Chapter 77: Methods of Appeasing Others (Part Two)

Yan Dan had spent a difficult stretch of time wandering among mortals, but she had not learned to cook. The people in the opera troupe had assumed, looking at her, that she came from money, and had kept her well away from the stove on the grounds that she might accidentally burn the kitchen down. She had never argued with this.

So her first attempt at soup involved a significant amount of soot on her face and clothing, and a great deal of careful consultation with Bai Ling beforehand. The prescription Bai Ling described — pheasant, ginseng, wood ear mushrooms — was apparently something the Mountain Lord could tolerate. Yan Dan had noticed the day before that Yu Mo was eating without interest, everything bland, appetite clearly absent. She thought protein might help.

She washed everything carefully, set it all to simmer, and then stood vigil over the pot. It was her first time doing this and she was terrified of making a mistake in either direction — overcooked and mushy, or undercooked and flavorless. When it was nearly ready she added salt in tiny increments, tasting repeatedly, with no sense at all of how much was correct.

She took a sip.

Revelation: heaven was clearly operating a compensation system. She was entirely without musical ability, but she could apparently cook. This seemed fair. And in terms of practical value, she thought, the ability to cook far outweighed the ability to play the zither. She was, fundamentally, a practical kind of demon.

Feeling cheerful, she went to find Yu Mo.

He was sitting on a bench outside the study, eyes half-closed, dozing in the sun. When he heard her approaching and saw what she was carrying, something complicated moved through his expression.

Yan Dan remembered the fish incident and the flattery incident and felt a moment of hesitation. She looked at the earthenware pot in her hands, steadied herself, and said: "Mountain Lord."

He sat up and adjusted his outer robe. "What is it?"

"I made you some soup. Would you like to try some?"

He looked at her, then at the pot. "Is this your first time making soup?"

She gave him a frank smile. "Yes. First time. I made it specifically for the Mountain Lord to try."

He coughed lightly. "Is that so." After a pause he sat up properly and said, quietly: "Then I'll try some."

Yan Dan poured him a bowl immediately. She watched him take a spoonful, pause for what seemed like an unreasonably long time before bringing it to his lips, and then — after another interval — nod slightly and say: "It's all right."

Yan Dan looked at the expression on his face during all of that and drew a conclusion: he had expected her first attempt to be genuinely terrible, which was why he'd treated every spoonful like a small act of courage. She pressed her lips together. "Even a first attempt can produce something good," she said under her breath. "It doesn't automatically have to be bad."

Yu Mo reached over and pinched the tip of her nose. "What are you muttering?"

It was a casual gesture. It was also warm in a way that caught her off guard. She was the type to take a little warmth and immediately want more, so she smiled at him and said, "Nothing, nothing. Mountain Lord, is it truly only 'all right' and not 'quite good'?"

Yu Mo set down the bowl — nearly empty — and tapped the rim with his spoon. "Come and look."

She leaned in, and he flicked her forehead. "There's grit in it. Wash the wood ear mushrooms more thoroughly next time."

Yan Dan stared at the bowl. She seemed to produce new varieties of embarrassment every single time she was in this man's presence, which was not characteristic of her at all.

---

Before dawn the next morning, Bai Ling came through the door without knocking.

Yan Dan was still half-asleep and trying to understand what was happening. She saw Bai Ling drop into the chair at the table with a face like incoming disaster.

"What's wrong?"

Bai Ling slammed a bundle of things onto the table. She sat with it for a moment, jaw tight, and then said, voice low and controlled: "The Mountain Lord has had a courtyard built for you, not far from the south lake. He says you should pack up and move in today."

This arrived like cold water. Yan Dan sat up fully. "Why?"

She had known, in the abstract, that this was eventually going to happen — Yu Mo had never actually touched her, which she'd been aware of without quite processing. But she still technically held the title of mountain lord's concubine. She hadn't even gotten anywhere near winning his favor. To be moved out this quickly, before anything had properly developed, stung her pride in a very specific way.

Bai Ling said irritably, "How would I know the reason? Here — this is from the Mountain Lord."

The brocade box Bai Ling held out was extremely familiar. Yan Dan opened it. A soft, faint fragrance rose from inside.

