He could not help but laugh, covering his face again and giggling even more as Ji Ying's serious face turned into one of petulant frustration. "Ah, is he now?" He continued giggling. For some reason the explanation seemed both extremely ludicrous and yet very sensible. That he had been traveling around with a god, one of the very beings that had cut off his people from gaining new souls and harried them into hidden cities far beneath the waves was such a strange and understandable concept. But he still could not bring himself to believe it just yet. He needed to hear it from Liu Xie's own mouth. So he looked over expectantly at the other man.

Liu Xie however was looking at Ji Ying, "how are you so sure I'm that?" He asked while narrowing his eyes at the young woman. "You can't just go around accusing people of being gods. It makes you look crazy."

Ji Ying held up her hands and stepped back, her boot scattering a few rocks as she looked away into the dark. "Hey I said my piece, I'll go back to staring at that stupid tree."

"I asked a question," Liu Xie said. "Answer it."

Ji Ying gave a long sigh, looking back at the two men. "Lady Gu told me."

"She did?" Liu Xie's eyebrows lifted in surprise and his eyes turned towards Rui Yifu.

"Don't look at me, she did nothing except ruin my mask," Rui Yifu said with a loose shrug, adjusting how he sat so he was a little farther from the dying fire between them. "So, is Miss Ji Ying right? Are you a god?" He smiled faintly, waiting still for the truth he already felt.

Liu Xie was sitting still and his typically apathy filled face had returned. The fire's light were reflected in dull glassy dark eyes. Like a puppet's, Rui Yifu found himself idly thinking to the time he woke up after the destruction of the Free City, when that wooden human-doll had stumbled in. "...Yes," Liu Xie finally said. "That's exactly what I am."

With that admission it felt like there had been some sort of veil pulled from Rui Yifu's eyes. The thing in front of him had never been a human, and was only ever mimicking humanity. It was had been admittedly rather convincing in some ways, but the constant secretiveness was grating. Not that he himself had not been actively keeping secrets. Rui Yifu's faint smile remain fixed on his face, "so the most pathetic of the Four Pillars graces me with his presence. I thought the gods had better ways of getting to places besides walking the entire span of the Four Kingdoms though?" He said it with a sneer yet a flicker of anger filled his chest. Liu Xie was a god the entire time and yet misfortune repeatedly found them, and worse yet had managed to harm Zhu'er. The only reason she had not died was due to Liu Xie's interference, but if he had actually acted like a god all those damnable wounds would not have happened in the first place.

"Don't bare your teeth," Ji Ying said uneasily. "You look like you're about to bite someone's arm off with those teeth."

"Maybe I am," Rui Yifu snapped his rows of teeth in Ji Ying's direction, frightening the young woman enough she nearly stumbled backwards over her own feet and dashed off to the shack.

Liu Xie sighed now, a somewhat raspy sound. "You're right, there are better ways. Ways I can't do at the moment."

"Is it related to whatever's carved into your back?" Rui Yifu asked, remembering his glance at the strange scarring.

The god's eyebrows lifted slightly, "yes...how did you know I had anything on my back?"

"When we were in that abandoned house outside of the Free City and you, like a dramatic fool, came back in as a wooden mannequin... if I had seen your back then, it'd be there too, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."

"What are they?"

"Vows," he said. "Or maybe rules would be better. Things I can't do," Liu Xie's face twisted into an ugly mask of frustrated impotent rage. "And the person who suggested this and carved it into me is the same bitter goddess who has been making flesh puppets and causing chaos! I can't do anything about it because I'm stuck like this!" The fire suddenly roared back to life in pallid colors, Rui Yifu moving backwards in alarm to avoid being caught in its flames. "She had planned this for so long, and we all fell for it."

"It's an unfortunate state of affairs, I agree," Rui Yifu said, "do you still want to follow your original plan?"

Liu Xie put his head in his hands, "yes. At least so long as I can get her into the White Ash Desert she can be safe there. I still need to get beyond the Silent Mountains though."

"Ah, no riding lightning or clouds or any such nonsense?"

"No."

Rui Yifu's head ached, but with questions rather than anything else. Getting to speak to a god was rare enough, but to a god hardly known for anything positive? The unfortunate one whose position had him seen as a god of death? Rui Yifu wanted to pick the leaves off this tree and examine them closely. "Will you tell them this as well?"

"I don't know." The frankness and the creeping despair in Liu Xie's voice sounded quite different from what Rui Yifu was used to. Liu Xie said nothing more after that and the fire abruptly extinguished itself.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Left in the cold and dark, Rui Yifu got up and brushed non-existent dirt from his sleeves and went to the shack, leaving Liu Xie alone beside the ashen logs.

The shack itself was small and cramped. Mold sank into some of the wooden walls, while cobwebs coated in dust occupied dank little corners. The floor was mostly dirt with a few rocks sunken in, with mildew clinging to where the walls met the floor. The smell was one of fresh rain and acrid stink. Yet it seemed like even the spiders had abandoned the place. Zhu'er was sleeping in Bo's lap, wrapped up in enough white cloth that she looked like she was swaddled in snow. Bo himself was sleeping with his head against the wall and his mouth half open, allowing drool to roll downwards. Li Baobao had curled up close by, holding his legs to his chest and his head against his knees. Ji Ying was laying against another side of the shack, facing the wall. Rui Yifu found a mostly dry and better smelling corner of the house to sit down in, making sure the sword he was now in custody of laid on his lap. He closed his eyes and then felt the heat of morning on his back. Grogginess gripped his brain along with confusion. How did morning come so fast?

