Siblings (Part 1)

"Phew..."

Qin Yi had only just let out a breath when a black shadow lunged before his eyes.

The boy was tackled to the ground by the girl and rolled onto the grass behind him.

The silent moonlight poured down, casting jagged shadows across the wooden wall.

The girl stared blankly at the boy beneath her. Her disheveled long hair hung before her face, and through the gaps in that curtain of hair, he could faintly see the tears still clinging to the corners of her eyes.

Clothes rustled. The boy propped himself up and looked at the girl straddling him, wanting to say something, only to realize that she seemed to be crying.

This was a side of her he had never seen before.

Her sobs were so faint that her body only trembled slightly. She buried her head against his shoulder and clung to him tightly, her thin arms locked around him as though afraid he would vanish like a phantom.

Feeling her body shake, the boy reached up and cradled her head. His palm touched her long hair, stained with blood. He sighed softly, but in the end, said nothing.

The Milky Way spilled down from the heavens,

The bloodstained boy and girl were like two little beasts licking each other's wounds, curled up amid the devastated forest as they sought the only warmth left to them.

At some point, Ruan Su suddenly stopped crying. She rubbed at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve, silently rose to her feet, and, without looking at Qin Yi's face, bent down and carried him on her back toward home.

Starlight stretched their overlapping shadows long behind them.

Qin Yi lay sprawled over her shoulder, his cheek pressed against her rough, stiff collar. Beneath the blood-soaked cloth, he could feel the faintly burning warmth of her body as he said quietly,

"I can walk by myself."

"You... are... hurt."

"It's not serious."

"Not serious... is... still hurt."

"..."

Qin Yi did not insist further.

Ruan Su's bare, bloodstained feet stepped onto the mud, each step making a faint sticky sound. When they reached the courtyard gate, she suddenly said,

"I... thought... you... died..."

Her voice held none of a young girl's crispness. Each word was squeezed out one by one with great difficulty, dry and breathy, rough as an old tree being stripped of bark.

Among the noble families of the Central Plains, it was fashionable to keep mute servant girls from childhood. Once the practice spread to the Shu Region, even minor gentry began to follow suit.

The poisonous soup Ruan Su had drunk when she first entered Immortal Guest House had destroyed her vocal cords. Yet because of her unusual constitution, she had gradually regained the ability to make a few simple sounds over the past two years.

Qin Yi lowered his eyes and explained softly,

"Almost. I suddenly regained consciousness."

"...Mm."

As they entered the courtyard, the moonlight revealed the horrifying bloodbath strewn across the ground. Ruan Su, still barefoot, passed the corpses of the female ape and the girl and asked quietly,

"The... blood... on you..."

"It belongs to someone else."

"But that... demon..."

"I don't know. Something must have happened on Compassion Mountain."

"I... mean..."

"This girl died in my place."

"...Oh."

Ruan Su glanced at the girl's mangled corpse and let out a breath. Her thin shoulders lowered slightly. She said nothing more and did not ask about the girl.

Death had never truly been far from them. While fleeing with the tide of refugees, Qin Yi had often picked up children and brought them along, but every one of those children had died on the road.

After four years of expansion, the house they lived in was fairly large. It had a living room, with a kitchen beside it.

Pushing open the creaking wooden door, they could vaguely make out the outlines of the furnishings in the living room by the moonlight streaming through the doorway.

The furnishings were simple: a square table, a cabinet, three crooked wooden chairs, a heated brick bed, and a narrow plank bed.

After gently setting Qin Yi onto a wooden chair, Ruan Su reached out with her little hands. As she helped him remove his clothes, she checked his injuries.

Her fingers were icy cold. When she gently pressed against his ribs, her fingertips trembled faintly.

Qin Yi caught the hand she extended. Her five fingers were slender as scallion jade, her skin crystalline white, but her palm was rough and covered in calluses utterly unfitting for a girl her age.

"They're all internal injuries. You can't feel them from the outside. They shouldn't be too serious."

"Then I'll... go get medicine... tomorrow..."

"Mm."

Qin Yi took out the bag of broken silver from the short-haired woman. It made a faint clink as he placed it on the square table. Taking off his clothes, he said,

"There should be about seven taels of silver here. It ought to be enough."

Ruan Su nodded, carefully put away the money pouch, and went out to draw a bucket of water. When she carried it back, moonlight shone upon her exquisite bare feet. Qin Yi noticed several fresh cuts on the tops of them, beads of blood seeping from the wounds.

Ruan Su paid them no mind. She soaked a cloth in the water, wrung it dry, and began wiping down his body. Wherever the cloth passed, blood that did not belong to him was washed away layer by layer, revealing pale skin and several bluish-purple bruises beneath.

