The Tale Never Ends

On the fifteenth day of the lunar month just after the new year, I was sent back through Time. Unexpected and unfathomably, I came to the red pine coppice that Father found me when I was still a baby. Everything I saw seemed like a hypnagogic midsummer’s night dream to me. Was it just a vision or had I really taken a step down the old lane of Time to witness everything myself? I could not say. But if I had really returned, why was everyone unable to see nor hear me? Why was I able to fly? Why was I not hampered by fatigue nor hunger? But if it was only a dream or a vision, why were my cigarettes and the contents of my wallet wet when I returned after the torrential deluge in 1976?

When I was trying to leave the forest, I began to realize thinking of walking out was an ignorant naivety on my part; the forest was just too wide an expanse for me to find my way out in a day or two. I had to start a fire that night but that allowed me to know a new friend in a geeky girl who got lost from her tour group, Qin Le.

But the fire provided us a false sense of security while the darkness veiled the dangers that lurked unseen. A huge score of foxes, disregarding my position as the lordling of their kind, besieged the fireplace. The leader of the pack, a female white fox wielded great magical powers that dwarfed even mine and I was no match for her.

But what was more baffling was the magic she used. Not only she was skilled in sword telekinesis, her mastery of this brand of sorcery was greater than mine, to say nothing of the sword techniques that mirrored mine in almost every way.

In the end, I had expended all my strength and mana, allowing myself to be taken a prisoner by the vixen. I was carried off to her lair while Qin Le was herded along by the legion of foxes under her command.

“You can take me, but why take an innocent person!? Why is she taken here too!?” I jab a vehement finger at Qin Le, hissing angrily at the demoness. The demoness’s face curdled into a skeptical look. She peered at a breathless Qin Le now sitting on the ground of her stone chamber, eyeing her warily and suspiciously before she finally asked, “She’s not that lover of yours?”

Then it dawned upon me. This demoness had mistaken Qin Le as my girlfriend Edelweiss! “No,” I hissed, frustrated, “She’s just a lost traveler. My girlfriend is nowhere as weak as her!” I quickly soften. “Send her away, please. She has no place in whatever score you have against me. I, and the Shiyan Blade, are all that you want. Not her.”

To my surprise, the vixen burst into a fit of giggles. “Your weapon might be a legendary weapon with magical powers that many covet. But not me. I’m only looking for you.” My eyes narrowed when she finished with a notion of distrust and hesitation ballooning in me. Unless somebody has ways to refine my soul and properly transfuse me back to the sword, the Shiyan Blade was nothing but a shadow of its former might and glory. Anyone who covets the Shiyan Blade would also be needing me and that was the unequivocal fact. But why is this demoness hardly interested in the Shiyan Blade and only me? Could my deepest fears be true?! Does she want me for a mate?!

I shook my head like a rag doll and tried to clear my mind. I looked at the demoness again, my eyes imploring her for answers. She smirked cheerily at me, looking more harmless than before. Then I remembered the sword techniques and the sword telekinesis magic she was using against me earlier, and I probed, “That magic you were using just now. That’s sword telekinesis, is it not? Who taught you that?”

The last thing I would have expected from her was a confused and surprised look like how one would when looking at an abysmally dumb person, as if sword telekinesis was a skill that everyone should know.

“Your grasp of this particular brand of magic is better than mine,” I breathed, “Even the swordplay techniques are identical to mine! So who are you, really!?”

“Stupid fool!” The vixen scowled, giving me a glare that made me feel like a little boy, “Do you not understand yet?!” I stared at her blankly. Unlike how she was during our first encounter in the forest, she was not exuding any malicious nor cruel air of a killer. In fact, there was not even a whiff of enmity! My head shook very slowly. Suddenly, she smacked hard on my head! With an exasperated tone, she said, “A hint then. My name is Murong Qinglan. Surely that’s enough for you to know who I am now?”

