16. The Return

Wei Ying was unconscious for the rest of the afternoon and through the night, and was weak and lethargic when he woke up, although at least his eyes had cleared and looked human again. A’Cheng had actually been stabbed in his shoulder along with getting his knee broken, but with basic medical treatment and a heavy application of sleep and circulating his qi, he was healing quickly.

Which left Yanli to clean up and do something with the corpses. She had left them alone due to tending to Ying’er and A’Cheng and then collapsing from exhaustion and stress, but when dawn came, she could not put it off any longer, for any of their sakes. They had all slept in the main hall, taking comfort in being close, but even so, it took a while to get Ying’er and A’Cheng settled on the porch in a couple of old comfy chairs that Lao Wang used to use.

Wei Ying had insisted that he could help, then nearly passed out again when he tried walking more than ten steps. A’Cheng didn’t even offer since he couldn’t stand, much less carry anything, but he was very foul tempered about it, and glared furiously at the dead.

First, of course, was Lao Wang himself. His old, empty body was light as a feather as she carefully rolled him onto one of his winter capes in lieu of a proper burial shroud, tears streaming down her face. What she was going to do with all the other bodies, she had no idea yet, but Lao Wang deserved to be treated with respect. She had closed his eyes and his mouth, and put his cane next to him (she had removed it from the body he had thrust it into, yanking it hard to get it free, then promptly thrown up over one of the gravel paths). She managed to settle him in front of the main hall in a place of honor, in the shade, to await washing and dressing. Then she kowtowed to him in gratitude for all he had done for her family.

A’Cheng and Wei Ying sat like the idols of angry gods nearby, both their eyes dark with impotent fury even as they bowed their heads respectfully.

Then she got up and turned to the chore of dragging the other bodies around. Some were only in pieces and had to be gathered up with a shovel, but overall they were very heavy. The morning remained cool, however, so the bandits had not started rotting much yet. She needed to get them out of the house before too long, though, so did her best to haul them, piece by piece, to the front gate. It was taking forever and soon she was working in the heat of the afternoon, taking breaks every few minutes in order to not overexert herself. She knew she would not have the strength to start cleaning up the blood and gore until the following day.

“I should have had the Burial Mounds take them,” Wei Ying said as Yanli pulled one of the torsos along the ground.

“No!” She stood up and glared at him. “You asked enough of the Burial Mounds!”

“WHAT HAPPENED?” Meng Yao shouted from the gateway, looking around in horror at the multiple dead and bloody bodies. “YANLI!” He dropped the travel bag he was holding and sprinted towards her, grabbing her by the shoulders and scanning her with frantic eyes. “Yanli! Your face is scratched!” He reached up as if to gently touch her cheek, but stopped when she started laughing. And laughing, and laughing. He held her as she slowly collapsed on the ground, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe, tears streaming down her face, the horror and the absurdity of the situation hitting her all at once as she clutched A’Yao’s arms.

“DaGe!” Both boys yelled, follows by thumps and cries of pain.

“Hey, hey, you boys just, uh, stay there. You look hurt. Are you hurt? Oh yeah, you are definitely hurt. Young Master! Over here!”

“Who are you?” Wei Ying yelled aggressively.

“Get out! Get out of our house!” A’Cheng shouted.

“Ying’er! A’Cheng!” Meng Yao snapped at them, and they shut up. He looked at Yanli, but she waved him on as she tried to catch her breath, so he got up and walked over to them. “You are hurt! Get back in that chair, A’Cheng!”

“Who are these strangers?” Wei Ying growled, and it brought everyone up short. The tenor of his voice was raw and angry and unnaturally deep, and the red tinge to the whites of his eyes was back. Yanli was instantly reminded that only the afternoon before, he had been tapped into the Burial Mounds.

The strangers in the courtyard backed up, sensing that something was wrong. She stumbled to her feet and pushed past A’Yao.

“They are friends! Ying’er! Listen to me!” She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her.

“No. They are strangers. Strangers steal from us. Strangers hurt us. Strangers must die.”

“Yanli—” A’Yao whispered behind her.

“Not if they are friends! Even strangers can be friends. We don’t hurt friends!”

He growled again. She used all her strength to pull him up close to her face. “Let go of him! Let go of him right now!” She shouted as loudly as she could with every ounce of qi her heart could spare.

Wei Ying’s eyes went wide and clear and he gasped wetly before passing out and collapsing in the chair.

A’Cheng and A’Yao both looked terrified as she settled Wei Ying into a more comfortable position.

“What happened here, Miss Meng?” A soldier in green and silver and leather stepped over to them. He was a cultivator, and he looked the part: a broad chested and handsome man with two sabers strapped to his back and radiating an aura of power.

“Bandits broke in. My brothers were hurt.” She raised her chin defiantly, calling on her memories of being the young mistress of Yunmeng Jiang. “We protected ourselves.”

The man raised an eyebrow and looked around at the carnage. “I’d say you did, at that.”

“An array,” someone else chimed in. He walked around the soldier, his delicate silks in varying shades of green swishing as he moved, the silver charms and embroidery catching the sunlight. He looked like a young cultivation master, although he did not carry a sword. He did, however, carry a fan. One of Yanli’s folding fans, in fact; one elaborately and riotously decorated with a matched pair of bixie, a tianlu and a pixiu, picked out with silvery blue thread. It was one of the most expensive pieces she had ever made, but he used it to gesture at the ground like a kitchen rag.

