Chapter Text
During the next few days, Ye Baiyi found that he had an almost infinite capacity to admire the ways in which Rong Changqing was beautiful.
Of course, first and foremost, there was that smile on his face which Xuan-er had inherited, that special easygoing cheer which drew in people and made them look into his eyes and go with his mad schemes.
That had netted him quite a number of girlfriends and wannabes in their youth, before the woman who would be Rong-furen came into his life; Xuan-er had used that very same charisma in turn to build friendships and alliances, in both realities. Rong Changqing himself was no stranger to that attitude. Just his easy charm and persuasiveness had, after all, been enough to collect quite a number of unhinged individuals, rogue fighters and wronged women into the Ghost Valley — the sanctuary regarded as the 'evil sect of evil' in these parts. So far, the ghosts had stayed put and only very occasionally staged a pageant of ornate revenge on mundane evil-doers, reminding them that ghosts might forget, but would not forgive.
People had mentioned the Ghost Valley in passing, but Baiyi really needed to know more. If Wen Kexing's young life had been ruined by Xuan-er's downfall in his original life, bringing him to the top of the Ghost Valley as a result, of course it made sense that he hadn't budged from the position he was born into now. No sane person would volunteer to become a ghost. But that begged the question: - who was leading the Ghost Valley here? Whom had Changqing left in charge after he had set up the place, and who had taken over by now in their little dog-eat-dog world deep in the mountains? What about the Scorpion King, who had dropped off the map after Zhao Jing's downfall?
Zhao Jing fell so Rong Xuan would stand. Taihu Manor was home to skills and creativity now, with a library that was a benign version of the World's Armoury. Rong Xuan's alliance stood as well, with many sects that pooled their knowledge in the way Xuan-er had dreamed of. Senior disciples from all directions were forever dropping by to consult the lore and make copies, especially now that many of them were travelling home for the New Year, and then back to their sects a few days later; so if they passed Taihu by a day's journey or less either way, they would take the detour to look things up and collect printed manuals for the junior disciples.
Printed manuals — the very thought boggled the mind. Taihu had a printing shop, and so had three or five of the other leading sects, and all the beginners' guides that weren't secret could easily be handed out to the juniors that needed to study them. They could even add their own annotations; nobody needed to use these books after them.
Also, Taihu printed good copies of the mundane classics, from Li Bai's poems through the Classic of Mountain and Seas to the histories of Sima Qian. The sects wanted their disciples to be broadly educated, not purely focused on fighting and cultivation, which sounded almost ridiculous to the Ye Baiyi from his other life. But as there was peace and co-operation here, the sects could afford to expend the resources.
Ye Baiyi's mind kept almost rhythmically boggling to itself today as he was lounging in the printing shop with a pot of cold white tea, watching Rong Changqing repair the largest printing press which had thrown some gears or levers while the printing apprentices had been running a few copies of the Five Lakes beginners' manuals that Qin Jiuxiao was planning to take home for the new arrivals after the Lantern Festival. In the mid-holiday lull, after so much food had been eaten, so many firecrackers exploded, and the lions had tired of dancing, there was time for chores and errands that required people being where they usually weren't.
The most basic texts, as well as the five or seven most important mundane classics, were kept at the print shop as standing woodblocks, written on waxed paper, transferred to the wood block with rice paste, carved, and used on demand. With the more new-fangled movable type (which Taihu Manor could do as well, using arcane contraptions that the Dragon Pool Cabinet had made for them), you'd do one numbered print run, then take the text apart again, sorting the little ceramic characters into huge cases of little boxes.
Minglin, who was in on Ye Baiyi's 'memory issues', had commented on the techniques at first, but after he'd said, "I know that" for the third time today, she had fallen silent and gone back to drawing schematics on woodblocks. She did a lot of illustrations for manuals, and was quite proud of it.
Taihu Manor even had several printing presses, rather than using the more common method of inking the block, covering it with paper, and patting it by hand; they made printing off all the necessary copies of a treatise or the agenda of a conference so much faster.
