In a small bedroom in the villa in Bufa City, Wu Ling quietly played zither in Su Xiang's room while she continued to recover from her injuries after fighting in the pit. Yu Jinqi had said the wounds weren't very serious and that she'd recover in just a few days, but that didn't stop Wu Ling from cooking for her and playing zither to help her rest while she recovered.
He'd even brought Yue along with him to keep his sworn sister company while she slept. Some days, he wondered whether he could even consider the Silver Snow Rabbit he'd painted to be his own Guardian Beast. As he watched the furry rabbit snuggling close to Su Xiang, he felt like he'd lost the battle for her affection entirely.
Of course, Hou wasn't much better. The gluttonous Golden Crow would fawn over anyone who filled his belly with spirit crystals and tasty flames. Lately, that meant that Hou clung to Jin Wuya whenever possible but he'd been just as clingy with Alchemist Huang Yeyan when they'd traveled together. Unlike Yue who seemed to prefer the company of women who would dote on her, Hou only cared that someone filled his belly!
"I can hear your zither," Su Xiang said softly, her sapphire eyes fluttering open and a smile tugging at the corner of her lips. "Even in my dreams. Thank you, Brother Ling."
"It's 'Sister Qianhu,'" Wu Ling corrected as he stood to check on Su Xiang. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm better," Su Xiang said, reaching for a cup of water beside the bed before wincing in pain when the movement tugged at the injuries on her shoulders. At the time, her blood had been too hot to notice and her focus too sharp to be stopped but the injuries San had inflicted during their battle were the worst she'd ever suffered.
"Here, let me," Wu Ling said quickly, helping her to sit up and take a drink. "Is that better?"
"Yes," she said after taking a long drink of water. "Sister Qianhu," she said after a moment. "When it's just the two of us, does the name really matter? Whether I call you one or the other, when we're alone like this, is it really important to use your new name when I've known you by the other for so much longer?"
"I didn't think it would," Wu Ling said after thinking for a few moments. "But, since reawakening, it does. It's hard to put into words. When I'm dressed like this, I'm not Wu Ling anymore, I'm Hua Qianhu. When I'm dressed the other way, it's the opposite. It's not like I'm two different people," he added quickly, seeing the concerned look on her face.
"It's more like, there are two overlapping circles. In the middle, most of the things that make me who I am belong to both Wu Ling and Hua Qianhu," he explained slowly. "At the edges, there are a few things that belong just to Wu Ling, or just to Hua Qianhu."
"Right now, it feels like nineteen parts in twenty belong to both Wu Ling and Hua Qianhu," he added, struggling to find a way to quantify the differences. "There isn't much of me that only belongs to one or the other."
"It wasn't like this before my reawakening," he said. "But Master warned me that with my new cultivation method, Hua Qianhu would have to become more than just a mask I wore."
"I'm starting to learn what that means," Wu Ling said softly, taking Su Xiang's hands in his own. "But one thing I know for sure. The part of me that's your sworn sibling, that part is right in the middle. No matter which guise I wear, you'll always be my sister."
"As long as that's true, then it's fine," Su Xiang said, her eyes glowing slightly when Wu Ling said he'd always be her sibling. Since that was true, the rest of the details didn't matter to her.
"Sister Qianhu," Su Xiang started to ask. "Since you mentioned your reawakening, I wanted to talk to you about my own. After yesterday, I've decided what I want my second path to be. I want your help so I can reawaken as an Artist."
"You want to be an Artist?" Wu Ling said, blinking several times. "Is it so you can better understand love?"
"Not exactly," Su Xiang said, shaking her head slightly. "It's because of the totem you gave me," she added, clutching the wolf totem that hung from her neck. "You put your feelings of wanting to help me when I'm injured into this wolf, and Little Red carried those feelings when I summoned him to help with my wounds," she explained.
"I'm dedicating my sword to Love," she continued, looking deeply into Wu Ling's silvery eyes. "But no matter how much I use it to protect others, a sword is a weapon of violence. It's a tool for killing. I want my expressions of love to be more than that. I want to be able to make something with my own hands, something that carries my feelings to the person I make it for."
