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It does not rain aboard the Xianzhou Luofu.
This is not an exaggeration, or a figure of speech. It is only the abject, object truth. There is no concept of weather aboard the Xianzhou, no need for tiller almanacs or forecasting scribes. Come hellfire or mourning-doves, the sky bleeds perfect blue, and the sun appears without fail. Forever temperate for a walk to Central Starskiff Haven, or a stroll in the gardens of Exalting Sanctum.
There are few exceptions, save for a few biomes specifically designed to maintain conditions, among those, the Alchemy Commission and the gardens that feed the Luofu.
Once, there was to be a tradition for it to rain the day after Qingming Jie is observed. A sort of cleansing rain, so along as the sitting head of the Realm-Keeping Commission deemed it a high enough priority. The Xianzhou undergoes civil unrest for millennia, and it is summarily forgotten. (In another few hundred years, it will resume. But that it is neither here nor there.)
Jing Yuan grows up happily, in this place full of sunlight.
He is lucky; distinguished in pedigree, excellent in his studies. When he smiles, every transgression short of treason (although some of that, too) are forgiven. His parents disprove of his chosen career path, but they were elder in age when Jing Yuan was conceived, and it never becomes more than exasperated ire. The Jing line is noble and assured. Jing Yuan can do as he pleases, so long as he is happy and well.
He's been dealt a good hand of cards in life, this, Jing Yuan recognizes and appreciates. He's read the old histories, watched the immersias of long-gone peoples as part of his classical education. Greed is downfall of man. Hubris, the undoing of civilizations.
Jingliu would laugh at this, as would Dan Feng and Yingxing. Baiheng would listen, but as one of the Nameless, she believes in the inherent malleability of fate.
But histories are recorded for a reason. A study of men more than than civilization. The same mistakes, repeated again and again, in every possible configuration until that repeats itself, too. Jing Yuan memorizes these mistakes, knows them, and knows them better than anyone else. He is more aware of his mortality and fallibility than them, and what he lacks in talent he must make up for with caution.
Take what is given, take what is deserved. He is a filial son, an obedient student, He makes the same jokes and eyes at Dan Feng and Yingxing through the decades without any intent for more. The years pass, the sun rises and falls.
x
There are visitors, terrestrial ones, mostly, that like to marvel at the good weather. It is a good way to set the tone for diplomatic meetings, and there are members of the Realm Keeping Commission who debate on the merits of creating a separate biome where the sun does not set at all.
Ultimately, the motion does not pass; the benefit of appealing to tourists does not nearly outweigh the costs of the endeavour. The budget, to the surprise of no one, will be redirected to increase the surplus of the defence budget.
Jing Yuan laments this to Jingliu and the loss of a new place to play hooky with his duties. It would hardly be a herculean task, no need to even establish a separate biome or a new sun.
Baiheng, bustling in the background cheerfully, laughs.
Jingliu's home is rather small. Humble even, for someone of her rank and renown. Although it would be a veritable fortress compared to the barracks that Jingliu refused to move out of, for the longest time. Everything in the estate, other than the swords, belongs either to Baiheng or Jing Yuan. Really, even the house itself does not really belong to Jingliu, for all that it is her name on the deed. The Quintet enjoys joking that it is really Baiheng's home and Jing Yuan's training grounds, where Jingliu is occasionally permitted to use the bed or enter to train Jing Yuan.
Jing Yuan's claim to the courtyard is mostly tied to his fixation with the spot in the corner of the wall, where the whorls of a crooked gingko tree's undulating roots have contorted itself into a nook for napping. Comfortable when Jing Yuan was smaller than the length of Jingliu's longsword, less comfortable now that he is not.
"You're not going to train anymore today, are you," Jingliu says, rocking the tea cup in her hand, watching the cold tea roil and stain the bone-white bottom of the ceramic. It's not a question, she recognizes his attempts to stall as well as anyone else.
Training within sight of his master is just a spar by another name, and at least for today, Jing Yuan is not interested in being beaten to the ground until he cannot get up.
"The weather is beautiful today, Master, is it not?" That it is always, goes without saying. It really is a nice day for a nap, the nook that he can no longer fit into, undoubtedly warmed by the sunlight. Scuffed and worn by the years that the wood is nearly soft.
"So you say," she says. Jing Yuan would never dare accuse of Jingliu for being soft. Her tenderness came in fractions, with conditions. As afterthoughts and veiled behind blows, doublespeak, a passing word. "I supposed you can afford a break, as long as you stop telling me about bureaucracy of losing a place to nap."
x
The first time Jing Yuan sees the rain, he is some three hundred years old, away on a campaign. He's seen rain, of course, yet to see it here is akin to seeing a rare bird out of captivity.
