HCAW 25

Chapter 25: This Body, a Blade

From a certain day on, a strange little beggar began to appear on the streets of Penglai.

This beggar wore an oddly fine mud-gold jacket patterned with bamboo—clearly the clothing of a noble household. He carried a bamboo-joint dagger in his arms and limped when he walked, his eyes wide and frightened like a startled deer. Yet no one could see the searing hatred buried deep in their glossy depths.

He often huddled outside tea houses and taverns, waiting for diners to toss out bones meant for dogs—then fought with those same dogs over scraps of meat. At times, he would wait at the lower bends of drainage canals for leftover rice to float downstream, scoop it up with a bamboo basket, dry it in the sun, and that was enough to fill his belly. And so, the little beggar scraped by, eating what he could. When he had the strength, he would even swing that bamboo dagger a few times to practice. Locals who saw him would cover their mouths and laugh, pointing: “Now that’s a little sword fanatic!”

Someone eventually recognized the bamboo pattern on his jacket—it was the emblem of the Fang family, guardians of the Langgan Guard. They asked:

“Hey, little beggar—what’s your relation to the Langgan Guard?”

The boy shook his head. “No relation.”

“Then why are you wearing his family’s clothes?”

The beggar finally said, “I’m Fang Jingyu, second son of the Langgan Guard. But not anymore.”

From that day on, everyone knew: the Langgan Guard’s second son had cut ties with his family and now wandered the streets, surviving on scraps and wind.

One day, while Fang Jingyu was gathering leftover rice near a drainage canal, a rowdy group swaggered up the path. At the head was a young lordling in flashy golden robes—gaudy and dazzling—but the boy himself was homely, with beady eyes and a bulbous nose, flanked by a trail of attendants.

The young master strutted up to Fang Jingyu, narrowed his eyes, and asked:

“You’re Fang Jingyu? The Langgan Guard’s son?”

“I used to be.”

“So even the Langgan Guard’s son has sunk to eating garbage rice!” the boy sneered. “If we spat in it, would you still eat it?”

With that, he ordered his attendants to spit into the bamboo basket of drying rice. Fang Jingyu curled around it, shielding the rice with his body, his fists clenched as if protecting a living thing. Spit rained down on his back like a storm. The young master snorted:

“The Langgan Guard? What’s so great about him? He’s nothing compared to my grandfather! But all this street talk, over and over, praises that so-called hero Fang Huaixian. Bunch of blind fools!”

Grandfather? Fang Jingyu kept his head down, still shielding the rice, but his ears caught the word with sharp clarity. Before he could make sense of it, a voice suddenly rang out:

“You little brat—what are you doing?”

At the sound, the young master shriveled like a turtle yanked from its shell, all arrogance gone. Down the alley came a hunched old man in fine brocade, a jade of Mohe size and gleam hanging from his belt.

“Grandfather, I—I wasn’t doing anything! That boy was blocking my way, picking up trash rice!” the lordling stammered.

Fang Jingyu looked up—and froze. Fury surged in his chest like a frozen tide. It was the Mohe Guard. The traitor who brought the wolves into their house. The man who had led to his brother being taken.

He rose slowly, eyes narrowed, glaring at the Mohe Guard with such intensity it was as if flames might shoot from them.

The Mohe Guard recognized him and looked momentarily surprised. Then he put on a broad, Buddha-like smile. “Why, if it isn’t Jingyu. What are you doing here?” He reached out and thwacked his grandson on the head. “You little pest—what were you picking on others for? So full of yourself already?”

The young master, seeing his grandfather, dared not make a sound. He crouched down clutching his head like a frightened quail.

Fang Jingyu’s voice came cold and sharp: “I ended up like this, all thanks to you.”

The Mohe Guard saw the boy’s ragged clothes and overt hostility and felt a flash of awkwardness. After all, the Tao and Fang families had once been close. But after he exposed that the Langgan Guard had hidden Emperor Bai’s orphan, the Fang family’s status had plummeted. The Langgan Guard himself was now being held like a criminal by order of the Emperor. In both feeling and reason, he owed them much.

The old man crouched and pulled a small packet of lotus seed candy from his sleeve, forcing a smile as he pushed it into Fang Jingyu’s hand. “Uncle was wrong. Got into a spat with your father the other day and upset you. Come, have some candy.”

Fang Jingyu batted the candy away. “I don’t want your candy. You probably laced it with poison—just like you. All fine brocade on the outside, but nothing inside but a pitch-black heart.”