The Yan Bidan pill.

She stood holding it and not quite moving, and then Bai Ling grabbed the wooden tray that had been holding several folded garments and broke it in half with her bare hands, the crack of it sharp in the quiet room.

Yan Dan startled. "Bailing, did the Mountain Lord scold you? You look—"

This was clearly the wrong thing to say. Bai Ling seized an outer robe from the broken pieces of the tray and held it up. "Look at this! Covered in blood! He vomited so much blood last night! That little snake who's always trying to ingratiate herself — does she know nothing about tonics being too strong for an injured body? I have been so careful with every herb I've chosen for his medicine, every single one, and she went ahead and made ginseng and chicken soup!"

Yan Dan felt cold.

She was absolutely the snake in this story.

She did not say this.

"Always performing goodwill without understanding the situation, and now look what's happened — his injuries are worse than before! I'm going to deal with that snake myself! The Mountain Lord said he was fine — doesn't he understand why I've been brewing medicine so carefully for this long?! Everyone makes my life impossible and I'm going to lose my mind!"

Yan Dan took hold of Bai Ling's shoulders and pressed her firmly down onto the stool, then patted her back in steady, calm circles. "Don't be angry. Really, please don't. Take a breath. Close your eyes for a moment."

Bai Ling let herself be managed, some of the tension going out of her gradually. "I'm not directing this at you. I know this isn't your fault."

Yan Dan held her expression together with some effort. She wished very much that this were not her fault.

"Is Lord Yu Mo all right now?" she asked, carefully.

"He hasn't died yet," Bai Ling said.

Yan Dan absorbed this. That was not Bai Ling's normal way of speaking, which told her exactly how serious Bai Ling considered the situation to be.

Bai Ling suddenly took hold of her sleeve. "Yan Dan, honestly — am I more valuable to the Mountain Lord, or is that snake? Why does he always protect her?"

"I don't think it's quite protection," Yan Dan said, after thinking about it. "It might be more that he assumes the other person didn't intend harm, so he doesn't want to make an issue of it. Actually, I think—" she chose her words with care, "Lord Yu Mo is fundamentally a good-tempered person. He doesn't carry grievances against people."

She had done a great many stupid things herself, and he hadn't said anything beyond the minimum. His patience was, in fact, remarkable.

Bai Ling sighed and stood, gathering the clothes. At the door she tossed back: "I didn't realize you knew the Mountain Lord so well. Most people think he's cold."

"I didn't—" Yan Dan started to object, and then stopped.

Perhaps she did know him a little. She had been focused on him for days, and without fully intending to, she had accumulated small pieces of information — what kind of tea he preferred, how hot he wanted it, which hours of the day he was most likely to be in the garden. These things had lodged in her memory without her deciding to keep them.

She looked at the Yan Bidan pill in her hand. The feeling in her chest didn't have a name she recognized.

---

She walked directly to Yu Mo's room. The door was open and she went in without knocking.

He was leaning back against the headboard. His expression was ordinary. When he saw her, something in his eyes registered faint surprise.

Yan Dan's mind was going too fast for caution. She went straight to the bed, took his hand, and said: "I was wrong. I should never have given you that soup to drink. I didn't know you would — I'm not making excuses — I truly know I was wrong."

Yu Mo propped himself up slightly. "You heard this from Bai Ling. She was anxious. I'm fine."

Yan Dan's mind went briefly empty.

Then she leaned forward and put her arms around him. She didn't plan it. She just did it. "I'm sorry," she said. She couldn't explain it precisely — there was something about being near him that felt less lonely than being elsewhere, and she had been lonely for a very long time.

She heard him exhale. His hand came up and patted her back, the gesture caught somewhere between helpless and resigned. "Truly. It's nothing."

"Bai Ling showed me the outer robe. There was so much blood—"

He coughed twice, lightly, his voice staying even. "When the clots come up, that's the body clearing them. It's a good sign. Now — have you been to look at the new courtyard? Is anything missing?"

Yan Dan remembered the courtyard, which she had successfully forgotten in the past several minutes, and felt a small, involuntary protest rise up in her. She tried to hold it back and mostly failed. "You're — you haven't even — I haven't done anything to make it worthwhile for you, and you're just giving up already? Just like that?"