The planet is Anthe-XV, he is leading the charge of the borisin. Anthe is a planet covered in seas and torrential rain. The campaign ends in not-quite disaster, and is patently unpleasant.
It's beautiful, however. Jing Yuan decides that he rather likes it, when reporting back to Dan Feng and the Alchemy Commission to submit samples of Anthe's rain.
"It's almost as though a wild animal, unrestrained, existing as its nature intends," Jing Yuan says. Its wildness is antithesis to the Luofu, to Jing Yuan itself, and perhaps that's why he likes it as much as he does.
"It figures that you only like something because it's capable of killing you," Yingxing says, amused. Why is he here, in fact? It is rare to see him out of the forge, these days. And he does not enjoy braving the dampness of the Alchemy Commission even for Dan Feng.
"I guess you wouldn't like the rain," Jing Yuan says, serene. "It wouldn't be very good for your joints."
"Why, you little—" Yingxing says, with no real heat in his voice.
"If you intend to fight, I will douse you both," Dan Feng says. See how much you like the rain, then, is the threat. He and Yingxing share a glance, just between them.
Jing Yuan watches on, content.
x
Titania-XVI, Anthe's sister planet, by contrast, is completely barren. Once, it had been covered in water, now, it is bleached of it. Miles and miles of barren land stretch out into eternity. The dust turns his mouth bone-dry and the heat is crushing. Each breath ravages his throat.
The campaign, too, is more significant than that of Anthe's. Titania has shaped up to be a difficult theatre with the Borisin stronghold. The entirety of the Quintet has been called here, albeit separated. His Master and Baiheng, Jing Yuan with Dan Feng and Yingxing.
Even the High Elder's iron-clad composure is slowly being wicked away by the crushing oppression of the heat of Titania. Perspiration sheens at his forehead and at his neck, and the small raincloud that he summons every shichen or so does nothing to help him.
By comparison, Yingxing is patently unruffled. His only response to the heat is to roll up his sleeves and unbutton the top clasp of his collar. Acclimated by the fires of the forge, and occasionally swoops into generously blot at Dan Feng's forehead, even as his lips twitch with a derisive smile.
Jing Yuan watches, as he always does. Half a step away, even as they tease him. He no longer colours as he used to at the implications, the barely-veiled euphemisms. But he never steps closer.
It's funny, he contemplates, that with the heat, the sun cannot be seen. The sky is grey, overcast by the layers and layers of sulphuric acid that renders this planet unliveable — save for the long-lived and Yingxing, protected by Dan Heng's power.
It is funny, too, that it is upon Titania that he sees his first storm.
Jing Yuan has never been much of a fighter. If simple compatiability and his parents would have it, he would've never picked a sword, so much as his lance. But Jing Yuan has always been too stubborn to let sleeping dogs lie, regardless of compatibility.
So: he does not have Jingliu's brutality, her ability to carve armies in halves. He is not the Vidyadhara High Elder, who moves mountains on whims. He is not Yingxing, who has the desperate instinct of the short-lived, who can still summon his want for vengeance upon command. Baiheng, with her Foxian inheritance, who can hear and react lightyears faster than he.
He stumbles, and it is his mistake, the fault of his untrained body betraying him. The type of mistake that he cannot reason and scheme and persuade his way out of. The light comes down, like the setting sun, its swing, fast enough that it is warm as opposed to cold, feels rather like it, too.
Then, the rain comes.
Above them, thunder crackles, like the sound of Lightning Lord's swing— Except it is not Lightning Lord. A dragon swirling above them roars and slams into the sky in a streak of blue, the tip of a polearm. Titania's black clouds part, and it begins to rain.
From droplets to a torrential downpour that Jing Yuan's only read in databanks. Allies and enemies alike are confused, but where allies begin scrambling out of ravines and away from the winding gorges in the landscape, the Borisin remain transfixed at the rain.
It is their undoing.
The valleys left behind by the old primordial seas begin to swell with water, the current cleaves through lines of the Borisin formation, sweeping them away into riptides and whirlpools. The stalemate breaks.
The ingenuity of the water befits the High Elder. The Borisin, the purest of the Abundance, do not die like the Xianzhou. The entirety of their body must be disintegrated for them to truly die. Like this, they are held captive by the water, as they drown over and over again.
Foolishly, a little dazed, the only thing Jing Yuan thinks to do is to part his mouth, his face tilted towards the sky, a line of blood cracking at the corner of his lips. It takes like brine, like mint, the sharp chill signature to Cloudhymn magic, like nothing at all.