The old man froze. Fang Jingyu’s eyes, like ink ground to full darkness, sent a chill down his spine.

Awkwardly, the Mohe Guard laughed, “Jingyu, this wasn’t my decision. Emperor Bai was a tyrant. Anyone tied to him was bound for the execution block. Let alone his orphan! I talked myself hoarse pleading with His Majesty just to spare your father. If I hadn’t intervened, your whole family would be headless by now!”

But Fang Jingyu replied, “And so what if we were? At least we’d go to the afterlife together. That’s better than the mess you made of our lives!”

This boy had once been soft and meek. But now, worn down by hardship and cold wind, he’d hardened instead. Given the right guidance, perhaps he too might grow into something remarkable.

The Mohe Guard sighed and added, “Uncle had no choice. Everyone knew your father was close with Emperor Bai. And the Tao and Fang families—so close for generations—were already being watched by others. If I hadn’t cut ties with your family, my own household would’ve lost our heads by now. Jingyu, I was forced—truly forced.”

“Forced?” the dirt-covered boy snapped. “So to save yourself, it’s fine to kill others?”

The Mohe Guard stared in astonishment at the frail boy before him. Fang Minsheng had been like a star blazing at the zenith, his brilliance eclipsing all around him—but now, the Mohe Guard realized this child before him shone no less brightly. He was cold, unyielding, like a blade honed in secrecy.

Standing in front of him, the Mohe Guard found his own presence unconsciously diminished. The old man sighed. “Ah… no matter what, I do feel guilty toward you. Whatever scolding you have for me, little Fang, I will accept it all.”

He stood up, gave Fang Jingyu a long, deep look, then reached for a red jade bead from the string of jade at his waist and handed it over. “Take this to Qingning Mountain, behind the drill grounds. There’s the Yu Yin Guard there. Give this to her—she’ll take you in as a disciple and teach you the finest blade techniques in the world.”

Fang Jingyu stared at him coldly, as if he were looking at a wolf.

The Mohe Guard sighed three times and forced the red jade into the boy’s hand. “I can tell you’re a fine seedling, but your body is weak by nature, and you’ve already fallen behind. If you keep wandering the streets like this, some wild dog will tear you apart. I was once close with your father—I can’t bear to see your corpse rot in some alley. Take it. It’s the last thing this uncle can offer.”

“You’re not afraid that one day I’ll come back with that blade—and take your life?”

The Mohe Guard burst into laughter as if he’d just heard the funniest joke in the world. His yellowed eyes even welled with tears. “A wisp like you? Come back in twenty years!”

Fang Jingyu clutched the red jade tightly in his palm, picked up his rice basket, and left without a word.

Half a day later, as the Mohe Guard had once told him, he climbed Qingning Mountain.

The mountain was barren, sand and gravel swirling in the wind. Jagged stone ridges stretched like veins, worn and craggy.

In the gray hues of the mountain, an old woman in black practiced with a blade. Each slash cut through the gloom, gleaming like moonlight.

Fang Jingyu approached, holding the red jade high in both hands and knelt.

“I am Fang Jingyu. I seek instruction from the Yu Yin Guard!”

The old woman didn’t sheath her blade until half an hour later. She cast him a cold glance.

“The Mohe Guard sent you? You’re surnamed Fang—are you the Langgan Guard’s son?”

Fang Jingyu lowered his head. “I’ve left that family behind. I’m just a vagabond now—not the Langgan Guard’s son.”

“Even if the Mohe Guard recommended you, I’ve no lack of disciples, nor any interest in taking you in. There’s a hut up the mountain with a rack of blades—pick one to protect yourself, then be on your way.” Her words were cold as stone. She turned and walked away.

Fang Jingyu stared after her, a turmoil of emotions churning in his chest. The Mohe Guard had clearly given him a token—so why did she show no interest? It made no sense. But then he thought: if he wanted revenge, he had to become stronger. His father had already refused to teach him swordsmanship—if he couldn’t find another path, who knew how long it would take to avenge Minsheng?

Besides, the Xian Mountain Guards were known for their eccentric and difficult personalities. He, a weak child who still stumbled when he walked—how could the Yu Yin Guard look twice at him? But this only sharpened his desire to learn. He turned and chased after her.

Catching up, he knelt once more and kowtowed.

“I am Fang Jingyu. I humbly beg for your instruction!”

But the old woman didn’t look back, her figure dissolving into the molten light of dusk.

She spoke coldly: “Boy. Taking you in now will benefit neither you nor me. Go think clearly about what you truly want. Then come find me again.”

