Cheong Myeong was not the first one to say it.

In fact, he wasn’t even sure why anyone brought it up. It just—appeared. It was his fault, probably, for not taking this generation of punks more seriously when it came to their steadfast and ever so hopeful observation skills.

While they didn’t quite follow him around like lost puppies, they also stopped freaking the hell out anytime he did something wildly erratic. In Cheong Myeong’s book, this was great progress from the first day he was introduced to them. He was here to regain Mount Hua’s glory. He was here to help. To fix every mistake he ever made in his first life because he had been worse off than—

So, he was not the first one to say it.

Hell, Cheong Myeong was certain that the person who said it wouldn’t be the last person to say it, either, but it came at him like a batch of angry fucking pirannas and he was left wondering how the hell these kids had gotten away with this for so long.

The absolute tomfoolery that must have been going down in their brains for the past who knows how many years before he got here! A shame, truly, a shame. Cheong Myeong thought he wouldn’t have had to deal with such games until later, you know, when most disciples started to bother him at a normal age. Not—right this very second. They were getting too sharp.

“Hey, Cheong Myeong,” Jo Geol leaned closer to him, quieting his voice quite a bit, “Have you ever been—treated poorly, like that?”

“Huh?” He blinked, played dumb. He, of course, knew exactly what Jo Geol was talking about. To sell his totally, massively innocent act, he batted his eyelashes. “Like what?”

Jo Geol had known him long enough to see through his jumbled tactic.

This, too, did not stop Cheong Myeong from continuing to stare and act like a confused little kid on the side of a long and endless road. Listen, he died once after a treacherous battle and thought that everything had been fine. He should have held on back then, kept up and never stopped. Due to his own negligence, shit went to hell and back. This meant that he couldn’t slack off one bit in this life. He needed to stay up to date with everything he could.

The treatment in question was the situation that was currently being enacted before them in the marketplace. Cheong Myeong already knew who was at fault. He already knew who he would rather defend, and who he would rather send six feet under—

A voice in his ear, talking quietly, Cheong Myeong, you are part of the world’s empire, you must stay.

Strange and alive and right where he echoed, where he breathed.

“Hm,” The Mount Hua disciple made a considering noise, rather loudly, just so Jo Geol knew he was going to wring a real answer to this question out of him. Try that again. He blinked, came back to himself and smiled like his peer had said something funny. It was an awkward but genuine question, coming from Jo Geol. Cheong Myeong wouldn't deny that.

People brought up a lot of things. During training, meals, or downtime when Cheong Myeong was not running all his peers into the earth in the name of Mount Hua. Plenty of them talked—and, well, he was prone to listen. Just to make sure he got all the current facts of life straight. All the gossip, the familial ties, who was who, what had become what in his hundred years of absence—he was quite good at playing along, really! His sahyeong would disagree with him, but, well, that was a debate for Cheong Myeong and the gods.

The fact of this conversation was quite simple. In this new body of his, he had plenty of scars and quirks that didn’t quite fit the picture he made for himself.

He was a bit odd to the others, probably.

Nothing that didn’t make sense, of course, because that would get pretty annoying pretty fast. He was living his second life. Of course things would be different. Cheong Myeong knew that—he did, he could recall every difference and every change that had taken place over the time he had been dead, but that did not soothe him all that much. Not anymore, at least. Things would just keep changing. The trees, the season, the person who was paid or respected the most, everything. Cheong Myeong knew that everything was changing and everyone saw him.

Which also meant that it made sense as to why people were aware of pieces of him he was not. It was something like that, something similar. He did not know about every scar or scrape this body had.

The old wounds it once sustained, the foods it used to eat. The person he was before he came back—he knew none of it. He could estimate some of the things because they were obvious, the ache in the back of the knee, the slight rattle in his lungs every other time he caught a whiff of pollen when the tree blossoms bloomed. Weakness in the lungs, a fever in his head, stuff like that. From the short fatigue that only ever lasted a few seconds every now and then, to the swarming of bees in his head when he stared at a source of light for too long.

