The Li Family

Li Mutian woke at the hour of the Tiger. Lying with his eyes wide, he stared up at his tattered roof, where a faint glimmer filtered through the gloom. A small hole had opened up overhead a few days ago, but Li Mutian had found no time to patch it. He had not slept well for three whole nights. Looking at the woman slumbering heavily beside him, he let out a deep sigh. "A woman sees no farther than the yard. Those immortals who come and go like the wind have been tearing through Mount Dali like madmen these past days, digging as if they'd turn the earth three feet deep. Everyone was trembling in fear, dropping to their knees to kowtow whenever a streak of light flashed by..." Li Mutian's brows knit tight, his heart weighed down with dread. The small hamlets nestled at the foot of Mount Dali had always lived carefree, but lately fear hung over every household, leaving everyone on edge. "Deep in the mountains the tracks are narrow. The court has no reach here, and we don't care to be ruled anyway. But when immortals fight, a single spell could blast Lijing Village until not even a dog is left." Li Mutian rolled over, unable to find sleep again. He climbed out of bed and gazed out the window into the heavy night. "The boy grows bigger by the day, eating more with every bowl. Tomorrow I'll send him to the Meichi River to bring back some fish and crabs. "If an immortal spell strikes us dead one day, that's fate. The Li family has cleared and tilled this soil for more than two hundred years. Mother cannot be moved, and Father cannot be stirred." Li Mutian shook his head with lowered eyes, clasped his hands behind his back, and stepped out the door. Outside, the big yellow dog was still sound asleep. Li Mutian ambled through the early-morning mist, watching Lijing Village wake from its slumber—chickens crowing, dogs barking, and plumes of cooking smoke curling upward. "Xiangping!" Li Mutian hollered toward the house. A series of clatters rang from within. The door swung wide, and a half-grown boy came bursting out, babbling as he ran. "Dad!" Li Xiangping had neat, fair features and a sly glint in his eyes. He looked up at Li Mutian. "What chores today?" "Go down to the Meichi River and bring back some fish and crabs." Li Mutian waved a hand. "No heavy work today. Go catch a bit of fresh meat for your mother." "Great!" Li Xiangping nodded eagerly. Grabbing a cord basket and a long spear, he darted off without breaking stride. Li Mutian chuckled twice and headed toward the fields. *** The Meichi River was shallow and broad, flanked by wide shoals and thickets of reeds. The village kept geese and ducks by the scores and hundreds; there was no need to feed them by hand, for they were driven out into the water first thing in the morning. Come evening, someone would walk down to the bank and call out. Accustomed to the voice, the birds would waddle home in a trailing flock. When Li Xiangping arrived, the ducks and geese had not yet been turned loose. The Meichi River lay empty, two small wooden rafts bobbing against the bank. He rolled up his trouser legs and sleeves, dropped to his knees in the silt, and fumbled blindly in the water before him. Peering closely into the current, he caught a flash of blue-green. "Fine fish!" Li Xiangping lunged down with both hands and plunged beneath the surface, holding his breath. His right hand clamped tight, and he hauled the blue-tail out by its gills. "Heh heh!" Li Xiangping laughed aloud and tossed the fish into his basket. The fish native to the Meichi River were never so foolish; nine times out of ten, this blue-tail was a stray that had darted down from upstream, giving the boy an easy prize. Glancing down at his feet, Li Xiangping looked puzzled. A patch of the riverbed felt unusually smooth, giving off a faint silvery gleam. Just as he drew a breath to dive down and inspect it, a loud shout rang from the bank. "Brother Xiangping!" Li Xiangping instinctively hid the basket behind his back and looked up. A boy of about ten was pushing his way out of the reeds. "Little Ye, out to graze the ducks?" "Yeah!" His cousin Li Yesheng nodded obediently and grinned. "I heard a strange thing this morning. A huge stag was bitten on the hoof by a snake and died right at the village entrance. Its antlers were as big as a dining table—terrifying to look at!" Listening to his chatter, Li Xiangping breathed a sigh of relief and held the basket forward. "Look at this blue-tail. Caught it barehanded." "What a fish!" Li Yesheng looked down into the basket, smiling with envy. Li Yesheng's father had been bedridden for years, and his eldest brother was a shiftless loafer. They often went without knowing where their next meal would come from, leaving him with little choice but to beg for food at the home of Li Mutian, his eldest uncle. His cousin Li Xiangping had always treated him like a real brother. After chatting for a few moments, Li Yesheng shook his head. "All right, Brother, I have to get back to watching the ducks. If two go missing, my brother will beat me half to death." "Go on, go on." Li Xiangping was eager to examine whatever lay on the riverbed, so he hurried his cousin along. "Got it!" No sooner had the younger boy left than Li Xiangping held his breath and dived to the bottom. He felt around every inch of the silt until his fingers closed around a round object. "Pfft..." Li Xiangping wiped the water from his face and inspected what he held. The object was roughly the size of a palm, with a small cyan-gray disk at the center encircled by a rim that looked like dark iron. There was nothing remarkable about it at first glance. The front face was cracked into seven or eight pieces, held together only by the rim, while the back bore a rather bizarre symbol. Li Xiangping studied it for a long while without making out what it was supposed to resemble. "It looks a bit like Auntie's mirror." His maternal aunt owned the largest plot of land in the area, and only she could afford a looking glass. Ordinary village girls made do with peering into water. When his aunt first obtained that mirror, Li Xiangping's mother had brought him along to see it; it truly was far more convenient than water. Yet the mirror in his hand was far too murky. Everything was lost in a hazy fog, revealing nothing at all. Li Xiangping shook his head in regret, tossed the object into his basket, and turned back to fishing. *** Lu Jiangxian had been in the water for nearly half a month. From the third day onward, the presence of moon essence within him had stalled, refusing to grow. He had tried for another week, but made not the slightest progress; he could do nothing except make himself glow. That morning, he had been staring blankly at the large cyan carp beside him when a broad hand slammed down, pinning the fish into the mud. The water quivered, and fingers seized the fish's gills to haul it away. While Lu Jiangxian was still sorting through the tangle of feelings stirred by seeing a living person, the large hand reached straight back down and scooped up his true form. Beholding a rather handsome face, Lu Jiangxian grew tense. The youth babbled a few sentences, then casually dropped him into the basket, leaving him staring wide-eyed at the blue-tail fish. In that instant, Lu Jiangxian realized a grave problem: he could hear the sounds, but he could not necessarily understand them. The pronunciation in this region sounded vaguely like the Min-Zhe dialects of his previous life, and he could not make out a single word. That meant even if he could produce sound, the locals would never comprehend him, posing a massive obstacle to fitting into this world. As more small fish were tossed into the basket, Lu Jiangxian calmed his mind and gathered his focus to perceive his surroundings. Watching the boy carefully raise a wooden spear, Lu Jiangxian let out a soft murmur of surprise. In this state of awareness, he could faintly sense the boy's thoughts and roughly tell which fish on the riverbed held the lad's attention. With this sensory perception to guide him, Lu Jiangxian listened as the boy muttered to himself after every catch. Before long, he had grasped the numbers three through six and the specific sounds for several kinds of fish. "One step at a time." Seeing the boy stand up to leave, Lu Jiangxian sighed inwardly. The lad appeared to come from a farming family, and would likely hand an object made of bronze-like material over to his parents. By staying in contact with humans, he could slowly learn the local dialect. And while keeping himself safe, he would find a way to increase his moon essence.