Alice

"You're not Daoist Liang."

"No," agreed the voice. It had shifted lower in pitch into a pleasant tenor. "But you're not who you seem to be either."

Alice said nothing.

"I don't recognize your accent. When I was still a mortal, I fancied myself an adventurer. I have traveled the plains of the Middle Continent and made them my own. I have broken bread and baked buns with the walrus hunters of the frozen north. I have danced in duels with the spearmen of the barren wastes and sung the sonatas in the mud huts of the southern kingdoms."

There was the creak of a wooden bench. The man behind her was now seated. An immortal, without a doubt. But why was he here, in the Ascending Sky?

"Why have you come to darken the doorstep of my old sect?"

"How should I address you, senior?" asked Alice, who was still afraid to turn around.

"I am Kong Fu. Kong means absence - like the air, like the space between the stars."

Ah yes, Kong Fu. Alice suppressed the nervous giggle rising from her throat.

"How should I address you, junior?" he asked, his voice gentle and mocking.

The Silkworms spat and hissed.

"I am Chow Mulan. Chow means grasp - to hold, to take, to believe."

There was a dry chuckle.

"At dawn, she leaves her parent's home. At dusk, she camps where the Yellow River roams."

Alice felt a chill down her spine - not just because he'd recited one of the lines of the poem Mulan, but because as each word left his lips, his voice pitched higher and closer to her own. By the time he'd finished the verse, he sounded exactly like Alice.

"But that isn't right," he said, his voice a smooth tenor again. "The Song of Mulan is the story of a girl who pretends to be something she isn't out of a sense of duty." The bench upon which he was undoubtedly sitting creaked. "Why have you taken her name?"

Alice did not answer and she still did not turn around. She stared instead at the wilted flower in Liang Dadu's hair and hoped the woman wasn't dead.

"But there is little dissonance between her face and your own. You are Chow Mulan. That's quite peculiar." There was the cracking of bone, the squirming sound of flesh over flesh. "How could that be possible?"

His voice became more high pitched again. "I'm willing to buy a horse and saddle, I shall take my father's place in battle."

The voice dropped back to what Alice assumed was his natural one. "No, this isn't you. It doesn't even align with that beautiful little story you told me about yourself. But I believe that was false too."

The Silkworms recoiled, angry and unwilling.

"There is a resonance between the story of Mulan and your own. My only conclusion is that the realm you call home is the origin. Tell me, where are the Yan Hills? Who was the Khan? Under which stars does the Yellow River roam?"

Alice steeled herself and turned around.

“From which Heaven were you cast away? How have you arrived at these skies beneath your shores? From which starfield does the flower Mulan come?”

Alice was met with her own face. Had her dimples always been so sharply defined? Had her cheekbones always risen so high? Had her eyes always been closer to green than brown?

Kong pulled the flower out of his hair and the little violet drifted to the floor.

“If you won’t answer me, I’ll find out for myself soon enough,” he said. The threat sounded strange in Alice’s voice.

“I’m not from a Starfield,” said Alice.

“You are lying to me, but you don’t seem to be lying,” said the immortal. “Unless-”

He paused. “Unless where you are from is no longer a Starfield.”

The excitement rose in his voice - in that imitation of Alice’s voice. “Unless where you are from cannot be spoken of. Unless it is so desperate that you do not speak its name that even at the age of seventeen you’ve been taught to lie.”

Whatever the immortal Kong dreamed of was clearly outside of Alice’s knowledge, but he was so excited about it she didn’t dare to contradict him.

“Are you from Heaven Under Earth, where the dirt has turned foul and the rivers run in sulfurous colors? Are you from Wind Over Water, where the Yin trees have been overrun?” His voice shook. “Or are you from the shards of that unnamed plane with the many broken mirrors, split from the scars of Ascendancy?”

Alice could not let him get more carried away - he was too excited, too unstable. She couldn’t imagine the sort of reaction he would have if she let him continue on this flight of fantasy. In the end, despite the squirming of silkworms, she decided that her greatest weapon would be the truth.

“Senior Immortal,” said Alice, as softly as she could. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. I’m from a Seed World.”

Alice expected disappointment, she expected anger - she didn’t expect the breathy gasp that seemed so out of place coming from the image of her own face.

“I see.”

Silence, but for the sound of a creaking wooden bench as Kong leaned back. There was something attractive and aspirational about the way he wore her body - powerful, still, poised. Alice thought his mannerisms were close to those of Fairy Guan’s - deliberate, assured, comfortable.

“It is within the purview of an immortal to be vain about wisdom. I will ask you some questions. In return, you may ask me some questions,” decided the immortal. He didn’t wait for her agreement to begin. “What is your true name?”

Alice wondered about all those tales of the naive giving their names to higher powers, but she decided to swallow her fears down. She would live past this catastrophe and worry about consequences later. “Alice Chow.”

“Fascinating, fascinating,” breathed Kong. “I have never met anyone from a Seed World before, but I can now hear the influence that your mother tongue has on your speech.” The rapture in his smile, on Alice’s face, looked wrong. “Now ask me a question, any question - I will answer it if it’s within my power. Quickly!”