He could understand that some of them must have come from other people. On the streets, maybe, in houses or shebbled huts where no one visited. This body must have been through some tough shit before he spawned into it. Who knew what, though. Out of every possible injury, Cheong Myeong wasn’t in the mood to figure out who did it.

He was at Mount Hua again, back where he belonged and needed to be. What happened to the soul before him—they should be resting, now, somewhere else. The pain this body once went through wasn’t pain he currently suffered from.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cheong Myeong waved a hand, offering a smile that didn’t quite fit right on his face.

This body was similar to his old one, maybe—the hair was still dark and black, still long and curled at the tips. It got tangled like his old hair used to. He had similar eyes, similar teeth—no chips or dents or missing ones. He could feel all his ribs, or he used to, before he gained some steady weight once the diet and food supply of the sect changed.

Jo Geol made a face at him, and Cheong Myeong smiled devilishly in response—this, he could do. The younger generation was so easily swayed by a few threats of violence, especially from him. It was wild. Not surprising, but wild all the same.

“Should we step in?” Jo Geol asked after a second.

The two parties who were fighting, one as the aggressor and one as the victim, were only a little ways away. A man yelling at a girl, gripping her arm quite hard from the looks of it. He was yelling pretty loud, red in the face. All he needed was some steam and some long teeth and he would be a bull right out of someone’s nightmares, maybe a demon worshiper, who knew.

“Mm,” Cheong Myeong debated. When the man kept yelling at the girl, he thought, with poorly concealed anger, let me go punt this fucker, and he sighed. “Yeah, stay here.”

His peer made a noise, but Cheong Myeong was already up.

He cracked his neck and stalked over without a care in the world. Something buzzed in his head, sent another trill down his spine—all was well, all was right. This would be solved and he would go back to Mount Hua and the day would be dealt with. To be treated poorly, especially in this providence, well, he deemed it unsatisfactory. The girl didn’t do anything bad enough to warrant a full scream match, and really, it was in poor taste to do nothing. Even poorer tastes that none of the onlookers had done something sooner.

It only took a few seconds and then Cheong Myeong was right next to the man. The girl looked like she was about to bawl, and fat tears were already rolling down her face. Scared, maybe, and horrified at whatever foul nonsense this man was blabbering about.

“Hey,” He said, and he looked up at the guy—broad shoulders, a lanky but crimson face, wild eyes. Angry eyes. The face of an angry person.

The man scowled, heavy and unknowing as to what was going to come next. “Hah?”

Maybe you’re a bull, Cheong Myeong thought, before he grinned ear to ear and wrenched his fist back and slammed the guy right in the nose. The girl’s arm got released and she tumbled downwards with a small wretched noise. Cheong Myeong wasn’t paying attention to that just yet, he was after something else, he was more concerned with—

“Gods above,” Someone in the gathered crowd whispered. “Oh, shit.”

The man sputtered out a groan, a long winded curse, and said something that Cheong Myeong blocked out for his own sanity—who needed to know what the guy said, anyway—and kneeled backwards. The Mount Hua disciple reached forwards with a blink and yanked him up, quick and sharp. It was easy. So featherlight. Violence came like his native tongue.

Cheong Myeong lifted the man up by his collars, eyebrows raised in mock curiosity. He wasn’t, really. There was a steady hum in his spine. The guy’s nose was bleeding. He didn’t feel bad about that. He wasn’t sure he felt bad about any of it, at least, not really. The girl should be okay. Her arm would either need a cold compress or some medicine, but it was probably just a bruise. Cheong Myeong was more concerned with the guy he was holding up with one arm, a curled fist, a look of insincere interest written all over his innocent little face.

“Hey,” He repeated again, just to be a dick because he was good at that, “Why are you beating up a kid?”

His eyes glinted.

—

“You’re crazy,” Yoon Jong told him seriously, once they were back into the sect’s winding paths and yards. Jo Geol said something placating, something about having needed to fight for justice because it was just plain wrong—which it was—but Cheong Myeong didn’t pay attention all that much.