“WHAT?!” My eyes grew as large as teacups. Wait a minute… She knows sword telekinesis magic… and her name’s Murong… Oh, Heavens?! Could it be?! Another member of the family?! Murong Qinglan noticed the change in my expression and knew that I have realized who she was, nodding with a wry smile at me. Hesitantly, I stammered, “S-sister?!” She burst into a fit of guffaws as she acknowledged with a playful snort. Then she reached over to me and rubbed my hair like I was the little brother she was supposed to have.

“Now just hold your horses!” I screamed, pushing her hand away. I glowered at her, “This whole thing is just a cock and bull story of yours! Father and Mother told me nothing about a big sister?! No. I need proof. I need proof before I can be sure you are who you claim you are!”

She bent down closer to me and turned her face aside, showing me her ear. Then I saw it. A little earring hanging from the fox’s ear protruding from her head. I drew a slow and long breath with trepidation. There it was, a little stone, looking slightly dark, blueish, and purplish at the same time, encrusted on the earring!

It looked nothing valuable, but this was not the first time I have seen a stone that looked exactly the same. In fact, it was a stone I had seen so many times that I would never forget it, for the same one, looking almost identical in all aspects including size, was embedded on Father’s liquor flask!

The revelation struck me so hard that I lost my senses momentarily. I reached and yanked her ears, pulling her closer so that I could examine the earring properly, conveniently forgetting that it was her ear. My sister howled with pain and slapped my hand and retaliated by tugging at my ears and I too began wailing, “Sister, sister! Nooo! Nooo! Please! Let go!”

There was no margin for doubt; Murong Qinglan is a sister of mine and the earring she wore could only be given to her by Father. All that, with Sister’s sword telekinesis magic and her style of swordplay made me all the more certain. And that allowed me to address her freely as “Sister.”

My ears were almost purple when she finally let go. She looked at me, with tenderness and concern in her eyes this time as she stroked my hair lovingly. “It has been twenty years. You’re a big boy now.” I nodded and I asked about what happened earlier in the woods. “And such love you showered upon me after twenty years, Sister. The first thing you showed me was that anger and enmity just now. You really wanted to kill me just now, did you? Please don’t say no. I’m born with the Spirit Sight; I can see the aura of malice and hatred about you just now.” That earned me a soft giggle from her. “You were just a toddler chewing on your own hands when I last saw you a couple of decades ago. Come on. I’m not Father. How was I supposed to know it was you?”

My lips pursed indignantly. “Liar. You knew who I was the moment we met. With your aptitude in sword telekinesis magic, surely that did not escape your notice?” She imitated me and grumbled, “So what? And here I was, thinking that you’d be stronger than me. I only wanted to test you. But you turned out to be a worthless clod.” That did little to assuage me. Test, you say? I thought quietly, You were trying to kill me! I was skewered with three of your ice swords!

Sister seemed to have seen through my thoughts. She snickered, “Who do you take me for? A clod just like you? Come on, I can save you even if you were punctured with thirty swords like a pin cushion, to say the least of only a meager three.” Finding nothing I could say against that, I merely glared at her and threw an ugly look.

Just then, Qin Le woke up from her stupor. Her head swiveled from left to right, staring strangely at Sister and me. Then she remembered the short banter between us and she stuttered, “What are you both…”

Sister and I looked at Qin Le in unison, staring back at her in such a way that made her fidgety and jittery. “It’s all a misunderstanding,” I explain hastily, “As it happens, this is my long-lost sister! She thought you are my girlfriend, otherwise, you wouldn’t have been caught up in this fracas.”

Qin Le froze, her eyes transfixed upon me with a blank gawk on her face before her head pivoted towards Sister again. Then I knew. Sister looked like a fox demoness through and through. And with the recently-discovered revelation between me and her, it was small wonder that she would begin to think that I am also a demon myself. Moreover, she had just witnessed the fight in the woods just now that looked like a chapter from fictional books and stories. I could hardly blame her.