2 years and 9 months.
That was how old he was.
Tiaosu was excited. Although, he was always excited, so that was really not saying much. But there were just so many things happening and never enough time. So, he needed to be quick. To be fast meant more things get done. It also didn't hurt that he got to win all the time. He just loved winning!
Case in point, he was standing by the door, ready to go, while his siblings were still dressing in their winter clothes. His winter attire consisted of a brown fur robe that went down to his feet and cozy pants. On his feet were a pair of leather boots with rabbit fur lining the inside, resulting in some toasty feet.
“Don't forget your hat.” Wenku threw a hat on his head.
“Haha, you look like a cowboy!” Tiaosu threw his sister Huabe a glance.
“What’s a cowboy?” Often Huabe would say a word or phrase that did not make much sense to him. And judging by the other's faces, they didn't know what she was talking about either.
“It’s what you look like. Duh!”
“...” Sometimes, his sister was weird.
Wenku opened the door, and a cold breeze blew into the house. Outside was like a completely different world, a world of white ground and grey sky. Fat flakes of snow fell from the sky, doing their best to smother the surroundings.
Fighting against this snow were the city workers. Their wide shovels moved up and down in constant motion as they cleared the streets of snow. The shovelled snow ended up along the sides of the path where it was being packed together. The beginning of a wall was slowly forming.
Despite only being the tenth day of winter, it had not stopped snowing. For ten days, it had snowed and showed no sign of stopping. According to his father, it would snow every day in the winter year. The valley that they lived in would fill with snow. And they would live beneath all this snow, building icy tunnels underneath it all.
Tiaosu couldn't wait to see it.
“Wait!” Huabe stopped in her tracks. “I can't find my Dan Lantern. Did I leave it inside?”
“Wha?! You trickster, give me!” Huabe quickly swiped it from his hand.
Duanso shook his head. “You really need to keep a closer eye on your stuff.”
Huabe pouted just a little. How could Tiaosu see his little sister pout? It was time that he turned that frown upside down.
“What were you saying, Duan?” He opened his hand and presented Duanso’s allowance money pouch in his hand.
“How did you!? Damn it!”
He tossed the money back at Duanso. In the corner of his eye, he could see Yantye checking his pockets.
“You're fine, Yantye.” He sighed. “It’s no fun stealing from you. It’s too easy. You’ve really got to at least sleep with one eye open or something.”
Yantye simply nodded and continued to walk towards the path.
As the group of 5 walked down the street, his brothers and sister marvelled at the surroundings. Every house had a metal chimney just as tall as the chimneys alongside the path that held candles. All these chimneys had thin streams of grey smoke constantly spewing out into the air, curling and twisting their way up until it disappeared into the clouds above.
Wenku had shown them all the basement of their house, where a massive stockpile of wood lined the walls. In the middle of the basement was a large metal furnace that stood on 8 small wide legs. Around this contraption of metal and fire was a confusing mess of metal pipes. Apparently, the fire would draw fresh air in and part of that air was siphoned off, heated by the piping winding around the furnace. That heated air would then gently blow out of vents located around the house.
But all that was pretty boring. Instead, Tiaosu found Huabe’s Dan Lantern to currently be the most interesting thing in the house.
The lantern was given to her by the minister a few months ago. It was a “Loan from the empire,” as he put it. From what little Huabe had said about the lantern, it was supposed to store Qi light. The Qi light apparently had two uses. It was used for cultivation, obviously, but it was also a currency between cultivators.
It was all so interesting, the cultivation world. He wished that he could capture a spirit or perhaps get a beast egg. He had thought that Huabe could help them, but she had said that she couldn't. When asked for a reason, she just clammed up and then said she could tell them after they get a link.
It kind of sucked. But, Tiaosu was sure that he would succeed! He could perhaps try to capture that fire spirit that had taken refuge in their furnace.