Fang Jingyu knelt and bowed all the way down the mountain, but she never turned back once.

The wind was dark with dust, and mountain birds cried out in sorrow. He hobbled down the slope, knees aching, his mind in a haze.

What must I do for the Yu Yin Guard to take me in? He racked his brain with the question as he drifted back through the alleys of the city.

As he passed a teahouse, he overheard porters chatting inside.

“Just saw a few Xian Mountain officers heading toward the Langgan Guard’s estate. Wonder what they’re going there for.”

The Fang estate? A heaviness sank into Fang Jingyu’s heart. Unknowingly, he’d already been living on the streets for a year, and it had been long since he’d heard any news from home. A terrible premonition tangled through his chest like seaweed. He turned back at once, stumbling through the streets toward the Fang estate.

In the blood-red dusk, he ran as the last light burned across the land. Just as he reached the corner, he saw two black-clad Xian Mountain officers walking away, carrying a straw mat soaked in blood. Fang Jingyu ducked into a side path and climbed over the brick wall, slipping into the courtyard first.

In just a year, the estate had fallen to ruin. The holly trees stood silent under wind and snow, the moss on the polished stone glistening like mold.

After a while, the black-clad men entered through the main gate. The Fang gatekeeper followed them nervously into the front courtyard. The officers dropped the mat to the ground and said:

“We’ve brought the body back.”

The gatekeeper saw Fang Jingyu standing in the outer yard and stared at him in shock. After recognizing him as the second son of the household, he averted his gaze, bowing and scraping toward the officers.

“Sirs, you honor us with your presence. Forgive the poor welcome! May I ask… whose body have you brought?”

Fang Jingyu suddenly smelled a stench so vile it made his nose curl. It was coming from the straw mat.

“Emperor Bai’s orphan. Fang Minsheng, son of the Langgan Guard.”

At those words, Fang Jingyu’s eyes went wide.

He had never imagined that someone who had left the house upright and whole… could return wrapped in a straw mat like a hunk of dead meat. The two officers carrying the mat held damp cloths over their mouths and noses, muttering that the corpse “reeked to the heavens” and “smelled worse than a hundred-year-old latrine.”

When the straw mat was unrolled, it felt like a sledgehammer shattered Fang Jingyu’s chest. He stared, stunned, at the blood-drenched, grotesquely twisted body before him. The limbs, the face, the torso—so swollen and bloated they were unrecognizable. It looked more like a hacked slab of meat on a butcher’s block than a human form.

This… was his brother?

Fang Jingyu stood motionless, dazed, his mind filled with a deafening roar. He looked once more at the mangled corpse, crawling with tiny insects, beyond horror, and the question rose again:

Was this truly the one who once stood like moonlight and breeze, who taught me to read, to hold a sword—Fang Minsheng?

After his brother had been taken away, he had suffered a full year of torment. Fang Jingyu looked down at his brother’s hands—his fingers were incomplete, his body covered in wounds and scars, a sight too horrific to behold.

He stood trembling. Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the main hall. The Langgan Guard, hair disheveled, dragging a broken leg, burst out from the room. In just one year, the once robust and commanding man had withered into a skeletal husk—sunken eyes, protruding cheekbones. The moment he saw the body laid on the straw mat, he let out a gut-wrenching wail:

“Minsheng—!”

Though the face was beyond recognition, the tiger claw scars on it remained. As he collapsed over the corpse, a cloud of green-headed flies buzzed up, and the Xian Mountain officers all retreated with covered faces. But the man, uncaring of blood or filth, clutched Fang Minsheng’s body, wailing in anguish. “Who did this to you? Who made you like this? I’ll kill them! I’ll kill them all!”

He slammed his head against the stone tiles again and again, each strike splattering blood.

The limp corpse in his arms had one hand fall loosely to the ground—and on that hand, Fang Jingyu saw something.

A yellow-tinged imitation jade thumb ring, slipped halfway over a severed finger, darkened with blood.

He suddenly remembered that day long ago—his brother’s birthday. Fang Minsheng had slid that ring on his hand, beaming like sunlight and spring breeze, and said, “Thank you for the gift. I’ll wear it always.”

Then, a wave of grief like a blade split open his chest. Fang Jingyu dropped to his knees and pounded the ground, sobbing in agony.

He heard his own cries, his howls, echoing through his ribs like crashing waves, mingling with his father’s wails in the wind.

That day, he learned that when people are consumed by grief, they scream in the exact same voice.

