The roar that erupted from Patriarch Shěn Qíngcāng shook the very foundations of his opulent main hall.
"SHÉN ME?!"
His knees buckled, not from weakness, but from the sheer, destabilizing force of his own rage and confusion. He stared, uncomprehending, at the object in his palm: the blood-stained hairpin, a delicate, mocking token of his son's failure. Before him, Lord Shen's assistant stood pale and shaken, his throat working soundlessly before he finally forced out the message, each word a shard of ice.
"Your son is our guest. The bride price has just been raised. We await your... improved offer."
The message was as elegant as it was terrifying, a masterpiece of underworld rhetoric. And it was most definitely received.
Patriarch Shěn, his mind reeling, began to pace the polished floor, his fine robes swirling around him. This was not part of the plan. The Zuì Mèng Lóu was a business, a den of vice run by some upstart woman.
He had assumed she could be bought, threatened, or reasoned with. He had sent his son to clean up a loose end, not to have him snatched from the very mouth of the wolf's den.
"Just who is she?" he muttered to the silent, judging portraits of his ancestors. His voice was a low growl of frustrated arrogance.
In his meticulous, century-spanning plot to steal celestial power, his one, fatal lapse was his failure to investigate the woman who had taken in the orphaned girls. He had dismissed her as a mere brothel matron, a profitable but ultimately lowly creature.
It was the symptom of his clan's most profound flaw: they were so busy looking up at the heavens, scheming to grasp the power of the stars, that they failed to see the demons walking calmly at their feet.
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Meanwhile, in a sunlit room high above the drama, the air was thick with the earthy scent of medicinal herbs. Ju, the youngest and most cheerful of the Three Peonies, hummed a sprightly tune as she applied a final, cool poultice to Yisha's wrist, the last of the qi-suppressing poison now neutralized and drawn out.
On the other side of the room, the atmosphere was quieter, more intensely charged. Li Wei sat behind Qianyi, his posture straight, his palms resting gently against her back. A steady, cool stream of his spiritual energy flowed into her, a glacial river mending the scorched and torn pathways of her meridians.
"You're warm," he murmured, his voice softer than she had ever heard it, a private sound meant only for her.
"The energy you're giving me is cold," she replied, her own voice a thread of sound. "It's... soothing. Like putting snow on a burn."
A comfortable silence settled between them, a fragile bubble in the wake of the storm. It was broken only by Yisha's dramatic sigh of relief as Ju finished her work and slipped silently from the room.
"Qiānqiān," Li Wei began, the question he had been burning to ask finally slipping past his guarded lips. "Why him? After a century, why did you choose that... peacock?"
Qianyi was quiet for a long moment, the sunlight catching the delicate curve of her profile. "He... remembered the little things," she said, a hint of naive embarrassment coloring her tone. "He knew I liked my tea steeped for exactly three breaths after the petals unfurled. He noticed the jade hairpin I wore only once and found one just like it a decade later. I thought..." Her voice wavered. "I thought that kind of attention meant he saw the real me."
It was a surprisingly shallow, human reason from a woman known for her celestial elegance and strategic mind, a testament not to her foolishness, but to a deep, unspoken desire to be seen and cherished in the smallest of ways.
Li Wei's hands stilled for a fraction of a second against her back, his heart aching with a sudden, sharp realization. His own steadfast, silent devotion, shown in a thousand daily actions, had perhaps been too quiet for too long.
"I know how you like your tea steeped," he mumbled, the words escaping before he could stop them.
"What was that?" Qianyi asked, tilting her head slightly.
The dam of his frustration broke. "I said, 'I know how you like your tea steeped.' So does ShaSha. You drink your tea that way because I drink my tea that way. Remember when we first met? You thought I was too pretentious to be... well, how I was, but you tried my tea and loved it," he blurted out, the sentences tumbling over one another.
"He knows how you like your tea steeped," he mocked, his native cruelty, born of fear for her, bubbling to the surface. "You're smarter than that," he scolded, his voice rising. "He did absolutely nothing but use the same tricks our girls use on the patrons here! You've seen it a thousand times! You should have known better!"
Qianyi didn't respond. She sat in perfect, wounded silence, and a single, perfect tear welled in the corner of her eye, tracing a slow, graceful path down her pale cheek.
