Chapter 12: Chapter 10: Daydream at the Dinner Table

The white and green clothed stranger had seemed to have vanished like an arrow that darted ahead of them as they followed the shrieking. The shadow throwing trees clustered angrily, branches swooping low with twig-talons and threatening to knock Li Baobao’s head off as he pursued the stranger along with Rui Yifu and the skinny raggedy short haired man who was shrieking “BOSS COME BACK!” at the top of his lungs.

 

Li Baobao caught the man ahead as glimpses of white fabric hurtled through the overgrown trees and clawing bushes, as if they just moved aside for his passage. The thinner man that still yelled stumbled and ducked out of the way of the arbor obstacles while Rui Yifu seemed to move almost as swiftly as the white wraith ahead of them.

 

The scream was piercing now and joined by loud squealing, Li Baobao dashed past the tree line into a corpse scattered clearing to catch a white glint in the sunlight as Liu Xie swiftly severed the arms of a haggard looking masked thing…

 

Li Baobao rubbed his eyes as his vision seemed to swim with a phantasm of a now armless masked bandit as well as a wretched looking thing with only a toothy maw upon its face that howled in pain as thick darkened blood splattered on the ground.

 

Liu Xie turned his head towards them, “grab her and run!” He yelled, as a symphony of snarls that sounded nearly human began pouring out through the recesses between the trees.

 

With barely a thought, Li Baobao pushed himself forward with all his strength to snatch the tiny body from the ground.

 

“Master Li! This way!” Rui Yifu called out.

 

He followed the voice as fast as his legs would take him, stumbling past the rotted corpses on the ground. Stains of red were enveloping his sleeves and chest and his hand pressed against something smooth beneath the torn flesh, something that threatened to spill over his arms.

 

Between the trees in the shafts of light that fell from the canopy he could catch glances of more masked mangy figures, their bodies crouched and long talon like fingers clinging to the wood. Li Baobao screamed prayers to the Amber Emperor as he watched them swarm outwards towards him.

 

His legs screamed at him, threatening to betray him with every step in revolt against being used for such excessive work. Even though his heart was racing, his mind screaming, his arms straining beneath the delicate half-dead child that continued to bleed out, he kept running.

 

One awful creature lunged downwards so he attempted to throw himself and the limp and cold body in his arms into a roll onto to smash into a tree with enough force he heard something below him wetly crack.

 

He had landed right on top of the child who yet still clung stubbornly to life. Quickly wrapping his arms back around her he pulled her back into him as he turned to see the fiend crouched down, howling in pain as a jade flame emanated from its back. The flames wrapping licks of fire around its limbs that popped and snapped being folded behind its back as easily as dough.

 

Behind it stood Rui Yifu, quivering and pale with his hand still limply outstretched before he withdrew it and took a step towards the other two, before a blade narrowly missed slicing into him. The sword dug itself into the monster with a sharp ‘sclurch’, more blood pouring onto the ground as it sank its too-human hands into the ground in some desperate attempt to get at Li Baobao. Its body violently convulsed before it slackened.

 

Li Baobao looked in the direction of where the sword had been flung from to see a blood drenched apparition dragging the white faced and whimpering body of the skinny short haired man from earlier, “the next rule of revenge is to be aware of your surroundings, Bo.”

 

The voice was familiar. It was the man who had convinced him to climb down the tree. Li Baobao feebly tried to hold the child up to him, only for her to slip from his wet arms and land back in his lap, red hair and blood indistinguishable from each other. In the sunlight, something pale pink glittered from the wound like fat wet noodles. He felt something crawl from his heart into his throat as he realized what they were. “I… I’m sorry…” he whispered, although to either the man or the girl he couldn’t say

 

The man’s eyes turned downwards to the torn body in Li Baobao’s lap. “.......Idony…”

 

“...-much about him.”

 

Li Baobao looked away from the red soup to see his mother leaning near his table, the hundreds of pearls upon her clothes gently clicking together as she did so. She tipped her head to the side, giving him a concerned frown. “Is something wrong?”

 

“Mmm,” Li Baobao thought on whether to tell the elderly woman the truth or not. Was it right for a woman, especially a woman at her advanced age of forty six, to know what had happened in the forest? What if she had a heart attack!? “No, I was just… lost in thought.”

 

“Well make sure you can find your way back,” she teased gently before she returned to whispering something to his quite elderly father who sat at his own table quietly eating his pre-mashed sprouts and brown rice and nodding along to the words spoken into his ear. Behind him servants busied themselves going in and out from behind the silk screen painting of a heroic ancestor battling a massive serpent with gold coins for scales.

 

He looked back around at the other tables within what his mother liked to term ‘the larger parlor’, although it was simply a large room reserved for feasts when the family was together. It was sparse except for its blue lacquered tables and a few paintings upon the walls showing various exploits of the Jade Prince or the Bridge Water Sage. In his childhood he remembered there being a few rusted weapons kept at the walls as well until his mother put her foot down. He could count all eighteen of his brothers, and their wives, and their sons, sitting at their own tables and still slowly crawling through the ends of their own meals. Rui Yifu was sitting at another table chatting with two male servants, his eyes occasionally glancing over at Li Baobao, the matron and patron of the Li family, and then back at Liu Xie.

