Shu Lan Jing, son of the Empress of Blue Flower Mountain, and supreme ruler of the Tian Empire, had disappeared by the time Lu Shao arrived. His cousin had abandoned his throne and gone into hiding, fearing the ever increasing discontent of the nobles and commoners might end with his head chopped off.

Or so the rumors went.

Lu Shao wasn’t sure what happened, but he doubted his cousin ran away because he feared getting lynched. From what he heard from his Uncle, his cousin wasn’t that weak. But finding out the truth was impossible. The Empire was in complete chaos. Other than Shu Lan Jing definitely leaving the throne, no other bit of information Lu Shao and his party heard along the way could be trusted.

It’s not that anyone was outright lying, as he could tell if they were, people were simply repeating things they’d heard from somewhere else, and these repeated stories were often contradicting and sometimes absurd to a degree they couldn’t be believed.

As an example, there was a rumor—perhaps more outright slander—that Shu Lan Jing drank the blood of virgins to remain eternally young.

Lu Shao would call his own mother ugly before he’d believe a vicious hearsay. Shu Lan Jing was of the same sort as Lu Shao; not quite human, not quite spirit. They didn’t “feed” on anyone to remain young, that was just their natural state of being.

With gossip of that level floating around among the public, it was no wonder Lu Shao found himself in a difficult situation.

Perhaps he should have turned back then, but Lu Shao felt he better get to the bottom of his cousin’s sudden disappearance before returning. He doubted his cousin was afraid of getting executed, as some rumors suggested, but there might be some other, equally serious, reason he’d fled. What if his cousin was in some kind of distress? His cousin wasn’t quite human, would anyone out here be able to help him? Therefore, Lu Shao, his younger brother, and a disgruntled deer began searching the entire Tian Empire in hopes of finding Shu Lan Jing.

Thus a short trip turned into a long one.

~~***~~

Without it’s Emperor, the Tian Empire quickly fell into chaos as different factions fought to gain supremacy. While they were busy fighting each other, neighboring countries began eagerly nibbling away at the Empire’s borders. Soon, the Tian Empire was fighting enemies from within AND without.

Lu Shao sent news of what was happening in the Tian Empire to his parents. He also told them he and his brother would stay in the area, and continue to look for their wayward cousin.

Mei Hua and Jin didn’t object to their son’s decision, though Mei Hua wasn’t very happy about it. Her sons had already seen quite a bit of human cruelty, but that didn’t mean she wanted them to be exposed to more of it. Alas, thanks to the example set by her eldest son Shan Hui, and her husband’s indifference; once her children became adults they travelled where and when they wanted, and only felt the need to inform her rather than ask permission.

As for Jin, he was never the sort to restrict his adult children’s movements. He generally deferred to Mei Hua in how to take care of their children when they were young, when they became adults he felt strongly they should go out and live their lives independently of himself and his wife.

Some of this was because he liked to monopolize his wife’s attention, but the other part was likely due to having spent eons watching how animals raised their children. In the animal kingdom it wasn’t normal for children to cling to their parents after they reached maturity. Jin thought how animals treated their adult children was just right, and adopted a similar attitude.

~~***~~

The Tian Empire’s fall had ripple effects throughout the entire western continent. The “silk road” from west to east broke down, causing disruptions to the flow of goods. Prices for cheap items from the west skyrocketed, and many items were no longer available at all, the makers of them having fled their homes or died in a conflict.

It had been over a century since anyone in the west had gone into a full blown war. Western countries looking to take over the Tian Empire needed tools and weapons and someone to train their armies, as their current militaries were lackluster for what was needed to win. Demand for various kinds of metals rose sharply, and in conjunction with the need for metal, experienced blacksmiths suddenly found themselves besieged with job requests. Mercenaries and retired military leaders were also highly sought after.

To the far western nations Lanhua was a legendary place, filled with warriors of exceptional talent, craftsmen of great skill, and literal mountains of untapped resources. It was known that Lanhua’s Immortal Emperor and Princes had taken over the East long ago. If not for the country’s disinterest in the west, the envy their power inspired in people would be under a thick layer of fear. But as it was, mostly the mortal rulers between the Tian Empire and Lanhua envied their eternal youth and power rather than greatly feared them.

Those countries furthest from the mountains knew the least about Lanhua, both in the distant and the more recent past. What they did know about the mountain nation was often fragmented and sometimes outright false. These nations somehow came to the conclusion, based on what they did know, that if they offered the right price, the Emperor of Lanhua would surely enter an alliance with them.