“A very powerful array that…hmmm…called on the resentful energy of the Burial Mounds?” He looked very smug as he said it.

A’Cheng’s mouth snapped shut. Yanli looked at A’Yao for an explanation of who was demanding answers of her family.

“A’Li, are you alright? What happened here?” He asked softly, moving to hold one of her hands in his. He paused, bracing himself. “Where is Lao—uh, Yeye?”

She gestured at the bundled form at the base of the porch. Several of the cultivators who had hurried up to A’Cheng and Ying’er stepped away from it quickly, with polite bows and regretful grimaces.

“They killed him?” A’Yao said, his voice filled with grief.

She nodded. “He died protecting us. He put his cane through that man there, and bought enough time for Wei Ying…it was Wei Ying’s array, and he managed to charge it up. It was keyed to the Burial Mounds.” She took a deep breath. “We’d be dead without it.”

Wei Ying was, himself, completely oblivious, still unconscious in the chair as everyone stared at him in varying degrees of horror, regret, and fascination.

“This wouldn’t have happened if we had spiritual swords!” A’Cheng cried out as one of the—Nie?—cultivators helped him get resettled in his chair.

“Yanli,” A’Yao gently pulled her away from where she was trying to fuss over Wei Ying. “I’m so glad you and the boys are safe,” he said, his eyes reflecting his grief and his fear. It probably did not escape him that had things happened differently, his return home would have been too late.

Speaking of…

“Where have you been? A’Yao! We were so worried!” She went to grab his shoulders and realized that he was taller than she remembered. He would never be an imposing man, perhaps, but he had finally cleared her own height. He smiled gently, but shook his head.

“I was on the run.”

She took in a deep breath and nodded. She would ask more questions later, but for the moment, she looked over at her brothers, now surrounded by Nie, including one who was possibly a doctor. Wei Ying was still out of it, and A’Cheng was clearly in pain. The man with two sabers was crouched next to him, feeding him some qi to help with it.

“So! Is this Crane in the Mist?” The young lordling swanned over, waving the fan Yanli had made around ostentatiously.

“Yes, Huaisang. This is my sister, Meng Jiayi, also known as the elusive master embroiderer, Crane in the Mist. JieJie, this is the young master and heir of the Qinghe Nie sect, Nie Huaisang.”

“And yet! You keep calling her Yanli.”

Yanli froze in the middle of her bow.

“Of course I use her milk name sometimes. We’re not that far apart in age,” Meng Yao said, bland and polite.

“Hm.” Nie Huaisang stepped away from them as if dancing. If he was a day older than A’Cheng, Yanli would eat her shoe. When she was a girl she had met his older brother and, of course, his father, but Nie Huaisang at the time was too young to bring out of the women’s quarters. Now, though, there was something bright about him that reminded Yanli of Wei Ying.

“Who designed this deadly array? I must congratulate them!”

“Ying’er laid it out. But as you can see, it has had a negative effect.”

The man with the two sabers stood up again. “Would that every negative effect had such a conclusive outcome.” He was looking around the courtyard in admiration. The Nie definitely came by their reputation honestly, she thought.

“Miss Meng! This is my bodyguard and cousin, Nie Zonghui.”

She bowed. “Thank you for bringing my brother home,” she said.

“Oh, he brought himself, Miss Meng. We’re here because the young master decided to run away to buy some fans.” He stood up from his own bow with a smirk on his face. “We’re the rescue squad.” He motioned at the other cultivators, some of who chuffed in laughter.

Nie Huaisang puffed up like a rooster. “I was fine!”

“You told me you had permission,” Meng Yao said with the air of a man rehashing a very old argument.

“DaGe did, in fact, give me permission to go and buy a new fan!”

“Did you tell him the new fan was located in Yiling, in Yunmeng territory?” A’Yao cocked his eyebrow, clearly knowing the answer.

“Not in so many words, no.” Nie Huaisang flapped his fan and refused to look at any of them.

Nie Zonghui chuckled and turned back to Yanli. “Don’t worry, Miss Meng. We caught up to them fairly quickly. Your brother can take care of himself, but Sang’er is a handful.”

“Hey!” Nie Huaisang put his hands on his hips.

“JieJie?” Wei Ying croaked, squinting at her. She flew to his side. Everyone else, she noticed, went very still.

“Ying’er!”

“It’s loud, JieJie. It’s so loud.” Tears welled up in his eyes.

“What is loud?” She looked around, trying to find a source for the noise he has hearing.

“The screaming. They are all screaming, JieJie! The screaming won’t stop!” He shuddered and put his hands over his ears. A’Yao crouched down next to him. No one else around them moved at all.

“Who is screaming, DiDi? Can you tell us? Is it the bandits? Are their ghosts bothering you?” He asked, reaching out to rest a hand on Wei Ying’s shoulder. Ying’er sat up, unnaturally stiff, almost like a fierce corpse.

“They took it! We want it back!” His eyes flared red again and his voice resonated throughout the siheyuan like a gong.

The Nie medic punched an acupuncture needle into the back of his neck and he collapsed.