 

Liu Xie himself was sitting at a table somewhat closer to the Li’s. His food wasn’t the deep and rich stews or freshly made fruit pastes, the three different kinds of noodles, or the braised fish. Instead it seemed that he only had a simple bowl of rice and a cup of water, like a typical pilgrim (if an honored one), and Li Baobao watched as he handed it over to Bo, who was given no table and told to sit next to Liu Xie as if he were some sort of dog. Li Baobao frowned at the rudeness of doing such to a guest, and was soon slinking onto his feet with the bowl of his own untouched stew and slipping over to them as his family was distracted with each other or their spouses and children in some form.

 

“Would you like this?” He asked, holding the stew out to Bo. Bo stared at it for but a second before he quickly grabbed it from his hands. Liu Xie’s gaze narrowed at Bo briefly.

 

“...Thank you!” Bo gave Li Baobao a weird smile, as if his face’s perpetual scowl had become etched on his bones. He then dumped the bowl of rice unceremoniously into the stew which he began quickly scarfing down.

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“Master Li Baobao, it’s not good to feed dogs at the table, they might think they belong there,” Rui Yifu’s voice spoke gently. Li Baobao turned around to find the slender-looking man standing behind him with his poetry covered fan in front of his face.

 

“Dogs? There’s no dogs in here,” Li Baobao replied in confusion as he looked back at Liu Xie and Bo.

 

“Can you not be shitty for maybe an hour?” Bo asked with a mouth full of food.

 

“If you two are going to argue it would be better to do it outside of this room,” Liu Xie said while looking past Li Baobao and Rui to stare at the rest of the assembled Li family that had converged upon their patriarch’s table. He looked back at Li Baobao, “should you go join them?”

 

“Oh no, they’re asking him for permission for certain things, blessings on new acquisitions or deals,” Li Baobao replied suddenly feeling a bit flustered, “I just… I really just go to the nearby towns to deliver his messages and negotiate small deals on his behalf, I don’t actually do-”

 

Rui Yifu rested a pale hand on Li Baobao’s shoulder, nails creeping deep into the fabric, “nonsense! You do a perfectly respectable service for your father as the youngest son!” His heart swelled slightly with the encouraging words.

 

“...You have a lot of brothers,” Liu Xie observed. “When they were being introduced, I lost count.”

 

Li Baobao chuckled, “to be honest, sometimes I think my father does too!”

 

“No sisters?”

 

“Eh… no… well,” he sighed as he folded his hands into his sleeves. The sound of Bo continuing to consume the rice-and-stew mixture at a grotesque speed barely blipped in his thoughts as they instead turned to a few hazy memories of his weeping tired mother. “There were some, but they didn’t live past their first hundred days…” The hand on his shoulder squeezed comfortingly. “My father says it’s for the best,” Li Baobao gave a half-hearted shrug. “As it is said in the 676 Pages of the Bridge Water Sage, ‘raising a daughter is like tending to another man’s field’.”

 

Liu Xie rested his chin in the palm of his hand, “what a terrible saying…” he was quiet for a moment before he chose to speak more, “how is Idony?”

 

“Oh, she’s doing better, she’s awake! Did you not… visit her?” Li Baobao asked in concern. He still did not understand how the two were related besides some vague mutterings of finding her ‘in the snow’, but he felt it rude to press the matter. Especially since at the time they were desperately trying to staunch the bleeding. He felt his stomach curdle at the very memory.

 

“I did, but it seemed that she was more willing to talk to her Gege than to me.”

 

“...When I was a little boy, sometimes I would be… a bit bratty… with my own parents when upset,” Li Baobao said while wondering if it would be right to touch Liu Xie’s shoulder like Rui Yifu held his. “I’m sure that after everything that’s happened to her she’s just-” he paused. “Wait she told you I’m ‘Gege’?”

 

“I think she believes that’s your actual name,” Liu Xie looked half-amused by the thought before his face lapsed back into a small frown. “She’s angry with me and has every right to be,” he sighed, his voice barely audible over Bo’s munching.

 

“I can’t imagine why you seem to be so good with childcare! Her wan and thin appearance was surely just from blood loss and her intestines being exposed,” Rui Yifu said before turning to look at the hungry man beside Liu Xie, “Bo can’t you eat properly?”

 

“Yes! You couldn’t have known there was a nest of those monsters in that forest, I thought they were simply bandits at first,” Li Baobao nodded his head at Liu Xie and gave him a smile, “you are welcome to continue staying until she’s fully recovered.”

 

“But father-!”

 

The group turned to look at one of the men that surrounded the Li family head. Li Baobao recognized his twelfth brother, Zhongshu, and his wife were on their knees. “Oh no... “ Li Baobao covered his mouth. He had a feeling he knew what upset their father so.

 

“I will not hear anymore,” the wheezy voice of his father whispered out. “You have responsibilities and they must be attended to!”

 

Li Baobao turned to the others and placed his hands together, “we should… leave. I would not want to put any of my family’s burdens upon you. My brother is a good man but he has a small problem with impulse decisions.”

 

“He gambles often and poorly, there is no shame in admitting that,” Rui Yifu elaborated. “His own vices simply highlight your virtues, master, and you could use that.”

 

“Oh I would prefer to not use someone’s misfortunes,” Li Baobao answered softly while Liu Xie got up, dragging Bo onto his feet as the man finished the bowl of rice and stew. Li Baobao felt the rest of the dinner party pass him by, lost in his own thoughts.

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