———

The setting sun carved silhouettes of distant towers, all steeped in the dusk. Terns floated across the red light, vanishing in an instant.

Fang Jingyu sat silently in the corridor’s wooden chair. He watched the servants carry the limp Langgan Guard back into his room. The Xian Mountain officers placed the corpse on the small slope behind the estate, forbidding anyone to bury it. They said the Changyi Emperor had decreed the son of a tyrant should not be granted peace.

Looking at the ruined estate, Fang Jingyu felt a vast and suffocating emptiness.

His brother was gone. The hope of rescuing him had dissolved into a dream. And as for vengeance—he was still far too weak to stand against the Xian Mountain Guards.

What did he have to live for now?

The Yu Yin Guard’s words returned to him: “Go figure out what it is you truly want.”

Fang Jingyu walked aimlessly out of the estate, bathed in the dying glow of the sun. The heavens burned red, then were slowly swallowed by dark clouds. The stone alleyway turned a cold, pale grey. A sliver of dim gold light poured in from an archway. Red lanterns trembled with candlelight like embers on the verge of extinguishing.

He wiped his tears and walked slowly. Suddenly, he stumbled, chest striking something hard. The pain flared—and in that moment, he could no longer contain it. He wept aloud in the deserted alley.

Why had his life been cursed from the start? Why was he born without the love of his parents? Why did fate take his brother away?

Would he spend his whole life crawling behind others, never able to catch up, forever drifting, forever outcast?

He looked down through his tears and felt in his chest pocket. He pulled out a small bili—a bamboo flute. It had jabbed his ribs when he fell, leaving a purple bruise.

He froze.

When the Xian Mountain officers ransacked the Fang estate, they took everything related to Fang Minsheng. Only two things remained: the bamboo bow and this flute, both gifts from his brother. The last remnants of his memory.

The sight of the flute struck him like lightning. He wiped away his tears and, swaying, forced himself to his feet. His brother’s death remained unavenged. His brother’s dream unfinished. How could he waste another day?

Beneath the setting sun, a tiny figure staggered forward toward the distance.

Fang Jingyu climbed Qingning Mountain once more.

He found the small wooden hut on the mountain. Inside, the walls were covered in blades—ring-hilt sabers, goose-wing sabers, willow-leaf sabers, horizontal sabers… a dense forest of steel like a grove of bamboo. Amid the blades stood a tiger-hide chair. An elderly woman with white hair sat polishing a blade with deerskin.

She didn’t look up at him. Her voice was cold. “Here for a blade? Pick one and leave.”

“No. I’ve come to learn.”

The old woman paused, then slowly raised her eyes. Her gaze was as clear and cold as dew. “I told you—I don’t need disciples.”

“But you live for the blade. Surely you still need one more perfect weapon.”

“Your frame is too soft. You’re not suited to wield a blade.”

“I once heard my brother say that even someone like me could have an iron skeleton grafted into the body. It hurts beyond words—but it allows one to move like anyone else.”

She fell silent. For the first time, she studied the boy kneeling before her. His limbs were fragile, wrists thin, ribs sharp—like a stalk of grass ready to be blown away. But in his eyes, a fire burned that could consume the world. It was like sunlight at high noon.

Grafting iron into the body? Madness. She had seen warriors of Penglai’s armies scream like beasts when iron frames were set into their bones—even hardened men, scarred from dragon-blood battlefields, had wept from the agony. Most couldn’t survive the pain. And yet this child, with his reed-thin body, had chosen this for himself.

She didn’t know why—but her mind suddenly changed.

“I once asked why you want to learn the blade. Is it for fame? For strength? For revenge?” she asked at last.

“For nothing,” Fang Jingyu said. “If I can enter your tutelage, I’ll cleanse myself of all distractions. I’ll live only to study the blade. I ask you to take me in.”

“You could’ve stayed in the Fang estate, lived out your life in peace. Why walk this path through hell?”

“I’ve long been a dead thing. I’m more ghost than man. Rather than dragging out a shameful life—I’d rather burn away in glory.”

He kowtowed again. When he raised his head, a trail of blood streaked down from his forehead.

In that instant, the Yu Yin Guard felt a strange chill ripple through her spirit. She saw in him a natural-born blade. The blood on his brow seemed to blend into his gaze. His face was pale as frost, but his eyes blazed like fire, fierce and unyielding.

“I am Fang Jingyu,” he said, word by word. “I offer this body as a blade. Through fire and death, command me as you will.”