Chapter Text
On the day of his sixteenth birthday, Meng Yao ascended the stairs of Jinlintai…
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No, that's not quite right.
Let's start over.
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Nine years ago, a man fell down the steps of Jinlintai and died. A tragic accident, put down to bad luck and drunkenness.
Though, it was strange, some whispered. To fall from the top to the bottom of Jinlintai's great staircase might kill a normal man, indeed; but the man who died was a cultivator. Powerful, capable, in the prime of his life.
Jin Guangshan might even have cultivated to immortality, had his neck not broken on the third-to-bottom step.
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Meng Shi married a year after Jin Guangshan's death. She had a young son to provide for, and dwindling prospects. Her health, already fragile, had taken a worrying turn.
Sisi had found her a man from among her own clients: older, sedate, not wildly wealthy, but steady of manner and literate. A eunuch, Sisi assured her, looking for companionship after retiring from a long career in the imperial civil service. He would not expect anything from her apart from the courtesies of companionate marriage, and would be happy to take her son in as his own.
Cheng Siyi was in possession of a small house by the river, three rooms of books, a lot of paper, and a supply of standard-issue inks, stones, and brushes that he'd been gifted on his retirement. "It's no Jinlintai," he'd murmured when the Mengs, mother and son, stood in his doorway with their meager possessions in their arms, "but it's alright."
Meng Yao was very careful with the brushes, when his stepfather gave him permission to use them.
Cheng Siyi was not in possession of a bamboo cane, or a temper, or any particular predilections, aside from a quiet life away from the Forbidden City, in Yunmeng where he'd been a boy. He was soft-spoken, well-read, disliked crowds and loud noise, and was visibly appreciative when his wife's charm and social graces relieved him of the burden of having to socialize with strangers.
Meng Shi was courtesy and warmth itself to her new husband.
She still kept the pearl from Jin Guangshan in a drawer on her makeup table, though she never spoke of it. In the time after his death, she looked at it only twice that Meng Yao knew of, and both times she shut the drawer again sharply, as though the sight of it brought her pain.
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For the first few months of their acquaintance, Cheng Siyi treated Meng Yao as cautiously as one would a lit firecracker.
Meng Yao had watched his mother's face light up as her new husband discussed poetry with her in thoughtful, meticulous detail; as he asked her opinion on matters in and out of the house, and went to market for and cooked her favorite dishes especially. Already disposed to set aside feelings of hurt for her sake, he resigned himself to the fact that his stepfather cared for his mother, but simply did not know what to do with a child.
Then Cheng Siyi found Meng Yao reading through the manuals of imperial household management that he'd brought back with him from Beijing. He sat down next to Meng Yao, patiently explained the words he couldn't understand, and summarized complex concepts with increasing simplicity until even a reasonably bright six year old could grasp them.
Cheng Siyi conferred with Meng Shi that evening as Meng Yao was going to bed. By sunset next day, Meng Yao had a curriculum, a standing engagement with a local tutor, and more ink and paper for writing than he could shake a stick at.
The boys at the school he was sent to called him names, of course, but it was nothing he hadn't heard before; compared to the coarse language of the children of Yunping's dye vats, his fellow students were pathetically unimaginative and hands-off in their offenses. Meng Yao ignored them and drank in knowledge.
Cheng Siyi spoke hopefully of the civil service exams in Meng Yao's future, of a bright career of power and influence. He knew some officials of the treasury, he said, who would be glad to mentor such a clever young man.
Meng Shi's smile was frost over porcelain.
Meng Yao knew better to ask his mother, in front of a man, what was wrong.
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"You don't want me to be a civil servant," he said later, as they crouched by the river, doing laundry together.
"Your…my husband is correct," Meng Shi murmured. "You would make a fine bureaucrat, my darling."
"But…" Meng Yao swallowed and looked away from his mother's painted smile. "But I want to be a cultivator. Like my father."
