[Young Master Xian]—❈—49:: unnamed

Hello everyone.

So, things are progressing steadily, the burial has been set for the 24th of this month. Which is good.

Thank you all so much for all the support. Truly. It's been much more than I dared to hope for.

Seriously, thank you.

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Xian Qigang

Across the infinite realities and countless timelines, there lived three people: a small-town cop, an elementary school teacher, and a youth with aspirations to be a paediatrician.

These three people never met. In fact, they couldn’t have, for they occupied separate realities at separate times, and none of them lived a life extraordinary enough to offer them the opportunity to cross such boundaries.

Extraordinary lives or not though, these three were exceptional people.

Of course, if you’d asked them, they would have told you that they weren’t exceptional. And if you’d asked them if they were good people, all three would have said, with some variation but essentially, ‘I try to be.’

But they were good people. They were kind and considerate of others. Full of compassion for the world around them. This is what made them exceptional… and it’s why I chose them.

Then again, saying I chose them feels wrong. I didn’t exist until they were part of me. I was barely even a person, merely a fragment of an awful man I was desperate to escape.

They’d been fragments too. Mere echoes of the persons they once were. Their lives so long past that even their realities had aged and faded into the memory of the multiverse by the time I came along.

I’d scraped together everything of them that was left, so little that even their names were forever lost, and I’d moulded it all together to make me.

It is a tad difficult to make a monument to someone without knowing their name or appearance, but I suppose I don’t really need those things, do I?

I stare at the four egg-shaped rocks leaning on each other at their smallest points, each one needing the others to remain upright.

Their smooth, black surfaces nearly shine under the light of the sun and I have to admit, this has come out a lot better than I had worried it would.

“Gold would be better,” The Sun Emperor says from behind me. “Or perhaps imperial jade.”

I roll my eyes. He’s said this before. Repeatedly, in fact.

“These are not people who would appreciate such a show of wealth,” I say. “I’ve told you this several times.”

Not to mention, gold can so easily cross that fine line between luxurious and tacky.

“You should make them bigger too,” The Sun Emperor continues like he didn’t hear a word I said. “You claim to honour these people and yet you give them something of so little value. Your monument to them should sit in a grand hall; the centrepiece of its own palace. Not in some easily missed corner of my garden.”

I sigh, rising from the squat I’d been in to make the final adjustments to the placements of the three-foot-high stones, clothing soaked from the knees down.

The so-called ‘easily missed corner of his garden’ is in fact a twenty-foot-wide fountain, and I’ve set the monument in the water close to the edge.

“I’ll take that under advisement, Sunny,” I say, stepping onto dry land once again.

“If you call me that again, I will pick up one of those worthless pebbles in your monument and crack your skull open,” The Sun Emperor says evenly.

I roll my eyes, used to his threats by now. “Uh-huh. Or, counterpoint, you could tell me your name and I won’t have to call you that.”

“Attain congruence, Xian Qigang, and you will need me to tell you nothing.”

I actually laugh at that. “Yeah, Sunny, I think we can both agree by this point that congruence is off the table for us.”

I expect a retort, most likely another threat due to my calling him Sunny again, or perhaps an insult along the lines of my talent being too crappy to manage congruence or similar, but instead, The Sun Emperor gives me a steady, serious look and says, “Without congruence, Xian Qigang, we will not survive another occurrence like this.”

“Oh,” I say. Because what else can I say?

Not for the first time since I’ve been here, I take a long, hard look at Sunny.

He looks better. Much better. His colour has returned, his left eye is no longer blind from internal bleeding, the black veins in his skin have disappeared, and his right hand no longer looks like a dementor’s limb carelessly melded onto his flesh by a drunk Cthulhu.

Even his hair has retained its previous lustre and fullness.

By all appearances, he’s fully recovered. But I see it. The shift in his eyes. That subtle way his right hand constantly clenches like it still doesn’t feel quite right.

He may look fine, but what we’d gone through when I jumped into the Wild Qi storm to hold it back... He’s not okay.

And neither am I.

I had severely underestimated just how devastating that much Wild Qi would be.

I think we both had.

Shaking off those thoughts, I say to Sunny, “We should be fine though, right? I mean, what are the odds that something like that would happen again? Even if it does, what are the odds that it would involve us?”

The Sun Emperor’s silent stare is all the answer he deigns to give me.