It was good, it felt good. The fizzle in his back was gone and there wasn’t a single bruise on him. No scratches or anything.

“Eh, that’s debatable!” Cheong Myeong just smiled, brushed it right off his shoulder. To be crazy is not so bad, actually. Something echoed a laugh, a ripple in a pond. You win everything you bet on when you’re crazy. “I promise I only did what he deserved.”

Jo Geol looked at him. “You probably broke his ribs…”

“The price to pay for being a lowly scumbag,” Cheong Myeong agreed without a care, and he waved his hand in dismissal. He whistled, dripped hai hand and folded it behind his back with a steady face. “If someone had stepped in, I wouldn’t have had to. It’s not a problem.”

His own reflection haunted him. The faces of all his former sect members haunted him. Everything did. A few strangers who were scummy people wasn’t a big deal, not to him. A broken nose and set of broken ribs didn’t matter. All of it came together and solidified like a stone at the base of a river, something or something or another. He saw something that was plain wrong. Injustice. Hatred. It made his stomach churn and his whole head explode, memories come back to the surface in a foamy soup of sorts—something other than food, other than bathing in a river while everyone else was training under his threats.

“It can be a problem, Cheong Myeong,” Yoon Jong said with a sigh, sounding perplexed but also just worrisome, which, you know, was funny. “If someone tattles on you for unnecessary force, you could get sent to seclusion to reflect on your actions.”

Cheong Myeong knew what would have happened if it was a hundred years again, back in his first life. He could name like thirty-six punishments off the top of his head. Not all of them had actually been done to him, but they had floated around between sects during his time.

If the offense was grave enough, you could be whipped or flogged. Beatings were more common—with a light stick or a heavy one. Tae or jang. Sometimes burned with a brand, or told to hold hot coals until the coals themselves had cooled off. Sometimes it was just to train until you physically couldn’t anymore, sometimes it was seclusion—exile, in some of the worst of cases. Cheong Myeong was certain that exile would be the worst thing for him, here. To be banished from Mount Hua? He would lose it. He would die a second time just to try doing things again a third time. The survival of this sect was the most important thing, that was all that mattered to him. The sect and all of its people.

Jo Geol shook his head, running a hand through his head with a butchered laugh or sorts. “Honestly, how would they even punish someone like you?”

He laughed, shaking his head as well. It was no problem for someone like him; he had decades of experience with bad conversations, this was easily trouble-shot by his own tongue. “I don’t know. A jang beating, maybe. That would be troublesome to forget.”

It would scar and tatter. Take some time to heal from, even with all his qi pumping through him steadily. He had strength and agility and was flowing. He was doing well for himself, and in the same breath making sure everyone else would thrive, too. It would be unlikely that the sect would get rid of him, Cheong Myeong wanted to say, because they seemed very pleased with all the good fortune he kept bringing in—but a beating wasn’t so far out there, was it?

Damage for the unnecessary damage he did to the man in the marketplace.

He kept walking down the courtyard, his hands behind his back. When he realized, only two seconds behind, that both Yoon Jong and Jo Geol had stopped walking with him, he looked over his shoulder and waited.

“What?” He raised a brow. “Did you step on a sharp rock or something?”

Yoon Jong stared at him, just standing there. It was only the three of them in the courtyard, at least in this specific spot, but that still didn’t mean Cheong Myeong wanted to gather a crowd of other over-curious disciples that didn’t know better on when to listen in and when to speed walk in the other direction.

His senior brother stalked forward with a rebound kind of energy, and he placed both his hands on Cheong Myeong’s shoulders like this was terribly important. Perhaps to Yoon Jong, it was.

“No,” His martial brother said firmly. He spoke with a large sum of conviction. “They would not.”

Jo Geol was frowning at him, too.