It had been the first day of the winter year when a sad-looking orange blob crawled its way inside their house. The spirit had quickly phased through the floor and taken up residence inside the ever-burning furnace. As soon as the spirit had entered the flames, it was back to its usual self. A vertical almond-shaped eye with flower petal-like flames expelling from the vertical ends of the eye. A blob no longer.
But capturing a spirit was super boring! He would have to sit there and just wait. He would much rather try to chase the spirit! But, that would never work. Spirits were much too nimble! Even the weirdly cone-shaped dirt spirits were fast, skittering around on their three stick-like legs!
But enough of those thoughts. It looked like they had arrived at the market.
The area was bustling with people walking from booth to booth. Merchants called out, trying to sell the last of their stock. All the travelling merchants would soon head back to the mainland before the oceans surrounding the mountainous island froze. Certainly, the ice would make for a solid path to the island, appearing on the surface to make travel easier.
But he had heard some stories. Beasts would descend from further up north and infest the waters beneath the ice, snatching up any would-be traveller who dared to walk on the ice. Suffice it to say, sailing was safer than walking.
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Alongside these hawking merchants were the locals, selling the necessities like meat, and bread. Unlike the merchants, they just sat back in their chairs inside the comforting warmth of their shops, reading a book, or fiddling with a wooden carving, just doing whatever caught their fancy.
The people ahead of Tiaosu began the clear the path, stepping to the side. He did the same and stared at the soldiers clad in grey, red-tinged armour. They wore a thick, tough-looking fabric over their bodies. Over the top of this fabric were plates of silvery red metal. On their heads sat a helmet of the same metal with a bright red plume coming out the top of it. They each carried a spear in their hands and a short sword strapped to their waist.
The 3 man squad passed them by, and the crowd swarmed to fill the space left by them.
The reason they had gone shopping that day was to catch the last of the merchants before they left. It was also the first time Tiaosu had been given money to spend. It was exciting thinking about the possibilities of what he could buy.
Tiaosu and his sibling went from stall to stall, looking at all the interesting things. There were knives, bolts of silk, strange-looking rocks, jewellery, and an assortment of strange creatures, including a four-legged animal covered in fur that Huabe was fawning over.
He could hear her saying “Who’s a bobabwa!” over and over again while ruffling the creature's fur. Tiaosu shook his head. His sister was truly odd at times, but that’s what made her so fun to be around!
He couldn't find anything here that was overly interesting. Perhaps he could buy some candy?
Tiaosu made his way over to a stand that was selling some sort of frozen treat.
The colourfully dressed merchant shouted over the din of the crowd. “That’ll be ten irons lad!”
Tiaosu handed over the ten irons and watched as the merchant took a bottle of amber liquid and poured some out into a small pot on a small woodfire iron stove. He boiled the amber liquid for a little bit while stirring the concoction. Then he took the pot off the heat and poured out long strips of gooey candy onto packed snow. Then the merchant rolled the strip around a thin wooden stick and handed one of them to Tiaosu.
“Here you go, kid. Enjoy!”
Tiaosu took the candy and left the stall. He took a bite of the candy and let loose an involuntary little squeak. It was amazing! The candy had the consistency of taffy, but when it entered his mouth, it began to melt and release a sweet delicious flavour on his tongue.
It might have been the tastiest thing he had ever eaten!
Tiaosu was distracted from his food experience by a boy rushing past him. From a brief glance, he seemed to be about nine years old. And very skinny. The boy was clutching something to his chest, but Tiaosu couldn't see what it was.
“Thief! Stop that boy!” Someone yelled.
That was when he felt it, a sudden disconnect from the world. He had only felt this one other time, the time that Huabe had spit out that horrid black stuff.
The sudden feeling went away, causing him to stumble as everything turned back to normal. It seemed that the people around him had also felt the technique as people stubbed toes, banged wrists and jerked elbows.
Then he heard an ear-piercing scream ring out over the annoyed murmurs of the crowd.
Tiaosu whipped his head in the direction of the scream. That was where he had last seen Huabe! What if something happened to her?! He ran forwards and pushed the crowd out of the way. The crowd got thicker and thicker as he got closer to where the sound had come from.
