Eating Meat

On an utterly unremarkable evening, a row of flame-red sunset clouds swept in layers across the mountains, and the golden-red light of the setting sun gilded the whole range in a dusky glow. Having finished their training targets early, An Jing and his group were gathered together playing marbles. The six of them—An Jing, Gu Yeqi, Zhang Ying, Cang Linzu, Ye Xiuyuan, and Zhan Feng—were the core group united around An Jing. They were basically his juniors and personal admirers, on good terms with one another, and they always played together in their free time. The marbles came from rewards An Jing had earned from the Instructors for his daily performance, but he didn't play with them himself. Instead, he used them to teach his friends how to master jin and apply it with precision and finesse. A line drawn on the ground marked the boundary. The other five held short sticks, channeled force through them, and took turns driving a marble to strike the marbles of the others. Hitting one other player's marble scored one point; hitting two scored three; hitting three in a chain scored six; four was a grand slam worth twelve; knocking a marble out of bounds cost two. The game looked easy, but in practice a player only came out ahead by reliably caroming into two other marbles. You had to weigh the force you put into your own marble and the chain of collisions—and that was to say nothing of using a stick instead of your hand, which made it more than a step harder still. It tested steadiness, accuracy, and the ability to calculate paths. Each player's shot counted as one round, and the game ended after five rounds. An Jing would coach the martial technique of whoever scored highest. As for anyone who finished with negative points, An Jing made him put in extra training. So far, Gu Yeqi had the most points—her control was remarkably deft. She reliably hit two every time, and on an occasional burst she could hit three. Cang Linzu and Ye Xiuyuan came after her. Their skill was nothing low, no worse than Gu Yeqi's; they were simply too greedy and always struck too hard, sending their marbles out of bounds. As for Zhang Ying and Zhan Feng, both were regulars on the extra-training list—Zhang Ying couldn't judge the angle of his force, and Zhan Feng was so strong he couldn't control how much of it he used. "Yes!" It was Zhang Ying's turn this time. He had judged the angle and the force just right and actually hit three marbles at once, wiping out his negative score in a single stroke. He let out an excited cheer. A moment later, though, he turned his head, puzzled, and sniffed the air. "Hey, wait—Big Brother An." "Do you smell that?" "A little." An Jing was flicking a marble with his thumb, straight up and down, utterly steady. It was how he trained his fingers' dexterity and control. He lifted his head and answered thoughtfully, "But I can't tell what it is." "Huh?" Gu Yeqi had come first again and would be getting pointers from An Jing. She was just bringing over a bottle of water to hand him; she turned back and said, "It's medicinal herbs, isn't it?" "Iron-South Pith... mm, and more!" Gu Yeqi had grown up on an estate steeped in the scents of countless herbs, and she could identify their varieties by smell alone. She closed her eyes, sniffed carefully, then opened them confidently. "And frost-awn flower seeds too—they calm the mind and settle the qi!" "Wrong!" Zhang Ying was just as confident. "It's meat. And a lot of it!" Then he sniffed hard and said with certainty, "And... more than one kind of beast meat!" Zhang Ying's family had been hunters for generations. Before the Frost Calamity, hunters of the Northern Frontier were synonymous with danger and with wealth. If a hunting party went deep into the mountains and came out alive, they came back loaded down—not only with the hides and flesh of fierce beasts, but with spirit plants and precious herbs rare enough to be worth the trip. Zhang Ying knew that smell well. It was what rose from the vigorous muscle of many beasts after slaughter, blood still running. He would never mistake it. "It's meat!" "It's herbs!" Within moments the two were arguing, and Cang Linzu and Zhan Feng egged them on from the side: "Fight, fight!" Ye Xiuyuan and An Jing could only shake their heads. "Enough." Finally An Jing raised a hand and stopped the two of them. "There's more than those smells." He turned his head toward the pavilion at one side of the drill ground. That was the Medicine Pavilion, where Deputy Envoy Yao and the others lived and worked. Suspended Fate Manor was like a sprawling boarding school; housing a thousand people was nothing to it. The refugee children gathered here were many, but the area they actually roamed was not large—places like the Medicine Pavilion, the rear hall, the back mountain, the central courtyard, and the secluded pool were all off-limits. Suspended Fate Manor had far too many secrets. The children simply didn't care. Except about the Medicine Pavilion. Every five days, Deputy Envoy Yao summoned the children there for physical examinations and prescribed medicine, so all of them were quite familiar with the place. But today, An Jing caught a different smell drifting from the Medicine Pavilion as well... something cloyingly sweet in the extreme, mixed with a faint, strange rankness. It was like braised pork stewed with mustard, brown sugar, and strawberry craft beer—a smell that made the mind waver from the slightest whiff. "It's about time to eat anyway." Hearing the bell, An Jing gave a slight shake of his head and threw off the bizarre comparison that had just popped into it. He called everyone together and led them to the dining hall. Today was indeed very different. Under the astonished eyes of every child, in an overpowering aroma of meat, each of them received a huge portion of meat. Two or three jin? Or four or five? There was so much meat. Some pieces were ribs, some leg bones; the beast meat had been carefully roasted and gave off a rich fragrance. It wobbled and trembled, giving the illusion that it might spill off the plate. An Jing's brows knitted slightly, and he could not tell whether it was alarm or delight. He stared hard at the portion before him. This was probably the meat of some fierce beast, for the bones were strangely shaped, unlike any creature he knew. The heavy smell of fat mixed with spices and sauce made his stomach churn violently and his flesh tremble, hungry, urging him to tear into the meat before him. But perhaps because An Jing had eaten a good deal of meat lately, he could forcibly suppress his body's instinct. He swallowed back the saliva his body had produced and looked around the whole dining hall. Not everyone was eating the same meat. Some, like An Jing, had the meat of some fierce beast. Some had the great wings or the wing roots of birds. Some had offal. Some had strange insects? There was even seafood—fish and crab. The list went on. But without question, everyone loved the food before them. No one had the slightest desire to talk; every one of them was single-mindedly working through the meat in front of him. Eating meat. There was nothing else in the children's eyes, only pure hunger and greed. That surging desire made An Jing's blood run cold; an inexplicable horror crept up his spine. "An Jing." Just then an aged voice spoke. An Jing turned sharply and found that Manor Lord Yao had come to stand silently before him. "Is it not to your liking?" The gaunt old man, like a wisp of a ghost, bent down to meet An Jing's eyes and asked softly, "Why aren't you eating?" The youth gazed into those deep, dark eyes, then grinned, baring a mouthful of white teeth. "Manor Lord Yao, I'm afraid there won't be enough." In truth, the meat before An Jing was far more than what lay on the other boys' and girls' plates—and of better quality besides. Perhaps this too was the Eldest Senior Brother's privilege. As the strongest of them all, his treatment was on an entirely different level from the ordinary boys and girls. Which only made it more unsettling. "Heh heh..." At that answer, Manor Lord Yao straightened up and laughed, a laugh whose meaning was unclear. "Because you fear it won't be enough, you look at the meat in everyone else's bowls before you eat?" "What a greedy boy... But there's no need to worry." Manor Lord Yao said mildly, "One day, you will truly eat your fill." "Eat."