He had a foot out of the command tent when the old anxiety hit: cultivation. A ceiling he could feel but not see.
Li Ming pivoted back. "Your Majesty, I'm about to crack Qi-to-Spirit. Any pointers? And… does your method really stop at Spirit-to-Void? No sequel? No 'Part Two: Ascend Like You Mean It'?"
Zhao Zheng's look translated to: You soaked in the Fountain for a year and a half and you're only now getting there? Out loud, he kept it gracious. "Beyond that is Postnatal returning to Prenatal. Insight into the Way—your own, not another man's text. All methods end at Spirit-to-Void." He flicked a page of the Oracle Bone Tome. "As for breaking through—steady wins."
"Sure," Li Ming muttered, curling a lip as he stepped out. "Enlightenment. Memorize the periodic table, become a god."
Boredom prowled his bones. He slung his staff, watched squads drill, and slipped into a warehouse to see if Zhao's coastal raids had netted anything with a magical skull-and-crossbones worth "liberating."
They had. Crates of it.
He was weighing the ethics of sampling when a few guards strode in—Zhao's personal retainers. They snapped to attention and saluted.
"Good day, sir!"
First "sir" he'd ever gotten. Ridiculous pride flared anyway—the kind of glow you'd get from being elected class monitor in third grade.
Li Ming flashed a dazzling smile. "Again. Humor your officer."
They exchanged looks, then saluted. "Good day, sir!"
"And once more."
"Good day, sir!"
Satisfied, he handed each a protective charm. "Souvenir."
"Thank you, sir," one said, nodding to the stacked reagents. "We're here to inventory. The Commander will need them in three days."
Right. Three days to dismantle a coalition. With the Tome in hand, Zhao would trace the expeditionary camps and drop apocalyptic fireworks on each. These reagents would spice the blasts.
So: no sampling with witnesses. Li Ming sighed, wandered out, and climbed onto a roof to stare at cloud-drift.
Three days of nothing. I'm going to sprout mushrooms.
Then a thought smacked him. He'd just given Zhao a lecture on the islanders' character. If the man took it seriously, there might not be many captives left by the end. If Li Ming was ever going to test the myth of the "perfect helpmate," he'd better do it now—purely academic, strictly observation. Field notes. Nothing else.
He dissolved to black mist and arrowed toward the nearest city. He didn't ogle inside Qin lines—for obvious reasons. Zhao had sent men to mines and prettier women to "assist with lineage," leaving the rest to farm. Not exactly sightseeing.
He crossed the line in minutes and descended over a busy district cloaked in invisibility. Landing publicly would cause a panic—half the crowd would run, the other half would build a shrine. Hard to people-watch in a stampede.
He drifted along the streets instead.
No beauties. Not one. But there were ghosts.
The first time he saw her, he almost fled—broad daylight and a she-ghost stalking the lane. Anyone manifesting at noon had to be terrifying. He floated closer—makeup. He forced himself not to bonk a stranger with his staff and shout Begone, spirit!
Then they were everywhere. Poor folk—coarse cloth, quick feet—still had eyebrows. The well-dressed women didn't. Nor did they have white teeth. Or natural skin tone.
What is this? Wealth equals… shave your brows, paint your face chalk-white, and lacquer your teeth black?
He didn't know the Heian fashion history—that nobles prized powder-white faces, plucked brows, and ohaguro, blackened teeth. He just saw a parade of paint: a single red dot of lipstick like a pressed camellia, teeth the color of midnight, eyebrows gone, calves hidden under elaborate layers.
The lips I get—"a touch of red in the center." But why one dot? Did the instructor clock out halfway through the lesson?
And the teeth. How do you eat a steamed pork bun like that? One bite and the filling's charcoal-sesame.
As for the faces: Did someone's uncle overbuy whitewash? Is it expiring, and they're using it up before it curdles?
After more consideration he arrived at a theory: Thin skin. They're literally thickening it with paint. Otherwise, who marries someone who can't even grow eyebrows? Imagine waking at night, rolling over, and scaring yourself back to the ancestors.
A pair shuffled past, shoulders swaddled in padded kimono. Right. Built-in pillows and mats. Easier to bump a mark and pick a pocket. And the paint's an alibi—thick enough and nobody can ID you later when the constable asks.
Disappointed and mildly traumatized, Li Ming abandoned his field study and misted back toward camp.
By the time he landed, all he wanted was a nap on a quiet roof. He dozed until dusk, when a squad set a ladder against the eaves and called up that dinner was served.
He was starving—until he saw the main course: snow-white steamed buns.
Instantly, the chalk-white faces bloomed in his mind. Appetite: gone.
The soldiers glanced at one another. "Sir, is the food not to your taste?"
He considered telling the truth—that a wizard had been spooked at noon by a parade of powdered phantoms—and decided his dignity had suffered enough for one day. He picked up his cup instead and drank like a man who had never met bread.
As Li Ming brooded on rooftops and rituals, Zhao Zheng moved elsewhere with iron efficiency, and consequences began to surface.
While Li Ming was out "sightseeing," Zhao Zheng moved. He ordered every miner involved in the stoning death rounded up so he could scour their minds himself.