And even if he didn’t, surely they could rope someone in who would be willing? Either a Prince, a high ranking official, maybe even a general! In their minds, there was no such thing as an unbribable population, only a matter of what fee needed to be offered to get them to switch over.

~~***~~

The sudden influx of gifts and political attention wasn’t appreciated by Jin at all. He conquered the east because their instability and culture of violence directly harmed one of his people, not out of greed, pride or opportunity. If those eastern nations hadn’t touched his wife, they could have gone on destroying themselves with impunity.

His reasoning for subjugating the east was no secret. The schools within Lanhua explicitly laid out why it had happened. But outside of Lanhua, including those eastern countries he’d trampled over, no one really believed it. Who would take over half a continent just to keep their family safe? To the rulers of the world, such a notion was too foreign to be believed.

Whether they were slimy, slick tongued politicians or delegates sincerely beseeching him, the western nations’ many representatives were a thorn in Jin’s side. When he’d first gotten a human body, he would have sent wolves to tear apart the worst of them or unceremoniously kicked out the best of them. But now that he was “respectable”, with family and citizens watching his every move, he had to behave with self restraint.

Jin tolerated this for exactly one month before he decided he couldn’t take it anymore. In secret, he consulted Xui Shi to put an idea that had been brewing in his mind since he woke up in motion. The next day, all the Princes were given the title “Royal Emissary” and tasked with the job of being liaisons between the Emperor and foreign dignitaries and ambassadors. As Royal Emissaries, their words and deeds carried the same authority as the Emperor.

It sounded fancy but anyone connected to Jin knew he’d created the position to get out of dealing with the foreigners. The princes were not much better than their father and balked at having to deal with the begging, weedling, annoying outsiders. They immediately went and complained to their mother.

Mei Hua, however, turned out to be unsympathetic.

“Aren’t you all princes, ah?” She responded in exasperation. “It’s not like you haven’t done ambassadorial work before, all this does is make it official. There is only one of your Father, but how many of you are there? Just split up the responsibilities between your brothers if you find it annoying. What’s more, didn’t you come to me just yesterday complaining your father’s grumpiness was getting annoying? Well, now he will be happy again. Like you wanted.”

Seeing their mother unreasonably siding with their father, the princes could only sulkily accept their fate.

Though their mother was right in saying there were many of them and they could share the responsibility, the chances of it working that way weren’t very high. At least half of them were regularly out of Lanhua, many weren’t good with diplomacy, leaving less than a handful that could respectably do the job.

Those few who’d end up doing all the work were unwilling. VERY unwilling.

Xui Shi was once again approached to deal with the same problem. He looked at the princes, who had the same look on their faces as the Emperor had when desperate to avoid work, and felt worried for the future of the nation.

In the end, a lottery system was put in place to keep things fair. A wicker box and round wood coins with the prince’s initials were made out of Blue Flower Tree branches, to prevent the sons from cheating. Every prince’s coin, except those who were on an official mission by the Emperor, such as Lu Shao in the west, would be put into the wicker box. Xui Shi would, at a random time and date, draw out a coin. Whichever son’s name was listed would be tasked with doing the bulk of the work for a year. Those sons who worked for a year, would have their name removed the following year, so that no son was an Emissary two years in a row. If they lacked the skills necessary to do the job, Xui Shi would strictly teach them until they understood at least the basics.

Xui Shi was fair and impartial, unbribable and impossible to threaten. He was also not human, able to appear and disappear at will, making him unescapable for the ambassadorial lessons some would need. Every son knew that if his name was picked, they couldn’t get out of it. If any brother showed joy at the “chosen’s” misfortune, the “chosen” decided to make his brother’s life miserable the moment he wasn’t busy.

This method became known as the “work lottery” and later “the lotto”. The fairies liked the idea and soon began doing it too. From there it spread out into the rest of Lanhua society. Eventually it became a staple method for picking people to do jobs no one wanted to do.

~~***~~

No matter how tragic the events in the west, life continued on for everyone else in eastern Dalu.

The sons of Jin grew up, doing work they sometimes loved and sometimes hated. A few of them got married, starting their own families. But others became more entrenched in their bachelorhood. No matter how they were nagged by their mother, who to them seemed to have an unquenchable desire for grandchildren, they remained staunchly apathetic.

Perhaps watching her children have their own children, or fighting with her bachelor sons over starting families, got Mei Hua’s mind on children a little too much. Her maternal instincts were ignited and, as if a fire had been set on dry grass, she had a sudden, intense desire for babies of her own again.