Finally, he pushed through the last of the crowd and popped out into a cleared spot of the street. Sitting in the middle of this empty circle was Huabe, leaning on her knees.
“Oh, Bay! Thank goodness you’re all right. What happened?” Tiaosu grabbed Huabe by the shoulder and turned her head to face his.
What he saw made him blink his eyes in confusion. Huabe’s eyes used to always be similar to his and his brother's own. A completely white eye with a soft-edged ink splotch for a pupil. But right now, Huabe’s ink splotch pupil was sharp. Black spikes seemingly originating from a bottomless black pit in the center of her eye.
But as he stared at her eyes, they slowly smoothed out once more into the soft ink splotch that it was before.
Then he noticed the blood. “Oh my god! Bay, are you bleeding?!” There was a spray of blood along her robes and some dripping down her face.
Huabe shook her head. “No. I’m fine. But this scum isn't! Ha!” She stood up, and that is when he saw what she was kneeling over.
It was the skinny boy, laying on the ground, bleeding from his Achilles heel and neck, staining the white snow red. In his hands was clutched a loaf of bread.
Clutched in Huabe’s hand was a bloodied knife.
It didn't take much to put two and two together. Tiaosu felt sick to his stomach. In fact, he was sick to his stomach. He scrambled over to a snow bank and barfed onto the snow. His candy was dropped onto the street behind him, abandoned.
He could hear Huabe speaking to a nearby merchant. “You know what, I think I’ll buy this knife after all.”
…
Tiaosu stepped out of the guard station alongside Huabe and his father.
They had all been brought here, along with some other witnesses, to tell their stories of what had happened. His two brothers were currently at home, very confused about what had happened.
Huabe was not charged with anything. Normally, a person who killed a thief would perhaps get a few months of jail time, or perhaps a fine. But once the guards heard she was a cultivator, they let her go.
Tiaosu had some conflicting feelings about what had happened. He still loved his sister, but she had just killed someone! Over a loaf of bread! That boy certainly looked like he could have used some bread. But did that justify stealing?
He couldn't make a decision. It seemed like a grey area.
“Huabe,” Wenku spoke, breaking the silence. “You know what you did was wrong, correct? You can not just go around killing people now that you are a cultivator.”
Huabe shook her head. “I will not just randomly kill people. But what I did was not wrong.”
“I-I… Let’s just try to be a bit more careful of who we decide are the bad guys, alright?”
“Ok.”
Wenku sighed and continued to walk down the street.
The three of them soon arrived home and went to their room to get ready for bed. Yantye and Duanso were already asleep. Tiaosu slunk under his covers and tried to fall asleep. But that boy's face just kept appearing in his mind. Over and over.
Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. Tiaosu walked over to Huabe’s bed and jumped in beside her.
“Pshh, bay, are you still awake?” Tiaosu whispered.
“Yes, I am. I was absorbing Qi light. What do you need Osu?”
“Well… How did you, you know? And why?” He questioned.
“I think it was pretty obvious how I did it. And why? He was a criminal, so I killed him. Simple as that.” She responded, keeping a serene look on her face.
“But. I mean. He looked pretty hungry.” Tiaosu noted.
“I don't care. I see crime, I kill it, simple as that. Some people may claim that there is a moral grey area, but I see no grey. Only white and black.” Huabe closed her eyes. “I’m gonna go to sleep now, goodnight. And don't worry about grey areas, it's a shit colour anyways.”
Tiaosu chuckled a little at that. “But, wait, what about when I steal stuff?”
Huabe sighed. “You’re family, and you don't really steal anything, because you always give it back. There is also one case where stealing is totally fair game. If a person steals from you, it is only right to steal from them. Now scooch.” Huabe lowered her cold hands onto the back of his neck.
Everything seemed so clear now!
A twisting black and white sludge surrounded by four rings dragged itself up his bedpost, jolting him from his thoughts.
“What the Fu-”