Yue bustled from place to place, making arrangements for the upcoming summit. She was harried, stressed, and very much in her element as she attended meetings with the Grandmasters of the Great Spiritual Flowing Purewater sect to discuss everything from guests and seating arrangements to topics of discussion and common goals. Everyone could agree that they wanted peace between Qin and Jiaguo, but the exact shape of that peace was a matter of significant debate.
Would Jiaguo be folded into the Awakening Dragon sect, as Yoshika had originally suggested? While that might seem favorable to Qin, there were concerns even among their allies. Xin Hai spelled it out for them as she and Kaede joined him and his peers for lunch in their grand hall.
“Yue, I love you like a daughter—even if your engagement to Wei fell through—but the great sects are important checks on each other’s power. Even a fallen one like ours is carefully measured against our neighbors.”
Guan Yu, his second-in-command and Grandmaster of the Earth Rending Sword branch of the Flowing Purewater, nodded.
“Indeed, the very reason we are ‘fallen,’ as my sworn brother puts it, is the censure we received for harboring the Cult of Harmonious Stars after dual cultivators were purged by the other sects.”
Lin Xiulan rolled her eyes and gave him an arch look.
“Poached, more like. Everyone was greedy to gain control of the best healers in the empire once our right to self-advocate was revoked. Have you been holding regrets all this time, Guan Yu?”
“Not at all, Lady Lin. My point is simply that our defiance of the other sects was mere pretext to the real reason for their censure. The addition of your cult as a Flowing Purewater branch sect empowered us too much for the other Great Sects to tolerate, and so they conspired to strip us of power in other areas.”
Xin Hai grunted irritably—despite being the head of a great sect, he was a boisterous and straightforward man with little patience for politics.
“It’s a constant push and pull. The Austere Mountain is the ‘weakest’ of the great sects, politically, but they have a strong martial tradition and a greater fighting force than any other sect. Healers are valuable—too valuable for the sects to allow us to have an uncontested monopoly.”
Xiulan scowled.
“We’re not commodities to be bought and sold like sacks of grain.”
“No, of course not. Our stance was always a moral one, and I made no objections when you moved your cult to Jiaguo. The Cult of Harmonious Stars is free to make their own destiny, but that’s not how our peers see it. Nor will they take kindly to the Awakening Dragon consolidating so much power.”
Kaede pursed her lips. She’d been fairly quiet, letting Yue do most of the talking as Yoshika focused her attention elsewhere, but Yue still appreciated her presence.
“Even if we surrender entirely to the Awakening Dragon, that creates a new superpower among the Great Sects—especially if we ally with Flowing Purewater.”
“Exactly—and it gets worse. Traditionally, all of the sects have been at odds with each other, but there’s a certain level of solidarity among the southern sects, even the Bai until the bloody vultures got into bed with Yan De. What do you suppose will happen if you consolidate a corridor of power all the way from the southern half of the continent, straight up to the God-Emperor’s doorstep, separated only by the Austere Mountain and Silver Orchard?”
Yue grimaced.
“It’ll be war either way. Only this time we’ll be beset on all sides.”
“What’s going to happen is that the other sects are going to claim that the Awakening Dragon’s ‘victory’ against Jiaguo is shared by the empire, and especially the sects that contributed most to the war effort. As such, it wouldn’t be right for the Awakening Dragon alone to rule over that new territory.”
“Tsk, damnable vultures!”
Xiulan smiled mirthlessly.
“I’m sure they’d very generously offer you up a corridor of their lands around the Forbidden Mountain range so that you can connect Jiaguo City to the Awakening Dragon through our land. But in exchange, the Austere Mountain will want Yamato, and Silver Orchard will want Goryeo.”
Kaede shook her head.
“Absolutely not. I don’t care if it was on Yan De’s orders, I’m not entrusting my people to leaders who would put their own people to death.”
Guan Yu nodded solemnly.
“And therein lies the problem. Your surrender is in name only, and everyone knows it. Qin is no stranger to weaponized bureaucracy, and we have witnessed your takeover of Goryeo, regardless of whether it was an outcome you intended. This summit is not the end of your war—just another battlefield upon which it is to be fought.”
“Then what would you have us do?”
Xin Hai leaned back in his seat and grimaced, glancing out over the balcony behind the great waterfall fed by the spring at the mountain’s peak.
“You need to slow down. Don’t rescind your title—you need the power that comes with it, and even a nominal surrender will undermine the people’s faith in you. Let Yue take control of the Awakening Dragon while you negotiate a ceasefire. We’ll remain friends, but not direct allies. I can’t promise more than that after repeated censures—I have my own people to consider as well, you know.”