"Oh, A-Yao," Meng Shi said. "I know. I know. But what we want, and what we get…perhaps it's better this way."
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Meng Yao read cultivation manuals and cross-referenced them with texts of Cheng Siyi's that mentioned Daoist practices. He took notes; he meditated furiously on the rocks by the river and gave himself a sunburn.
His classmates laughed at him and called him Meng-xiandu. He barely noticed.
Then Cheng Siyi found one of the manuals, read it, and frowned deeply. "Oh, no," he said. "This is…hm. This looks like nonsense to me."
Meng Shi and Meng Yao, who'd both been braced for shouting and rage, relaxed near-simultaneously. Meng Shi said, "I bought them from disciples of the Yu sect, they were selling them in the market…"
"Oh," said Cheng Siyi heavily, "those wicked fakes and forgers. Real cultivation sects'd flay a disciple alive for selling their secrets on the streets. Notoriously careful about such things, as I understand it." He eyed Meng Yao, dubious. "You really want to get into cultivation that badly, boy?"
Meng Yao bowed wordlessly, as low as he could, and hoped his posture spoke for itself.
"Well…I don't know much about it," Cheng Siyi said, "but I have a friend who does. Perhaps she'll be more use than these—these wretched counterfeits. Goodness. I shall have to write to Zhou-xiong in the department of printing regulations. I so hate to see intelligent people duped by canny imposters."
"You're…not angry at me, are you," Meng Shi asked carefully. It was the first time Meng Yao had ever heard his mother ask such clarification from a man of her acquaintance.
"Why would I be? I don't believe myself too clever to be deceived by such schemers. If I hold any anger it's for them. Taking advantage of a caring mother, whose son has a clear passion…hm. It's foul. I'll write to my friend tomorrow."
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For a man who did so poorly with strangers, Cheng Siyi had a great many friends. He kept in touch with by letters; his charm lay in his pen, not his tongue.
A rogue cultivator late of the Yao sect, a tall woman with a faint dusting of hair on her chin who cultivated with an iron staff, spent an eventful afternoon putting Meng Yao through his paces with strong stances and a ready laugh. She laughed even harder when he found a stick and tried to mimic her strikes.
When she spoke with his mother and stepfather later, he eavesdropped, and for the first time, heard the word 'genius'.
The light in his mother's eyes as she looked at him made him feel one hundred feet tall.
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"I only wish he'd been able to meet you," she whispered one night to Meng Yao, while covering his shoulders with a blanket as he studied. "A-Shan…he would have been delighted by you, A-Yao, I just know it."
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By the time he was fifteen, Meng Yao knew the following:
How to prepare twenty-seven different medicinal plants using a pill furnace.
The nine ranks of cultivation.
The eight extraordinary and twelve principal meridians, their associated acupoints, and how qi flow could affect them.
That his father had been a great man and a powerful cultivator.
That his mother had loved his father.
The differences between an imp, a yao, a demon, and a ghost.
That his mother still mourned his father.
How to perform lianqi.
That his father, a powerful cultivator, had died an untimely death, and the world had made scarcely a murmur about it.
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"Mother," he said quietly one morning, as the two of them chopped vegetables and Cheng Siyi swept out the hearth, "did my father have enemies?"
Meng Shi inhaled sharply, and then slowly shook her head. "I don't know," she whispered. Then, softly, almost to herself: "He was a good man."
Years later, Meng Yao would look back on that moment and recognize someone trying, very hard, to convince herself of something of which she was not sure.
But he was twelve, and his mother was all the stars in his sky. He did not realize, as sons never do at the time, how young his mother was.
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By the time he was fifteen, Meng Yao suspected the following:
His father's death on the steps of Jinlintai had not been an accident.
There was a conspiracy to keep it viewed as such.
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By the time he was fifteen and a half, Meng Yao had decided the following:
He would become a cultivator of renown.
He would join his father's sect, and rise within it to the highest rank of his capabilities.
And he would find who killed his father, and avenge his mother's grief.