I will succeed!

The fervent voice of the young prince, soon to be emperor of the Shuanguang Empire, spread throughout the crowd beneath his feet. He stood upon the balcony of his royal study, at his sides two little children clung to the hem of his dragon robes. Their eyes were sparkling, and there were traces of their noble blood in that gleaming brown eyes, but the silence of the crowd shunned the hidden bravery flowing through their veins.

Contrary to them, their father had eyes blazing like celestial stars whenever he gazed at the crowd gathered below.

I will succeed, not only the dragon throne left by my forefathers and ancestors for thousands of years, but I will also succeed the dreams of our people!

I am but a single man, a sickly prince, burning with the vigor of youth and handling the people under the will of heaven, otherwise no different from all of you gathered below my palace. And as you all do, I also have a heart. And guts, and courage, and audacity to call myself the emperor before all of you. But I seek forgiveness, my soon to be people, for my impulsive decision.

I am but a single man, a sickly prince, whose ambitions include nothing that won’t benefit the prosperity of my soon to be people and my soon to reign nation. Everything I and will do, and anything that I and won’t do, will always be there for you and you alone.

Are these excuses of another monarch who will soon dry us out of our measly amount of money and food, you can ask. Are these the veiled words of another emperor who will only seek to pile gold on gold into his treasury, you have to ask. And you will say, these words of yours are only another set of excuses to blind us, fool us into submission, as no righteous ruler will justify his actions by words, but with his fists and wits, with action.

And you are right! You, my dear and intelligent people, hundreds of thousands of you all shouting there! You all are right.

But what action can I do to prove my worth, my innocence here in the short term I will reign? As an infant I was sickly, as a child I was alone. As a youngster, I was hidden, and as a prince, I was pressured. Up until now, how many of you knew of my name, of my deeds? None! But how many of your good deed have I heard and learned and admired, do my people know? None! Again, none!

The young prince stopped speaking, digressing the words he spoke in a flurry of emotions. His face flushed with red, and his breathing ragged, young prince realized how chaotic the words he spouted were. For a moment, he also fell victim to the silence of the hundreds of thousands beneath him.

Then a huge commotion broke out. Yells, shouts, cheers rose from the commoners. Palace guards at the gates stirred into action to block the gateway, but no one made way for there. Instead, they looked upto the young prince, and someone called out his name.

''Long live the Emperor! Long live the Shuangxing!''

Their voices boomed and reached to even the city walls at the horizon, Shuangxing found his own voice drowned by their fervor cheers.

No, don’t! You can yell Shuangxing as much as you want now, it does not matt-

Then all the images disappeared as Shuangxing waved his hand in front of him.

The illusion around him disappeared with a puff, all sound and images dissolved into thin strands of smokes. They flew over his head and sunk into the red jewel at the center of his Imperial Crown, and soon left him all alone inside the royal study. Shuangxing stood up from the wooden wing chair and walked up to the grand balcony behind his room.

Walking atop the white marble of the balcony, he came before the edge and grasped the railings to look down.

The slope flowing downwards to the Karnival was once riddled with hundreds of thousands of people willing to die for him, and the further pagodas with seven or thirteen floors were once nothing but temples where abbots squandered people as if they were a bat sucking the blood of its prey.

Now, neither of them remained.

He destroyed the evil vermin that was the Brynhildr’s Temple, fought off against the sect influence on his people, gained and distributed the wealth of the nation to raise the middle-class that was the backbone of their society.

But then he lost the support of the poor, gained the ire of the wealthy, no longer commanded respect among the zealots and monks, and turned into an eyesore for the sect.

But was it really important now?

It wasn’t.

He was no longer an Emperor, after all, lofty aspirations and heavy burdens of people were no longer his worries.

He was an emissary, and as all emissaries had done, he would give his everything to the one deity who gave him power. And this deity, Shuangxing prayed, was not one of those benevolent ones.

If there was a word that could describe it, it would only be one thing.

Mongrel.

*********

The sky was blue and clear. Branches and leaves of the trees swayed under the calm whizz of winds, sunlight perched atop the treetops and shadows cast on the crops of all kinds: Corn, wheat, rice, watermelons. A small stream of water burbled and flowed into the shallow trenches between the lines of brown earth, moistening and nourishing the roots of these herbs and food.

Near the largened farm beside their small hut, there were a few boulders and trees left unrooted. Atop one of these huge yellow rocks sat Ubel, around his body a sheen screen of light. It was as thin as the tip of a needle, color of aqua, and from deep inside it garnered a power enough to scare off a cultivator of low strength.

Ubel took deep and continuous breaths and swathes of grass below his feet danced back and forth from the blown air. Within each breath was traces of Qi, unrefined and wild, with no clear attribute and mixed with all kinds of essences; Fire, water, earth, wind, light, darkness, sun, moon, death, life, and many more. And it was the same for the screen of Qi around him, it consisted of a mangled force of Qi.