The courier returned with worse news: every one of them was already dead. Not of plague or accident—absurd, theatrical ends. One choked at dinner. Another drowned in a latrine. The worst performed seppuku in his sleep with a mining tool, spooking the rest of his hut into sleepless terror.
Normally, a few deaths in the pits wouldn't even make it up the chain. Overseers didn't rush to report a dead laborer any more than a family called the watch for a dead rat. But Zhao had asked. And so the foremen came, white-knuckled, certain heads would roll.
Zhao listened, face hardening into granite: grudging respect for Li Ming's suspicion, soured by the taste of being played. If the culprits had stood before him, he might've cleared the board with a machine gun. Lacking that, he waved the foremen back to work, adding coldly: "If you find yourselves idle, thin the locals."
The real problem gnawed at him. If infiltrators could slip into a mine, they could slip into his camp. Maybe they already had, waiting for the right night.
He locked down the perimeter and ordered a purge. In theory, simple: Qin men knew Qin men. A sergeant shouting in their tongue would smoke out impostors. In practice, the Sushi Kingdom's occultists bred infiltrators who could wear any skin—pitman, barracks maid, even pregnant wife. The search turned brutal. Every belly was checked, every face pinched to test if it peeled away.
They still flushed one: a "pregnant woman" who drew steel with simian speed, dropped several soldiers, and vaulted into the dark. Last glimpse—night gear, skull mask flashing, lacquer-black katana cutting torchlight, and the speed of a monkey set loose.
—
Elsewhere, Li Ming sat on a roof with no appetite, waving away steamed buns. "Kreacher, peanuts and beer."
Invisible, the elf obeyed, setting down fried peanuts and a stout bucket of beer.
Li Ming stared at the moon. "What's the real story with Chang'e? Eat an elixir? Or did she get bored after drinking Fountain water and hop up there to play—then get lost on the way home?" He tipped the bucket. "Bit like me. Can't find my way back."
Kreacher blinked, baffled. His Earth wasn't Li Ming's Earth. He couldn't point the way.
Li Ming smiled ruefully. "My wife has a superpower. If I even glance at a pretty girl, she appears out of thin air and yanks my ear. Today I scoped a whole boulevard—nothing. Didn't show."
Kreacher stayed silent. He'd never even seen the mistress.
After a beat, Li Ming stretched out on the tiles. "You miss home, Kreacher?"
The elf's fingers worried his pillowcase. "Master, where Master is—that is Kreacher's home."
Warmth pricked Li Ming's chest. He turned to say, Drop the invisibility. Have a drink with me—and froze.
A skull-masked figure sprinted across the rooftops, black blade rising.
"Staff—come!" Li Ming barked, casting.
Kreacher saw it too. He thrust out a hand, lancing a spell at the assassin—only for the katana to shear it apart mid-air. The figure never broke stride.
Another spell—split again, the thrust carrying straight for Li Ming's face.
The staff was still in flight. No time for defense. Cold rushed his scalp. Dead.
Kreacher moved first. He leapt, seized the katana with both small hands, and shouted, "Master—!"
The moment he touched steel, his invisibility shattered. The assassin flinched, then rammed the blade forward. Steel punched Kreacher's chest.
Kreacher felt the pull—blood and soul sucked into the blade. Flesh withered, vision tunneled.
Li Ming saw it too. A soul-drinking sword. The staff slapped into his palm. He had seconds and two choices.
One: kill the assassin now. But Kreacher's soul was trapped in steel, beyond the Black Book of the Dead. Lose him, lose the lynchpin of too many plans.
Two: freeze time around Kreacher, drag him through a portal to Shangri-La, and throw him into the Fountain. That left Li Ming alone against a sword that cut magic like paper. He wasn't a brawler. If he didn't force the assassin back, he'd die here.
No time.
Li Ming snapped a stasis field around Kreacher with one hand, swung the dementor staff with the other. The assassin's night gear frosted as the katana bit into enchanted wood. The edge slowed just enough for Li Ming to jerk aside. The kiss of steel opened his ear; hot blood slid down his jaw.
His spell landed. Hellfire detonated across the assassin's face.
No scream. The skull mask flew. A smoke bomb clacked, burst, swallowed the roof in gray. When the haze cleared—gone.
Soldiers thundered up the ladders. Li Ming scooped the fallen mask, its bone grin unsmudged by fire, and ground his teeth. He slashed a portal open and turned to the first arrivals. "Tell Zhao Zheng I'll be back in two days. Personal business."
He carried Kreacher through to the Fountain's lip and dropped him into the luminous water. Released the stasis.
"Careful!" Kreacher cried, still fighting the blade.
Skin taut, Li Ming exhaled. Alive—that was enough. "It's over. You're safe."
Kreacher blinked up from the water, saw his master unharmed, and smiled—like that was all that mattered.
The Fountain's vitality surged, knitting soul and flesh. Li Ming, finally assured, looked down at his staff.
His mouth twitched.
The soul-drinking katana was still embedded in the tip, sunk so deep the haft had warped around it. What had been a straight cudgel was now a scythe, the blade's curve arcing wrong, like a sneer.