Ranran's stomach growled. She dug into the pouch at her waist and fished out a few pumpkin seeds to quiet it. Yu Tong noticed and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with a fistful of peanuts.
She watched Ranran pick them apart one by one.
After they'd left Juefeng Village that day, the master had turned back to Jue Mountain, snapped a branch from the reincarnation tree, and dug out a section of its root. Back at West Mountain, he planted the branch in the garden and fed it spiritual water to coax it into taking root.
If Ranran guessed right, the girl was a spirit-fruit grown from that tree. Unripe and uprooted too far from its source, she would have been starving for spiritual energy. So the master had brought the tree to her.
When the soul was first drawn into the wood, the master had sacrificed the blood of his own wrist to seal the knot. That bound him to the fruit. When he met the girl in the village, he must have known her by her breath alone.
There was also the name. Ran. Could she be Mu Ranwu, reborn?
Knowing the girl wasn't the demon Mu Qingge but someone more like a sister to her old self, Yu Tong had softened without meaning to.
The master had given his orders. Nothing was to be said. Yu Tong had always been careful and tight-lipped, so she'd never spoken of the girl's strangeness in front of her brother.
"Still hungry? Should I get more?" It was unlike Yu Tong to be generous, but she asked anyway.
Ranran shook her head. "How are these peanuts roasted? There's something different about them. I can't stop."
Yu Tong smiled. "Ordinary peanuts, but they'd gone a little damp. I didn't want to waste them, so I tucked them into the furnace hole while the master was refining elixirs. They came out better than expected."
Ranran nodded, impressed. A cultivator who used his alchemy furnace to toast damp peanuts. Very grounded. She didn't know his face, but she liked him a little more for it.
Just then, the master came down the garden path, unhurried, dressed in plain white, his robes trailing like still water. He walked without sound, as though the ground offered no resistance.
Ranran remembered her mother's worry about the money. She got her apology in first before he could speak.
Su Yishui waved Yu Tong out and sat down slowly. Through her veil, he studied the girl in front of him. Thin as a hunger ghost. Whatever looks she'd had were being eaten away by it.
He said, at his own pace: "Are you satisfied with the house?"
Satisfied? With this ruin?
Ranran scrambled for something safe to praise. "Your taste is clearly refined. The carvings on the roof beams are very fine."
"Someone else built this courtyard," he said flatly. "I don't care for this kind of excess."
Ranran's smile stiffened. She reached for her pouch and held out a handful of pumpkin seeds. "Su Xianchang, would you like some?"
He didn't take them. "You've been sequestered in that valley for three years. The houses on the mountain are in poor shape but I'll have them repaired shortly. You have no foundation yet, so you'll be eating regular meals. I've asked Yu Tong to keep the kitchen stocked. You'll also receive three taels of silver each month, for your family."
That landed squarely. Ranran had grown up on radishes and boiled greens, her family's poverty made worse by her illness. Outside, she'd passed the kitchen and seen Yuchen hauling supplies up the mountain. Hams and sides of bacon hung in the courtyard like New Year decorations. Baskets of fruit and vegetables crowded the steps. The smell of ordinary, living food.
She felt something loosen in her chest.
"Why such generous terms?" she asked. "What will be required of me?"
"Disciples who enter West Mountain are always treated this way," he said. "I'm taking on several apprentices. You'll meet the others soon."
That settled the last of her nerves. She had feared being alone with a strange master in a strange place. Companions changed things. And if her monthly stipend could reach her parents' hands, this risk was worth taking.
So it was decided. Xue Ranran would enter Lingxi Palace as a disciple.
She went down the mountain to tell her parents. Her mother Qiaolian wasn't moved by the three taels, but she'd held on to one belief: Mr. Su could cure her daughter's illness. She let her go, though it cost her something.
The couple found temporary lodging in a town at the mountain's foot. Ranran told them the master allowed monthly visits. They felt easier about it after that.
Yu Tong set Ranran up in a room beside the garden, which was planted thick with strange flowers and half-dead things, including one stunted tree the master had transplanted from somewhere old. Yu Tong had propped it up with ginseng water and patience. It had barely taken root.
