From the Cold Springs to the Mountain

Even in her enforced seclusion, she was not cut off from the world—not as removed from it as she should be, she thought on her worse days, for the safety of others.

There were visitors nearly every day, at the beginning. Once the rest of the clan found out where she was, that is—after the first days, that trembling, tumbling, dark stretch of unmarked time, when she had no concept of where her body ended and the rest began: her qin, the chalk-filled waters of the cave, the resentful pull of the Yin Iron. She knew she was injured, but she couldn't feel the wound. She had to hold on, to be the still centre of all that she could sense around her, to endure.

She didn't remember why her endurance was so important, but whenever her energy flagged, the need for it screamed in her mind. She endured.

Eventually her consciousness returned to her, with a snap like a dislocated shoulder setting back into place. She calculated later on that she had been in the Cold Pond Cave for seven days at that point, stretched between life and resentful energy for five of them. Sitting up from the wet stone, she directed her attention inwards: the deep rent inside her chest, both physical and spiritual, had sealed itself up.

No wonder it had taken her golden core so long to mend that damage; no wonder she had been so incapacitated throughout. The resentful energy of the Yin Iron suffused the cold water all around her. It hung over the surface like a black fog. Lan Yi crawled over to her qin and began to play, fingers shaking on the strings.

The next day, the Lan elders came to look for her in the cave.

After long, long discussions, they agreed that her eldest nephew should become the next Sect Leader in her stead, and the outside world should be told that she had retired into seclusion. After a few years, the story would change. Lan Yi would officially be dead.

She had the feeling that, having been the first female Lan Sect Leader, she would be the last for a long while.

"Do you disapprove of me, Baoshan jie?"

"Why would I disapprove of you, meimei?"

"You don't believe that sect leadership should pass down by blood."

"No."

"... And I am a sect leader by blood."

"You did not choose it, meimei."

"Nor am I stopping it. The Lan Clan will continue after me."

"Oh, are you having a baby? And who is the father?"

"Baoshan jie, stop teasing me! I'm speaking seriously."

"I'm not stopping you."

"You know I can't—when you—!"

"..."

"The leadership will pass down to my nephews, of course."

A sigh, heavy in the dark. "Yi mei, I don't disapprove of you. Let's drop this subject for tonight, please? Why talk about those dour young creatures when you could be kissing me?"

Restraining the Yin Iron was the most difficult thing she had ever done in her life. Before that, the most difficult task of her life had been breaking the seal on the Yin Iron.

For a little while in between, she had thought that living without Baoshan Sanren would take that title. She had written romantic letters saying so, letters that no one could deliver for her because nobody else knew where Baoshan jie's mountain was. Lan Yi might have disappointed her and been cast out of the warm light of her love, but she wouldn't betray that secret just so she could beg for a second chance. She would just have to live through this cold season: to reform her sect, to harness the power of the Yin Iron and show that she could control it, she could bend it to her will.

Baoshan jie would see then that her fears had been ungrounded. She would look at Lan Yi and see not just the beauty and intelligence she had so often told her she admired, but a powerful cultivator—her equal, at last, despite the generations that separated them. And she would come back.

It took years, in the freezing but never frozen grotto, sending her spiritual energy out into the water and pulling it back into her core, before Lan Yi admitted to herself that Baoshan Sanren would not have taken her back, if she had been able to overcome the Yin Iron.

How could she not have seen that her beloved could not love a woman who would even try?

It seemed like a ridiculous idea, at first.

"If you don't want them, shifu, we'll take them away again," her younger nephew said. Beside him, his older brother stood silently, his arms full. "But A-Shui was insistent that we offer them to you."

"What am I supposed to do with them?" she asked, baffled.

"They are to keep you company," said her younger nephew. He took one of the white rabbits gently from his brother's arms and, stroking softly over its ears, walked over to where Lan Yi stood. She held her fingers out to its twitchy nose and it raised its head to sniff at them.

Her younger nephew reached into his sleeve for a bundle of greens. When Lan Yi accepted the rabbit from him, he squatted to spread the leaves over the cave floor; his brother, the Lan Sect Leader, crouched to let the other bunnies hop down and nibble at the delicacies.

"What will they eat?" she asked.

"Grass and other plants from the hillside," her older nephew told her, his gaze intent on the soft creatures exploring the chamber. One of them approached the edge of the stone ledge, where it dropped away to the water of the spring, and he carefully turned it around to face a safer direction. "They can come and go freely as they need to."

"Because of the..." Lan Yi gestured to her own forehead ribbon. The ones the rabbits were wearing lacked the long tails that hung down behind her head, and the heads of her nephews. Presumably this was a practical choice.

