It took two days for Liu Liangzhe to bury all the bodies that had been so callously sacrificed in his name. The poor old man had patiently waited, and even fed them the humble rations he had for himself. Such kindness could not go unpaid. So Liu Liangzhe accompanied the man to the nearest standing village. The quant place they found themselves in lacked the refuse of Wufatian, but it also lacked the luxury. These were very sparing people, with little to offer, but there was an establishment that functioned as an inn. This was an opportunity that could not be wasted.
The party of three entered through the doors. A man with faded blue-violet robes stepped up to greet them, and a woman in a similarly coloured attire followed behind him. She was thin and pointy all over her face, her hair was brittle and seemed to just break in certain places. She looked like a dying dandelion.
"We welcome the young masters to our humble inn," the man said, and the woman, most likely his wife, bowed as well. People were polite when Liu Liangzhe was first alive, when he was mortal before his entombment, but he realized that these people seemed even more polite than he was used to. He wasn't sure how to behave, and he bowed in return.
"Thank you," he said before he turned to his guest. "Please, order whatever you'd like to eat. My treat."
"But, gongzi, how?" the man they had been walking with asked. This man could easily be mistaken for a monk, and the fact he carried a monk's spade did nothing to discourage Liu Liangzhe of that notion, especially having been outside such a wretched place as Wufatian. Lu Liangzhe settled the boy in his arms, holding him with one arm wrapped under his bum, before he dug inside his black robes and pulled free a handful of silver jewelry.
"My… associates didn't return empty handed from their… assignment," he said, and that seemed to satisfy the man. In actuality, his horde of walking corpses had looted the thieves they slaughtered -- but that didn't sound like something a monk would approve of. The woman escorted them all to a small table that could comfortable sit four, a low lying wooden table made of dark wood. There were a mismatched assortment of cushions at each side, and Liu Liangzhe sat on one and set his newest charge beside him. The monk sat across from him as well, lying his spade to the ground beside them rather than holding it on his back.
"What you did back at Wufatian," the monk said, "I haven't seen a technique used like that in my life, but I've heard about it. They said that the Diyu Lord was tainting that lake, and I went to bless the people there. They rejected my blessing, but… while I've been rejected often, I will always help where I am needed."
The woman returned with a pot of tea and dishes that she set down for them. She kneeled nearby and poured their first cups for them. As she bowed and left, the boy from the temple grabbed his steaming tea cup and immediately went to drink it. Liu Liangzhe put his hand against his mouth, letting his palm be scalded instead of the boy's mouth. He gingerly plucked the cup from the boy.
"Patience. You should let it cool first, or you'll burn yourself," he said. How long had this child been without? Had the monk not seen him? Had he seen an urchin in need of help and deemed his fear of a stranger as rejection? He kept the judgement he passed out of his tone -- that was not his place. "Anyway, I'm glad you were there, then. I suppose we will go our separate ways after this. A monk cannot be seen with a fiend like me, of course."
"A fiend like you?" the monk asked. "Well, I thought you were just a rogue cultivator who dabbled in different traditions. While unorthodox, I can't say that you've done anything wrong. You acted… well, it may be sacrilegious to say, but you acted almost like a righteous deity in Wufatian."
"A righteous deity, huh?" he asked with a small laugh. "I'd never be so presumptuous to call myself such a thing. If anything, I don't wish to be something of that calibre. I will simply remain Liu Liangzhe, the teacher and father of this boy I found." He wasn't going to boast about how he saved the boy, or how he single handedly acted like a deity, according to the monk across from him. Rather, he just waited for the woman to come back and for the monk to order what he liked, and enough for all of them to share. There was something wholesome that he had missed in his final days of life, all that time ago, about sharing a meal with people.
"So, can you tell me your name?" he asked the boy that joined him. The boy himself had been very quiet, too quiet for a child of his age. He remembered meeting children in his youth and after and they were all boisterous and loud, or shy and meek, but they always said at least one or two words abouts something. This boy hadn't uttered a single sound.
Instead of responding, the boy just shook his head. The monk hummed and sipped his tea, observing them in silence.
"Well, what should I call you if you won't tell me your name?" he asked, his voice was light and playful. He didn't want this child to fear him, which is exactly what could have happened, especially after the men in Wufatian had tried to sacrifice the boy in his name. The boy opened his mouth, and a sound came out, a croak. He closed his lips and pointed to his mouth before he shook his head again. "You're a mute?" he asked, although in hindsight a mute wouldn't be able to confirm it. The boy shrugged his shoulders.