“Where do immortals go when they ascend?” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them - they felt so silly, so childish.

“Upwards and outwards,” said Kong. “The immortals of old told stories of ascending to faraway lands from lower realms and to starfields that aligned with their thoughts. In the peace of the Phoenix, all immortals from lower realms have arrived at the Unending City, the greatest middle realm of note.”

Alice didn’t ask another question, even though she had many on the tip of her tongue.

“I hope my answer was satisfactory.”

Alice nodded.

“How did you come to learn the language of the Stars in the Sky?”

That one was easy. “It is similar to the language spoken by my parents. Where I’m from, there are many languages.” She felt the need to broaden her explanation, as the immortal had done. “There is no cultivation in the world from which I’ve come. The lives of mortals are a short span - and thus there has never been a single dominant language across the world’s population.”

“That is patently absurd,” said Kong. “I simply do not understand how that could possibly ever work. Without a unified language, how could there be culture? How could there be innovation? How could there be cultivation? But of course, there is none of those things - that is why it is known as a Seed World.”

Alice didn’t agree - in fact, she felt rather insulted, but she didn’t make her displeasure known.

“Yet, we still recite poetry from your world, Mulan. Come, ask me your question.”

“What determines the nature of realms?”

The immortal wearing her face nodded, smiling. “You are such a good student.” He reached out and caressed her cheek with a single finger in the same way that Fairy Guan enjoyed. Alice bit the inside of her cheek so she wouldn’t clench her fists. “But I won’t be tricked. You will need to ask this question in two, maybe three parts.”

“To answer the first of these questions, I must first explain to you what constitutes a Starfield. And to do so, we must use the words of the Limping Matriarch. We have rearranged the stars in the sky like-”

The words of the Iron Scripture came to Alice in that moment - she couldn’t keep herself from speaking them. “Under the sword of the ruling sky, raise the saber high. Melt and bent under heaven’s weight, rearrange the stars like fishbones on a plate.”

In a way, this was a bit off brand for her - it was David who was attacked by the need to recite poetry. But this time, the words shouted by Li Qingshui at the walls of Bei’an had wormed their way back into her mind, previously forgotten.

“Where did you hear that?” whispered Kong. “That is my question.”

“From the Iron Princess at the gates of Bei’an,” said Alice, praying that she wasn’t roping more and more people into this sticky situation.

Immortal Kong spat at the floor by his feet. “They have discovered an heir for that interpretation of those shards, then.”

“Interpretation? Shards?” Alice queried.

“Is that a question?”

Alice shook her head.

“Very well. I will continue on your original line of questioning then. Now that you have some idea of what a Starfield is, I will explain what separates a Lower Realm from a Middle Realm.”

Alice still wasn’t quite sure what constituted a Starfield, but she didn’t want to ask a clarifying question.

“Lower realms are myriad and many - the official defining trait of a middle realm is that they're under the jurisdiction of a starfield. Some starfields were previously very territorial, aggressive and would attempt to conquer as many lower realms as possible and raise them up into middle realms.”

He paused. “I will allow you another before I ask my final question.”

“What separates a Starfield from a Middle Realm?”

“I suppose it wasn’t completely clear was it,” said Kong, almost indulgently. “A starfield is a site of veneration. There are a limited number of starfields - only sixty four possibilities. Above them all sits Heaven Over Heaven, the seat of the Phoenix. All mortals who manage to ascend from a lower realm are generally funneled into the ‘favored child of heaven over heaven’ - the Unending City.”

Sixty four possibilities - equal to the number of hexagrams of the Book of Changes. Alice thought of Li’s words now.

You can’t ever let anyone know that you know those words.

Heaven Under Earth - Tai. Pervading. Wind Over Water - Huan. Dispersing. The Limping Matriarch. Limping. Jian. Mountain Under Water.

Don’t you know what happens to talented young cultivators who have secrets they shouldn’t? Have you not heard the horror stories of maidens locked in towers for thousands of years, for just a scrap of knowledge?

That rapture on the immortal’s face - her face - was back. “You would not be out of place amongst the young masters and fairy princesses of the sects of the Unending City,” said Kong. “You are beautiful enough and, with a Principle at such a young age, talented enough.”

Immortals diving from the high heavens to crush empires for just a single manual?

“My question is whether you would make a fuss if I removed you from the red dust of this lower realm, and took you on a journey of cultivation, a journey of discovery, a journey of improvement?”

Alice did not have time to truly wrestle with the spear of ice in her stomach, did not have time to truly process the disgusted sounds of chewing from within her at that expression on Kong’s face, did not have time to truly reconcile with that fear of being separated from her only friend in the world.

There was a high, ringing note. Her ears recognized it as A sharp - in fact, one of her guqin strings was tuned to that key.

Every single pane of glass in the greenhouse shattered. In an inexplicable moment of bravery, Alice threw herself over the surely-still-alive body of Daoist Liang.

An old woman’s voice crackled in her ears as blades of glass nicked at her back.

“Outer disciples are not permitted to leave the city of Tianbei before they should form their Cores.”