Three-legged Crow City.
Lotus petals sailed above Three-Legged Crow's Valleys, distant rivers glistening like the pearly sky.
In this reflection, temples, courtyards, and towering pagodas appeared, reaching the heavenly clouds.
The elders, younglings, and middle-aged navigated through the bustling town and weaved through vendors, hawking and bartering. Amongst these simple mortals walked immortals—cultivators.
Their very presence demanded reverence, eyes colored with jade lights. Noble robes of a myriad colors appeared everywhere. Mythical emblems kissed by the elements and ordained by secret elders.
Their confident expressions spoke volumes about their strength and status; this was a city where they frequented often; one could even say it was a city of cultivators. And here, if you weren't a cultivator, you would quickly fall into mediocrity.
One who had passed and fallen below it lay in the shadow of a hastily constructed roof. Her stomach growled, and she grabbed it, as if attempting to quiet it down.
"Hungry.." Mei Lin mumbled. Through her adolescent eyes, she saw the more affluent townspeople eat, jealousy in the tone of her stomach's growling.
Sat on the cobblestone outside a busy restaurant, she tried to resist the mouth-watering smells wafting into her nose. She had to.. to go into that restaurant where only the legendary cultivators and nobles visited—she wouldn't even dream of it.
Even if it had been days since her last meal, which was leftovers of leftovers.
The poor were not shown pity here in this city; she knew it all too well, the long scar across her dirt-covered face an imprinted memory.
"May I sit here?" She turned her head in the direction of the voice; it came from a beggar just as raggedly dressed as her, though he smelled a hundred times worse.
His raven hair was unekpt, resembling an old mop, but his ocean eyes were oddly sharp.
Combined with his defined contours, even underneath layers of dirt, he was "handsome." Mei Lin stammered absentmindedly, catching herself soon after with a tinge of red on her face.
"S-sorry!" She bowed her head slightly in embarrassment.
Zhihui looked at this and said in a gentle tone, "I'll take that as a yes." He sat down and brought out his own wooden bowl from underneath his worn-and-torn robes before continuing, "What's your name?"
Mei Lin avoided his gaze, hesitating; she was shy by nature, and her life as a beggar only made her more reclusive. But for some odd reason, her apprehension toward this stranger didn't awaken in the presence of this strange beggar.
After a short moment of silence, she spoke in a voice so low it could barely be called a whisper. "Mei Lin," she muttered, staring down at the wooden bowl in hand, not expecting that the stranger beggar would hear her.
"Mei Lin, it's a nice name." Zhihui spoke softly, his smile radiating warmth.
Mei Lin stayed silent; she had already spoken more than usual. However, the strange beggar didn't seem to mind her lack of response, reaching his hand into his robes again as he spoke.
"Mei Lin, are you hungry?" He said, holding a piece of bread the size of his palm, stale with bits of green on it.
The poor girl's head whipped to the side almost instinctively. Her eyes flickered with anticipation, focused intently on the food in the beggar's palm.
Her lips made no movements, slightly on guard now that free food, which was a dream in her world, had come into play.
So her stomach answered for her, growling its frustrations as if to say, "Am I hungry? I'm starving, damn it!" Its tone is grumpy and baleful.
The words of the belly echoed through Zhihui's ears, and he chuckled. "Alright, tell me all you know about this city, and I'll make sure you eat your fill." He toned, a gentle smile creasing his face.
Mei Lin stared at him with watery eyes. In truth, like many other beggars, she hadn't eaten in days. Often she would rummage through garbage for scraps, but this week, for reasons she didn't know why, there were a lot more cultivators in the city.
Especially the bad ones, which she identified as the ones in black-and-dark crimson robes with a blood-eyed raven insignia on their shoulder. She had seen another beggar her age scouring through the garbage get caught and taken away by one of these bad ones, never to be seen again.
To Mei, a 10-year-old girl who had lost her family to illness, food was her lifeline and the only path to survival. Unlike the cultivators, who could go weeks without eating by relying on their stronger life force, for her, a couple more days like this and the inevitable would happen.
Her gaze swept past the stone-hard-looking bread and into the eyes of the strange beggar. "Ok," she whispered with a nod. A small hope brightened her eyes.
Then, with her low, downhearted voice, she began to recount all that she knew about the city. Zhihui would sometimes point at different buildings and ask about them; other times he'd ask about the passersby. To all which Mei Lin answered the best she could, the flame of hope in her eyes burned brighter with each passing second.
Even though an ordinary person would have trouble both hearing and understanding her murmurs, Zhihui, having heightened senses, could make everything out clearly, making his own deductions off of the small information she gave.
An unbiased opinion was what he was looking for, and who else but a beggar could fit this role better?
"I see." Zhihui squinted his eyes and gestured towards the restaurant.
"The bad ones you mentioned are the ones wearing the black robes, right? With that evil-looking crow badge," he said, to which Mei Lin replied with a slow nod, her eyes on the ground, away from the direction of the bad ones.
'The bloodlust sect, huh? Their clothing fits the name well, and the gangsters from earth couldn't hold a candle to these guys when it comes to ugly expressions.' Zhihui thought, his eyes moving to a group of cultivators dressed in navy blue robes—three young women and two men—walking into the restaurant.
"And those are? The good ones you mentioned?" He turned to look at Mei Lien. She raised her head and traced his grace, responding with a less-scared nod.
Thoughts danced within Zhihui's mind as his eyes twinkled. Soon the gray hue departed from his irises, leaving a grin behind.
Mei Lin's eyes raced back and forth from the ground to the piece of bread in Zhihui's hands with expectancy.
The short encounter with the strange beggar had given her a bit of hope; from the small conversation, she had the impression that the strange beggar wasn't a bad person.
He didn't give her the harmful looks the others did, and his voice was warm when he spoke.
He was a gentle person, she thought, different from the others.
Very different.
Staring at the restaurant with a grin on his face, Zhihui crushed the bread in his palm, reducing it to crumbs.
Mei Lin watched the crumbs fall to the ground with widened eyes and a tightened heart.
She was surprised; however, she was willing. Even if the crumbs were now submerged in dirt, she could gather them together; after all, eating scraps and leftovers wasn't new to her.
She stretched her hand out in the direction of the remnants and abruptly froze.
"This would be my first proper meal. I wonder what they've got." Zhihui said licking his lips, his feet rubbing the crumbs into the dirt, along with the last ember of hope in Mei Lin's eyes.
Her heart sank into the ground, a sick feeling bubbling up in her stomach. Mei Lin buried her head into her lap and quietly whimpered. Despair blossomed within, nourished by the flowing, cold tears.
Even under the scorching bright sun, Mei Lin's body was cold and shaking. The world around her had turned dark, and she felt more alone than ever, but more than anything, she felt stupid.
Zhihui gazed down at the shivering young girl, and, with a movement so quick and subtle that she barely noticed, he swept her off the ground and into his arms, carrying her as if she were a princess.
"Can you smell that?" Zhihui muttered, the heavenly aromas wafting into his nose as he inhaled deeply. "It's the smell of free food."
With owl-wide, reddened eyes, she stared into the two blue pools of the young boy, confused. "Where are you taking me?" She scrambled together the scraps of courage she had and asked.
Zhihui raised a brow in response, saying, "I said you'd eat your fill."
"So that's what you're going to do, heheh, and I will too." He elaborated, a mischevous smile playing on his face as he walked towards the restaurant.