was swallowing ice, so cold and numbing that it began to sting and ache.
The frigid burn settled deep in his gullet, above the navel— his Core.
And it surged, painfully, through the stream of his arms. To his hands, down towards his feet, until it met the crown of his head; where it traveled downwards once again. Running and spreading and spinning; like the soiled clothes in their buzzing washing machines.
“Ah, ah, ah. Only five more catty.” Sunren tutted, splaying a hand atop Kizuna’s forehead, his own palm tinging pink from the cold erupting from the boy’s body. “You’re almost through.”
Kizuna screamed, keening and high when his hands snapped open, wrists presenting themselves upwards— where bright, undulating gold knots slithered from the jut of skin between his palm and forearm.
This was the second step.
Forged of xi, the knots’ cords were spun with utmost intricacy. Each lustrous, spectral strip of gold perfectly matted down. Twisted and braided so tight and sleek; no fibre, neither synthetic nor natural could compare.
They looped, curled, and wove atop one another. There were flat knots layered upon tassel gnarls. Creeper, cassion, and wan plaits strung through one another. Extravagant, fat loops of round brocade and auspicious knots hung from the cord, like kudzu leaves sprouting from vines.
“Alright, that’s enough,” Sunren said evenly, breathing to channel his raw power. Kizuna could not see the man's Cultivational aura. Not for any weakness on Sunren’s part, but more so his methods. Sunren had told him, once; that his abilities had been forged strictly to allow Kizuna to live.
That they were, in Sunren’s words— as dependent on one another as a knot was to its rope.
The man kept his hands on Kizuna’s trembling body, fingers slowly tittering through the air as he kept the xi within the boy’s body in motion. To keep him from bleeding out and passing to the heavenly realms, lullabied with regional ballads from his homeland.
A sudden heat carted through the cords, and every breath Kizuna took stretched them outwards.
He was always so cold, when they did this.
So, he chased after that brief warmth like a moth to a flame.
The tethers tangled along the cage’s bars, knots grabbing hold and slithering upwards as though they were snakes. And along the floor they spread, hair-like; matted and coiling atop one another in such a manner that looked quite nauseating. They would sap at the natural xi in the atmosphere, hungry for it.
Kizuna was the vehicle for this xi. It needed his body for the Triads to collect it.
“Kizuna,” Sunren’s voice hardened. He seemed so far away now. “That’s enough.”
It scorched Kizuna’s face, body, legs. His eyes, too— his left iris smoldering into a fantastic gold.
The mark of his Beast, rousing awake.
The cage whimpered a sad creak, the shafts holding its sides bending at the middle, the grid roof threatening to graze at Sunren’s scalp as the ropes grew far too weighty.
“Kizuna,” Sunren repeated.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Kizuna spared him a teary sweep of his eyes. He closed them with an exhausted sigh.
His soul, clasped tight in the confines of his Core, worked without rest. For any other, even seasoned Cultivators, came times of respite. When the chore of siphoning xi from the atmosphere would sap their lungs of air or leave their bones aching.
Kizuna knew not of such affairs. His Core was a hissing piston pushed to the extreme. A motorcar with the brakes ripped from its upholstered interior, jetting down the side of a hill. All it knew to do, all it could afford— was to persist and charge as it ripped itself apart.
Kizuna watched with slowing breath as the cords binding his wrists ripped and unraveled, glistening as if they were fine chains strung with jewels.
His knots were shredded into strips, fluttering weightlessly as his Core snapped into a million shards, all of the xi stored within crashing outwards and back into the atmosphere in fragments of citrine-syrup glass.
He had arrived at the cusp of his own death.
Sunren sifted his fingers through the air, sensing through touch alone. His hands carded and rode the still air, the touch of his palms to the flecks of xi as light as a water-strider upon a pool.
He gathered the golden wisps into his arms, the xi softening as it met him. It was like they were nothing more than smoke, lingering by his elbows.
Sunren pulled them to his chest, leading them gently past the cage’s bars, to the glamoured jars that sat neatly in a row before him.
The xi seeped into the glass like fresh honey, resting lightly against the bottom. It tinted black after a few moments. Kizuna did not know why the xi that passed through his body would do so.
Regardless, it would not be long until the xi he channeled was to be distilled down into cinnabar and matted into vats of red rouge.
“Go ahead, child.” Sunren smiled at him, relieved. “Let it be.”
The assurance was all Kizuna had needed.
His pulse fluctuated, whispering weakly through his venules and capillaries. He shuddered, mangled body a mess of lacerated skin, bones, and gold.
Sunren’s words rippled across every sector of his body. To the little inlet psyches of his mind, to the hindering stutter of his lungs, the slowing of his heart—
Without much ado, Kizuna let himself die.
He snapped.