Baiyi remembered earlier years when Rong Changqing, Xuan-er and Long Que had spent weeks each winter perfecting the apparatus — yes, he did indeed remember them. Seeing Changqing now, lifting the heavy top right off the machine to see where it was skewing sideways, brought back clear images of the moment when father and son both had put the thing into place together, and it had slid smoothly over the paper for the very first time. Baiyi remembered their cheers, and the way Changqing had skipped over to kiss Baiyi soundly on the lips in triumph. Rong-furen had been there as well, with a toddler Minglin on her hip.
So the past of this lovely world, full of smiling friends and peace and printing presses, was real enough to come sneaking back in Baiyi's mind; the body retained what the body had seen, even if Baiyi's soul was different.
Underneath Rong Changqing's linen work clothes, you could see his marvellous muscles straining as he lifted the contraption off the mechanism; then, as he squatted down to inspect the grooves in which it was supposed to be running, you could clearly see the power of his buttocks and thighs tightening the fabric.
Even though he was immortal who ran mostly on qi, Changqing still had the physique of a sword-smith, the arms of a man who would swing a long heavy hammer or a heavy double-handed sword every day, and legs that stood firm at the anvil.
Baiyi never got enough of admiring this aspect of Changqing's beauty, either.
His body had been like that in their first life; but in this one, Ye Baiyi was allowed to openly look. In this life, he saw the strong back of his lover and suddenly remembered what the warm skin felt like over the hard muscles when he ran his hands over it in bed, or in fact in the middle of a mountain meadow in summer. Who would come and disturb the immortals as they cultivated their unique power together?
"I think I have it," Rong Changqing suddenly declared. "Everybody step back!"
Qin Jiuxiao fled to the corner where Baiyi and Minglin were hiding, bumped into their table and acted very flustered, so they offered him tea.
"I am so sorry that my order broke your mechanism!" he blurted out. Compared to Qin Huaizhang (and indeed Zhou Zishu who had been his da-shixiong), he was rather commonplace and awkward, but he was diligent and took care of things, and in this softer world, his idealism and principles had a chance to not kill him.
"If it hadn't been your order," Minglin said, "it would have been the next; and what if that only happened after the holidays, and my dad was no longer here to help with the repairs? We would have had to muddle through on our own and maybe even get somebody from Longyuan to help. My dad is always so happy to provide more than the spiritual guidance of a faraway immortal!"
"Even so, it was him and Master Ye here from whom our peace and our knowledge came," Qin Jiuxiao said, looking at Baiyi with a sliver of awe. "If they hadn't given the manual from which they cultivated to immortality to Master Rong Xuan as a proof that indeed they were indeed willing to share their most secret knowledge, this entire alliance would never have happened. With the martial world not at war over revenge or skills, the mundane world can prosper; the fields are tilled and fertile, and the law rules even the powerful."
"That reminds me," Ye Baiyi said. Now was a good a time as any to bring it up. "Talking of the powerful that think themselves above the law — I have been thinking about your former da-shixiong lately. I still can't fathom why he actually abandoned all of you for the service of Helian Yi, and stole your sword as he left."
"He didn't steal it," Qin Jiuxiao said, very quietly. "I gave it to him. He told me what he was planning to do, what his imperial cousin had written and promised him, how he would take his skills to make a real difference in the mundane world; he asked me to come with him! I said no, I wouldn't desert my parents, but I gave him my sword. He didn't have his own from Master Rong yet; he'd been promised one, so I argued that I could take that one, and he would put the sword I already had to good use."
Ye Baiyi nodded; he had thought that much. Leaving his sect, yes — but steal a sword? Not the Zhou Zishu that he had met.
"Do you still hear from him?" he asked next.