“Fine.” I sigh. “How do I attain congruence?”

All I really know about it is that it happens either during advancement into Sprouting phase, or while breaking through into a higher realm.

Even Old Qigang (the asshole) barely knew anything about it besides that his mother had done it, and that being one of the few to accomplish it meant an immediate launch to a level of power and authority that he’d only dreamt of.

“I can’t tell you how to attain congruence, Xian Qigang,” the Sun Emperor says. “That defeats the purpose of it. It is a journey that one must walk alone.”

“Well, that’s a problem then, because, as I understand it congruence is like a one in a million thing, right?” I ask, largely rhetorically. “Those odds are not in our favour, Sunny.”

The Sun Emperor looks incredibly frustrated, and I half expect him to lash out at me.

I would understand. This is all my fault, after all. I’m the idiot who thought jumping into a storm of Wild Qi was any sort of good idea.

The carnage it had wreaked on this world had been horrendous. The forest had been swallowed entirely by corruption. Sunny’s Army had mutated into unholy abominations that we’d had to put down. His fancy palace had warped and changed. Even the sun hanging overhead, seemingly untouchable and unquenchable, had dimmed.

We’d had to burn so much and rebuild it all from scratch. And yet, despite all that, they were everywhere, the tell-tale scars of corruption. Impossible to hide.

One only needs to look.

I almost apologize to the Sun Emperor, but I know that it wouldn’t be genuine.

A good, or safe, idea jumping into that storm had not been, but even if I had the chance to do it all again, I would choose it every time. My friends had needed saving.

Sunny releases a long, quiet exhale, his frustration seeming to disappear with it.

“A bridge to cross when we reach it,” he says definitively. “For now, you must return.”

I blink at the sudden suggestion. By return, of course, he means for me to awaken back in the real world.

“I suppose,” I say.

My sense of the outside world is vague, but I’m certain that several days must have passed there. Time’s weird in here. For one, the sun never sets, leaving the world in an eternal noon, and for another, I don’t sleep, or eat. The hours blur together.

“You have no more need to stay,” Sunny says. “The rebuilding is done. Your body has recovered. And I grow tired of your presence.”

I roll my eyes. “You aren’t exactly my first choice of company either, mate,” I say without any real heat.

At this point, I feel like he’s only still mean to me on principle. Like, he believes that he shouldn’t like me for whatever reason, therefore he acts like he doesn’t.

What a tsundere.

“You’re right though,” I say, looking around at everything we’ve built since I’ve been here. “I’m done here. It’s time I head back to Meng Yi and Xiuying.

“See you soon, Sunny,” I say.

A nod is all I get in return.

It’s good enough for me.

I blink, and my eyes open to a familiar ceiling lit by glow crystals, body sinking into a soft bed.

A warm body is pressed into my side, an arm draped across my belly.

I peer down and spot a mass of lustrous, dark hair.

Meng Yi.

I must have moved enough to wake her, because she stirs and looks up at me.

Her eyes widen at the sight of me awake.

“Hey there.” I smile at her.

“Qigang.” She rises, and the tone which with she says my name causes my heart to beat funny for a moment.

I begin to speak again, but I forget the words when she reaches up and hugs me, gentle and tight. Like I’m a vision that she’s scared will vanish into mist.

My arms wrap around her in turn, and for several moments we simply luxuriate in each other’s presence.

Eventually, the moment ends, and Meng Yi pulls back, her expression the happiest I’ve ever seen on her face.

“I’ll go get Doctor Lei,” she says suddenly. “Stay right here, okay?”

A brief second of indecision flashes across her face, and before I can wonder what it’s about, resolves settles in, then Meng Li leans forward and kisses me.

On the lips.

It isn’t a quick peck either. No, it’s solid lip-on-lip contact for at least three mississippis, and, just my luck, I’m too stunned to enjoy it.

Finally, she pulls back, practically beaming, then she rushes out of the room.

Several seconds later, my brain reboots and I settle back on the bed.

It’s decided then, the next Wild Qi storm I come across? I’m jumping right in.

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And that's the chapter. I (desperately) hope it was enjoyed.

I understand that the length leaves a lot to be desired, but I really wanted to post something. The next one will be longer.

In fact, I'm seriously starting to consider making the chapters around 5k words instead of these shorter ones.

Thank you all for reading. And thank you all once again for your continued support.

Take care.