Meng Yi

It takes her a minute, but finally, Xiuying carefully puts the book inside the box and seals it with her qi, marking her as its new owner.

Meng Yi had known, probably even before Xian Qigang himself did, that the manual would be ending up in Xiuying’s hands.

At first she’d suspected, when Young Master Xian had asked the Vice Commander to stay as they awaited the accountants, but when she’d opened the box and seen the name of the technique, she’d been sure.

The young manager hadn’t known this new version of Xian Qigang for very long, but she already knew him well enough to know that, he would definitely consider it fitting to give some woman he was in no way beholden to a sage rank technique, simply because it bore the same concept as her cultivation method.

“I will repay this with my life,” Xiuying says, meaning every word.

Good. She should. Because Meng Yi was quite certain that that manual was worth the Vice Commander’s life three times over. Well, she was certain it was worth that much to some cultivators anyway, seeing as, to the man who’d just handed it over to Xiuying, it seemed barely worth more than a pillow.

Despite having a (rather close, if she did say so herself) relationship with such a person, it was still difficult for Meng Yi to comprehend such wealth. Such power. And she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps it was why this new man she called Xian Qigang seemed so giving.

After all, even something like the Golden Mango, which, to her, was an item the likes of which she never even dared to dream would make it into her possession, was of negligible value to him.

A fruit which had altered her cultivation so radically, that Meng Yi had given up on tracking the envious and inquisitive gazes it had drawn her way. A fruit that would, for as long as she lived, continue to pay dividends in her cultivation. Yet it had cost him next to nothing to acquire, and barely anything to give away.

In the face of wealth so great, the question couldn’t help but rise unbidden in her mind: was the man who had replaced Xian Qigang as generous as he appeared, or was he simply so wealthy that the scraps from his table were unfathomable treasures to the likes of her and the Vice Commander?

Meng Yi didn’t know for certain, but then again, did it truly matter?

After all, in her own words, Xian Qigang had always had wealth and power. True, it was more now than ever before, but the fact remained that he’d always been wealthy and powerful. The scraps from his table had always been able to change lives for the better.

But the old Xian had never given out those scraps, had he? He’d thrown them away instead.

So, perhaps this was what it meant to be generous when one had this much power, to be willing to give out your leftovers to those whose lives it could make a difference.

Meng Yi didn’t really know. She’d never met someone who was both powerful and generous.

“When is his funeral?” her Young Master asked suddenly, leaving Meng Yi confused for a moment. “If I’m going to be profiting off the man’s death, the least I can do is pay my respects.”

Her eyes widen fractionally as she realises that she never told him. “There will be no funeral, Young Master,” she says gently. “Magistrate Qin had no next of kin. He left no children, no wives. Not even concubines. He barely had friends.”

Young Master Xian frowned at her words. “But that doesn’t make sense,” he argued. “Friends or not, he still needs a burial. What about his cor—?” and the word ended unfinished as realisation settled on Young Master Xian’s features.

“Right,” he said, tone of voice strange. “There’s no body, is there? It dissipated into qi, and I cultivated with it.”

Meng Yi frowned at the nature of his words, and the tone in which he’d said them.

“You sound upset,” she said.

He sighed. “That’s because I am,” he said. “I don’t even know why though, I mean, I barely knew the man. And it’s not like I dug up his grave and stole his corpse, he offered it to me. It was a gift. A creepy and rather morbid gift, but still a gift. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’ll probably tell me that such an act is an immense honour that people are willing to kill for or something.”

“It is,” Meng Yi said.

“There you go then,” Young Master Xian said before sighing again.

“He must have made quite the impression on you,” she said.

Her young master stared at her with a pensive frown for a moment.

“I guess he did,” he admitted finally.

She’d suspected that was the case.

Meng Yi wasn’t entirely abreast of what had been shared between the two men in their two meetings.

Young Master Xian had told her about the Magistrate’s letter from his dead love, of course, but it had only been for the purpose of giving her the needed information to follow his hope that a celestial plum will take him back to his world.

