Hu’s father leads us to a small cluster of houses at the edge of the city. Guards mill around campfires, making small talk, waiting for their next shift. 

“This is the guard’s camp,” Hu’s father explains. “It’s pretty small, so you’ll have to share a room with Hu since we didn’t realize you were coming. Is that alright with you?”

A chance to sleep with Hu is definitely what I want. “Of course!”

Hu turns his head away, but I hear him mutter “Why does it have to be me?”

“Go put your stuff in the guest room and then you can come back for dinner,” Hu‘s father suggests. Yan leads us to the small guest bedroom and leaves, leaving us alone. There’s a bed, a drawer, and a small mirror in it, and not much else. It’s even smaller than my bedroom in Fulian, but I won’t complain because this will give me a chance to be in closer proximity to Hu. 

“We have to share a bed?” Hu groans. “Isn’t that illegal for unmarried people in ancient China?”

“Your father must have made an exception for me, since I’m just that amazing,” I ponder. “After all, you are lucky to be dating such a young, beautiful, amazing, precocious, brilliant, benevolent, exemplary connoisseur like me.”

“We are not dating!” Hu yells, before checking his tone and speaking in a quieter voice. “Why can’t you get that into your head? We’ve had this conversation way too many times in the past few days!”

I’m about to reassure him that of course we aren’t just dating, we’re practically married, but Hu holds up a hand, cutting off my words. 

“We need to talk about consent,” he says. “I do not want to be in a relationship with you, and I did not give you consent to go around telling people that I’m your boyfriend. Not everyone who’s a ‘good guy’ falls in love with you, which you don’t seem to understand.”

“What?” I gasp. I remember how he basically said the same thing at my house a few days, but quickly backtracked when I became angry. I give him the same angry look again, hoping to get him to admit that he’s wrong. But Hu looks up at the ceiling as if speaking to a higher entity and says, “Hey! Computer, are you going to let the Mary Sue kill me? If so, good luck finding someone else to complete your quest.”

The sky booms as if in answer, and suddenly rain starts pounding down on the house. The candle on the dresser gets blown out, and we’re left in utter darkness. Luckily, Yan comes through the door with a candle, illuminating the space once again. “Lisu, Second Brother, it’s time for dinner.”

“I was just thinking, how about Lisu shares a room with you instead, Yan, since you’re both girls?” Hu suggests. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to share a room with Lisu.”

“I want to be with Hu!” I protest, which Yan immediately listens to. Obviously, because my opinions are usually correct. 

“I think Lisu and Second Brother can sleep together, since they’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” Yan smiles at Hu, dragging him outside before he can protest. We walk into the dining room, where a cook is setting out plates of food. 

“The food smells delicious,” I compliment the cook. 

“You would speak to such a lowly cook like me?” the cook’s eyes fill with grateful tears. I decide to go further and sign her forehead with a spare brush that I picked up on one of the side tables.

“I’m never washing my forehead again! Thank you for this honor!” the cook exclaims, furiously holding back tears as she unloads the rest of the dishes. 

“Do you want me to sign your forehead too?” I ask Hu, but he vehemently shakes his head until I put the brush down. 

Hu’s father comes in, still wearing his guard gear. “I’m afraid I must eat quickly and return to duty. We’re quite short-staffed.”

“You must be very busy,” I remark sympathetically. We all gather around the table to eat. The food is scrumptious: braised pork in brown sauce, pork dumplings, river prawns, hairy crab-stuffed oranges, greens and rice. It’s much better than eating baked pheasant. Long has a stack of scrolls next to his plate; he systematically picks up one, marks something in it, and puts it back down. Then he moves on to the next scroll, all while shoveling an enormous amount of food into his mouth. 

“Studying while you’re eating?” Hu teases.

Long scowls. “Just because you don’t care about the imperial examinations doesn’t mean I don’t.”

Hu’s father gives a pointed glance at Long. “I haven’t agreed to let you take it yet.”

“Because the emperor killed our mother and conspired with Anglian mercenaries, blah blah blah,” Long rolls his eyes. “As if! You were probably hallucinating. You’re lucky this isn’t a big town, or else you would have been hanged for treason against the glorious Jun Dynasty.”

Hu cuts in. “You were there with me that day. You saw the mercenary’s face, and the Emperor’s seal he was carrying. That evidence is irrefutable! We’ve been estranged from the government’s affairs for so many years, yet you still buy into their propaganda. We need to rise up against the corrupt Emperor.”

Long rolls his eyes. “Next you’re going to tell me we should vote for whoever our emperor is.”

“But we should! Democracy is a right of the people.” 

“Where do you get such weird ideas? Every kingdom we know of is either a monarchy or a dictatorship. Have you ever heard of a system where people actually vote for their leader that has worked?”

Hu shrugs. “Maybe in the future, people will rebel against their corrupt rulers and establish a country for the people, by the people.”