"Does... it hurt?" she asked.

"I can bear it," he answered.

Silence.

A moment later,

Ruan Su glanced toward the kitchen and said quietly,

"You... ate...?"

"I did. What about your injuries?"

"I'm... fine. In... a few days... they'll heal on their own."

"I mean your face."

"..."

Ruan Su froze at once. Droplets falling from the cloth in her hand struck the earthen floor with soft pattering sounds.

A few strands of hair swayed aside, revealing the vivid red scars covering half her face. Their twisted lines resembled a dried-up riverbed.

Qin Yi looked at her.

As if noticing his gaze, Ruan Su pressed her lips together and instinctively turned her head aside, letting the disordered curtain of hair fall again to cover that shocking burn. Only the half of her face untouched by it, beautiful as an immortal's, remained exposed.

She did not want him to see her misery, much less her ugly appearance.

Qin Yi raised his hand. His fingertips touched a hanging lock of dark hair, and he gently lifted the ends aside.

Ruan Su frowned and instinctively tilted her head away. Her neck drew in slightly, like a young beast whose wound had been touched.

Qin Yi reached out and held her by the shoulders.

Ruan Su instantly stopped resisting. She looked away toward the two corpses in the courtyard, the corner of her lips curving as she smiled indifferently.

"...Very... ugly?"

"Mm."

"..."

Ruan Su's pupils contracted, and she lowered her head without thinking.

Moonlight slanted in through the crack in the door, falling over her lowered eyelashes and casting a scatter of fine shadows.

The corner of the girl's lips was still raised, but the curve trembled faintly.

"Right...?"

She said it lightly, but she hoped he would offer her some comfort.

Even if it were only a perfunctory lie,

Even a casual sentence would do.

Yet all that answered her was silence.

A draft rushed in from the courtyard, letting out a low moan as it passed through the crack in the door.

After a long while,

Qin Yi spoke again, but he was already talking about business. If he wanted to keep her under control, he had to press her down at the right moments. He said softly,

"There's a hidden chamber beneath the ruined temple on the eastern side of town. It contains the goods smuggled by that band of roving bandits. I'll think tonight about how to deal with it."

"Oh, right. That bag of weapons you brought back can be sold for money too. Forget about the crossbows. You can set up several more traps in the courtyard the way I taught you before."

"There's a tendon in the Killing Ape's arms and shins. It's quite resilient and can be used for crossbow strings. Dismember it and set it aside for now. The next time I wake up, I can use it to improve the draw weight of those crossbows..."

"...Alright."

Something dimmed in Ruan Su's dark eyes, though she did not show it. She silently committed the boy's instructions to memory and answered with a smile.

After wiping his upper body clean, she bent down and knelt halfway on the floor, her knees pressing against the cold ground. Holding the boy's ankle, she removed his shoes and began wiping the blood soaked into his legs.

Autumn wind seeped into the house, and Qin Yi, bare from the waist up, shivered instinctively.

Ruan Su's hands abruptly stopped. She hurried off to fetch an old cotton-padded coat, washed until it had faded white, then trotted back and draped it over him.

"Be... careful... not to catch cold."

She drew the coat closed over his chest and tied the fastenings with her fingertips, her movements gentle and practiced.

Looking at the girl's hands, so unfitting for her age, Qin Yi suddenly said softly,

"I could have done this myself. I'm awake now."

"I'm... the older sister."

Ruan Su glared at him, leaving no room for argument.

Qin Yi immediately shut up.

This older sister of his could be terrifyingly stubborn about certain things.

After washing his body, Ruan Su went to the courtyard again to change out the water, then brought back the soap made from fragrant herbs that Qin Yi had prepared himself.

"Lower... your head a little... There's blood... in your hair too."

Water trickled down through his hair as the girl's fingertips gently kneaded his scalp.

After thinking for a moment, Qin Yi brought up business again.

"Sis, the old master might come looking for you tomorrow or the day after."

"...Huh?"

Ruan Su's hand paused slightly as she washed his hair.

Qin Yi explained,

"This attack may have been an impulsive overreaction by the young master."

"Why...?" Ruan Su did not understand.

Qin Yi smiled faintly and said softly,

"We were born lowly. To the young master, even if he liked you, he would see it as a favor bestowed upon you. Since you rejected him like that, he would naturally want to teach you a lesson. The old master is different. He was able to build Immortal Guest House to its current scale. Rather than letting his emotions run wild, he values profit more—your future value, in other words."

"...Oh."

Ruan Su frowned and gave a soft acknowledgment.

After a moment of silence,

Her voice was still difficult and rough, but it carried a trace of gravity that was hard to detect.

"But... Xiao Yi, the one who proposed marriage for the young master... was the old master."