The moon was bright and full as it hung from the sky, as though the rain from last night had cleaned away some filth that had smudged the heavens. The air was cool and smelled like fresh water. Sitting on the roof, the lone figure watched as the streets quieted down, waiting. Lanterns were extinguished, candles snuffed. One by one the windows of buildings went completely dark.

The town was peaceful, and its inhabitants were kind. In all her time there she had not seen a thief nor a beggar.

“May I join you?”

She looked over her shoulder, “Lin I don’t need anything today. I ate yesterday.” She then made a exaggerated casual show of fixing her hair bun, as though Lin was not there at all. She had been expecting him however and even wore nicer than usual clothes, a small pouch of white and pink fabric sitting in her lap.

“It’s good to have something stored,” he said, climbing up the rest of the stairs while holding a wooden box that smelled faintly of decay and herbs. He sat down next to her and set the box down on his other side. “It would be bad if you had nothing to eat.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” She asked, “dear Doctor Lin Shizhen, have you ever considered the reason why so many people avoid being treated by you is because you have a habit of talking to them like they’re idiots?”

“I didn’t mean any offense, Sister Hua Qingzhao,” he said apologetically.

“Of course you didn’t,” she snorted.

“I heard Lang Lang brought the little girl to you,” Lin’s abrupt change of the conversation was almost staggering in its directness. “What did you think of her?”

She blinked, “I think she’s a foreigner.”

Lin looked unimpressed, “did you sense anything strange about her?”

“Hm,” she crossed her arms. The little girl had been nervous and flinched from her at first, in fact she resembled a feral puppy in some way. No wonder Lang Lang liked her so much. “Anything strange? Well,” she closed her eyes. “She was… rather stagnant. I thought she was a ghost at first, but she didn’t have any of the other markers.”

“So you felt it as well, Lang Lang treats her as a normal child.”

“Of course he does, it’s Lang Lang,” she sighed. “Why are you so concerned about this, Lin?”

“Because I haven’t seen anything like this,” he answered. “She doesn’t know enough words to explain where she’s from.”

“What do you mean?” She tipped her head to the side, “she talks a lot. Some of it is garbled but I could understand her fairly well… oooh, I know. You took no time to learn much about her and went straight to a desire to dissect her!” She raised up her sleeve to hide her grin behind her. “You probably scared her half to death with that sour face.”

“I don’t know why you would say such things.”

“Because I’m right,” she said. “I have a good sense of people.”

“Like with that official?” Lin’s voice was flat but the barb was sharp.

Stolen novel; please report.

Hua Qingzhao’s hand rested on her chest, there were twenty seven different holes all over it, hidden beneath the pretty clothes. “Oh, that’s painful. Why did you need to bring that up?” She mumbled. “I don’t bring up your old home, so you shouldn’t bring up my death. Besides, it’s not like that official had a happy ending either.”

“You certainly wrote an unpleasant one for him.”

“Did you really just come here to be rude to me and ask me about a little girl?”

Lin was quiet for a long time, gazing out into the dark streets. Far from the buildings were bountiful fields, and then beyond that was a thick dark treeline. “Do you ever feel constrained by this place?”

Now it was her turn to be quiet. When she was young, she enjoyed being something of a debutante in the capital city of the Eastern Kingdom. She had in fact never left the city, she had been sold to a high class brothel that exclusively served government officials. In a way, she found some similarities between her old home and Lang Lang’s town. Everything was taken care of, but almost nobody could leave. “This existence is fine, I’ve never been one for travel,” she admitted. “Besides, if I left this town I would likely be hunted down and purified. I’m not nearly as strong as Lang Lang. What about you? I know you can leave here through the river, but you are never gone for long.”

“Like you, I’m not very keen on being hunted down,” Lin answered. His smile was just a shadow on his face in the moonlight. “I have nothing outside of here. Both my homes are gone. Even if I swam all the back to where I was born first, there’d be no one waiting for me. Better to stay here where I can be useful than to give in to the same melancholy.”

“So we’re both here because we have nowhere else to go, I think you would have already known that.” She reached upwards to the moon, as though it were a ball she could hold in her hands. It was shining so brightly she thought it resembled a cloudy reflection of the sun. “There’s no shame in being here though. We both have our duties, and we have a good lord. The people are gentle. We live in a place that even the emperors of the Ancient Dynasties would be envious of.”

“That’s a good way of thinking about it,” Lin agreed. “Do you think Lang Lang has a mandate of heaven?”

“Would they give it to a dog?” Hua laughed. A thought then came to her, “ah. Speaking of Lang Lang. An immortal of some sort had come to start trouble. I sensed him poking around the boundaries of the maze curse.”

“When?” Lin looked surprised. “I don’t remember Lang Lang raising any concerns.”

“It was yesterday, while it was raining. So he must have been informed about Lang Lang’s abilities, or maybe very lucky,” she explained.

“An immortal? Are you sure?”

“I know he was an immortal because I could taste it in his marrow,” Hua said while idly scratching at a small loose thread in her sleeve. “Lang Lang might be known for eating hundreds of immortals, but I’ve eaten the guts and bones of quite a few myself… mostly because he gives them to me.” She reached over with one slightly-too-long arm to poke a slightly-too-long nailed finger at the box. “Which is why I said I didn’t really need this… although the thought is appreciated.”

“I do take the health of people into consideration all the time, it was not much of a thought.”

“Learn to take a compliment or I’ll fry you up and serve you to the neighbor’s kids,” she teased. “Where was I? Ah yes! The immortal!” She clapped her hands together. “As I was eating his kidneys, I kept getting something stuck in my teeth and there were little hard bits. I took them out and discovered they were little seeds and some roots. I kept them for you to examine.” She picked up the small pouch from her lap and handed it to Lin.

Lin held it carefully in his hand, weighing it before he put it away. “I’ll look at these later. Until then, would you like something to drink?”

“You have the order wrong, I’m supposed to be asking you that,” she got to her feet. It was rarely just a drink. “This is my roof after all that you’ve invited yourself on.”

“I can help you.”

“Don’t bother, I don’t trust you in my kitchen,” she placed her hands on her hips, looming over the still sitting man. “You are really annoying sometimes Lin.”

Lin did not answer, staring up at the moon. “I need to entertain myself somehow.”

She shrugged in response, going down the stairs into the cold house below, waiting for the familiar sound of him following her.