"He used to write to me in secret," Qin Jiuxiao admitted. "At least for a few years; then the letters got fewer and further between and stopped about three years ago. Most of the disciples he had taken with him to the court had died by then, and his Window of Heaven had become a household word of terror. I — I called him out on that in my last letter, I couldn't stay silent! But he never answered. Life at court, the power given by the emperor, and all the blood on his hand must have hardened his soul. It is such a pity; we all relied on him so much!"
"I wonder why your father didn't realise what was going on, and tried to stop him?" Ye Baiyi said. "Qin Huaizhang always struck me as more sensible than that."
"He is!" Qin Jiuxiao protested, offended on account of his father. "He was already sick back then, and my mum had written to their friends in the Healer Valley, Master Zhen and Gu Miaomiao, because my father still thought his illness would go away on its own. They sent their son Zhen Yan, who arrived at Four Seasons Manor only three weeks after da-shixiong had left; he was so disappointed to no longer find him there! When he'd learned martial arts with us as a kid, he had adored him so much; he came with an ancient dog that had been da-shixiong's gift, and some of its descendants, meant as a gift in turn. He talked about following him to the capital and trying to get him out of whatever he had gotten himself into there; but my father convinced him not to meddle. The capital eats pretty young healers alive and doesn't even spit out their bones, he warned him."
Ye Baiyi nodded along; everything made so much sense now. Those brats had always been meant to be, as had been Changqing and he himself; but the way reality fell down differently along the fixed points of the tale that in time turned it into history had kept Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing from each other this time around.
At that moment, Rong Changqing gave a loud groan as he lifted the contraption, apparently content with its condition, and slid it home again on top of the machine.
He split a seam at the shoulder of his robe as he did so, and Baiyi felt his throat go dry at the sight of the golden skin exposed underneath the grey linen.
Changqing moved the heavy slab back and forth on the printing press. "Try printing off a sheet," he told the printing apprentices who had been watching in awe, "to make sure it works correctly before I go to wash up and put on a different robe."
He took a few steps towards where Baiyi and Minglin were sitting, accepted a cup of cold white tea from them, tossed it back, then had three more.
"There were some grubby grains in the groove in which it runs," he explained, even though among his audience, only the apprentices who were keeping their respectful distance could even understand what he was on about. "I guess splinters carved off incompletely from the woodblock, mixed with residue of the rice paste, and ink. It should run properly…"
One of the apprentices held up a sheet of paper, flawlessly printed with the diagrams and characters that made up the page of a beginners' manual.
"… yeah, it does."
Changqing held out his cup for more tea.
"That was some feat of strength there, dad," Minglin said, with a grin. "If I didn't know that you don't need to, I would have guessed you were trying to impress somebody. Maybe Ye-shushu here?"
They all laughed. They all knew full well that Ye Baiyi was physically her father, but it would have been so rude to the memory of her mother to casually refer to that, so Ye-shushu it was, as it was for all of the Rong kids, except Xuan-er. For him, Ye Baiyi was shifu.
"I was impressed, though," Ye Baiyi said, smiling smugly. The idea of Rong Changqing doing all that for him felt very good, kindling a slow warmth in his stomach.
"I remember just that groan from a very different context, though," he added in a whisper when Minglin and Qin Jiuxiao had gone to look at the clean, crisp pages the machine was printing off now.
"You remember?" Changqing said, hope in his voice.
"Yes," Baiyi said, smiling into his eyes. "I actually remember. I also remember when you built the machine, and little Minglin on her mother's hip. I remember Xuan-er and Feng'er wearing red and bowing to the two of us."
"The poison, or the curse, is wearing off," Rong Changqing said. "Hopefully."
Baiyi shrugged. "I remember the other life still as clearly," he said. "And I do wonder where Zhao Jing's little scorpion went. I think there will be answers when we find him."
"But we don't even know — would you recognise him from the other life?" Rong Changqing asked.
"Yes," Ye Baiyi said. "We are getting there. Things start making sense."
He leaned in and kissed Changqing even though they were in semi-public. He didn't want to explain more yet.
Written by a human in Ellipsus.