Cheong Myeong blinked twice, keeping his expression raised as if he was facing off against someone who was acting wiser than him—which could be applied to any and every adult in this lifetime that knew and talked to him, unfortunately. He gave a strange smile, made his expression as simple and open as he knew how to, and shrugged off Yoon Jong’s hands whimsically. “I mean, there are worse things. Don’t even worry about it. Whatever they decide, I’ll handle it.”

Mad dog, His brain whispered. Someone bared their teeth in a distant memory, blood on their tongue and in between their teeth. A dragon living in a tea house. Isn’t it just unusual to not have gold under your hands at your table?

“That’s not what we meant,” Jo Geol said, but Cheong Myeong waved a hand again like this was easily dismissed. To him, it was.

“Seriously,” The disciple said with a smile. “I’ll be fine, sahyeong.”

—

Un Geom heard about the excursion in the marketplace—and though he called upon Cheong Myeong to speak about it, there ended up being no punishment.

“You attacked a man,” He had said, proddingly.

Cheong Myeong had looked at one of Mount Hua’s first class disciples and swallowed, had bowed his head and replied as formally as he could. ”He was tormenting a young girl and had not planned to stop.”

Un Geom had looked at him and nodded. Taken this in stride, weighed it out for what it was.

There was no beating.

—

Cheong Myeong had been going through the motions for a long time. This kind of thing did not come at a strange price. He learned to live with whatever decisions he made—which was why, in this life, he refused to slack off or make the same mistakes twice. This was his second chance. Mount Hua would not fail simply because Cheong Myeong was here to ensure every future generation had a sect to call theirs.

The echo and the ripple and the need. This is home, this is the place that is mine. He wanted to give that to the people that now shared rooms and halls with him.

Who he now shared with, lived with.

The mountain air was fresh. It was a little cold and it came to him in puffs of steam, the morning fog that wrapped around the towering trees. He could live here forever. He should have lived here forever the first time, back after the war against Cheon Ma and all of the demon lord’s followers. To worship someone like him—it was something Cheong Myeong would never understand, never dare to say he did. His heart came and thundered in his chest instead and he could live with that.

Few people could.

Even fewer people could live a second life with all their memories from the prior life still intact, perfectly available for one’s nimble fingers to flip through.

So he was here, and Mount Hua was growing at a faster pace since he got here, and now the disciples that Cheong Myeong was placed with were learning quicker. They were getting sharper, more appointed—he was racing with it, taking everything he could take and giving it back by a tenfold. They needed a tenfold, they needed a million.

This was home.

There was no other home for him, not in any corner of the earth.

Home was the sect that had taken him in during his first life, when he was an orphan and no older than one; wrapped and hidden and too small to defend himself against anything or anyone. Home was Mount Hua and all of its people,every leader and elder and teacher, every student, every disciple. Everyone here was home. Not the streets or the woods or the hidden nooks inside a town he could only recall with rose tint.

Sometimes the third-class disciples would talk of their families, the ones in other provinces, the ones who sent letters to them. Some didn’t speak to their families anymore, said that Mount Hua was all they needed. I don’t need anyone else, you all are enough for me. Some gossiped about everyone’s families, including Cheong Myeong’s non-existent one—because they were talking bloodline and birth and not the chosen kind, not the one that he currently held onto with everything he had.

Now: this was fine in hypothetical situations, because Cheong Myeong didn’t exactly care what the kids thought about his origins.

It wasn’t like he could tell them the honest to gods truth about it, so he sealed his lips and smiled with a murderous glint and threatened another long day of training, racing—carry this boulder or carry all of them. And the kids listened, because apparently threatening them was easier when it came from him, the sect’s golden goose.

His sahyeong was probably laughing at him for this, too, which painted a watercolor image in Cheong Myeong’s head. He could work with it. It was better off to play this role than any other. His goal here was to make the sect thrive, to take its place in the ranks yet again, to win and live and never regret a moment of it.

The actual problem was that while he didn’t care what the kids talked about as long as he could stay two steps ahead of them, he still found himself hearing them speculate on things they probably shouldn’t be speculating on. Hence, the situation he now created for those who had yet to learn something that every prestigious sect member used on a daily basis: manners.