"A-Shui, A-Lin and the other children have been practising their weaving and talisman work," he said, one corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile she hadn't seen him make in years.

"They'll leave their waste about the place."

"It's easy to clean up," said her younger nephew.

"Well, then. Perhaps I will keep them. For a while." Lan Yi smiled. "Please tell A-Shui I am very grateful for her gift."

The two young men—not so young, now, in fact—stood up, their faces falling simultaneously into accustomed serious lines. Each tucked his right arm behind his back. "We will take our leave, shifu, and pass on your message."

"Wait," she said, surprising herself. "When you came today, I expected you to bring news of my proposal." Her final proposal, her last chance at any of the reforms she had spent years struggling for. Soon she would be dead, officially at least, and even the Lan, who loved the secrets that thronged the woods and the back hill of the Cloud Recesses, would ignore the political demands of a dead woman. "Have the Elders made their decision yet?"

"The Elders have rejected your proposal," her older nephew said flatly.

She opened her mouth, but her younger nephew interrupted her: "As do we." He glanced apologetically, not at her but at his brother, whose eyebrows twitched in a momentary frown. Then they both bowed with formal depth and left her, still holding a soft white rabbit in her arms, speechless and unheard.

For the last few years, Lan Shui had been visiting her more and more often. As head disciple—a position naturally reserved for a member of the main Lan family—it unsurprisingly fell to her to bring the few supplies Lan Yi still needed. No outer disciples knew of the concealed cave at the source of the Cold Springs, and almost no one knew what it sheltered. The hours Lan Shui had spent here, reading aloud from newly-acquired cultivational texts and playing with the rabbits, were unnecessary and went against the spirit of her father's rules, if not the letter.

The first time Lan Yi invited her great-niece to stay overnight in the Cold Pond Cave, it was winter. The girl's face had been pink from the cold when she arrived, her eyes puffy despite the snow she'd apparently used to scrub the tearstains away. Lan Yi had asked no questions. She just kindled a fire in the little fire pit she kept to boil water for tea and sat quietly as the afternoon passed. That night, as she drew the quilt over both of their shoulders, she thought she heard Lan Shui's breath catch in a sob. Still, she held her tongue. If Lan Shui wanted her counsel, she would ask for it in her own time.

"Shifu," Lan Shui said now. Her narrow face was not tanned—she undoubtedly spent too much time in the library for that—but it had picked up the faint gold of summer. Her eyebrows, twin brush strokes painted with a decisive hand, were drawn together in worry. "How did you become the Sect Leader?"

"My father died," she replied simply, waiting for the real question.

"But your brother—my grandfather—wasn't he the heir?"

"Lan Yun was younger than me, and he was frail as a youth. The elders agreed that I was the wiser choice of successor." She paused, let herself think briefly back to those days. "It took a lot of persuasion."

"Mm. I understand." Lan Shui's eyes grew fierce. "Father has named A-Lin the sect heir. He waited until Mother had her baby to make the announcement. As it is a boy, he is to be the second heir."

"I see."

"Shifu, they said—" The girl's voice faded. She cleared her throat. "They said it was bad enough that I was a girl, but a girl who could not be relied upon to produce heirs could never lead the sect." Gently, Lan Yi laid her hand on her great-niece's, where Lan Shui clenched her fingers in the white silk of the robes over her knee. "You never had children, shifu."

"No," Lan Yi confirmed. "Nor did I ever intend to, even if things had turned out differently."

She had convinced Lan Shui to wait until the spring to set out into her new life, so when she came to say goodbye it was with pollen and dew clinging to the hems of her travelling robes, and the smell of the pines in her hair.

"Do you have everything?" Lan Yi asked, hearing the voices of all her aunts in her own. "Food for the road, medicines, needles and thread, powder and oil for your sword?"

"Everything, shifu, I have everything." Lan Shui's smile transformed her face into something radiant and unfamiliar. She had always been beautiful to Lan Yi, of course, but it had been harder to see it through the strain of the last months.

She took her great-niece's hands. "And your friend?"

"She... won't come with me. But she won't tell anyone where I've gone, either." She hesitated, before admitting, "It's a relief, really. To know how things stand between us."

After they broke apart from their farewell embrace, Lan Yi held out a small, silk-wrapped parcel. It was a jade pendant, carved with drifting clouds, with a pale blue tassel she had made herself.

"Write, when you can," she said, "but if you can't do so safely, it's better that you don't. And... one last thing, A-Shui." From her sleeve, she drew another parcel. It was almost identical to the first one, but had talismans stitched into the silk that should seal it from anyone but its intended recipient. That recipient ought to recognise their forms, because she and Lan Yi had worked them out together, many years before.