But when the boy opened his mouth, something seemed off. He had seen many open mouths, almost entirely when corpses, their jaws broken and loose, mostly trying to eat him before he invented his infamous techniques, and after that, they often looked like that because their muscles had slackened before they tightened to make them rigid, keeping their jaws open.
"Can you open your mouth again?" he asked, and the monk's eyes narrowed, but the man said nothing. For clarification, Liu Liangzhe continued with, "I swear no harm will come to you."
The boy in question opened his mouth again, a bit wider, and Liu Liangzhe saw what was wrong. The boy had no tongue. It was a clean severance, too, near the back. That meant it had been done on purpose. He pushed the boy's jaw closed with a gentle touch and then he stroked the boy's matted hair down the back. For some reason, he had known this boy only for a few days, a silent boy who showed him little personality, yet every small thing that Liu Liangzhe learned, only drove him to more fiercely protect this greatly-wronged child.
"Can he write?" the monk suddenly asked, as Liu Liangzhe remained without words. Liu Liangzhe turned to the boy, who nodded head frantically. The monk turned to dig in the satchel he carried and pulled out a scrap of talisman paper, long since stained with dried blood, likely of a chicken, and then he pulled out a brush. The boy grabbed everything with fervour and held the brush, awaiting ink. The monk presented a small pot of grounded ink and the boy dipped the brush with the steady hand of a calligrapher before he held his baggy sleeve up. These were not skills he learned on his own, someone had taught him how to do this. Someone with some form of nobility in their own background. The boy slowly but surely wrote his name with somewhat unsteady lines, but far more confident than Liu Liangzhe had otherwise expected from a homeless child.
Liu Liangzhe held the paper and read out loud, "Shu Xiaolin?" The boy nodded his head and set the brush down. "Shu Xiaolin," he repeated. "Any relation to Shu Mengya Daozhang ?" The boy looked confused, but that was to be expected. If he was over a thousand years old, then Shu Mengya wouldn't be around anymore. The monk however didn't seem nearly as confused, his eyes narrowing.
"What do you know of Shu Mengya Daozhang?" the monk asked him as he carefully took his things back and replaced them in his satchel. Clearly the old man was curious, but was his curiosity tainted by suspicion? Liu Liangzhe had a difficult time reading the monk mostly because he was still of the idea that things had to have changed somewhat after his 'death.'
"She was the founder of the Wood Sect, and she was a very strong cultivator. Some whispered she was going to ascend one day, and was the most likely to do so of the founders of the six major sects," he said. He didn't tell the man about how Shu Mengya had spoken out in his defense, her and another cultivator, the only two among their peers that had decided that he was ill, not evil. She had still expected him to die of old age in his imprisonment, and if not for the energy that now coursed within him, dark and twisted, and inhuman in a way that meant that he may not be mortal either, he would have thought this was just a dream as he awaited punishment or reincarnation. He was alive, however, he could feel, taste, smell, and whatnot, but… something had happened, something not even the brilliant architect, the one who constructed the array that kept his chains tight around his coffin, Shu Mengya could have foreseen.
"She spoke on behalf of the infamous Diyu Lord, the man who killed thousands of people every few months. A corpse raiser, a ghost speaker, a demon in human skin," the monk said, his voice lower now, less trusting than it was before.
"What a multifaceted woman, I suppose," Liu Liangzhe said. Their food was promptly served, and while Shu Xiaolin had rushed to start shoving pieces of lotus root into what had to be his starving belly, Liu Liangzhe regretted having to hold him back. "I'm not going to starve you, Xiaolin, I'm just trying to keep you from burning yourself." He repeated this many times as he tried to cool the food with his own rushed blowing. Deeming it cool enough, he let the boy have it. The soup and the plate of braised lotus and carrots didn't last long at all.
The monk stood up after he was finished eating, even though Shu Xiaolin and Liu Liangzhe weren't nearly done.
"I offer my deepest apologies for leaving so abruptly, but I've lingered for too long as it is," the man said. Liu Liangzhe nodded to him, and the man headed to the door. He turned to watch as Liu Liangzhe fixed Shu Xiaolin's grip on his chopsticks, and with a sigh he exited the building. Liu Liangzhe was grateful for the monk to leave, a suspicious person would be a no good travel companion, and could make his life much more difficult.
"You know what? We'll stay here tonight, if they have a room. I'll brush your hair, because it certainly needs it… I hate to ask, but do you have any parents?" The boy shrugged as he stuffed more food in his mouth. "Well, that's alright, I'll care for you from now on. Just you and me, kiddo."