Clearly, whatever had transpired between the men had left its mark on Young Master Xian, for him to feel so strongly about paying his respects to a man he barely knew.

Or, perhaps, this was simply some odd, misplaced guilt or something similar, after all, based on his own words, Young Master Xian sounded rather disturbed by his cultivating with the Magistrate’s qi.

Before she could decide whether she wanted to dig deeper into that, or distract him from it, Young Master Xian said, “You know what? Screw it. A funeral doesn’t have to be some grand, official gesture, I can do a small, simple thing by myself.”

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He turned to her then.

“Do you guys do tombstones here?” he asked her, but before she could even answer, his eyes brightened with an idea. “No, scratch that,” he said. “I need seeds. For flowers. Or maybe a cherry tree. Do you know where we can get those?”

“You want to honour Qin Zedong by planting seeds?” she asked, the idea a little odd to her imperial sensibilities.

In The Sunrise Empire, the culture was to use tombstones, or, if the person was important enough, to erect a shrine in their honour.

Young Master Xian didn’t miss her reaction to his idea, because he said, “Is that a problem? Do people not do that here?”

“It is atypical here in The Empire,” she admitted. “But it is quite common in the Fen Kingdom to the east.”

Young Master Xian frowned pensively for a moment. “You think Magistrate Qin would mind?” he asked as though she knew the man.

Personally, Meng Yi was of the belief that the dead couldn’t mind anything.

She had to think that way. Because after her father died, things had been quite rough for her family for some time, and she knew that it would have been torture of the cruellest nature for the man if he’d been able to watch them go through that without being able to do anything.

Young Master Xian didn’t need her opinion on death and the afterlife however, so Meng Yi simply said, “No, Young Master Xian, I don’t think he will. And yes, I know where you can get seeds.”

“Okay, good. Can we go now?”

“We can. And while we’re out, perhaps we can get you a new bed,” she added pointedly.

Young Master’s Xian’s cheeks blush at her words.

“Right,” he said awkwardly. “Good idea.”

Meng Yi grinned at his discomfort.

It was fun to tease him, but he really had no reason to feel awkward about what he did.

Yes, it had been strange. At first. But the more Meng Yi thought about it, the more the act left a warm little feeling in the pit of her stomach.

—❈—

Since he took over the life and body of Xian Qigang, her Young Master hadn’t had much opportunity to leave the manor.

Mostly, he’d been either training, studying, cultivating, or passed out from exhaustion due to advancing in some atypical manner.

In fact, counting this would make it four times that Young Master Xian had stepped foot outside the manor. Which, in hindsight, wasn’t the best for her plan to show off how much he’d changed to the public.

“I’m not imagining it, right?” Young Master Xian asked as she led him to the only florist she knew, a man that her mother had worked a few years for some time ago. “I’m definitely drawing more attention than usual.”

He was, though it was mostly from the cultivators they encountered, and Meng Yi knew exactly why that was.

“Do you remember your comment about it being a great honour that some might be willing to kill for? Magistrate Qin’s offering of his body for you to cultivate with.”

His eyebrows climbed in understanding. “Ah, that makes sense.”

“Along with the fact that you are now the most powerful cultivator in all of Silver Springs,” she added.

She watched him think about that for a moment. “I suppose I am,” he agreed. “At least, until a new Magistrate shows up, right? Because I recall you told me something along those lines.”

She nodded. “I did,” she said. “Magistrates are The Sunrise Empress’s proxies. A requirement of the job is that they be the most powerful, or at the very least, be on par with the most powerful in whatever region they oversee.”

“So, whoever they appoint as Qin Zedong’s replacement will be Qi Realm?” he asked.

“At minimum, yes. Though it might be months before a replacement is appointed.”

Young Master Xian shook his head. “Guess bureaucracy is the same everywhere,” he said.

They ended up getting the new bed first.

It was a bit out of their way to the flower shop, but Meng Yi suspected that Young Master Xian might not be in the mood to go mattress shopping after picking up flower seeds for a private funeral.