Kaede clenched her teeth, but Yue preempted her with a smile and bowed graciously to Grandmaster Xin.
“We’ll take that under advisement, Grandmaster. I know that we’ve put you in a difficult position, but perhaps you are right. With friends in the north and south, we may well be able to take our time in consolidating power.”
“Yue, we absolutely do not have time for that. We need every bit of help we can get.”
Yue’s face didn’t change when she heard Yoshika’s protest in her mind, and she replied coolly without missing a beat in the audible conversation.
“I’m well aware of that, but we’ve asked enough of our allies already. I don’t know how wise it is to pressure Qin like this, but you’ll have your territory. I promise it. We’ll talk after this.”
“Speaking of censure, I believe that our esteemed peers will likely try to undermine my authority during the summit—Yan Ren has every reason to challenge me, and after the battle at Kucheon I imagine that Sun Quan and Qian Shi will be supporting him.”
Kaede blinked at Yue, visibly surprised that she’d managed to respond telepathically while speaking. Yue just smirked without looking back at her—all the practice was finally paying off. Xin Hai either missed the exchange or ignored it, grunting in acknowledgement.
“Word is that the first prince and the princesses will be in attendance as arbiters, and Yan Hao was seen traveling south with Long Chunhua. You’re right—they’re going to challenge your inheritance.”
Yue stiffened. She’d expected the challenge, but...
“My mother will be here?”
She hadn’t seen or heard from her mother in a decade. They had been close, but that was a long time, and Yue had changed. Besides that, who knew what sort of threats she’d be under from Yan De’s disciples?
Lin Xiulan smiled sadly and reached over to take Yue’s hand.
“It’ll be alright, dear. I’m sure she’s anxious to see you again. Your ‘uncles’ Ren and Hao need her to challenge your right, but that doesn’t mean she’s cooperating with them.”
“Of course. Thank you for letting me know. So we have my father’s disciples, Sun Quan, Qian Shi, and possibly my mother to contend with.”
Xin Hai coughed once.
“And er, Bai Renshu as well.”
“Hardly worth mentioning. Now that he’s lost my father’s backing, perhaps we can take the opportunity to crush the little toady once and for all.”
“As you say. Aside from those of us present here, who will be advocating for Jiaguo?”
Kaede leaned on one hand and sighed.
“Ashikaga Sae and Seong Min from Yamato and Goryeo respectively, though Ashikaga isn’t exactly a diplomat. Zheng Long is back with his family to protect them from reprisals until we gain full control of the Awakening Dragon, and you’re our only other allies in Qin. Oh—there is one other, though I don’t know if they’ll take a stance.”
Yue looked askance at her. What was this?
“Why is this the first I’ve heard about it?”
“I was going to tell you, but I honestly don’t know when they’ll arrive or even who it will be. The Dragon Lord promised that he’d send an emissary.”
Guan Yu blinked.
“From the southern isles? The fiends have stayed away from the mainland for millennia, and you’ve convinced them to send a delegate?”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
“Yes, but I couldn’t get him to commit to anything else.”
“I see. Well, perhaps we can negotiate something upon their arrival, but for now let’s assume a neutral stance.”
“What about Shen Yu? He’s been awfully quiet since our truce.”
Immortal Sovereign Shen Yu—what a pain. Yue was still upset that Qin had declared war on Jiaguo despite the man who supposedly had the authority of the God-Emperor advocating against it. She suspected that he’d been half-hearted in his adherence to their agreement, but then so had Yoshika, so perhaps that much was fair.
Xin Hai scratched his chin.
“I don’t know, actually. He may attend, but as you say he hasn’t made any moves. Last I heard of him at all was that he’d recommended against war with Jiaguo. As far as I know, he hasn’t left the palace since.”
Kaede’s response surprised Yue again.
“Send him a formal invitation, if it isn’t too late. I don’t expect him to be an ally, but I need to negotiate with him as well.”
That was about as close to inviting the actual God-Emperor as it got, and Yue had a feeling that Yoshika would have done just that if it had been possible. She was serious about staking it all on the summit, and that realization renewed Yue’s own resolve to do the same.
“Thank you for meeting with us grandmasters. Yoshika and I will need to discuss our revised strategies in private. If Jiaguo’s surrender to the Awakening Dragon is unworkable, then we’ll prepare something else.”
Xin Hai nodded.
“Good luck, Yue. I’m sorry we couldn’t do more for you.”