She reasoned that it was a good time for more sons. Her husband was no longer the antagonistic or indifferent father of the past. He did well as a grandfather, showing affection and tolerance to the youngest of the family. If he could be that way with his grandchildren, what would he be like with his own little ones? She had to find out!

The fact that she had already made up her mind and was simply looking for an excuse, didn’t need to be mentioned.

“How are all our grandchildren not enough for you?” Jin asked helplessly.

The De twins, Taihua and Weishan, particularly had an enormous amount of children compared to their other married sons, with their children having many children too. The Palace of Preeminence, the area within Blue Flower Palace where the De sons lived, had been overrun with them. It got so crowded and noisy that the other princes threatened to start a national rebellion if something wasn’t done. In the end, starting from the 3rd generation, the De twins descendents were forced to move out.

But all the grandchildren produced by the De twins and their family didn’t seem to matter at all to Mei Hua.

Perhaps because of his wonton behavior early on in their marriage, Mei Hua had developed a very specific, aggressive way of expressing her desire for children. He didn’t have to be told explicitly by her to know what she was doing. He was accosted by his wife— again and again— without mercy.

“What do they have to do with me wanting more babies?” She cast him a sly look as her hands naughtily slid over his body. “You can’t possibly think they’re the same as having my own?”

He grabbed her groping hands and tried to reason, “But you already have 10 babies!”

She squinted at him.

“What babies? They’re all full grown adults! It’s just not the same when they’re grown up— no hugs or snuggles or innocent observations about the world…. They know everything and do what they want, pah! They just leave their old mother behind!” She sniffed disdainfully, throwing her adult sons into the pit without remorse.

As proof that she wasn’t being serious at all, she wiggled the fingers of the hands he was gripping in a humorously threatening manner. “And don’t you mean only 10?”

“Having 10 isn’t a small number!”

“But you promised.”

Jin looked at her, baffled. What had he promised exactly?

“Oh? You forgot?” His hands, originally meant to restrain her mischief, were used to pull him close to her. She kissed him soundly, disrupting his thought process. As they were sinking further and further into their passion, she mumbled, “Even if you don’t remember, I remember...”

What he’d promised, he never did recall.

Later that night, his mind drifting off to sleep, he thought contentedly, ‘Oh, nevermind. If she wants more, let her have more. It’s not like they stay clingy children for very long anyway…’

The 11th son was born a year later.

Mei Hua gave him the generational name “San” meaning third, implying he was the forerunner for the third batch of sons. Jin gave him the name Liang, meaning good.

San Liang, the good son, was very well behaved as a baby. As he grew up, it was discovered that he was not really well behaved, but lazy. Though he was smart, he lacked emotional intelligence and was an extreme airhead. To the astonishment of the rest of the family, he would frequently get himself lost, while in the palace, no matter how many years passed.

It was a family tradition by then to let their sons, once they were old enough, to wander around without restraint. However, for the first time, Jin and Mei Hua were so concerned over San Liang’s ability to find his way home, they assigned a permanent life-long guard to him. San Liang’s guard would be with him all day, every day, making sure he didn’t get hopelessly lost or entangled in something dangerous.

Seven years after San Liang, Mei Hua gave birth to another set of twins. They were called San Jierui and San Hongli respectively. Though they were also well-behaved babies like their older brother, they thankfully deviated from San Liang and grew into competent adults.

Jierui and Hongli loved to eat. They liked it so much they began to visit the Imperial Kitchens, watching the Hou fairies create delicious dishes of all kinds. When they were old enough, they began helping the fairies. By the time they were teenagers, they were working alongside the chefs as their assistants.

Jierui's talent was the ability to figure out the ingredients and the ratio of those ingredients in anything he ate with just a taste. After learning everything he could from the fairy chefs, he decided to travel to expand his cooking repertoire. He learned many recipes and used the knowledge he gained to create new recipes. Wanting to share his love of cooking, he wrote down in detail how to cook his personally created recipes and sold them to the public for a nominal fee. Generations later, these recipe books would be used for any new cook seriously studying their craft.

Hongli didn’t have the talent of taste, but his love of eating was not any less than his older twin. If his brother wanted to entertain people with new flavors, Hongli wanted to heal people with healthy eating that was also delicious. His goal was to turn otherwise awful tasting medicine and convalescent’s bland meals, into something truly enjoyable. The recipes he created revolutionized how medicine was administered and aftercare of the sick. Eventually what he learned reached across the ocean and became the standard for holistic health treatments.

Twelve years after San Liang was born, the San siblings gained another brother.

