Chapter Text
“If you’re not good the Yiling Patriarch will steal you in the night!” rang out the words of many exasperated mothers, before and after the siege of the Burial Mounds. It was never true; in fact, the first child stole herself.
Li Hua was at that age where she was no longer a child, but she wasn’t yet a woman. She had spent her day having tried to earn as much money as she could with her sewing skills and was walking home when she had heard a mother make the usual threat towards the small child that was running away from her.
“That’s right!” added an elderly man that had almost been knocked down by the running child, “I had a younger brother once, and the Yiling Patriarch took him away!”
Li Hua’s thoughts, which had been centred on what she should do, halted. The thing was that her father was planning on selling her to a brothel. Her mother had died of disease a while ago and her father, the worse for drink, hadn’t dealt with it well. Li Hua had taken some of her mother’s valuables back then and hid them from her father. She had debated turning them over but had realised that if anything it would only delay her father’s plans. But if the Yiling Patriarch actually stole children maybe she could run away! Yiling wasn’t that far and surely the Yiling Patriarch could use the help with the children!
With the new plan in her head Li Hua went home with a lighter heart. She didn’t dare take the household funds her father knew about, in case he went after her for the money, it wasn’t like he was doing any work to earn any of it. But she took her clothes, her mother’s valuables, and what would travel well from the kitchen—and then she left.
She travelled through that first night, just to create distance and pushed herself on through the morning and into the afternoon. When she couldn’t continue she set up camp away from the road and slept from afternoon through to the next morning and then continued on.
Li Hua made it to the base of the mountain at twilight, but she couldn’t get her feet to continue up the Burial Mounds in the waning light, so she camped out for another day. She couldn’t get her feet to move until the sun was high in the sky the next day.
Before she stepped foot on the mountain the sun was warm and inviting, but the second she started to walk up the temperature dropped, and the sky seemed to gain a grey hue just as the dead grass and trees seemed to have had. Though she supposed all the trees weren’t dead she could see some that looked like they were going to bear fruit come the autumn. She eventually made it to an area that had been cleared, she recognised farming fields when she saw them, even though it looked like the crops had gone to seed years ago and the field hadn’t been tilled or tended in the same amount of time. Past the fields were some huts, most of them falling down, some that seemed serviceable. But it gave Li Hua pause a desolate land with desolate abandoned buildings, in which only a couple seemed habitable. Where was the Yiling Patriarch? Where were the children he had stolen? Had she walked into a trap of some sort? Why had she thought that the Burial Mounds of all places would have been better then working in a brothel?
“Yiling Patriarch! Yiling Patriarch! I have come to offer my services! They say you steal children, I thought you could use help raising the children!” called out Li Hua, but no answer came.
She walked between the huts and stuck her head into the cave, but as she called no answer came. She collapsed to her knees raising a cloud of dust and her tears began to fall. They left tracks in the dust on her face and splashed onto the dry soil. “I’m still a child! I’m still a child! Don’t you want me Yiling Patriarch? Doesn’t anyone want me? My father was going to sell me to a brothel! Why doesn’t anyone want me? I can sew and I can cook!”
The girl, not quite a woman, cried in the dirt until she had no more tears. She then looked at what she had and the position of the sun and realised that she was low on food and funds and would need to barter her valuables away soon. She looked around the abandoned settlement, it had been clear that at one point people had lived there, and that it was a habitable place somehow. Li Hua went to the field and waded through the vegetation. There were things growing, choked out by the weeds. She pulled a few up and then, carefully dug out a radish. It was small, it could do with more growing, but it looked like a radish. She brushed the dirt off and inspected it, she even washed it with a bit of her water, and she had to admit it was just a radish, not worm eaten or anything. After a moment’s hesitation she took a nibble, the smallest bite from the side—it tasted like a radish.
It made her smile, she wasn’t sure why, but it did, and then she started weeding out the patch of garden she was in. She realised too late that the sky had gotten darker. She didn’t think she could make it to the base of the mountain before it got dark. And despite edible radishes, she didn’t want to really be out on the mountain in the dark.