“Come on,” Someone groaned, and they fell flat on their face. They clawed at the earth. Despite how out of breath they sounded, Cheong Myeong found himself unimpressed. The disciple groaned again. “This is torture.”

Cheong Myeong stared at the group of disciples on the dirt.

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk about things that don’t concern you,” He offered after a second, crossing his arms. Long story short, they didn’t know when to whisper about the faded but still noticeable lash mark on Cheong Myeong’s right shoulder—which, again, he didn’t even notice most of the time because he had no clue how it got there, or when, or who did it.

A disciple with black hair that was cut roughly around his face groaned something indistinctive.

He stared at that one, too, then back to the main group and shrugged lamely. The little handkerchief that he had turned into a flag was still clutched in his left hand, waiting patiently for the next naive twit to come and try and grab it. “You guys still have to take the flag, so.”

Someone cried out in disbelief.

Cheong Myeong did not feel a lick of sympathy, even when he could see how hard their arms were trembling. They had this coming, anyway. He would have done this with the whole grade of disciples, but you know, that wouldn't be as fair because the group of punks on the ground needed their own punishment. His brain buzzed again, his shoulders flexing a little. Well, well, well, of it isn’t the consequences of your own actions—

“Cheong Myeong, what did you do to them?” Jo Geol popped up, almost out of thin air, and stared at him like he had grown two more heads.

He blinked and shrugged yet again. “They gotta learn to mind their own business one day.”

“You decided that today was the day?” His martial brother asked, raising one brow and titling his head like this was some kind of grand old mystery that no one had ever bothered to solve until this very moment. “What did they even do? They look dead.”

“We are,” The previous kid bemoaned again. “We are so dead. We were just—”

“Being little shits,” Cheong Myeong finished for him, “Don’t gossip about other people’s lives, it’s weird and unbecoming of you.”

Jo Geol stared at him, stared some more, and then deflated like a popped turkey that had just been stabbed open so all the steam released into the dining hall. Sometimes he had the gall to do that where Cheong Myeong could see him. Sometimes he didn’t dare and that was so great, too, and funny. Maybe all the people here were funny and he was just a bit busy, too busy, to take note of everything.

“Anyway,” Cheong Myeong said loudly, and he smiled at the group of kids again—glinting, glinting, glinting. “You still have to get the flag.”

—

There was a scar on his shoulder, barely noticeable. Stretches of silver spiderwebs along one side of his ribs, a few aches he could not explain. The body he now lived in was a hobble on a lone island in an icy sea.

He was on his own.

Being reincarnated? Who could share that kind of feeling with him? Cheong Myeong was in a body that somewhat felt like his old one, kind of looked like it, but he was still in a new form. The bones were different. The skin was paler, almost, and he was glad to work under the sun for long hours so he could turn himself into a warmer shade that didn’t remind him of ghosts. This body had been through things that Cheong Myeong had not been here for.

It couldn’t hold liquor as well as his old body could, but maybe that had to do with his balance of qi. It was shorter than his old one. It felt strange to walk in, like he was walking on ice with numb legs.

Bits and pieces of him were still on the slope in which he laid down to die. The echoes of Cheon Ma’s declaration still haunted him. The bodies of his fallen cultivators still haunted him, chased after him in dreams and nightmares. Distant thoughts that coiled.

Cheong Myeong lived in a body that was strange and stilted, knubby and lanky in all the places he didn’t used to be. Movements and heartbeats that Cheong Myeong kept tucked under his ribs so he could remember them forever.

Things like that. Colors and visions.

Qi in his meridians, through his body; the strongest rushing river against a dam.

He knew that bodies changed. He was in a teenager’s body. He was the youngest one here in Mount Hua, and everyone seemed to try and watch out for him—which, as it stood, was strange and corny because he could take care of himself. He was the one to beat all the other kids’ asses in training. He was the one taking the lead, unsurprisingly, but apparently because he was like fifteen he needed consistent safety or something? Whatever that meant.