The 14th son of Mei Hua was startlingly different from all the sons before. Though he wasn’t born early, he was very small and delicate. His hair was a dark pine green, his blue eyes the shade of the twilight sky, and his skin dark like tree bark. Jin named his son Songbai, because the boy’s colors reminded him of a stately cypress tree.

This name ended up being apt. Songbai was loved by the Blue Flower Trees. The tree spirits felt he could have passed as one of them in appearance, if only his hair were blue and not green. As if to compensate for the difference, the tree spirits who liked him the most altered their hair and eyes to the color of turquoise, and this in turn changed the color of their flowers from a bright blue to a muted blue-green. These devoted tree spirits would follow Songbai around as flower-petal filled dust-devils, whispering their secrets to him, telling him the latest gossip, or pranking any of his brothers who dared tease him.

It wasn’t a surprise to anyone that when he grew into an adult, he took an interest in plants. His interest led him into gardening and later, farming. He developed novel and interesting methods of altering plants that hadn’t been done before. Certain edible plants were never the same after he was done with them, either strengthening them from common diseases or increasing their output or changing color or flavor. Because of his skills, many famines and pestilences that would have starved millions were reduced to mere inconveniences.

As to the reason behind Songbai’s dark skin and hair coloring, this turned out to be a direct result of Jin’s body, which was a direct descendant from Blue Flower Village. Ye was the only one who both remembered and witnessed the Empress “meddling” with the Blue Flower Villagers, until everything from the tips of their hair to the points of their toes had been altered to suit her taste. When he saw Songbai, he instantly recalled that Jin’s body on the maternal side commonly had dark brown skin and deep shades of green hair and eyes.

That Songbai took after his father’s maternal lineage rather than the paternal side, was surprising to everyone. Jin was a yang spirit and as a result all his children thus far had favored the paternal lineages. It was assumed that Mei Hua, though she couldn’t remember, took strongly after her father’s side of the family and that’s why any of her children took after her. It was theorized the reason Songbai took after his paternal grandmother was that Jin’s spirit was no longer raging uncontrollably and overwhelming everything.

When Mei Hua thought along these lines, she secretly hoped that meant that someday she’d be able to have a baby girl. However, after having 4 children and acting as the matriarch for a family that was ever expanding, she was a little tired. Jin also began to look disgruntled at how their “alone time” was being whittled down to almost nothing. Knowing they were both reaching their limit, she shelved the idea of having a baby girl and decided to try again later.

~~***~~

When the San sons had grown up, going their own way, news came back that Lu Shao had finally found his cousin! Shu Lan Jing had agreed to go to Lanhua and see his mother’s family, allowing Lu Shao and De Qiang to finally come home.

However, Lu Shao also warned his family that something wasn’t right with Shu Lan Jing. His body and spirit were sickly and he suffered from a kind of mental trauma. Lu Shao thought being on the mountain would cure Shu Lan Jing of his physical ailment, but the problem of his mind, that Lu Shao wasn’t confident could be cured easily.

When Shu Lan Jing took his first step onto the Blue Flower Mountains, he collapsed on the spot before anyone could talk to him.

Like how Jin’s spirit had been damaged because of the imbalance between the yin and yang of the mountain, Shu Lan Jing’s spirit was also severely damaged. His spirit instinctively devoured the yin of the mountain, the intensity of the process putting the suffering man into a deep, coma-like sleep. As it had taken years for Jin to wake up, Shu Lan Jing would also require time to recover.

Jin saw the sorry state of his sister’s son and felt a deep sense of pity. He gathered up his nephew into his arms and took him to the oldest Blue Flower Tree on the mountains, a place where yin bubbled up to the surface most easily. He laid Shu Lan Jing among the tree’s roots to rest, hoping the readily available yin energy would help with his recovery somehow.

Shuya, the Spirit of that Tree, declared she would watch over the son of her Master. From then on, except for occasionally visiting Mei Hua, and a liason or two with a certain Buck, her spirit wouldn’t wander around but stayed inside her tree.

Underneath her branches, Shuya made the world change: the night never left, with only the stars and moss to give light. Gentle fragrances mixed with the cool night air and the quiet sound of leaves rustling and a breeze passing by was the only thing that could be heard. It was a peaceful place, designed for resting for a very long time.

Ye would visit Shuya and watch the sleeping man with a mixture of curiosity and longing. He knew that all his Empress’ fairies were sleeping inside Shu Lan Jing and he fervently wished to see them again. Where had they been? What had they seen? What grand adventures did they get to experience? His heart ached from his yearning to know how they’d been and to talk to them again.

Yet, all he could do was wait.

He waited days, then months, then years.