“Nonsense. I owe you a great debt. If anyone should apologize, it is me. Xin Wei put himself and your entire sect in danger to protect me, and I’ve brought nothing but chaos and strife to you in return. As the Grandmistress of the Great Awakening Dragon sect, I intend to repay those debts with interest.”
He waved her off, chuckling.
“I have no regrets, except that you never truly became my daughter in law. I thought at least Yu’s boy had a chance, but you’re too much of a force to be tied down. Like Xiulan! The stars themselves must have aligned to grant me the fortune to earn her affection.”
Xiulan snorted.
“How uncharacteristically wise of you to realize it, my love. My husband may be reticent, but I promise that you have my full support, at least. I look forward to whatever you have in store for us.”
She gave Yue a pointed look, but she pretended not to notice as she bowed.
“Thank you again.”
They wrapped up the meeting and bade each other farewell before Yue and Kaede retreated back to her rooms in the Flowing Purewater.
Xin Hai had kept them for her, even years after her stay in the sect, and Yue felt a bit bad. Her engagement to Xin Wei had always been a fiction, but even so the Xin family and their sect had wholeheartedly taken her in. Yue had even flirted on and off for years with Guan Yi, the stone faced but remarkably gentle scion of the Earth Rending Sword branch, but it wasn’t to be. Neither of them could provide what the other wanted from the relationship.
Still, Yue considered the Xin clan to be akin to a second family for her, after Yoshika and her friends. Her blood relations didn’t even rate—apart from her mother. Maybe...begrudgingly, Zhihao if he’d had another decade to wisen up. Or a century.
The point was that the Flowing Purewater sect were among the few people from Yue’s homeland that she actually cared about and respected. She felt like she was doing them a disservice, even if she knew that they’d understand and forgive her. That was why she liked them, and it made her worry that she would fall back into her old ways and take advantage of that trust. Perhaps she already was.
“What’s troubling you, Yue?”
Yue glanced back at Kaede as she automatically began preparing tea.
“Aside from being at the center of a global conflict, the impending apocalypse, and meeting my mother for the first time in ten years?”
“...Yes? I feel like that last one doesn’t match the scale of the others.”
“Clearly you haven’t met my mother.”
She chuckled. Family could be an odd subject for Yoshika. Jia did not know her blood parents or care to, while Eui had a loving relationship with both of hers. Eunae knew who her father was, but didn’t know or acknowledge him due to family traditions, and recent events had strained her already chilly relationship with her mother. Li Meili had no parents, except for perhaps Jia and Eui, but that was too messy to think about.
Of all of them, though, perhaps it was Kaede who had the most troubled relationship with her family—because she had none. Her mother had died when she was just a child, her father had killed her stepmother, and she had killed her father. Kaede was the last Hayakawa living, and Yue could see how that burden weighed on her.
It was odd. Yue had never really spoken to Hayakawa Kaede much before she’d joined with Yoshika. If anything, they’d shared a mutual dislike of each other. Yue’s jealousy after Kaede became part of Yoshika didn’t help, but she got over it by just thinking of her as Yoshika, which was rude, in hindsight.
That had only been at first. Over time, Yue found that Kaede was perhaps one of her favorite aspects. Oh, Jia was always a treat and she enjoyed her verbal spars with Eui, but Kaede felt most like a sort of kindred spirit. Kaede understood Yue in a way that Yoshika’s other aspects didn’t quite match. They weren’t similar by any stretch of the imagination, but the things that troubled them were, and one of those things was their complicated relationship with family.
Another was loneliness.
Yue had friends. Lin Xiulan, Yoshika herself, and of course her moon spirit companion. But just those—she got along well enough with the other members of Jiaguo’s leadership and Yoshika’s friends, but they were Yoshika’s friends, not hers. That suited her just fine—Yue wasn’t as outgoing as she liked to pretend, and she treated most socialization like a game where everyone else was her opponent. She liked to win that game, but she did not enjoy playing it endlessly.
There were precious few people with whom she could let down her guard and just be. So much of her life had been dedicated to finding the freedom to be whoever she wanted, but ironically she didn’t actually like to share her true self the way Yoshika did.
They’d been comfortably silent while Yue finished preparing the tea, but it grew awkward once the two of them were seated, so she broke it.
“Do you remember when we were first reunited after the descent of the gods, and I invited you here to catch up?”
Kaede raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Though we were just Jia, Eui, and Meili at the time. I always feel a bit odd talking about memories from before my time, unless I’m speaking as Yoshika.”
“Mm. But you do remember. I was sitting right in this very seat, with Jia and Eui sitting where you are now.”