It was a weird situation. He was glad he was in it because it meant that he got to keep his second chance. This was what it meant to take the opportunity before him and run with it. Took it and ran with it until he snapped his legs in half.

Cheong Myeong was in a stranger’s house, but it was enough for him.

—

In his dreams, he was sitting next to Jang Mun by the river that winded through the closet valley in Mount Hua’s territory.

His sahyeong was looking at him, smiling like there was no greater sight to see in the entire world than Cheong Myeong, and he was saying look at how far you’ve come, sajae, and the birds chirped and the river swished and Cheong Myeong felt like he was safe again, like he was alive again.

In his dreams, he was alive and he was well and he was still the disciple he used to be.

—

“Hey, Cheong Myeong?” The disciple with him asked, sounding a little out of breath despite how light this activity was.

“What?” Cheong Myeong replied, surpassing the rocks and squinting at Jo Geol from above the tower. This pile of rocks was his, you could say, piled up from weeks out here training for no other reason than his own enjoyment. He was keeping up, keeping himself in check. This much, of course, he could do until the sect thrived as it was always supposed to.

Jo Geol wiped his brow, a complicated look on his face as he finally climbed the last few thresholds in the pile and came to a stop right next to Cheong Myeong’s feet.

“How did you get that scar?” His older martial brother—in this life, sure, Jo Geol was older—asked.

Cheong Myeong paused.

“Huh?” He echoed, as innocently as he could, because that was his thing. He was going to glower next like an old man. A part of him echoed you are one, aren’t you? It sounded like his sahyeong. He winced internally, made a noise like a dying finch.

Jo Geol looked at him, then pointed to the barest whisper of scar tissue that wrapped around Cheong Myeong’s collarbones and the very base of his throat.

His voice was steady despite how strange his expression was. “That one. How’d you get it?”

The Plum Blossom Sword Saint stared again. He pointed to his neck in a mirrored gesture, just to keep this little thing going. If it was anyone else, excluding the sect leader or Yoon Jong, Cheong Myeong would have half a mind to squash the disciple asking him this kind of question solely because he had a reputation of violent consistency to uphold in the name of godliness for the sect. And to cover his own skin because he didn’t have an adequate sorry to tell.

“This one?” Cheong Myeong asked, and his voice was feather light. He grinned again, and squatted so he could be eye to eye with Jo Geol. “I forgot I had it, actually.”

He did not know where it came from. Not the trill in his knee, the barely noticeable scar under the joint. Not the scar on his shoulder that must have come from a lashing of some kind, not the spiderwebs over his right side of ribs that was so hard to see no one had pointed it out yet. Maybe they had gotten kicked in. The soul who had been living in this body must have been having it hard. The Beggar Union must have not been keeping all their members safe by that much. A mere observation.

“Oh,” Jo Geol said. “Sorry?”

“What for?” Cheong Myeong asked with a glint. There was not much to apologize for. Sometimes scars just happened, wounds and aches and the like. You never really knew when it came down to other people.

“I,” Jo Geol squinted at him like the words formed a trick question. “I don’t know. For asking?”

Cheong Myeong only snorted, turning his head away and standing back up. For asking. An amused part of his brain laughed at it, twisted up and shriveled. The sun stared down at them both and it rippled, came past, overhead and through the dense branches of the green trees. Speckled gold rays. Warmth bled over his shoulders, smacked Jo Geol right in the face and made his skin glimmer a coppery color.

This activity was something he was going to force all the other third-class disciples to do, next. If it troubled even Jo Geol, well, it would at least be a worthy challenge for the others to try and do.

—

There used to be a tree behind the place where the golden palace used to sit; and one hundred years later, that tree still lived. Cheong Myeong peered at it with his hands behind his back, staring up at its ancient and looming branches.

Hello. The winding and twisted bark whispered to him. You are home again.

The branches swooped, peeled away with pink and red dapples. Flowers in bloom. It was a beautiful tree, probably the oldest one on the mountain. Cheong Myeong remembered hiding in it, sometimes, to skip training in the morning when he was hungover. It reminded him of his sahyeong, of a day that had gone well.