Li Wei felt the subtle change in her breathing, the slight tremor that ran through her frame, and he knew. He had done this. He had made her cry.
"Wǒ—I just meant you deserve the best," he said, his voice dropping to a frantic, remorseful murmur. "You know you deserve the best. And he was nowhere close to being good enough for you."
It was the wrong thing to say. The dam holding back Qianyi's own guilt and shame shattered. She began to cry in earnest, her breathing becoming ragged, uncontrollable sobs that shook her entire body.
"I know! I know! It's my fault!" she yelled, the words tearing from her.
"No! It's not your fault!" Li Wei shouted back, his own control fraying. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to pull her into the safety of his embrace, but he stopped himself. Instead, he turned her gently by the shoulders, his touch firm but careful. "It's not your fault. Of course, it's not your fault. It's HIS fault for betraying your trust. And he will suffer for the rest of his life for it. I'll make sure of that."
Yisha stood in the archway of the room, listening, saying nothing. She simply let her two most precious people have it out, the air crackling with their pain and long-suppressed feelings. After all, she was the keeper of both their secrets.
Watching their fraught, painful dance, Yisha's mind conjured the memory that was the bedrock upon which their entire lives were built.
They had been three scared, traumatized children. She, barely one hundred years old, and Qianyi, just a hundred twenty-five, had just lost their entire celestial village, their world reduced to the cold, dark silence of the cave where their parents had hidden them.
The first thing they saw upon being rescued was a boy with hair as white as mourning robes and eyes as cold and lonely as a winter sky. Li Wei. He was quiet, with an aura of dangerous stillness that frightened everyone away.
Everyone except them.
Yisha, even in her all-consuming grief, had been unable to resist his mysterious aura. She and Qianyi had made it their mission to tease a smile onto his face, to pull him into their arguments, to force him to live. They were the sun and moon, determined to melt his eternal frost.
But their true bond was sealed in the dusty streets of a Jianghu town. While Xuán Líng was away on business, a group of spoiled young masters decided the three quiet, well-dressed "waifs" were easy targets.
They taunted. They shoved. And when Yisha was knocked to the ground, the bullies unknowingly awakened a shared, cold fury—a language Yisha, Qianyi, and Li Wei did not know they shared until that very moment.
They didn't run. They fought back with an intelligent, synergetic coordination that was terrifying for their age. But they didn't stop at winning the fight. A dark, righteous delight ignited within them. They cornered their tormentors. Using Yisha's cleverness, Qianyi's strategy, and Li Wei's burgeoning power, they became the predators, and the running, frightened bullies were easy prey.
When Xuán Líng returned, she found the town a'buzz with the story of the three fierce, wild children about to be punished in the town square.
Yisha recalled the sight of Xuán Líng walking toward the magistrate's stage. Her rage at their endangerment was a force of nature. Her footsteps, though delicate, summoned a pressure that shook the earth, literally bringing all the onlookers to their knees, cemented in place and unable to move.
She had nearly leveled the magistrate's office that day. But beneath her fury, there was a fierce, proud satisfaction.
They were no longer just three orphans she had collected. They were a unit. A family. Forged in the destruction of their first home, and bound for life by a shared, unshakable code: ferocious loyalty to each other, and a delicious, creative cruelty towards anyone who threatened their own.
And over the course of a little over one thousand years, Yisha had watched Qianyi and Li Wei form another, more sacred bond—one they were both still too afraid to speak of, or perhaps, still didn't fully understand existed.
************************************************
Yisha quietly left the room, leaving the charged silence behind her. She walked through the pavilion almost mindlessly, until she found herself outside, breathing in the vibrant, chaotic air of Forget-Sorrows Street. She longed for a little fun, a taste of normalcy after the recent horrors.
Townspeople at their stalls and passersby all called out to greet the Youngest Miss.
"Youngest Miss! Over here! A fresh batch of sweet osmanthus cakes is ready!" called the elder woman from the pastry stall, waving a steaming tray.
"Xiao Yisha! Your smile is sunshine itself! Come, taste my new rice wine!" an old man beckoned from his shop door, his eyes crinkling.
"Miss Jia! This ribbon is the color of your spirit!" a silk merchant declared, holding up a bolt of brilliant, sun-gold silk.
