Chương 178: Hello Mother

"Elder Wu," I bowed deeply while using the moment to gather my thoughts and figure out what exactly I was going to say to this man who had known the real Ke Yin since he was a small child running through these same streets.

"This junior greets his elder and hopes he has been well."

"Look at you!" he said with a wide beam on his face, clearly pleased by what he was seeing.

"A proper cultivator now! Your parents will be overjoyed, they've been so worried since you left for the sect." His expression shifted into something a little more stern then.

"Though a letter now and then wouldn't have hurt, you know." He wasn't wrong about that. The original Ke Yin not writing a single letter home was something that didn't quite fit with who he had been as a person.

"I've been busy with training," I said, letting my voice carry the impression of a young man who had gotten swept up in the overwhelming newness of sect life and hadn't thought clearly about the people he left behind.

"Hmph. Too busy to let your poor mother know you're alive?" But he didn't actually sound angry when he said it, it was more the exasperation that came from someone who had watched you grow up and couldn't quite bring themselves to be truly upset with you even when they had every right to be.

"I hope they've been well?"

"Oh yes, yes. Your father's business has been doing well, he even took on an apprentice last month. And your mother, well, she still makes the best sweet buns in the village. Though she always says they're not as good as when you were here to help with the kneading..." Listening to him talk I found my thoughts drifting back to my time in the Starhaven Realm, when I had been borrowing Han Renyi's body for a time.

That situation had been something I could at least partially resolve in a meaningful way, I had been able to strengthen his body, give his family better cultivation techniques, help untangle the political problems that had been threatening to destroy everything they had worked for. But this situation was different, it made those comparisons feel almost cruel to think about. The original Ke Yin was dead.

There was no way to give his body back, no way to repay what had been taken from his family, no transaction that could be balanced out or resolved cleanly. The only thing I could actually do, the minimum that the situation seemed to demand of me, was to be the son he would have been if he had lived, to protect the people he cared about and make sure they never learned the truth about what had really happened to their real child.

"Junior Brother Ke Yin," Liu Chang said, his voice pulling me back into the present moment, "why don't you go visit your family while we meet with the other teams? I'm sure they'll want to see you." I started to say something about how mission responsibilities probably should take priority over personal visits, but Liu Chang's expression made it very clear that this particular discussion was already concluded before it began.

"That's an excellent idea," Elder Wu agreed.

"They're at home now. Your father just finished a big commission for the merchant Li's daughter's wedding clothes. I'm sure they'd love to hear about your experiences in the sect." There wasn't really any point in continuing to delay it, so I bowed to both of them, told Liu Chang I would rejoin the team when I was done, and started walking down the path toward the house where Ke Yin had grown up.

This was going to require me to convincingly pretend to be someone's son well enough that their hearts didn't break in the process. Simple enough, probably.

"On the bright side," Azure said, "if you fail catastrophically, the beast wave will probably arrive before anyone has time to be properly upset about it."

"You've been spending too much time around Yggy. You're developing a concerning sense of humor."

"I learned from the best, Master." I didn't ask whether he meant me or Yggy when he said that. I thought it was probably better not to know.

Walking through the village I kept my cultivation aura carefully suppressed, which was a skill every cultivator had to develop because mortals could sense what we had become even if they couldn't articulate exactly what they were sensing, something deep and instinctive in them registered the change, it made children cry without understanding why and made adults break into cold sweats for no reason they could name.

Even at my current relatively modest level of cultivation, letting the aura run free would have made the walk through the village significantly more unpleasant for everyone. The streets looked how Ke Yin's memories said they would, every detail matching right down to the specific crooked cobblestone near the baker's shop that everyone who had grown up here knew to step around without thinking about it.

The smell of fresh bread from that same bakery mixed with the smell of the river, which was always present here, and together they created a combination that meant something to me through memories that had never technically been mine to begin with. A group of children came running past and then stopped suddenly, turning around to stare at me with the unselfconscious directness that children had. I recognized one of them through the original's memories.

Little Ming, who looked to be about ten years old now and was staring at me with eyes that had gone very wide. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"Big Brother Ke?" he asked, his voice uncertain. I nodded and tried to arrange my expression into a smile that wouldn't read as unsettling.

"Hello, Ming. You've grown." He lit up immediately and spun around to face his friends.

"See? I told you he became a cultivator!" Hearing the pride in his voice brought the memories forward again, specifically the day the sect scout had tested the original Ke Yin and found what they were looking for, and how the whole village had responded to that news with a celebration that had gone on well into the night with shared food and stories about legendary cultivators and everything they had accomplished.

But underneath all of that celebration there had been a realistic undercurrent that everyone felt even if they didn't put it into words directly, because most children from small villages who showed spiritual sensitivity still failed the entrance examinations when it came to actually taking them. And those who passed, most of them couldn't survive the training and came back to ordinary life within the first year. The odds had never been particularly good for the original and everyone in the village had known it.