It was a strange sight for normal people, were they to see a man with shattered meridians controlling Qi, and with a slight proficiency at that. But to masters with power, and experience who were decades or even hundreds of years old, this wasn’t something impossible. Only rare, but not surprising.

As Quan explained inside the notebooks he left, the lack of meridians wouldn’t constrain his control over Qi. Actually, what made him unable to control Qi was the existence of his meridians, or them being broken. Why was it? Because, in the first place, immortals controlled the Qi not with meridians, but with their minds.

And, as it seems, meditating was a pretty effective way of strengthening one’s mind.

Ubel took one last breath and opened his eyes. His gaze slid towards his right, to the entrance of their home. From there, a man waved his hands towards him with a bright smile.

‘’Priest Hong.’’ Ubel leaped down the boulder and clasped his fist. The man did the same.

‘’Ubel, how have you been?’’ He asked.

‘’Better than you it seems, Priest Hong. Where is your flowery cloth?’’ Today, Hong Seng wore not his green flowered robe, but a simple grey cloth that reached his knees.

‘’I tore its sides in an accident,’’ Hong Seng explained. ‘’It seems The Raven isn’t happy with his shrine being postponed again. So he sent a flock of owls to attack me.’’

‘’Owls?’’ Ubel hummed in thought. ‘’Falcons abound in the woods since the air is getting warmer, it is surprising a flock of them gathered together.’’

‘’The Raven is not of mortal men, Ubel, there is no need to think about how he had done it.’’ Hong Seng smiled. ‘’My hair is also ruined, too, but I don’t see you comment on that.’’ His red hair, too, wasn’t in its normal shape. Instead, it looked mudded and scattered, rather than gathered into a ponytail.

‘’Sure, Priest Hong.’’ Ubel didn’t care much about Priest Hong’s faith or his deity and both of them were peculiar enough that he had never heard of their mentions. He was a kind, middle-aged man whom Ubel met a month ago after constructing his father’s new grave. His tale was not something long or depressing or joyful. He was only a small believer of a religious group who wanted to build a shrine for their deity, The Raven, who was supposedly the son of Brynhildr. Heresy, yes, but no one cared about religions and people’s beliefs these days unless it pricked their sides. And Ubel had no spare energy to learn the man’s background.

Still, in case he sought harm Ubel knew he could take down the pitiful man in a swift strike. Not that he preferred...or imagined about it. Only an intuition.

‘’I’m still short of some stone and wood, Priest Hong, and your promised tools never arrived. How do you expect me to build it with my bare hands?’’

‘’Like you built that grave, as I guess you had no prior tools before my arrival.’’

‘’It is only some carved walls, light gracious! Do you know how much stone and energy I spent on building it? And you expect me to build a shrine twice its size with no tools? Hold onto your words, Priest Hong.’’

‘’Haah-’’ Hong Seng sighed. ‘’Although I still doubt you, nevertheless, a promise is a promise. Perhaps the owls were to remind me of my duty, who knows?’’

‘’You know it very well.’’ Ubel yawned and wiped the tears at the corner of his eyes. ‘’So, are you here for something else, or?’’

‘’I was going to ask if you would accompany me to the Denizage.’’

‘’Impossible.’’ Ubel blurted out. ‘’I don't ever intend to leave the forest.’’

‘’Why the haste?’’ Priest Hong looked at him with open confusion. Ubel could guess why very well. ‘’It is not far from the shore. Once at the beach, we only have to walk four to five hours to reach the docks of the city.’’

‘’And you are multiple times faster than me, no?’’

And he was right about that.

‘’I still refuse. I don’t feel safe leaving my grandmother behind.’’

Priest Hong gazed at him for a second, the gleam in his eyes shunned, and he sighed. ‘’So be it. Then I will come back tomorrow noon.’’

‘’Farewell.’’ Ubel sent him off and watched his silhouette disappear among the branches and the trunks of the trees. Once he disappeared, Ubel entered his house.

Inside he saw his grandmother sitting on her rocking chair, this time with no additional blankets but donning thick leather robes and a pair of white gloves on her hands. And in those hands she held one of the books Quan gave Ubel, her gaze looking at the contents was one of full understanding.

Ubel came inside the room and looked at the still-burning fireplace. The cold of the winter started to substitute a fortnight ago and continued to decrease with consistency until today. Nevertheless, it was still chilly. So they continued to light it every once in a while. At the foot of the fireplace laid a pair of foxes, one male and one female. Male one was, of course, the mischievous fox who disturbed their crops. The female one was an addition to him, she appeared out of nowhere right after Ubel took the male fox in.

And it seemed the male knew her well even before meeting Ubel(Again), so Ubel just took them both. They did no work, female fox sometimes accompanied him when cutting stones and woods for the shrine he prepared to build, but that was its extent. Male was as cunning as ever, it didn’t even lift a finger and acted always tired.