“What do you think, Lisu? Your father used to be a court official, right?” Long pleads to me. 

“Well,” I say carefully, so as not to offend Hu. “No offense, but I do think Long is right. It would be such a mess if people voted for their leaders, because then corrupt people could trick people into voting for them.”

“And yet many monarchies are full of corrupt leaders too,” Hu rebukes. The room simmers with tension, and Long looks like he’s about to slap Hu, until Yan cuts in cheerfully. “Guys, taste this chestnut cake I made!”

She quickly doles out slices of the rich brown confectionary. Everyone hastily picks up their forks and tastes the cake. 

“It tastes good,” Hu praises his sister. “You’re getting better at baking.”

And just like that, the tension is resolved. It turns out Yan is good at averting the daily arguments between her two brothers, although I bet if I tried I could do better. Hu’s father laughs and remarks that Long can talk about politics when he’s actually become a court official, and Hu slaps Long on the back good-naturedly. We talk for a while longer, until it’s become quite late.

“We should go to bed,” I say, excited at the prospect of sleeping with Hu.

“Go ahead, I think I’ll help Yan wash the dishes,” Hu replies.

Reluctantly, I head to the guest room without him. Having been through such a journey, I quickly fall asleep. I don’t know if Hu ever comes to our room.

—

We leave early the next morning, equipped with more of Yan’s cakes and hot water bottles. Long doesn’t come out to meet us, as he’s in his room buried in the mountain of scrolls he has to study before the examination tomorrow. After our conversation at dinner, Hu’s Father reluctantly agreed to sign him up for the examinations, which has Long in even more of a studying frenzy. Hu gives his father and sister a hug, and we lead the horse outside the huge double gates. The doors clang shut, and soon we’re racing through the dark forests again, speeding our way back to Fulian. I’m not so worried as I was coming here, as we didn’t meet any monsters or peculiar instances on our way to Luoyang. Again, we make camp, but this time we have leftovers from dinner to eat instead of pheasant. We’re huddling next to the fire, trying to warm our hands from the bitter cold, when we hear voices coming our way. Hu immediately pulls me behind a tree, stamping out the fire and obscuring our presence. He leads our horse a ways away from the grove, retethering it to another tree. 

“What are you doing?” I ask him.

“Shh, be quiet,” he hisses. “Chances are, they’re a bandit or thief.”

We continue to crouch behind the tree. The voices come closer, enough so that their words become intelligible. I can make out two distinct voices, both of whom are speaking English. Naturally, being a gifted polyglot, I can understand them. 

“I told you this isn’t the right way, yet you didn’t listen-”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get us out of here.”

“You said that an hour ago and we’re still horribly lost!”

“Calm down, we haven’t been gone that long.”

“That long?? We’ve been lost for half of the day! Vofola and the others must be worried sick!”

Two Anglians come into view: an elf and a human. The human peers around the grove until his eyes land on the ashes where our fire used to be. 

“Someone was here recently. They might still be nearby,” the human says. The elf is immediately alert, drawing out a long thin stick emblazoned with strange symbols. 

“It might be an enemy,” the elf says, scowling. “Be careful.”

“Or they could be a Jun citizen who knows their way through the forests,” the human says calmly. “Let’s see if they’re still around.”

Suddenly, the bushes start rustling, as if someone is making their way through them. The Anglian pair turns towards the sound, and the human draws out a sword, pointing it at the bushes. A little girl wearing tattered rags tumbles out. Her face is scratched and bloody from the thorns and she’s horribly thin

“Please help me, I’ve been lost in the forest with no food for so long,” she says in a pitiful voice. The human’s eyes soften, and he retracts his sword.

“Of course we can spare some food,” he says sympathetically before reaching into his bag to procure a hunk of bread. 

“What? We might be lost for a long time, and you’re giving our food away?” the elf scowls. He’s about to say something else, but the human gives him a warning look and holds out the piece of bread to the girl. 

The girl gratefully reaches her hands out to receive it, which causes her to turn ever so slightly, revealing a curling, graceful tail trailing out from under her dress. Wait. A tail? This isn’t a normal girl. I remember what Hu told me a few days ago, about how animals and plants could cultivate and become gods but were usually malicious. Which means this girl is most likely a yao. Hu realizes the same time I do, and he reaches into his pack to bring out his bow while I jump out from behind the tree and scream, “Don’t trust her! She’s a monster!”

The human and elf turn towards me, bewildered, and the elf points his stick at me. Behind them, the girl starts laughing maniacally. “Clever human, figuring out my disguise so quickly. Unfortunately, it’s too late.”

The girl starts shifting: growing bigger, sprouting pointed black ears, her eyes turning into slitted pupils like a cat. A cat yao. My prediction about an evil rabbit wanting to kill me wasn’t so off after all. “So many high level cultivators gathered in one place. What a meal this will be. This will speed up my cultivation process by at least ten years!” 

Then she leaps towards the elf and attacks.