She surveyed the huts that seemed the most solid. She found mostly dust: dusty shadows, dusty candles, dusty bed, and dusty bed clothes. She carefully and fully prepared to run away screaming if there was so much as a rat or a spider, pulled the bed clothes from the bed and into the fading light of day. Only to find dust— the fabric wasn’t moth eaten or covered in rat droppings it was just dusty. She wiped off the candles and found the tools for lighting them and lit a light in the hut. The bed frame was plain and wooden; it didn’t look too sturdy but didn’t look like it had been insect food either. She tested it, gingerly; it appeared it would hold her for the night. She looked around to see what else she could find. She found some twine and took it to string a line, and then she hung the dusty sheets.
Li Hua spread her sleeping things out on the bed and closed the door to keep the outside out. She left a candle burning in front of the door and another by the bed. She ate some of her food and when it became dark enough that she couldn’t see anything through the gaps in the slats of the hut, Li Hua prepared for bed.
There was nothing else for it, she looked at the door and the candle burning before it and prayed, “Please Yiling Patriarch, keep me safe throughout the night, I’m just a child.”
There was no sound, no birds, or insects, and that was eerie all by itself. Li Hua knew come morning the candle she had would be nothing but melted wax, but that was the morning, in the present she couldn’t bring herself to blow it out. So, she fell asleep tense in the flickering candlelight.
Li Hua opens her eyes; it appears she made it through the night and might have slept through most of the morning. She got out of bed, dressed, and went out to greet the day— she didn’t notice the lack of candle by the door.
She was almost bowled over by a giggling toddler, but instead the apparition ran right through her, and she jumped back. “Sorry about that,” said a voice.
Her head whips up. “Who are you?”
There is a man dressed as a farmer in black and red, fiddling with the dizi in his hand, he tilted his head to the side and said, “Don’t you know? You called for me.”
Dark eyes went wide, and Li Hua bowed. “Yiling Patriarch!”
“Call me Xian-Gege, but yes.”
“Li Hua,” replied the girl and then she looked around, “are they ghosts?”
“Not exactly,” said the Yiling Patriarch, “Time can be funny here, don’t worry you won’t lose or gain time if you leave the mountain, but there is so much death and so much time all on this mountain that well it is easier to talk to you this way… from a memory, sort of… not exactly.” The people disappeared and then it was just her and the Yiling Patriarch, he smiled, and said, “See? We made a connection I don’t need them to talk to you anymore.”
“Why did you need them to begin with?”
“Why ask that? Why not, why did you answer me and not all those sects that tried to summon you?”
Li Hua shrugged. “A toddler ran through me.”
The Yiling Patriarch barked out a short laugh but his whole face looked sad, he shrugged. “When I died my soul was in tatters, and unable to leave the Burial Mounds, despite that I haven’t been able to really piece myself together, so I’m not that strong.”
“Why,” said Li Hua after a nod, “did you answer me and not all those sects that tried to summon you?”
The laugh that time was real. “They all wanted the Yiling Patriarch the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, and that’s not really me, ya'know?” She didn’t but he just continued, “That toddler that ran through you he was like a son to me, and don’t worry he survived, I hid him when we were attacked, and I died so they wouldn’t find him. You called me as a child that needed help, it resonated with my death. And I took an oath: ‘to eliminate evil and protect the weak; while always maintaining a good conscious’… it is funny the things you say. I have a horrible memory, but I cannot forget those words, as they held me in life they seem to be holding me in death. But there you have it, I answered you because your father wanted to sell you, you are not weak because you got yourself out of that situation, but I couldn’t in good conscious send you away.”
She smiled for a moment and bowed in thanks, but then her brain caught up with the answer to her previous question. “But you said you weren’t strong, are you still able to help?”
“Oh!” he said and waved his hand as if to brush it aside, “Yes, yes! If you keep asking and praying and the like I can help you, you just won’t always be able to see me. Try to stay to the main paths of course, stay indoors at night. How was the radish field? You were there earlier.”
“Choked with weeds, but the radishes still grew.”
“Yes, that is good,” said the Yiling Patriarch he brushed his nose, “perhaps I can call some corpses while you sleep to do the heavy cleaning up of the fields, maybe make a more solid dwelling…”
“What?”
“Oh, don’t mind me! Don’t mind me, why don’t you go and dream about something better than me? Don’t worry you pretty little head HuaHua your Xian-Gege will guard your sleep”!
He disappeared, well faded as he waved at her. If you were already asleep how did you ‘go and dream’? For lack of a better idea Li Hua went back into the hut, closed the door, and crawled into bed. She closed her eyes and had a pleasant dream of laying in flower fields and other pleasant leisure activities. All the while she could hear soothing flute music.