E. Hyde's Archives

You are fifteen years old, You are fifteen years old, and you are the heir of a minor sect. You outperform many of the heirs of the great sects, though, and you wish you could be ranked among the sons instead of the daughters, just to make things fair.

You are fifteen years old, and your father’s second wife finally gives him a son. He stops seeking out second sons who might be persuaded to marry in.

You are fifteen years old, and your high cultivation makes you a sought-after bride. In the space of two seasons, you go from heir of a minor sect, to the betrothed of Sect Leader Wen.

Most would call that a step up. You try to see it that way, too.

It’s four years before he marries you. In that time your stepmother does her best to make a proper bride of you. Sect Leader Wen chose you for your cultivation, you counter, not your beauty or your deportment. Besides, enjoying night hunting doesn’t mean you’re not a woman—look at the Meishan Yu. That argument is as much with yourself as with your stepmother, and you’re not sure why. No one was saying you wanted to be a man.

“Sect Leader Wen wants you for the sons you’ll bear him,” your stepmother says. Yes, well. You don’t need to wear skirts to do that, either.

You are nineteen years old, and you are the second wife of Sect Leader Wen. But his first wife passed long ago—he is much older than you—and you’ll be the only Madam Wen.

You are nineteen years old, and you are poisoned on your wedding night. You burn the poison away with your golden core, then you throw back your veil and draw your sword. “Who’s trying to kill me?” you demand. “Face me like a man!” Then you falter. Why did you say that? In all likelihood it was not a man, isn’t that right? Poisonings and hidden attacks—?

Laughter rings out. Your husband is amused. So amused, in fact, that when he assigns you a bodyguard he gives you a soft-faced boy, some lesser son of a defunct sect, more inclined to be a doctor or a philosopher than a fighter. You’ll be the one protecting him, not the other way around.

You are nineteen years old, and you’re glad your husband agrees you don’t need protection.

You are twenty years old, and you are pregnant. Your husband, who let you go on night hunts alone in your first months of marriage—even wearing men’s clothing, as was your habit—now insists you remain in the Nightless City. (You had hoped, when you married, that your new husband might night hunt together with you, but when you expressed that wish, he only laughed and told you to enjoy your youth. He seemed pleased by the trophies you brought, though.)

Still, he’s given you freedom of the whole city, with only one exception: his private cultivation chamber, which you are never to enter.

As you cannot go out hunting, you take it upon yourself to train your useless bodyguard. He’s such a serious kid, putting everything he has into his new role, finding ways to adapt his spiritual training to combat. You wonder what it is about Sect Leader Wen, that you both accept your new roles without question. And when you think about that , you very briefly consider venturing into his cultivation chamber in secret, just to prove you can—but you are well aware what a profoundly stupid idea that would be.

You are twenty years old, and you are the mother of Sect Leader Wen’s firstborn son. It was a difficult birth, but you and the child both pulled through, and you’re eager for things to return to normal. But your husband won’t allow you to hire a wetnurse. “Better for the child’s cultivation if you do not,” Sect Leader Wen insists, and he would know, right? He’s well on his way to becoming an immortal, after all.

You suppose that’s fair enough. And it’s only for a couple of years.

“I can bring you medicine to stop the milk,” says your bodyguard, who still knows the pathways of the body. But you shake your head. With your cultivation as high as it is, your husband would know it wasn’t natural.

It’s odd, because aside from that comment, he doesn’t take any interest in his son at all.

You are twenty-two years old, and you’re going to start night hunting again, and you hate the way motherhood has softened your body. “How do you do it?” you ask your bodyguard. “You found a way to cultivate your body to make yourself look tougher—you do it when you have to train with the soldiers, did you think I didn’t notice?”

Your bodyguard pauses. “To make myself look... tougher,” he repeats.

“You’re not doing it now, so I know it’s not just that you’ve gotten older,” you say.

He closes his eyes and breathes deep. Ever so subtly, his face shifts from the soft boy’s face you met three years ago, to that of a man. His shoulders broaden too, and you’re not sure if he actually grows taller, or if he’s just suddenly—imposing enough that it seems that way.

“Exactly, that,” you say, pleased that he’s not trying to hide it from you.

“You would look—more like a man,” he says.

You shrug. “Better than looking more like a woman.”

He explains, then, that it’s a training of the body and not a disguise; that with a strong core it will become permanent. You’re supposed to consider that a downside, probably, but instead, it’s the first thrill of excitement you’ve felt in months.

You are twenty-three years old, and the day you tell your husband you’re pregnant with his second child, he announces he will retreat to the mountains to cultivate in seclusion.

“If he doesn’t want sons he could save me the trouble,” you gripe, which you know is unfair to A-Xu.