Bo and Li Baobao were slowly waking themselves up, while Ji Ying was brushing out Zhu'er's hair. Zhu'er looked like she was midway through sulking as the long red hair was parted by a black comb. "You know, you could start brushing your own hair. It'll be a lot better than just letting it get all knotted up like this." Ji Ying lectured the young girl, "then when if someone else brushes it, they won't need to deal with all the knots!"

"It hurts," Zhu'er grumbled.

"I know! That's why I'm saying you should brush it."

Rui Yifu rose to his feet, startling the two girls. "I hate to say this, but Ji Ying is right," he said.

Zhu'er eyed him warily, looking him up and down until her eyes settled on his. It was then Rui Yifu realized she might not quite recognize him. He was about to say something but the sound of Liu Xie stepping into the shack broke his train of thought, "oh good. You're all awake," the god said. "We'll start walking soon."

"How far is it?" Bo asked with a mighty yawn that slowly tapered off into poor Li Baobao copying it.

"Not far," Liu Xie replied.

That was not a very helpful response, the idea of what was 'not far' was likely much different to a god but Rui Yifu did not want to say anything that might risk the potential sight of an uncomfortable Liu Xie needing to be honest and explain everything.

It really was not that far at all, Rui Yifu had no incense sticks to count the time but he was able to tell that the length of morning shadows had only shortened a little by the time they reached towering white painted walls that reached towards the sky and an equally towering gate. On the gate was a strange insigina of metal that looked like it had been set into the wood. It vaguely resembled tree roots endlessly curling and looping in on itself. Staring a bit longer one could even make out an aberrant form of a man's torso, with too long arms that disappearing into the coiling mass around it. Despite Liu Xie's implying of the 'house' being very old, it looked brand new. The paint practically glowed and there was not a hint of rust or any other deformation on the metal thing on the door.

"...Whoa!" Bo's shock and excitement were clear. "Where's the rest of the house?"

"It's a wall, stupid, not the actual manor," Ji Ying muttered.

"Just by the walls alone... I think this is bigger than my home town," Li Baobao sounded amazed and yet the melancholic tone of his voice that had been persistent since the burning of the Free City remained. Rui Yifu glanced down to Zhu'er, who was craning her little neck just to try seeing the top of the walls.

Liu Xie approached the gate and held his hand out, pressing it lightly against the doors which moved with shocking silence to reveal sprawling white sand and tall willows the color of bone. A pathway of grey stone was built into the sand that led to a manor that was the same color as the sand, and the walls that surrounded it all. The roof tiles upon the manor caught the early morning sun in strange ways, a radiance of colors that bounced off it depending on how one looked upon it. The fact Liu Xie had continually called it just a 'house' seemed frankly ridiculous. It was a palatial manor that bore not one hint of human involvement in its construction. The windows were covered by near translucent gauzy screens and even from this distance Rui Yifu could make out that some of them had paintings on them as well.

The 'oohs' and 'aahs' of Bo, Li Baobao, and Zhu'er continued until they reached a short set of stairs that brought them before another door, smaller and with the same strangely designed creature as the one on the gates. This door opened upon approach, revealing a grand front hall where warm light drifted past the gauze covered windows to land upon three well dressed looking court officials who all sat together at a large red lacquered table covered in ink stones, paper, brushes, empty plates of food, spilled alcohol, and their own fluttering hands as they wrote upon the paper, giggling and laughing to each other. The walls themselves held grand ink paintings, depicting scenes from history that Rui Yifu could only partially remember. Notably were also the young women who flitted about from man to man, refilling drinks, bringing more paper, setting down more food or taking away plates.

The three men were so busy with their poetry they did not even notice the new group that had arrived until Liu Xie spoke. "What are you three doing in my house again?" He asked sharply.

All three men stopped what they were doing to look back at the group, focusing on Liu Xie in alarm.

"A-ah. We didn't expect you to be here!" One stuttered up quickly.

"Get out!"

"R-right!"

The young women all froze in position, some standing on one foot while carrying heavy items while others were midway reaching downwards and other uncomfortable poses. Their glossy amber eyes stared at nothing as the three men grabbed up their poems in a frenzy, knocking over ink and brushes as they hurried out. As they went past, Rui Yifu got a moment to scrutinize their clothing a bit closer. They were all wearing grandly sumptuous robes of virtuous scholars that might be painted in temples or tombs, and all three wore amber carved badges on their belts. More deities, he surmised. Likely of literature.

"Who were those guys?" Bo asked.

"Bastards, that's who," Liu Xie replied with venom. The young women, who had not moved, all suddenly stood up smoothly. Their heads turned to the group, the amber coloring gone and replaced with a stark white color. They swiftly moved to the table, the spilled and knocked over ink stones, the brushes, the scraps of unused or torn paper, cleaning it all or carrying it away without a single sound. Their clothes were simple make but also made of fine silk and after all items had been removed, it was like there had been no intruders into the manor at all. Four of the women came back in, standing silently and without blinking as they looked upon the group with empty gazes. Rui Yifu stared back at them, his eyes going over each and every one of them before looking behind himself at the last of their party.

The hair styles may have varied, and the milky white eyes were off-putting, but Rui Yifu could still see how each and every face was the same familiar shape.

They all looked exactly like Ji Ying.