After choosing a bed he liked, and leaving instructions for it to be delivered as soon as possible, they went for the flower shop next.

Both Lang Bo and his shop looked exactly how Meng Yi remembered it from the last time she was here.

She’d been thirteen at the time, and a very different person from the woman she was today, and walking into the shop felt almost like walking into a memory.

She could almost hear her mother calling out to her in greeting, almost feel the dizzy delight she always felt back then basking in the heady fragrances that suffused the shop.

Meng Yi shook it off. She was not that girl anymore.

Lang Bo, the florist, must have thought so too, because he showed no indication of their shared history.

Of course, it was entirely possible that he simply didn’t remember her, but Meng Yi suspected that it was because he didn’t want to get too informal with cultivators, especially since one of them was Xian Qigang. Whatever the reason, Meng Yi was glad for it, and part saddened by it, because it drove home even harder just how much things had changed. Just how much she had changed.

They didn’t stay long, Lang Bo hurriedly providing Young Master Xian with everything he asked, including seeds from a cherry tree, which she genuinely hadn’t expected to be in the possession of a florist.

With the seeds acquired, Young Master Xian brought up a question that he really should have considered before now. “Where are we going to plant them?”

Meng Yi stared at him. How was she supposed to know that? she wondered.

Seeing that she didn’t have an easy answer, Young Master Xian suggested, “What about his compound? It has a lot of space.”

Meng Yi shook her head. “The Magistrate’s palace is imperial property. You don’t have that authority. But you do have authority over your manor. And you have the space.”

Young Master Xian didn’t seem particularly taken with the idea.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right,” he said. “Maybe a hilltop. Or a cliff somewhere.”

“There are many hills and cliffs in the region,” Meng Yi said. “I’m sure we could find one.”

“Really? You don’t mind?”

Did she mind spending her day searching for a perfect hilltop to honour a man she never even met in person? Of course she did. But, not only does her minding it not matter, Young Master Xian should also know by now that the only answer she would ever give to such a question was, “Not at all, Young Master. I’m happy to help.”

They went looking sometime in early afternoon, but it was almost dusk by the time they found a suitable one.

The view from the top of the hill was breathtaking, but the hill itself was hard and rocky.

“I don’t think any of those seeds will take on this ground, Young Master,” she said, eyeing said ground with a critical eye.

Meng Yi was no farmer, and she was quite certain that she had the opposite of a green thumb, but even she knew that seeds needed good, fertile soil to grow. And from the lack of anything growing on this hilltop, that was in short supply here.

“I don’t think it matters,” Young Master said.

He set the cherry seeds on the hard ground, then randomly tossed the flower seeds in a large ring around it.

Meng Yi had a good suspicion of where her Young Master’s botanical confidence was coming from. She’d had the suspicion since he first suggested planting a tree, so, instead of saying anything else, she simply watched.

Young Master Xian held his hand over the cherry seeds, then he took a deep breath and said, “Glory of the Sun.”

Meng Yi gasped.

It was like she’d lived in an eternal winter until this moment and only just felt the sun for the first time.

Light and warmth radiated from her Young Master, piercing through her and soaking into her flesh and bones.

She felt her energy growing, her nerves buzzing.

All these sensations distracted her from what was going on around Young Master Xian.

The plants were growing. The cherry tree already waist height with him.

It grew taller as she watched, sprouting leaves and branches, trunk thickening.

The flowers ringing Young Master Xian matured and bloomed, and, in less than a minute, the tree did too.

With a few words and some qi, Young Master Xian had brought life to a barren little hilltop.

He placed a hand on the trunk of the cherry tree, and In a quiet whisper that she almost missed, he said, “Goodbye, Qin Zedong. I hope you get to play among the stars with her.”

Meng Yi didn’t know what that meant, but she didn’t need to.

She walked forward quietly, taking care to not step on any of the flowers as she went to stand beside him.

She took his hand.

Qigang’s eyes were dry, but he squeezed her hand gently, and for some time, they stood on the silent hilltop and watched the cherry blossoms fall.