Luo Binghe, panting from exertion, moves through the sword form from the beginning. As he extends one leg behind him and raises his arms, he feels a sharp slap from Shen Qingqiu’s fan.
“Shoulder’s down,” Shen Qingqiu snaps.
Luo Binghe drops his shoulders.
The next whap comes to the back of his knee. He yelps and stumbles to the dirt.
“Your feet should be closer together, your knees bent more deeply. Again.”
A quarter shichen later, and Luo Binghe is barely keeping his feet. He moves swiftly through the form, and this time he knows it’s done perfectly.
Shen Qingqiu’s narrow gaze watches him intently. When Luo Binghe completes the progression of movements, he taps his fan against his palm.
“Hm,” he says. “You’re slower on the uptake than Shang-shizhi, but it will do.”
As he walks away to correct the other junior disciple’s forms, Luo Binghe does his best to strangle the hilt of his practice sword, imagining someone else’s neck in its place.
Unfortunately, that other neck looks exactly like his own.
——
“You’ve gotten taller,” Ming Fan observes, grabbing Luo Binghe’s arm and pulling at his sleeve. “We’ll need to get you fitted with new robes soon.” The older boy clicks his tongue, frowning as though this was a personal inconvenience, like he would be the one sewing those robes himself.
Luo Binghe huffs, but he can’t help a small, proud smile. He has been growing, absolutely shooting up since coming to Cang Qiong and getting access to a steady supply of food.
“I’ll take your new measurements later and send them to An Ding,” Ming Fan says, dropping his hand and crossing his arms.
“Yay!” Ning Yingying says, throwing an arm around his shoulders. “Xiao Binghe is getting bigger! Soon you might even be as tall as Binghe!”
Luo Binghe’s eye twitches.
——
Shang Binghe is the bane of Luo Binghe’s existence.
Everywhere he goes in Cang Qiong it’s “Shang-shidi” this and "Shang-shizhi” that. “Oh, you look so much like Shang Binghe! Only not as stoic and handsome!” “Have you met Shang Binghe yet? You two look so alike! Last week he rescued three puppies from trees and produced a miracle cure from thin air for a plague in some far-off place! Isn’t that great?” And, especially, “Binghe? Don’t we have one of those already? And I thought he was… taller.”
It is driving Luo Binghe insane.
Shang Binghe, the head disciple on Bai Zhan Peak, is the same age as him. They have the same name. They have, Luo Binghe was dismayed to discover upon their formal introduction, the same face. Except that Shang Binghe is tall, strong, and popular. He has two living parents who love him—one of them is a Peak Lord, and rumour says the other is some important foreign trade contact. Everyone in the sect loves him. Even other sects call him a once-in-a-generation talent.
“It’s just not fair,” Luo Binghe whines.
“Cheer up, buddy,” Peak Lord Shang says. He pours Luo Binghe a cup of oolong and slides the tray of snacks towards him. Sulkily, Luo Binghe takes a few melon seeds and begins to pick at their shells. “Listen, you don’t want all that spotlight stuff! When everyone’s eyes are on you, that means you have to deal with all their expectations and worry if you’re living up to them and all that. Isn’t it better to be the unknown entity? Then you can do whatever you want! Enjoy your youth!”
“I don’t want to enjoy my youth,” Luo Binghe mutters. “I want to be a great cultivator and grow four inches.”
In the dead of winter, the wife of a goat farmer gives birth to two daughters, lying in the straw of their barn. They are her first children. It has been four months since her wedding. Unlucky, unlucky.
“I really am cursed,” she whispers, looking over the faces of the sleeping girls. Identical, right down to the tiny, pin-prick freckles on their cheeks and chins.
One of the goats approaches to snuffle at her ear, and then at the babies. The one on the left scrunches up her nose at the sensation. She supposes she will have to find a way to tell the girls apart, but… well. It’s not so important.
Her husband won’t even look at the girls. Unfortunately, neither look very much like him.
—
“I’m not doing this again,” A-Hua says, gripping the makeshift scrap-cloth bag that holds all of her belongings in this world tight, like it’s full of gold and treasure and not two stale mantou, a strip of goat jerky, and a bent iron nail. She’s dressed herself in their little brother’s clothes, tied her hair up like father does. Their brother is tall enough already, and the two of them short enough, that it’s only a little small on A-Hua. Only shows a few inches of A-Hua’s ankles and wrists beyond the hems.
A-Yan stares at her, and wonders what, when they look so similar, makes her sister so different from her.
“You can stay here and try to take care of them for mom and dad if you want to,” A-Hua goes on, not pausing for A-Yan to speak, “It’s good. It’s good! You’re a nice sister. But if you do, you’ll probably starve with them, and killing yourself for our family won’t make anyone love you more.”
“Someone needs to take care of them,” A-Yan says, her voice dull. The fire that burns hot through A-Hua has always been absent in her. Silent where her sister is loud, apathetic where her sister is emotional. Grounded where her sister is flighty. It’s ironic that it is the colder of the two of them who seems to care so much more.
“Sure, sure,” A-Hua agrees. “Like their parents, maybe?”
“You used to think so, too,” A-Yan says.
“I woke up,” A-Hua says. “… you could, too.”
It’s the first time that A-Hua has made the offer since she decided to leave. For months, A-Yan has watched her sister toss and turn and cry out in her sleep. Her childish enthusiasm condenses and hardens into an alien sort of desperation that A-Yan doesn’t understand. She thinks that she knew A-Hua would leave them before her sister did. But never had A-Hua said: “Come with me. Let’s go together.”
She isn’t sure if it’s because A-Hua had known she would say no, or because her sister doesn’t want to stay together.
Either way—
“No,” she says. “Take care of yourself.”
A-Hua nods, ties her makeshift bag around her neck, and slips away into the night.
—
She never sees her sister again.
One year later, demons invade the countryside and slaughter her entire family, down to the last chicken and goat. She comes home from hunting in the late-fall forest a li away from the farm and finds the first of the bodies lying in the dust of the road. She follows the blood trail home.
At Huan Hua Palace, Palace Master Su tells her she’s the most extraordinary student he has ever taught. He holds her hand to correct her grip on her sword and walks her through the swing. She’s the youngest disciple of her age group to receive a spiritual sword. Its name is Gu Feng: a solitary peak. The Palace Master says it’s a sign that she will be great one day—singular, above the common person. She finds it a lonely name.
would you say it would be somewhat accurate in the yah (young at heart) sequel to have sqh taking care of/being mentor to TWO lbh’s 🤭 say yes i have moves im tryna make
YES absolutely, you are correct. SQH sees another LBH clamber onto CQM fourteen years later and has the following thoughts in rapid succession:
