Chapter 93: How Could I Possibly Not Be Human?

“Me?” Wang Xi wished she could crawl into the mirror, yet no matter how long she looked, the woman reflected there was still exactly as before.

“How could I possibly be anything but human? This demon-seeing mirror was taken from the royal treasury of Qianyan,” the girl retorted.

“You think I’m not human? You know who I am? I am a princess of Qianyan. How could I not be human?”

“Qi-an… Qianyan?” Hearing those words, the woman again peered through the crack of the door.

Inside, a child suddenly cried, “Mother! Qianyan! I’m afraid! I’m afraid!”

“Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid,” the woman said, patting the child’s back, her voice already breaking. “Don’t fear it, Mother is protecting you. It’s all right, it’s all right.”

“They are not human. Qianyan has been destroyed,” the child sobbed, almost breathless. “Eee… have they come back? Mother, have they?”

Destroyed?
Liang Si had never expected such an answer.

Their master was now over two hundred eighty years old. Assisting the Qianyan people had been his work across nearly three centuries. In this room, the mother and child had first insisted Wang Xi was not human, and now said Qianyan had perished long ago.

If Qianyan truly vanished and Wang Xi was not human, how could she have passed the spirit-test stone and entered the illusion realm?
Even if she could deceive the illusion realm, could she have fooled all the elder brothers on the mountain?

Liang Si pondered that, and Wang Xi thought on it too. The carefree brightness she once had was gone; somehow she sat on the threshold with an unseen burden on her back, listless and subdued.

No one could say how long had passed when a wind swept through the yard and sent leaves tumbling as though human hearts had suddenly turned cold.

Wang Xi stared fixedly at those drifting leaves, reaching out as if to seize something. The confusion in her brows was clear. “Senior Brother… did you bring the demon-seeing mirror?”

In the imperial palace of Qianyan there were many treasures, and many kinds of mirrors as well.
Before they parted, her father, the emperor, had given her this one, saying the journey to the Mysterious Cloud Sect was far and she might meet treacherous people; with this mirror, she could peer into a person’s heart.
There was also a heart-reading mirror, one she had once longed for but never obtained.

“I didn’t bring it,” said Wan Zhangfeng. He did not possess such a thing; if there was one, it would likely be kept by Elder Ai at Soaring Sky Peak.
“Oh!”

Slowly, she rose, went to the door, and knocked. “Auntie, how many years since Qianyan was destroyed?”

Seeing that she meant no harm, the woman in the room finally managed to speak in a trembling tone. “Fifty… more than fifty years.”

“What did you see when you looked at me, then?”

“You—you are the ghost in the sedan chair.”

“A sedan chair?” Wang Xi, weary to the bone, sat down again at the doorway. “I hate sitting in sedan chairs the most.”

She still remembered that every time she rode one, assassins came for her, and it felt as if her life itself was controlled by the shoulders that carried it. Little by little, she had come to prefer walking.
Still, it remained dangerous, and that is what drove her to the sword. Her swordsmanship only grew sharper.

Then one day her father found her and her elder brother and said the chiefs of the Mysterious Cloud Sect wanted to choose inner disciples, and that the benefactor of Qianyan would also select outstanding ones as disciples.
Her brother should have gone, but he had to inherit the throne. She herself longed most to meet the legendary immortal, so with her brother’s tacit permission she left with a credential.

Only a little more than a year had passed since those events. How, how could Qianyan have been destroyed for more than fifty years?
Father the Emperor, my brother—weren’t they both gone fifty years ago?
And she had been in a sedan chair?
Wang Xi pressed her hand to her head. Even thinking hard, she could not add any meaning to it. “Senior Brother, am I dead? How is what I remember so different from what she says? How could the Kingdom of Qianyan have been destroyed?”

“Fifty years ago there was a great fire…” the woman in the room whispered shakily.
Maybe because this girl’s face resembled the one in the chair yet was so altered, and had not attacked her, the woman found a little more courage.

“That great fire summoned a fierce storm. Since then, the capital of Qianyan sank beneath choking dust, and from that time onward, there was no Qianyan kingdom in the world.”

“Mother, mother, hold me close. I’m scared.” the child cried, breathless. “I’m truly afraid.”

“Then what happened?”

Liang Si did not watch Wang Xi with a predatory eye. The master had handed this girl to him himself. Through all this travel and hardship, even in sleep he had never taken his gaze away from her.
He was now Sixth Rank. In the Mysterious Cloud Sect that meant he could stand as a fully ordained disciple; in the world below he could become a sect head wherever he wished. To common people, he might even deserve to be called an immortal.
Because the evil within him had long been held in check, it was even less likely anyone could have swapped a person right under his eyes without his noticing.

“After that, each year when the dust storms rose, people said they saw the King of Qianyan riding along the old capital’s ruins, lingering there as though waiting for something.”

“Auntie said there was a girl in the sedan chair. What was that about?”

“I—I heard it from the elders.”

The two of them and the other two in the other room whispered through the closed door like old gossip.

“It was said,” came a chattering voice, “that girl was the little favorite princess of Emperor Qianyan. The emperor gathered rare treasures from all under heaven for nothing but her one smile. In the end she did smile, and by nightfall she went insane and set a fire.
And yes—because of the evil spirit in that fire, the sandstorms came. Every year when a dust storm rises, men who are out and about disappear.”

Liang Si grew thoughtful.
No men’s voices came from that room. No matter how loudly the child cried, it was this woman alone who comforted him. At such a moment, if there had been a man to head the household, he would have stepped out by now.

“Your family is…”

“The year before last,” the woman coughed, her complaint darker now, with an odd, firm finality, “that princess was brought into the capital of Qianyan. If you go any farther, do not, under any circumstance, say you are of the imperial house of Qianyan. Otherwise—otherwise…”

“What then?”

The child’s crying grew fiercer. “Mother, mother, mother, don’t bite yourself, mother, wake up!”

Wang Xi moved as if to open the door, but Liang Si still thought it was unwise.

This house was too large. If only a mother and her young son lived here, how could such rich vegetables and fruit grow so abundantly in this estate?
Liang Si had helped tend those plants during his spare time at Soaring Sky Peak. He had to admit this land was blessed, as all of Mysterious Cloud was, yet for miles around, this was the only inhabited place.
For a mother and a little boy, what care must be spent on this courtyard to keep everything in such order? Even then, it was sheer grace from Heaven.
“My grandmother was once a sorceress of Qianyan, so my mother can see your true forms,” the boy sniffed. “Leave now. Never come back.”