Jingliu is shouting in the distance, her voice hard and sharp. He cannot tell if it is him or the troops she's yelling at, suddenly overcome by the fact that he is still alive. The experience of being rained on is as novel as any.
A hand on his shoulder, ah, now Jingliu is yelling at him.
His ears are ringing. His eyes follow the shape of her mouth as he forms the words— They need to go... Dan Feng has unleashed he cannot control. She leads them uphill, hands shielded against the onslaught of the rain.
The others meet them at the peak of a mountain. Yingxing awaits them, squinting in the rain. Beside him, Dan Feng is iridescentin his glory, his shoulders pulled tight and formal, his face cold and his eyes set alight in copper fire.
Jing Yuan thinks to bow, and then there is a hand between his shoulders, at his back, like a blade. A hard shove forward, and they are kissing him—
Oh. He, they, which one? He can't really tell, and tastes the water more than he tastes anything else. It's rather terrible really, he is exhausted and his undershirt is soaked beneath the armour, either with blood or water. The logistics of the entire thing is poor. His armour clangs against something metal, and something else bumps against his shoulder guard, sliding off the slick surface. He understands why the Realm-Keeping Commission doesn't dabble in rain.
"Say something." And, oh, it is Yingxing hissing at him.
He opens his mouth, and is kissed again, and it comes to him. Dan Feng, the storm, Yingxing, the petrichor. The ozone and the lightning, the tempest that comes before.
"The weather is terrible for this," he croaks. A helpless laugh against his temple.
He stumbles. "I have you," Dan Feng says, bowing above him, his arms folded around Jing Yuan, Yingxing behind them.
I want them, he decides, and holds onto his arm, his fingers wrapping around the hard angle of the arm brace, I want to keep them.
x
"So," Yingxing says, pleasant, later in the Alchemy Commission.
"So," Jing Yuan echoes, feeling distinctly like he's fallen into a trap. Dan Feng favours him a smile. His hand twitches, for a weapon, a teacup. Even a table would be helpful as a shield, but it is noticeably absent from today's setup.
"The weather is rather fine today, wouldn't you say so?" Yingxing says, his smile sharp like a knife.
"I have ensured it would be so," Dan Feng says, similarly serenely.
The weather would not be what Jing Yuan calls fine. It is not the fairness of Exalting Sanctum or Central Starskiff Haven. Certainly not weather he would nap in. The Alchemy Commission is removed from the rest of the Luofu in its location, its ideology, and its appearance, too. Draped in the well-loved cloak, removed from the Luofu sun.
The mist unfurls over his shoulders like a vine. The clouds blot out the sun. he reaches, across the water, over the mountains. A journey to the East, a man whose flesh is immortality, a monkey-king whose hubris leads to its downfall, a swine who eats a divine fruit without tasting it.
There's a lesson here. There is also Dan Heng and Yingxing, a laugh against his mouth, more than he's ever let himself hope for.
x
Eventually, the Emperor grows tired of even immortality.
He surveys his province and finds it lacking.
His nature is to want that what he cannot have, first the throne, then the stars, then infallible immortality. He yearns for his home he left behind, the palaces, the glory of his dynasty, the children he has long outlived, a world made for him to inherit.
Alas, that world is long gone, regardless of how far and wide he searches. Instead, he seeks to create the Xianzhou in its image. A bustling metropolis for scholars and wayward merchants to gather, to discuss matters of state (permitting) and poetry over good wine. Structures impractical for siege, oak and cherry wood, lion statues of pure marble and raw jade, as wide and tall as four men. Koi fish ponds dotted with unwilting lilies, the air quiet with song.
It is the empire of his childhood, untouched by war and unravaged by his own mind.
He remembers naught of the drought, the famine, the sicknesses. Entire grain fields turned red, babes weeping in the desolate quiet of a ghost village. Brothers turned against brothers, sons' blade towards fathers.
That is to say, beyond the gold dragons and silver phoenixes, there was nothing worth remembering at all. What he creates is not the home he left behind at all, only series of deceptions layered upon deceptions, root and rot, steel and silk.
A grand exercise of self-delusion, vainglorious futility. Afforded only to the man who is at the centre of it all. Who has found, in the end, with all the power he can fathom, with the bit of the executioner's axe at his neck, he is still only a man.
Forever is a long time. So the sun rises, day upon day, century upon millennia, over a kingdom that never was.
x
It is during the high-noon that Baiheng's starskiff falls.
The starskiff sets afire upon reentry into the Luofu atmosphere.
A streak of gold against that boundless blue sky, a falling star. It is framed beautifully by the painted-sky. Blindingly bright, like the corona of the sun,. Jing Yuan's eyes water at the glare, even as he cannot bring himself to look away.