Kizuna saw white. Not the flash and bang of it, but the eggshell shadow of printing paper before it was sent to the fultograph. It was commonplace, now. Dying was only as much of a marvel as it was because it only ever happened once.
But not to Kizuna, never to him.
As always, the white cleared away. He saw images the same way one would in their dreams. Braced at the edges of reality, everything painted with the harsh blur of watered eyes. No cool taste of air, but his hair was adrift. No ground beneath his feet, but his body was weighted down.
”Hello again,” Kizuna said, smiling.
Another constant— the grin. Small and tight, and it never reached his eyes.
The Beast did not face him, upon his greeting.
It stood a little ways off from him, lounging in the air between them. The creature’s mane was a striking turquoise, floating like overgrown algae atop a pond. Framed its antlers, golden scaled flesh, and long snout; daggered teeth hanging from its jowls.
Kizuna looked up at it, past its colossal maw, which could surely swallow him whole should the creature ever wish to do so. There was a cross-shaped scar across its face.
Its eyes were clipped close, dead to the world around it. Or perhaps, as Kizuna always imagined— asleep.
“It’s our one thousandth, today,” Kizuna informed it. It deserved to know, he decided. Even if it was lost in the throes of sleep or existed as nothing more than a frozen corpse. “Thank you for your hard work.”
He bowed, so deeply his forehead met the Beast’s nose. Somehow, he had expected it to be moist, like a ragged dog’s. But it was as dry and coarse as sand. “I can hardly believe that it’s been five years.”
Throat suddenly growing tight, Kizuna swallowed. His hands rose and he grasped at the Beast’s jaw, so tight his knuckles swelled white.
“C-Could—” he stammered. A damn fool, himself— so feeble he could hardly speak. He pressed his eyes closed so tight, his head spun. “Could this be it?”
The Beast did not rouse, did not stir.
“Could this be the last time?” Kizuna tried again. He swayed on his feet, balancing on his heels as he pulled the creature’s head back and forth with him. Perhaps if he did so, it would drive some sense into the damn thing. “Could you please… please leave me be?”
Its body was as firm as stone, chiseled like a statue.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Kizuna ground out, cheeks growing hot. “None of it! Please, just wake up and answer me.”
Strength sapped, he fell to his knees. The Beast’s massive mandible followed from where he was still clutching it.
Kizuna stared at the irreal, perfect white of the floor as his tears speckled to the ground. He grit his teeth and shouted, “If you’re dead, why don’t you just leave me be!”
But his words fell upon deaf ears; as the white space around him seemed to spin and warp, his body growing heavier with the weight of its physicality—
And Kizuna felt the cage’s unforgiving chill below his back. The thrumming clangor of the steam laundries. The tart, chemical stench of soap assaulting him.
There was no pain, no more broken bones, no stinging chill in his veins. Gold still trickled from his fresh wounds, as they would for infinitude.
The Beast granted him nothing, and Kizuna had returned.
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First and foremost, Kizuna gazed at the crumbling grill-work of the cage’s ceiling.
Corrosion had eaten away at them, the faint almond flakes spreading from the top to the sidebars. Then further downwards to the ravaged, derelict mass of scraped debris beneath Kizuna.
The chunks ached where they pressed into his bare back, and he grunted as he rose to sit on his strewn legs.
“...I thought we told them to swap this out,” Kizuna called, throat tender and swollen.
His tongue had restored itself, no longer malformed and battered as it once had been. Still, the taste of metal remained in the roof of his mouth, and he licked across his teeth to gather as much of the tang; before turning his head sharply to the side and spitting on the floor.
“They were supposed to. Stainless steel, I said.” Sunren shook his head, back facing the boy as he wrestled with the metal tap attached to the wall. His hip was canted to the side to accommodate the large wooden tub beside him, a thin blanket draped over the rim.
With a dying groan, the tap at last gave way, and a rush of boiling water surged into the tub, filling with haste. Sunren sighed, running a hand through his long crow-black hair as fresh steam wafted into his face. “Master must have forgotten. I’d need to remind him on Fire’s Day.”
The man then took his cane, which had been resting against the wall, and tapped across the floor until he found the crate of xi he had collected. His blank eyes stared ahead.
Kizuna offered a noncommittal hum, lifting himself from the wreckage with jostling knees. Blood trickled down to his feet. The trousers he had donned that morning’s dawn sopped up the mess about as well as bread in a bowl of milk.
He made his way to the tub and said evenly, “Tell the Master I won’t be coming in tomorrow and this Sun’s Day.”
His voice echoed hauntingly across the room. Sunren had once told him that he spoke like the chittering of cicadas in a distant forest. Barely there, and yet assaulting to the ears.
A gentle splash echoed from the tub as Kizuna dropped one leg into the scalding water; which seemed to all too easily catch Sunren’s ear.
