Jiang Sanli

Her name was Jiang Sanli. It was not the name of the Jiang family that ruled the city of Ping'an - but the way the Jiang family's Patriarch used it. Jiang was the name of every orphan born alongside Sky River, because they had no father - and so the river raised them.

Sanli meant three foxes, an auspicious name for a girl like her, who was destined to be a whore. The old woman who had named her must have had a sense of humor. She’d died long before Sanli could ever speak to her. Such was the way of Ping’an.

Ping'an was a city divided firmly between those who had everything and those who had nothing.

This was the Dao - the way of the world. In the hall of every great household, the five steps on the path to immortality were illustrated in some way. The Seeker, the Builder, the Traveler, the Namer, the Founder - these were the gods that families like the Jiang worshipped. They were practical gods.

Those who had nothing worshipped the low gods - a myriad set of overlapping ideas. All merchants worshipped gods of fortune. Laborers on the dock worshipped gods of the earth. Captains worshipped gods of the sea. Some said they were allegorical, others said they were immortals in faraway realms. No one doubted their existence. They whispered in the ears of those who were lucky enough to receive their blessings. Sometimes they did more than whisper.

Sanli was the bravest of the whores of Chang's Jiulu, and the best at flattery besides, so Madame Chang gave her the table with the immortal and his fairy. Madame Chang treated all her whores very well - this was known. All but Jiang Sanli - Madame Chang hated her and would prefer it if she died. She’d never learned why.

When Sanli approached them, she offered up a prayer to Daji, as whores were wont to do. Daji was an inauspicious god, even a malicious god - but she was the only one who ever answered Sanli's prayers. Daji was the god of catastrophic love, of wine and meat, of seduction. Daji was a fox, the perfect patron for a girl named three foxes.

But Daji, who liked to replace the darkness of Ping'an with that warm, drunk arousal, and to fill her mind with alien thoughts, could not also slip her influence into the customers. Daji could not find purchase within the immortals, and she wouldn’t shut up about it.

When the fairy smiled at her, a heat pooled at the pit of her stomach and she felt lightheaded - contrary to her normal preferences. But why not the immortal?

A good tree is hard to climb, explained the heady purr in her mind - that voice that came out to play whenever Jiang Sanli prayed. There were no trees around for several li, just water and buildings. Except for one thing. When the immortal sat down on the lowly stool at the table, he planted himself there, his spark laying roots - as though it was where he belonged, where he had always belonged.

Sanli offered the spark to Daji again, but Daji did not respond to her - choosing to rant and rave about things she did not understand. This was usually the sign that Sanli had gotten all the help she would for the night.

Most of the people of Ping'an discovered the spark at some point in their life and awakened, usually in their twenties. But if one lacked the sort of resources the Jiang family had - the resources to buy medicinal pills and the resources to cultivate without starving, one rarely made it past the early stages of Qi Condensation. One in a thousand of those lucky few broke through to Foundation Establishment, an impossible dream.

Even amongst the Jiang, reaching Core Formation was unheard of. For their inheriting young master to do it by the age of eighty was a triumph heard for a thousand li - as far as the Eight Linked Cities. Or so the Jiang family said.

Jiang Tiankong was the most talented person to ever be born in Ping'an. Except for one thing.

A single stone pillar at the center of the Inner City, like the middle finger of a god pointed up at the Heavens. The carving of a mulberry flower, visible to anyone who approached the city from the south, was a constant reminder to the Jiang family that the Jiang Patriarch wasn't truly one of them.

The fairy surveyed the room with those inhuman eyes, big and brown and clear as glass. Daji complained that she was shrouded with fate or good fortune or some word Sanli didn't understand and never would. Of this, Daji was insistent and angry - a sure sign that her patron was wrong.

The fairy's voice was woven with something that wasn't quite qi, something that made Jiang Sanli afraid. She ordered red wine in cups of luminous jade.

The immortal blinked heavily and his soothing voice, something that made her blush, issued forth like a calm, clear spring. "Drinking wine of grapes in luminous cups-"

Daji woke and forcefully ripped away control from her body, enlivened.

"We rush to battle as the four-stringed lute plays,” said Daji.

Sanli had never been so afraid. Daji had killed her, her patron had killed her. She was an inauspicious, malicious god who had killed her. To show this kind of disrespect to an immortal, to bring her this kind of catastrophe. Oh, why did she pray at all!

But the immortals only looked pleasantly surprised - delighted, even. The vague affection and kinship that Daji felt for them was concerning to say the least.

Just like in the stories, the immortals indulged in wine and meat and made merry - wolves who insisted on being trimmed by the shepherd. Everyone in the room, from Madame Chang, to the other customers, to Meihua, who played the guqin in the corner, looked at them with a very real fear out of the corner of their eyes.

And they looked at their savior, Jiang Sanli, with adoration and thanks. It was a small thing, but it gave her the strength to navigate these treacherous waters when Daji slipped into silence. Everyone knew immortals were fickle beings, and Sanli was why they had not ruined them all.

The other daoist, clearly mortal, was a surprise. He'd strode past Madame Chang and had taken an unused stool from another table. He sat at the table of the immortals as though they were old friends. It was clear why they looked offended, though they bore him with surprising grace.

Daji woke again when Daoist Wen asked for pear blossom wine. Whatever Daoist Wen had said had not satisfied her patron.

If Madame Chang knew that the coming calamity was her fault - if she had known it was the result of the help her god had given her, she might not have looked at Sanli with that new light. Sanli had hoped that the immortals would have shown their anger towards the Jiang family for interrupting their meal, but Wen had drawn their ire first.

Just like in the stories, they paid her an auspicious number of taels to hide their vengeance. One for each of the elements to her and four for the jiulu - the most she’d ever been paid.

This was prophecy. They had marked Madame Chang's establishment for death. Immortals were fickle and cruel.

And so she pushed her luck, because with her reluctant home of fifteen years facing death, she would spend any luck to be somebody. The question had tumbled out of her lips, with the kind of audacity that she'd never had before - even when Daji overtook her.

"What is the Dao?"

At her question, the fairy became the only thing in the room that was real and she felt the spark, clearer and stronger than she ever had before as the fairy judged her.

"Don't be silly, my dear. The Dao is whatever you want it to be. And you can be whoever you want to be."

Daji howled in her mind as her grip loosened over Sanli, as the words burned away the bonds to her patron that she didn’t know she’d had. No, not the words - her own spark, which had become a flame - a truth.

The immortal, who wasn't-a-tree-but-she-couldn't-be-sure, gave her a reassuring smile - he must have known what the fairy had reminded her of.

Sanlí meant three foxes.

Except for one thing. She remembered now that her name was Sanlǐ.

It meant three gifts.