They were seated on comfortable couches flanking a modest tea table—an arrangement that Yue had grown fond of, as it reminded her of the cramped living space she’d shared with Yoshika at the academy. One that they still immortalized within both their soul realm and their own home. Kaede nodded slowly.
“Right. And you were undressed.”
Yue blushed—she’d almost forgotten about that part.
“Hardly! I was merely unguarded—dressed comfortably, rather than to impress. I felt that I could be comfortable with you—though perhaps I shouldn’t if that’s what you focused on.”
She was sure that Jia or Eui would have grown flustered by that, but Kaede just smiled softly.
“You made a calculated choice to leave a strong impression. Don’t blame me because you succeeded.”
“Tsk. You were a lot easier to tease back then, too. I suppose I’ve got you and Eunae to thank for that.”
Kaede shrugged impassively.
“Maybe we just got used to it. What made you bring that up, anyway? Nostalgia?”
“Not entirely, no. If my unguarded gesture—however calculated it may have been—left an impression on you, then I’d say you more than returned the favor that day.”
“Oh?”
Yue met Kaede’s eyes with a cool smile, but even years of Qin’s discipline couldn’t keep her heart from pounding, and Yoshika could surely sense how she felt.
“Yes. I distinctly recall that was the day you told me you loved me.”
Now Kaede did grow flustered, and Yue saw her posture change slightly as Yoshika gave the conversation her full attention.
“As we said at the time, I didn’t mean—”
Yue giggled and waved her off.
“Oh, I knew what you meant, and it was far from the last time you’d say it. I’ve said it too, and I’ll say it again—I love you, Yoshika. Like a sister, like I do my mother—who I do look forward to seeing, no matter how nervous I am. But I must admit, my heart did flutter that first time. You were just so earnest!”
Yoshika blushed and averted her eyes.
“Is this really the time to be teasing, Yue?”
“It’s a bad habit, I’m sorry. But I’m serious when I say that it was a life changing moment. That little flutter, that unexpected tingle when you said those words, the bare instant of uncertainty before my mind caught up and understood your meaning—I have genuinely meditated on that moment, and it was part of what helped me to understand my own feelings about emotional connection.”
“I’m glad we could inspire such a valuable insight.”
Yue rolled her eyes. Somehow, despite her empathy, Yoshika had gotten even more obtuse when it came to relationships. Completely unacceptable in a goddess of Unity.
“Don’t be a prat, Yoshika. I’ve come to a decision—and maybe I had a long time ago and was simply too afraid to admit it without a proper excuse. If Jiaguo and the Awakening Dragon must remain distinct, then perhaps we need only unite the leaders of each.”
“Yue...”
“Normally, there would be all sorts of contingencies about which side would engulf which—even a Great Sect marrying into a foreign power—but we are both women, and there’s a blind spot in the law which could allow us to set a new precedent. The princesses already acknowledged Jia and Eui’s marriage, and Jiaguo as a sovereign state, so they’ll have no choice but to—”
“Yue!”
She realized she’d been rambling as Yoshika’s shout snapped her out of it. Her heart was thudding painfully in her chest, and she realized that she’d gotten things out of order. Yue didn’t mean to spring it on Yoshika like that—she’d had a whole conversation prepared, but got ahead of herself in the moment and skipped important parts.
“I’m sorry. I’m making a mess of this aren’t I?”
Yoshika shook her head.
“No. It’s a good idea, it makes sense. It lets us join forces without upsetting the balance of power in Qin.”
“Then—!”
“But I don’t want to make you do that, Yue. I...I understand your feelings, and I love you too, I just...give me some time to think about it, okay?”
Yue’s heart sank. She wanted to protest, to tell Yoshika that this wasn’t just politics, to let the feeling welling up within her chest burst out, but she could see the fear in Kaede’s eyes, and it was like looking into a mirror.
She sighed, biting back the words for just a little while longer.
“Alright, I understand. But we must make a decision soon.”
“I know. Tomorrow. I’ll have my answer for you tomorrow, I promise.”
Yoshika bowed, then just disappeared into thin air, so anxious to flee that she couldn’t even take the time to use the door. Yue was still shaking as she sat back in her seat and took out the pins holding her signature hair buns together. She didn’t cry, nor did she feel like she would. Yue knew that she’d botched things, but that only made her more confident in her feelings.
She’d never been so nervous or flustered in her life. Yue had been so anxious that she never even said the word ‘marriage’ or asked Yoshika her feelings. Nor, in fact, did she genuinely express her own. She’d said the words, but out of either habit or nerves, she’d still been guarded.
“I love you.”
Next time, Yue would say it with her entire heart.
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