"There is a mountain," Lan Yi said, "a celestial mountain that no one knows of, and on that mountain lives an Immortal who reached enlightenment. She went to live on the mountain because she couldn't understand the world outside it. She used to come down to the world nonetheless, but I don't know if she does any more."

Lan Shui nodded, solemn.

"If you should find the mountain, or if you should meet that Immortal, my darling, please give her this from me."

The girl tucked the packet into her sleeve, bowed to Lan Yi and thanked her for all her help, and then she walked out into the world. Lan Yi stood by herself for a long time afterwards. She looked at the concealed entrance to the cave and wondered over and again whether she should have voiced her final words, after all. "Tell her I said she was right."

Once, she'd thought she could attune the Yin Iron to herself. She'd attempted this by spiritual brute force, through ritual and, finally, by allowing its resentful energies to flow through her, thinking she could purify them with her own golden core. Little by little, her theory had gone, she could pull the Yin Iron's power around to alignment with her own. Its resentment would bleed away, and its purified spiritual energy would feed into her own cultivation.

The waters of the Cold Pond Cave hadn't even been part of her plan, once the seal on the Yin Iron was broken. She'd just worked here because it was secluded, and the natural energies of the cave couldn't hurt her efforts. Now the pool had become an essential reservoir for the harsh energies she'd unleashed and couldn't tame, and Lan Yi was yoked to it like a shui gui tethered to the place where it drowned.

The correspondence from the outside world that the Lan disciples used to bring her fell off rapidly after her 'death' was announced. The visits from her nephews and the sect elders became fewer and further between over the following years, too. Lan Yi's world dwindled to the same points as it had after the initial backlash. Her qin, the waters, the Yin Iron, and her own endurance.

"What are you doing here?"

"Can't I come to visit an old friend?"

"A friend..."

"Besides, I thought I had received an invitation."

"A-Shui—! She found you? Is she well? ... Baoshan jie, I'm sorry. Are you well? I'm glad the token let you into the Cloud Recesses. I'm glad you're here."

"I missed you, Yi mei."

"I missed you so much. Come, sit. Let me make you tea. Let me... Oh. I missed you."

...

"Will you stay?"

"For tonight. I can't take longer than that away from the mountain—from my disciples."

"You've taken on disciples, now. You're really building your own school? I'm happy for you."

"It is a school, not a sect and not a clan. My students are street children. I'm taking the dross that even ordinary society throws away, never mind cultivators, and I teach them how to become gold."

"I didn't manage to reform the Lan, you know."

"Mm. I saw."

"The Yin Iron didn't work. And after that, the political pressure I could apply from this cave wasn't enough to convince them."

"As I recall, garrotting your opponents with your qin strings didn't help either."

"There's more to my Chord Assassination Technique than 'garrotting'! Ah, don't you make that face at me, Baoshan jie!"

"Stop pouting then, meimei!"

...

"You were right. I've wanted to tell you that for years."

"I wish I hadn't been."

"I wish I'd never even tried. I wish I'd given up the first time I couldn't break the seal on the Yin Iron."

"Have you made any progress in restoring the seal?"

"It's... it's hard enough just to hold it here, even with the energies from the pond. I don't have the reserves I would need to research further."

"I see."

"Jiejie, if you stayed with me—if we worked together, like we always did before—"

"What time is it? Is it dawn yet?"

"... No. No, there's still some of the night left."

"Let's just enjoy tonight, all right? Kiss me, meimei. Please."

...

Whispered, into a sleeping ear: "I love you."

Of all the disruption, all the noise and the fright of the world turning upside down, the thing that shocked her was something that should have been obvious.

Hundreds of Lan disciples, both inner and outer, pressed into the series of caves that Lan Yi had been so used to having at her sole disposal. Some of the drawn faces still bore blood, whether from bleeding from the qiqiao under the monster's spiritual assault or from the strokes of his sword. Babes in arms were bounced and hushed by their mothers, or—if their mothers had given their lives to defend the Cloud Recesses—by their aunts and grandmothers. The young children knew that no running or raised voices were allowed in the Cloud Recesses. Certainly there should be none in this secret inner sanctum. They were all tired, though, and in need of distractions. If the strange ripples of the waters here aroused their curiosity and led them to dangle their feet and hands off the sides of the rocky banks, or test the unusual echos with their voices, Lan Yi could not blame them.

It was almost a family reunion. She might even have been happy about it, except that she recognised only a couple of the faces.

How long had it been since the Lan elders had stopped coming to the cave as a matter of routine? Her great-nephew's successor as sect leader, Lan Huaiyu, had come to see her a few months before, as if to receive her official approval, though he'd only visited after his investiture. One or two of the other inner disciples looked familiar. They didn't stop to talk to her when dropping off baskets of books or robes, though, so she couldn't really put names to their faces.