He smiled at it, “Hello.”

—

It was the rain that came, slinking down the mountain and storming through the skies and heavens.

Cheong Myeong squinted outside the window of the room he was in, then crossed his arms. The weather was terrible. This, of course, did not compare to some of the storms he had seen in his first life. Trees snapping in half, whole houses being lifted and torn apart like spare firewood in a camp of sorts. But still, the current condition of the courtyard was not ideal. From the looks of it, the rain was hammering against the tiles and dirt and gravel. It was pounding on the roof of the buildings as it was, anyway, and Un Geom had already told all of them that they would not be permitted to train in this weather until the rain turned less violent—and the winds died down.

“I remember a storm like this when I was a kid,” A third-class disciple said with a long sigh. “It wrecked my entire village. It was such a mess.”

“Yeah?” Someone echoed, and they shook their head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Cheong Myeong understood both those things, for separate reasons. There are a million things that people can see and find and recall. In his first life, he could recall a lot. There were words and wounds and people. Strangers he faced with a nod stood next to in a battle that killed everyone—including himself, the sole being remaining, the last one to breathe on that hill.

Yoon Jong elbowed him lightly, staring at him. Or, not really, but he was facing in Cheong Myeong’s direction and that meant he was staring. “Have you ever seen something like it?”

“Nope,” Cheong Myeong said with a shrug. “Maybe someone angered the gods.”

Of course, he didn’t actually think anyone was dumb enough to make the deities so mad as to cause up a whole shitstorm for Mount Hua to deal with, but you know how it goes. Maybe is a strong word. Not strong enough, not for this. But it’s all the same. He stared at the window again and watched as raindrops ran down it. The wind howled, and anyone would be able to hear it, even through the thickness of the walls. The buildings should hold.

Sometimes storms just happened. It was nothing to be scared of, not when they had a designated shelter to stay in until the worst of it passed, but he could understand why some of the kids here thought this could be the end—or, not the end, but an end of something or another.

“Are you sure?” Yoon Jong asked again, but he didn’t sound surprised or anything. He sounded like he just wanted to know, like he asked to find out.

The question popped up and I wanted to know. That kind of thing.

“Yes,” Cheong Myeong replied, rather disinterested. “Rainstorms like these happen near large bodies of water, last I checked. Never been near an ocean.”

Liar.

At least he was so bad at it that everyone thought he was good at it.

Whenever it rained, that one damn knee he had started to ache. It was like he was an actual old man who had never cultivated qi or something. Which, again, was something he hated very much and did not understand. He blamed this body’s origins. Another mystery from an achy place of tenderness. He could deal with it, of course, because to fall into a fit over something so small really would be unfitting of him.

“The courtyard is soaked,” Yoon Jong said, and that was enough of a topic change. He sounded a little perplexed. “It’ll be muddy once the rain stops.”

“Well, I guess it still means more training for you all,” Cheong Myeong said thoughtfully, still leering at the mess that was the wild and wet outdoors. He sighed through his nose. “You won’t always fight on dry terrain. Wet terrain might do you some good.”

Yoon Jong made a displeased noise, almost nervous, and Cheong Myeong laughed again. The rain kept pouring.

—

“Hmm,” Cheong Myeong squinted at the courtyard, assessing the damage the rain did. His knee was still aching like some kind of endless premonition. Then, he nodded to himself. “Yeah, it’s muddy enough. You guys can still train just fine—think of it like a challenge.”

It would be fine. It would even give them something new to learn.

The disciples who had been watching from the safety of the hall’s steps made a collective noise before scrambling back inside.

Yeah, Cheong Myeong thought with poorly canceled glee. That’s not gonna save you.

—

He could count every scar on this body, and yet none of it mattered at the end—where they came from, when, who gave it to him—none of it mattered. Cheong Myeong remained and he lived, and he was home.

The place that this soul once suffered in was no longer present. He could keep the body safe at Mount Hua.