Ranran's window faced directly toward it. Yu Tong pointed to a large jar of black lacquered clay beside the door and said it held spiritual water. She was to water the tree every morning.
Though Su Yishui had accepted Ranran as his apprentice, he showed no interest in teaching her anything. He simply walked her into the main hall of the Lingxi Palace building himself.
Above the entrance, a gray wooden plaque still held three large characters in faded ink: Lingxi Palace.
The founder, she'd been told, was a woman named Mu Qingge. In her time the place had been full of disciples. Her sect rules still covered the wall in full, written in a hand that swept like wind through grass.
Ranran's mother had worked two years as a cook at the village school, and Ranran had picked up enough from loitering in the courtyard to get through the characters on her own.
What she found on that wall was strange.
One rule said: You need not cultivate your inner nature, but you must never neglect your appearance. Fine robes, fine cloth, a pleasing face before your master at all times.
Another: Three meals a day are sufficient, but each must be excellent. Only through tasting the full range of the world's flavors can one cultivate the essence of the great way. Should the infant self one day be born into forgetfulness, at least let it not forget the taste of sour and the bite of spice.
A few more in that vein.
Ranran didn't know the first thing about cultivation, but she knew what these rules sounded like: the house rules of a very elegant, very self-indulgent wastrel. Any genuine dandy could walk in and pass the examination without trying.
She was still reading when a voice came from behind her.
"Can you follow these?"
The master had appeared silently at her back. His voice was even.
Ranran stepped back and answered at full confidence: "This disciple will do her utmost!"
He did not seem satisfied. Through her veil she could feel his eyes picking her apart.
She looked down at her dress. Washed so many times the color had given up. She looked back up. "I'll find something better to wear tomorrow."
"Those rules," the master said, "are complete garbage. Can't you see that?"
Ranran blinked.
The word landed oddly. He moved like water, spoke like still air, held himself like something carved from cooler stone than the rest of the world. And then: garbage. As if someone had set a jade plate down and put something terrible on it.
But she recovered fast. "This disciple felt the same, if she's honest, but lacked the master's foresight to say so. In that case, which rules is the disciple to follow?"
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he turned, brushed his sleeves, and walked away.
Dinner that evening was at a low table with the two Yu siblings.
The spread was something. Ham, braised pork, fried dishes stacked three deep. Rich enough for a landlord's feast.
Yu Tong sighed as she served. "To welcome the new apprentice, the master made an exception and told me to buy real provisions. You should be grateful, Ranran. Though looking at you, I don't think you can eat all this. Whatever you can't finish I'll hang in the well for tomorrow."
Ranran's chopsticks stopped halfway to a dish.
She wasn't sure what to say to that.
Yu Tong worried she'd bought too much. Ranran worried she'd cooked badly. The food was, in fact, cooked badly. Either underdone or burnt at the edges, seasoned in ways that made no particular sense. Following a master who'd renounced mortal appetite had not sharpened Yu Tong's kitchen instincts.
Yuchen, however, had no complaints. He ate the way a man eats when he hasn't seen meat in months: no hesitation, no opinions, just movement. He worked through the chicken leg with full commitment.
Ranran poked at her bowl and talked instead, recounting the story of the sect rules on the wall.
Yuchen looked pained. "Our master came from wealth but chose plainness his whole life. He cut those ties early. He's half out of the mortal world already and has nothing but contempt for gold and silver display. It's only because we two still can't shake mortal habits that he takes on medical cases at all. To keep us fed."
He bit through the bone to emphasize the point.
Yu Tong set down her chopsticks and spoke carefully. "The old master of Lingxi Palace turned demon. She was not a good person. Your master is nothing like her. Don't take her rules as any model."
Ranran nodded vigorously.
Right, she thought. So the Demon Sect Master was not fit to follow. But this faceless master, who sets trap examinations using dead demons' house rules to test new disciples' character without warning, and then teaches nothing, is apparently the better option.
She chewed on that.
Life at Lingxi Palace might be more complicated than she'd thought.