Lan Yi played calming, healing songs on her qin, doing her best to take care of her sect. If the intruder forced his way inside the Cold Pond Cave, she would be a formidable defender—but so much would have to go wrong to get to that point, what would really be left to defend?

It took days before news came that the Cloud Recesses had been saved, its attacker killed at the point of a thousand swords. The nearby Zhao and He sects had sent reinforcements directly to Gusu, and cultivators from the Wen and the Jin had been pursuing him across the country for weeks. Together, they had finally taken him down.

Now that the crisis was over, she pinned down Lan Huaiyu to find out what was really known about the man who had massacred his way through the cultivation world, up to their very door. The answer was: disappointingly little.

"Did he even come from Yanling?" she asked.

"We don't know. Nobody there would credibly admit to ever knowing him, even before he changed and became so violent."

"What could have triggered such a change? And what did he want in the Cloud Recesses?"

"Nobody knows that, either. He kept to himself and confided in no one, even though many begged to learn from him."

She convinced them to bring his body into the cave, so she could see for herself: a man in his early twenties, bloodied from more slashes and stab wounds than could have been necessary to kill him. The defenders had not wanted to take chances. He had high cheekbones, a strong brow, and a scar on his chin that must have dated to before he'd learned to cultivate. His robes were white, as simple as any rogue cultivator's, stiff with blood and grime. Nothing about him gave away a clue about his teacher.

Lan Yi laid a hand on his chest, touched her fingers to the acupoint on his wrist, and felt nothing at all. Lan Huaiyu's eyes on her started to look suspicious. Kneeling down to rinse her hands in the cold waters, she gave her permission for the waiting disciples to take the corpse away for burial in an inconspicuous part of the forest.

When she was alone again, she let herself think of that young man's life on the mountain and his descent from it. If she could have spoken to him before he began his war on the cultivation world, what would he have told her about her beloved's school, the methods used there? After a quarter of a shichen, she moved back to the qin. She had her task to perform. The Yin Iron would not wait for her conscience to become clear.

They looked so young, the two boys who stood before her in the cave. Water ran from their hair in chilly rivulets and froze in their eyelashes, giving them an untimely glaze of silver, but it couldn't disguise how brightly their eyes shone to be learning these old secrets, or the soft cheeks that both of them still kept from childhood. The younger of the two, Baoshan Sanren's grand-disciple, watched her rabbits hop about the rocks with unhidden joy. His companion, by contrast, held his emotions as tightly within himself as he could. Lan Yi recognised the care he took with his touch and his gaze, looking out through Lan Shui's eyes, and she knew what it meant.

When she'd accepted their bows and passed over the Yin Iron to their safeguarding, Lan Yi faded from the young men's sight and drank in the feeling of the Cold Pond Cave without the heavy pull of resentful energy that had saturated it for over a century. Its traces were still there in the water, but the air, and her mind, felt clearer than she could remember them being for a long time.

She let them get a headstart down the back hill. She carefully pet each of the bunnies for the last time. She packed—it didn't take long—and then Lan Yi walked out of the cave, into the sunlight.

"Lan Yi?"

"Baoshan Sanren."

"I wasn't expecting you to come here. Have you re-sealed the Yin Iron? Is it over?"

"No, I didn't re-seal it. I've... passed it on. Baoshan Sanren, I think a lot of things are going to change very quickly now."

"So formal, Yi mei?"

"Baoshan jie. I wasn't sure if... I didn't have an invitation."

"Hah. No one needs an invitation or a token to enter my mountain. If you're not welcome, the mountain simply does not reveal itself."

"Then..."

"I'm glad you're here."

...

"It's a big place, your school."

"Yes. I'll show you the whole thing, later."

"Later, I'd love to see it. This room is enough for now."

"Yi mei. Do you still...?"

"I do."

"Even after—mm."

"Mhmm."

"Wait. Listen to me. I know what happened, after my first disciple left the mountain. I know he was killed in Gusu."

"I saw his body. He killed a number of Lan disciples, did you hear about that?"

"I don't know what... Well, I have some thoughts about what went wrong, but now it's too late to find out for sure."

"Hmm."

"What do you need me to say, Yi mei?"

"I need to hear that it wasn't only me who was wrong."

"It wasn't only you. I was wrong as well."

...

"So what are your plans, now that you're free?"

"I thought I could stay here, if jiejie will have me."

"Really, meimei, you're still asking 'if'?"

"I'd like to teach."

"You'll be a good teacher."

"I'd like to work with you, like we always did before."

"I've never done better work by myself than we did together, back then."

"I'd like to cultivate with you."

"I want nothing else."

"Good."