At best there will be a charred corpse. At worst there will be nothing at all. Or, is it the other way around? It is raining but it is not, there is nothing he can do. He knows it, he will not know it, he will re-learn it painfully.
It has stopped raining in Scalegorge Waterscape when he arrives. The sun paints everything golden. The threads in the clothes of corpses shimmer in the light, the cool stone warms beneath his palm. The water ripples gently, refracting the light in shimmers even as Yingxing sobs beside him. Dan Feng and Jingliu's silence are terrible and loud.
x
The sun remains bright, full and true in the sky.
Jingliu's estate is split in halves by hoarfrost, a fault line of ice blooms across the ground, the trail of her footsteps. The roof pierced through with ice, what remains standing does so in pieces. The rest, obliterated by Jing Yuan.
The stone ground is frozen. The gingko tree toppled, frozen to the core, the section of its breakage a clean wound.
His hand twangs. The swing had been in bad form.
"You are always welcome here," Jingliu said, once, off-handedly in response to Jing Yuan's pestering. Then, quietly, in a rare display of the sentimentality that she usually kept locked away, unreachable even by her. Tenderness by her definition, tenderness by her condition. Mercy, too. "You will always have a place to return to. I will ensure it."
The hoarfrost does not melt, no amount of heat is able to force its surrender. Eventually, the engineers and scholars grow tired of tinkering at it, and it is relegated to one of the numerous storages in the bowels of the warship. There are stories and reports written of incident, the same lesson told, retold over and over again. The words upon the page swim, fish in the flickering water, rendered indecipherable to his eyes. The characters changing, stroke by stroke, tree to fish, fish to horse. Jing Yuan wonders if he's ever read these words, if he's ever learned them at all.
x
There are no bodies for Jing Yuan to bury.
Nothing left of Yingxing other than the forge, than the prototypes and weapons he leaves behind. Only the memory of his tired smile, his finger against Jing Yuan's cheeks as he tells him to be go after the others.
He erects a small grave in the Alchemy Commission, which has always been permissive, their goals scholastic before ethical or even moral. Their amity with Dan Feng outweighs the taboo of the Quintet's treason.
Jing Yuan looks upon the hole in the dirt, the open wound, and thinks of what he may bury with Yingxing, things that may help in the afterlife. There is nothing that he can think of, no amount of mortal riches would make a difference. His arm brace is gone with his body, his sword, too. He lays his favourite hammer, some pieces of sugared plums that he'd liked, and covers it back in dirt.
He stands at just outside of the pavilion, sequestered away in a secret clearing amidst the maple trees, still blood red. It is hard to hide here, from the ghosts, the knowledge of what they've done, of what he's lost. Tethered to his spot, he sinks to his knees. The soil is wet and mushy between his fingers, and the smell of the dampness brings bile to his throat.
x
The sun is bright when Dan Feng descends into the sea.
The ocean unravels, parting strand by strand, until the seabed is revealed, the bone-bleached white like the surfaces of the now flooded Titania.
Thunder crackles overhead. Perhaps it is Lightning Lord, perhaps not.
The rain beads at the corner of his eyes.
Dan Feng's inner robes are the same colour as the sky, the same colour as the sea, the perfect blue. His hands folded before him, his head tilted down. The sight of his back, so dear and known to Jing Yuan flickers, like a mirage born of the summer heat. A blink and it's gone, a stranger before his eyes, instead.
Jing Yuan closes his eyes as Dan Feng steps forward. One step and then another, and then another.
He will regret not looking. It will not matter, in the end. The sun upon his face, well-loved, a suggestion of the warm satisfaction of a good nap.
The wind parts, the sky splits. The false heavens above, that man-made sun, outlasting them all.
x
( Lastly:
It is already bright when he awakes, newly-made Arbiter-General, a stranger in the same bones, or perhaps the same man in strange bones. Which comes first? A freshwater grave.
The light washes over him like a tide, a mother's touch.
He shifts, discomforted. This room is unfamiliar to him, even if all the objects are. There is a letter on his desk, his name in elegant script upon the parchment. It takes him a moment to recognize the handwriting as his own.
The reality of his existence refuses to bevel. Lingers like crude oil atop water, refusing to subsume. He is a fine-bone teacup, hollowed through the bottom, refusing to hold anything of what is given.
Outside, the sun begins its slow ascent at the same time it always has. Instinct calls him over to the window, and he has no reason to refuse it. He watches, captivated, empty, as the sun rises, slowly, slowly from the highest seat in all of Luofu. The same as his youth, breathtakingly beautiful, an ache in his heart.
The sun completes its rise, and the Exalting Sanctum is bathed in light. )