Their warmth was a balm. A genuine, carefree smile broke across her face as she waved back, accepting a warm cake here, a candied hawthorn berry there. This was her home. These were her people.
And then, her eyes, alight with a returning mischief, landed on her target: a street performer, a swaggering young man using a simple, low-level illusion to make coins "vanish" and impress a growing crowd.
Yisha leaned against a post, finishing her cake. With a whisper and a flick of her fingers, she channeled a wisp of her power.
The performer reached into his sleeve to "produce" a coin, but instead, pulled out a fluttering, confused sparrow. The crowd gasped, then giggled. He tried again, and a small shower of peach blossoms erupted from his dǒu lì—his bamboo hat.
The performer stared at his hands in comical shock, while the crowd, sensing a much better show, erupted in laughter and applause. Yisha caught his bewildered eye, winked, and tossed him a silver piece for his troubles before melting back into the crowd.
He snatched his dǒu lì from the ground where it had fallen during his botched act. He tied it quickly onto his back, revealing long, sun-streaked brown hair tied in a simple, functional braid. His features were sharp and handsome, his skin tanned a deep gold from a life spent outdoors, which highlighted the bright, intelligent curiosity in his gaze and the white flash of his smile.
"Wait!" he called out, his voice cutting through the din of the street. He ducked and weaved through the crowd, his eyes scanning for a glimpse of the girl who moved like light itself. He had to find her. He needed to know who could wield magic not to humiliate, but to play, and who would pay a silver piece—a small fortune to him—for the privilege.
He finally caught a glimpse of her, a flash of sunlight and a cheerful smile, just as she slipped through the grand, intimidating entrance of the Zuì Mèng Lóu.
His heart sank, then raced with a complicated thrill. A courtesan. Of course. It explained her confidence, her beauty, her playful magic. It made her both more attainable and infinitely more distant.
He summoned his courage and approached the door, only to be blocked by two impassive guards whose mere presence felt like an unbreachable wall.
"State your business," one said, his eyes doing a slow, dismissive sweep of the young man's travel-worn clothes and simple bamboo hat.
"I'm… I'm looking for someone who just walked in here. A particular courtesan," he stammered, then gave a vivid, earnest description of the girl who had turned his simple magic into a momentary masterpiece.
The two guards looked at each other. A muscle twitched violently in one's jaw. The other bit the inside of his cheek so hard he saw stars. They were valiantly holding back a tidal wave of laughter.
"Is that so?" the first guard finally managed, his voice strained with the effort. "Wait here."
He conferred with a senior guard, who smirked and gestured for the young man to follow. He was escorted inside and presented to the main floor hostess, a woman whose elegance was as sharp as a honed blade. The guard whispered the situation in her ear.
Her painted lips curved into a deeply amused smile. "But of course," she said, her voice a silken purr. "We aim to please. I will send for her immediately." It was too delicious an opportunity to pass up.
Yisha had just made her way back to Qianyi's room. Qianyi was resting, her breathing even, and Li Wei sat vigil at her bedside, his posture rigid with a concern that had softened from fury to a quiet, watchful intensity. Yisha opened her mouth to regale them with the tale of her outing.
Before she could utter a word, a junior attendant slipped into the room, bowed, and delivered the message with poorly concealed glee.
"Young Mistress Yisha, there is… a young man asking for you at the main reception. He followed you from the market." The attendant's composure broke for a second, a giggle escaping. "He is, ah… looking for you." A dramatic pause. "He is looking for you, the courtesan."
The silence in the room was absolute for one single, suspended second, thick enough to slice.
Then, it was shattered simultaneously by two voices, one a roar of pure, protective fury, the other a shriek of indignant, incredulous disbelief.
"SHÉN ME?!"
Li Wei was on his feet in an instant, the air around him cracking with a sudden, deadly frost that crystallized across the paper window. Yisha's hands flew to her hips, her eyes wide with outrage and a spark of utterly incredulous laughter.
"He thinks I'm a what?!"
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© 2025 Kiesha Richardson, writing as QiXia. All rights reserved.
Death Blooms for You is an original work of fiction by QiXia. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation of this story in any form is prohibited. All characters, events, and settings are created for entertainment purposes and bear no intentional resemblance to real persons or situations.