But from the bulge on the female fox’s belly, one could see he wasn’t that tired when it came to lust.

Ubel only shook his head at this.

He sat right beside them near the fireplace and reached his hands to their heads. Without minding to him, both continued to snore with small smiles on their faces. Ubel pat them when his grandma spoke.

‘’Was it the Priest Hong again?’’ She asked and closed the cover of the book. Her voice sounded livelier than before, and her skin seemed to glow.

‘’It was him. He was here to inquire about a thing.’’

‘’So? Where is he now, dear?’’

‘’He left to the Denizage for the tools, asked me to accompany him but I refused.’’

‘’Good boy,’’ A thin smile spread to her lips. ‘’But is he a man worthy of trust?’’

‘’He seems so.’’ Ubel stood up once she started her questions again. ‘’Does it even matter?’’

‘’It does matter, dear. Wasn't it you who complained about people wanting to destroy the forest? Now someone appeared and wants to relocate a part of the forest for himself, why are you so easy going about it?’’

‘’Grandma, I said it multiple times. A single priest is different from the whole nation. And it is just a job I do to get some money, I even made it so that his shrine is hours away from our home.’’

‘’A single priest with a huge religion behind him, yes. Dear, I don’t care about it much on where his supposed god will live, but why do you care about money? Will you trade with the wily fox laying down there?’’ She pointed at her feet and the male fox grumbled.

‘’It is...only an investment. I need to have something reserved, lest something unexpected occurs and I need something from the cities near.’’

Still, his grandmother didn’t seem convinced. She waved the book she held in front of Ubel’s face, her eyes darkened. ‘’So now you are going to disregard your master’s teachings? Ubel, dear, are your master’s words as worthless as a pile of silver?’’

‘’Grandma,’’ Ubel sighed and snatched the book from her grasp. ‘’If all you worry about is the priest himself, don’t worry. I am strong enough to ensure both of our safety.’’

Ubel told this as an assurance, for he could manage to pinpoint his grandmother’s source of worry. She read the books Quan gave to him as much as Ubel, if not more, and the first three rules at the start of each page were most definitely drilled into her mind as well.

1- Never spend a day without meditation.

2- Never spend a day without reading.

3- Never, under no circumstances other than something fatal, try to contact any community or authority foreign to you.

First two were things he did, as obvious as it was from his results, and the third one wasn’t something plausible for him to even achieve. He knew of only two authorities and three communities; The Sect and the Shuangguang Empire, and the town of Denizage with its two villages. He had no relation with the former two, one he left on his own volition and the other didn’t even border the Orabura Forest. For the Denizage and its villages, Koyh and Kabsah, he had no relation with them whatsoever other than Priest Hong, who also was only a stranger to the place.

Still, for Quan to repeat these three at the start and the end of each note, books, notebook, and scroll meant he knew something. A thing that Ubel wasn’t aware, even after learning more about the local geography and the history of the place he lived near, and was not worth getting tangled with.

So his grandma was both right and justified in her words. Ubel had faith in Quan’s words about not getting involved with anyone, and that was his intention from the start as well, but the prospect of getting some money that could potentially help him in the future was...a bit enticing? It was greed, perhaps, but it stemmed from the resolution to make the last few years of his grandma better.

Then...maybe he could seek something with it.

But for now, Ubel shook his head to focus again, I need to be careful about it. He didn’t believe a problem would arise from his relationship with the friendly priest, and in case anything popped up Ubel had confidence he could resolve them.

Yet his grandmother, a woman with great experience and arduous years behind her back, knew how insignificant the self-confidence of Ubel was on solving anything.

‘’Dear, dealing with humans aren’t like hunting animals.’’ She said and closed her eyes at last, with a push from her dangling feet the chair started to sway again. ‘’Can you still let go of your bow’s string in the face of a human, even if they were a murderer?’’

Ubel fell silent for a moment, deep in thoughts, then gave a small hug to his grandmother. ‘’No, I don’t think so.’’ He whispered and stood up. ‘’I will get the last batch of materials for the shrine, grandma, I’ll be back in an hour or so.’’ With that, he left through the entrance and disappeared into the woods.

Ke’ai Huiqing opened her eyes and looked at the swinging door. For a moment, she felt like laughing and a wide smile appeared on her face. Then it turned into tranquility.

‘’He lies like his father, doesn’t he wily fox?’’ She asked the grumpy fox, but he didn’t pay her any heed. The female fox turned to look at her, however, and her beady eyes were open wide.

‘’Hm, hm.’’ She let out two grunts, laid back on the floor, and ignored the surprised gaze of Huiqing. The trio let their body relax and soon, they all fell into a warm, cozy nap that would last until Ubel came home.