You step up to run the sect, because someone has to, and that’s when you discover how much your husband has neglected it across the past years. You knew he always focused more on his cultivation than on mundane matters, but to this extent? What the hell would it matter if he was immortal, if his sect fell apart around him?

You attend conferences and night hunts, even while you’re pregnant. You pay attention to the trade routes passing through Qishan; you win two more minor sects to your side. You wonder why you weren’t doing this all along.

Your second son is born, and you hire a wetnurse. You have a sect to run.

You are twenty-four years old and your second son is six months old and your husband comes back. He doesn’t ask after the boys and he doesn’t ask after the sect; he takes you to bed and takes you rougher than he ever did before, and his hands grab at your breasts and he flies into a rage. “What did you do to yourself?” he demands.

He—he was always fond of kissing your breasts and tasting your milk; you had thought it nothing more than an odd little sign he was human after all, but—

“I led your sect for you,” you say. “Do you think I could do that with a child at my chest?”

“Useless,” he mutters. “Useless!”

You can’t find him the next morning, and no one can tell you if he returned to the mountain or not, and you are going to enter his private cultivation chamber, and you should have done this long ago.

“Will you come with me?” you ask your bodyguard. He nods. It’s been a long time since he needed your protection.

“He wanted a bride with high cultivation,” you say, to yourself as much as to him. “He doesn’t care about sons. He wants...he wants my yin energy kept high,” you say. You’re ashamed it took you this many years to realize the truth staring you in the face.

“He wants a cauldron, not a wife,” says your bodyguard.

“If it’s true—” You pause. Even if it isn’t true, is the life of Madam Wen really the life you want? “Will you run away with me? Become rogue cultivators together?” He nods, even as you realize—that’s not what you want, either. What you want is the last year, to send your husband back to his mountain and lead the sect in his place. You didn’t realize until he showed up how much you’d been dreading his return.

Your sword is in your hand as you slide the door open and— “Leave! Go back! He’ll kill you!”

—and whatever you were expecting to find here, it wasn’t a woman.

She’s arrayed in an elegant bed, dressed in but a single layer of fine fabric. The lines in her face say she’s fifty, at least, but her breasts are somehow still swollen with milk. “The first Madam Wen,” you say, realizing.

“The second,” she says. You nod. “He already knows he can’t use you,” she says. “He has no reason to keep you alive if he finds you here.”

The first Madam Wen, alive all this time. Alive, but at what cost? “I’ll take you with me,” you say. “We’ll leave Qishan together.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t people gossip anymore? I can’t walk,” she says. “I was poisoned on my wedding night.”

Your blood runs cold. “I...also...”

This, you know, is where you should run. Where, like a story, you should narrowly escape the fate reserved for ambitious and curious women, where you should set aside your wants and content yourself with safety and a peaceful, silent life.

You aren’t going to do any of that.

You are going to kill him.

When Sect Leader Wen enters his cultivation chamber, your sword is already drawn. He has decades on you in experience but he’s out of practice, he hasn’t been on a night hunt in years, the only work he’s done for his high cultivation is—well, you’re not going to think about that. “You couldn’t kill me when I didn’t know you were trying; you surely can’t beat me now,” you say between attacks.

He casts you a withering glare. “I was never trying to kill you,” he says.

“And you failed at that, too.”

Finally you’ve shattered his composure. “You should have been perfect!” he screams. “I never got a drop from you! Why?!”

You don’t know and you don’t particularly care, but behind you, your bodyguard speaks up. “Did you consider, Sect Leader Wen, that your cauldron technique was developed for a woman?”

You freeze.

You are twenty-four years old and you are not a woman and furthermore, you never have been. The proof is right in front of you.

Sect Leader Wen takes the opening you gave him and lunges—not for you but past you, straight for your bodyguard. “You! You did this to her!”

“Zhuliu!” you cry out, but as you already knew, your bodyguard can take care of himself.

He doesn’t even need to use his sword.

Your bodyguard pulls his hand back from Sect Leader Wen’s chest and spares a glance at his face. No longer that of a near-immortal; lines turn to wrinkles, deepening impossibly fast. “No more golden core,” your bodyguard muses. “I wondered if that would happen.”

How old was he, you wonder? How many women—?

But now he’s nothing more than a helpless old man. And so, just as you said, you kill him.

“How did you know I was a man?” you ask your bodyguard, later.

He takes a long time to answer. Finally, “How did you not?” he returns, and you laugh. It’s a fair question. It’s so obvious now, in retrospect. Everything’s obvious in retrospect.

You are twenty-five years old, and you are the sect leader of the Qishan Wen, in your own name. A good name, you think, even if it raises questions. “Who is Wen Ruohan?” the other sects ask, and “Where did he come from?” and “He usurped the old sect leader—should we be worried?”

None of them ask what happened to Madam Wen. Perhaps if they did, you would be more inclined to answer.