Yu Mo looked at her for a moment. Then a small sound of amusement. "Since you put it that way — come to bed, then."

Yan Dan opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

He made the sound again. "All words, no actions." A pause. "I should tell you — neither Zilin nor I coerce people. If you want to leave, you can leave whenever you like."

Yan Dan thought about this honestly. "What if I want to stay?"

He looked at her, something like a real smile at the edge of his mouth. "If you want to stay, then consider Yelan Mountain your home."

---

The new courtyard faced south, close to the lake, small and well-positioned, with its own private garden. Peaceful. Whether it counted as home was a question Yan Dan turned over for some time.

She had relied on her master in the Nine Heavens. She had drifted alone through a thousand years in the Night Forgotten River. Even among mortals, who were interesting and varied, she had not found a place that felt like it was hers.

Yelan Mountain wasn't perfectly temperate — in deep winter the flowers faded and the lush green lost its spring quality, though it stayed warmer and more agreeable than anywhere in the Jiangnan region. Yan Dan settled into its rhythms without quite deciding to. The little wolf demon Dan Shu came to play with her occasionally. The other demons were generally friendly. Once, gathering herbs at the foot of a shaded slope with Dan Shu, they encountered a bat spirit whose smile — white teeth, steady gaze — gave Yan Dan the distinct and specific feeling that it ate people. She decided this was probably her imagination.

Since the morning she had rushed to Yu Mo's room to confess and then somehow ended up hugging him — in retrospect she considered this not her most composed moment — whenever they crossed paths he would nod at her faintly and continue past. Perfectly civil. Consistently lukewarm. She concluded that he had probably been somewhat out of it that day, which accounted for the relative gentleness. She was grateful for the lesson Ying Yuan's situation had taught her about not overestimating these things.

In the deepest cold of winter, a letter arrived from the fox clan elders. The content expressed, in formal and dignified language, the fox clan's unshakeable principles and moral character, and criticized the two mountain lords in terms that were precise enough to be impressive. Zilin read it and slammed her hand down on the low table. The blue-and-white porcelain cup on it jumped, fell, and shattered, and a shard grazed Yu Mo's cheek as he was reading his own copy of the letter.

He touched his face. Looked at the faint trace of blood on his finger. Said, without particular feeling: "Zilin, if the fox clan's behavior displeases you, you don't need to break things over it."

Zilin said nothing for a moment, her jaw set, and then: "The fox clan has truly excellent character." She stood up, flicked her sleeve with great precision, and left.

Yan Dan edged closer. A cut on that face would genuinely be a shame. She was still working out the angles of it when Yu Mo looked at her and asked, "What are you looking at?"

She smiled at him quickly and produced a silk handkerchief from her sleeve. "Mountain Lord, your cheek."

He sat without moving. She leaned in and dabbed carefully at the cut. "It should be cleaned properly so it heals well."

"This barely qualifies as an injury," he said. Then, after a pause: "It'll be colder tomorrow than it is today. You're not dressed warmly enough."

Yan Dan blinked. This was the kind of thing people said when they were not entirely clear-headed, she thought. She decided not to make anything of it, and instead followed a different thread that had been sitting at the back of her mind.

"Mountain Lord, honestly — your cultivation and demonic arts are stronger than Lord Zilin's, yes? By quite a significant margin?"

He set his elbow on the table and looked at her. "So?"

"Lord Zilin has a very short temper, and her power is considerably less than yours. How do the two of you manage to operate as equals?" She had heard a saying among mortals — two tigers cannot share one mountain, particularly if one of the tigers was old or unwell.

"What are you getting at?"

She shrugged, affecting unconcern. "I'm just curious. Shouldn't Yelan Mountain Realm normally have only one Mountain Lord? And I can already vaguely make out Lord Zilin's original form—"

"Is that so," Yu Mo said, his expression doing something she couldn't quite read.

"Yes, obviously. I mean, you wouldn't happen to be—" She didn't finish the sentence.

Something cold had arrived in front of her.

Zilin was standing there. Face like the underside of a pot. Words emerging through locked teeth, each one individually chosen for maximum damage: "You lotus spirit. You have quite the nerve."