The man, diligently tapping his finger to the glass bottles to listen to the weight they held— straightened. “You’re only allowed one day-off for the week.”
“I know,” Kizuna droned as he allowed the nearly-boiling water to engulf his sore body, the remaining bits of viscera and gore finally dissipating from his skin.
To any other, the water would have made their skin break out into patches of red, flesh and fat simmered to perfection. For Kizuna, it was a comfort after the chill he had experienced earlier.
The water colored gold in a matter of seconds.
“Master will demand a reason for your absence,” Sunren carried on speaking, his brow creased. He moved to the next crate, sat full and teeming. It was stocked to the brim with little ceramic and jade pots, no wider than the span of Kizuna’s forefinger, and no taller than his thumb.
With a click, Sunren lifted the flattened lid open, and gazed at the vibrant smattering of crimson within. Rouge, newly pressed and infused with xi-distilled cinnabar. He gave it an appraising sniff before placing it back in the crate.
“I know,” Kizuna repeated offhandedly. His bored eyes watched the man. “But… I have personal matters to attend to. I have work on Earth’s Day. And you know how it is during this time of year.”
Sunren turned to face him, even when the man’s own sight provided no further ease of conscience. “Is that why you collected more than ten catty today?”
Kizuna knew he had no reason to be ashamed of what he had done. It had not gone against any of the rules the Triads nor Master Banzai had set for him.
They could not punish him. And if they tried, he would watch them with unblinking and eerie eyes; until they feared a curse to be put upon them.
Kizuna so enjoyed watching them squirm under his scrutiny.
“As your Collector, you were foolish to think I would not notice.” Sunren added, as acidic as he could muster. He was the only man impervious to Kizuna’s ministrations. “I had to carter twice as much xi through your body just to keep your heart from giving out.”
”That includes my quota for tomorrow,” Kizuna replied, finally rising from the tub alongside a rush of water. He tugged at the blanket lounging by the rim, and wrapped it around his shoulders. “Master should have no reason to complain.”
“I’ve told you not to over-exert yourself. It’s dangerous,” Sunren said, grasping at his cane once more at the sound of Kizuna rubbing his hair dry. He stepped toward the shelves at the room’s far-side, rummaging through the folded piles of clothes and their respective tags.
Sunren ran the pads of his fingers over the thin bronze label, across the engraved letters, and hummed a small exhale of satisfaction upon finding Kizuna’s name.
“I hardly do so, sir,” Kizuna rolled his shoulders, padding closer to the man to gratefully accept the clothes that Sunren passed to him. They smelled of nothing, freshly washed. One of the few blessings of this damnable place. “It was just this once.”
“Keep pushing yourself to the brink like that and you might stay dead.” Sunren picked up the bundle of gauze left atop Kizuna’s ratty blouse shirt. “We still don’t know about how your abilities truly work. And if—”
“I am aware that my permanent death would mean that the Beast's Blessing dies with me, sir.” Kizuna’s lip curled upwards stiffly. A bad habit of his, really. He smiled when he was afraid.
“But it’s not like I can just remove the Eye from my body.” Kizuna continued to say. “Both I and the Blessing will be destroyed if we ever did so— and that Enforcer already tried his best to do that, anyway.”
That little remark had slipped past his lips easily, but simply recalling it made Kizuna want to vomit. The memory was still too fresh, too painful.
Sunren went quiet, simply staring ahead as Kizuna stepped closer and unfurled a long strip of gauze from the bundle. Looped the thin pieces around his arms. Until they obscured the golden cuts from view, shrouding their honeyed glow on his skin. The water, at least, managed to stifle the bleeding for now.
He even spared a few strips for his face, wrapping the linen tightly across the expanse of his hair, forehead, and left eye— still glistening. At the expense of having to lie and state that his body had become mangled after Long Shore’s civil war; it at least meant that nobody would know of his work’s true nature.
“Be that as it may,” Sunren said, after a long while. “We are bound by the same favor, child. And I hate to see you like this.”
Kizuna couldn’t help but sigh as he buttoned up his shirt and snapped his black frockcoat’s fastenings into place. “Place your platitudes elsewhere, sir. I do not know fear.”
This was a lie. But Kizuna was quite adept at hiding.
Because it was fear that brought him this Blessing. It was fear that brought him to the hand of Shen.
And while Kizuna may be a fool, he didn't repeat the same mistakes.
Sunren didn’t bother to reply as he made his way up the steel staircase leading to the steam laundry’s reception.
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Bonus:
The Laws of Cultivation
r/worldbuilding - The Asian-inspired, cultivational magic system chart for my book series (finished!) [https://preview.redd.it/the-asian-inspired-cultivational-magic-system-chart-for-my-v0-u0dziekpswcc1.png?auto=webp&s=d88d60fad54c6667c0273dc9ac57a8bf34df3e9f]