"That's beautiful," Wu Ling said, pulling Su Xiang's hands toward his face and giving her fingers the lightest kiss. "So what is it you want to make with your hands? Is there an art you want to study?"
"You know I love soft things, like Yue," Su Xiang said, her face heating slightly as she stroked the fluffy rabbit that snuggled close to her chest. "I considered asking you to teach me how to knit, but then I thought that it might be too limiting for me without studying another path. I'm sure that if I asked Brother Fang, he'd teach me how to knit a formation into a quilt," she said with a light laugh. "But that's not what I want to learn."
"Instead," she said, her expression becoming more serious. "I want to learn to embroider. It'll let me add my art to anything from scarves to dresses or even the inner layers of armor. No matter what I embroider, I can give the people I love something soft to hold onto that contains a portion of my feelings for them. I think that would be the perfect art to express love outside of my swordsmanship."
"Why do I have a feeling that Sister Xiang has been thinking of this since long before she became a Soldier," Wu Ling teased. "But you know that Embroidery isn't one of my arts. I can't really teach you."
"So learn with me," Su Xiang said, a pout forming on her lips. "Didn't you say that you could learn at least eighteen arts with your cultivation method? Share one of those eighteen with me. You already share Zither and Painting with Sister Meifeng and you even share two arts with my Cousin Yao. Is Sister Qianhu so stingy she won't share an art with me?"
"Brat," Wu Ling teased, letting her hands go to poke her in the middle of the forehead. "Does that mean you want access to my embroidery manual too? Or do you want me to secure a manual for you from the Bamboo Silk House? Mistress Cixiu at the local chapterhouse is an Embroiderer, I'm sure she has a copy of at least one or two of the sect's manuals on embroidery."
"Could you, could you really share your manual with me?" Su Xiang asked, her eyes wide at Wu Ling's statement. She knew his manuals were far from ordinary and when she asked about sharing an art with him, she'd never considered that she could also practice the same manual.
Hearing him offer, however, how could she refuse the chance to practice the same manual as her sworn sibling? It would be even better than sharing an art!
"It should be possible," Wu Ling said. "I'll have to write it out for you. The method is the easy part," he explained. "It's probably not very different from zither. The method of cultivating with the zither is straightforward enough. The power of practicing the art comes from learning hundreds of songs and eventually creating your own."
"There are probably patterns for embroidery that I'll also need to copy out for you to practice as well," he explained. "I'm sure that, over time, we'll both learn dozens of patterns that the other one doesn't know, and we'll have even more patterns that we share. Would that work for you, Sister Xiang?"
"Yes," she said, grabbing his hands and holding them firmly. "That would be perfect."
"Tomorrow, I'll return to the Chapterhouse to see if the sect has responded to my letter," Wu Ling said. Truthfully, he was more interested in a response from Yao Meifeng, but he knew Su Xiang would understand even if he didn't say it.
"When I visit, I'll ask Madame Cixiu what we'll need to do for your reawakening," Wu Ling continued. "My master helped with mine, and I've never guided anyone else in a reawakening, but maybe she can provide some guidance or even help since you're becoming an Artist."
"Thank you, Sister Qianhu," Su Xaing said as she relaxed back into the soft cushions of her bed. "I'm sure that your sect won't help me for free. Whatever it costs, you have to tell me so I can pay it. You don't need to take on debts for me."
"Whatever it costs, we'll discuss it once I know," Wu Ling answered gently. "But first, you have to rest. Let Little Red look after you for a little bit while I cook something for you, and then we can talk about embroidery, all right?"
"Mmm," Su Xiang said with a short nod, pouring her energy into the totem she wore as a pendant and summoning the phantom Red Mist Wolf to tend her wounds. While she didn't technically need the support of the talisman after receiving treatment from Yu Jinqi, the touch of the phantom comforted her in ways that ordinary medicine never would.
Once she'd summoned the comforting wolf, Su Xiang quickly drifted back off to sleep as her body slowly recovered. One day, she hoped to be strong enough to face powerful opponents without spending days recovering from injuries, but for now, knowing she had Wu Ling's talisman, the time spent healing wasn't so bad.