The fact that I had come back wearing proper sect robes was apparently proof enough for Ming that he had been right about something important.

"Young Ke!" Old Wang the vegetable seller called out from nearby.

"Welcome back! Will you be staying long?"

"Unfortunately not," I said.

"Official sect business." The children's eyes went even wider when I said that, and Old Wang's expression shifted into something more serious.

"The beast wave?" He dropped his voice, glancing sideways at the children who were still listening.

"We've been hearing rumors. Traders said they saw strange movements in the forests." Several of the people nearby found reasons to drift a little closer without making it obvious they were doing so.

"My cousin's friend said the beasts are acting strange," a woman said.

"Said they found a whole herd of spirit deer standing still, staring at nothing."

"Like they were waiting for something," someone else added. I could see the worry starting to move through the small crowd and the last thing the village needed right now was panic on top of everything else.

"The sect has sent multiple teams," I told them, keeping my voice calm, "we have experienced cultivators and solid defensive plans, the village will be protected, there's nothing to worry about." That wasn't entirely accurate but panic wasn't going to help anyone, and we did in fact have a solid defensive plan, assuming nothing went badly wrong, which in a cultivation world was always an assumption that deserved some scrutiny.

"But why did they send you?" Ming asked with the complete guilelessness of a child who had not yet learned to consider whether a question might be uncomfortable.

"You just started learning a few months ago."

"I have special skills," I explained.

"I work with formations, protective arrays, they go around important buildings, that's the reason they needed me."

"Like the ones on the granary?" another boy asked excitedly.

"My father says they cost a lot!"

"Similar to those, yes." I smiled a little, because the original Ke Yin had stared at those same formation arrays as a child trying to figure out how they worked.

"But mine are a bit different in how they work."

"Can you show us?" Ming started bouncing slightly with the request.

"Please? Just a small one?" I had been about to say no when I thought of something better to do instead, so I reached into my storage ring which caused the predictable gasps from my small audience, and pulled out one of my practice formation flags.

"See these patterns?" I crouched down so they could actually look at what I was showing them.

"Each one does something specific. This curve channels spiritual energy, and these triangles help keep the flow stable..." The children pressed in close around me, completely forgetting they had been wanting lightning and swords before this, and even several of the adults found themselves edging forward for a better look at what I was holding.

"Your father will be proud," Old Wang said quietly beside me once I was done with the demonstration on how it worked.

"He always said you had clever hands. Good to see you found a use for them beyond stitching cloth." The original Ke Yin's memories came again: sitting beside his father learning how to make a perfectly straight seam, how his father would patiently point out where to correct the line, the pride that had come from finally getting it right after so many attempts.

"Speaking of Father," I said, straightening back up and tucking the flag away, "I should probably..."

"Go," Old Wang said, waving me off with a smile.

"Before your mother hears you've been back for more than five minutes without visiting. She'll have my head for keeping you."

"But you'll show us more later, right?" Ming called after me as I started walking again.

"Promise?"

"If there's time," I said without committing to anything.

"After we deal with the beast wave." Behind me I could hear Ming already telling his friends an elaborate version of events in which I could make magical drawings that turned into actual dragons. Children had remarkable imaginations.

When I arrived outside the original's home, I took a deep breath to ready myself. The shop looked exactly like the memories said it would, nothing had changed.

From the wooden sign that I had helped paint as a child where the characters were slightly uneven in the places where young hands had contributed to the work, to the sample robes hung in the window that Father had installed himself, to the curtain inside embroidered with protective symbols that marked the boundary between the shop space and the living space behind it, which Mother had made herself, and even the slightly crooked doorframe that Father had always said he would fix eventually but somehow never had gotten around to in all the years since the renovation that had caused it.

"Master," Azure said, breaking me away from my thoughts, "I feel like I should point out that your current heart rate is approaching levels associated with combat situations, your palms are sweating, and you've been standing in the middle of the street staring at a door for ten seconds. Some of the villagers are giving you concerned looks." Right, I should probably get this over with. I pushed the door open and stepped inside, a small bell chimed above me as a voice came from the back room.

"Just a moment!" The scent of tea and fabric dye, the soft sound of cutting through silk, and especially the familiarity in the voice hit me all at once, and for a moment, I couldn't put into words what was going on in my heart.

"Master, you can't get distracted," Azure said, "you're here to help protect these people. Everything else is secondary." As emotionless as the advice sounded, he was right, I needed to focus on what I was actually here to do.

"Welcome to… Yin?" A woman stood in the doorway between the shop and the back room, holding a half-finished robe in both hands. She was short with long black hair pulled back into a bun, wearing a simple dress with an apron that had chalk marks from tailoring work scattered across it, and she was staring at me with an expression like she wasn't entirely certain what she was seeing in front of her was real. Which was a relatable response to the situation.

"Mother," I said, and somehow managed to find a smile.