CHAPTER 81: 81

"C’mon Doudou! Keep up! You’re always such a slowpoke!"

"W-wait for me!"

"I don’t wait for slowpokes!"

"Wai-!"

The little boy’s sandals caught the edge of the paving and the rest of him crashed to the ground. Pain stung all the way through both his legs and at the heels of his palms. He forced an eye open and saw the blurry shape of his older sister racing back toward him.

"Doudou!" she exclaimed, picking his small frame up in her arms. "Are you alright? Does it hurt? Let big sister see..."

The little boy held still as his big sister carefully examined his legs and arms. They were marked up by dust and the skin was red, but none of the areas showed signs of true internal damage.

But even so, the big sister turned and gestured for her little brother to get on her back. They had a long way to go before they got to the workshop.

...My senses came back to me slowly after breaking contact with the cool slab of jade and when I did, I found my face cold with tears.

I raised a hand and quickly wiped them away.

"Have you found it?" came Yidi’s voice from my phone. He’d lent me his SIM card while I took the teleportation spell to this mysterious cave Zhan was talking about.

"Here. Can you see it?" I asked as I tried to angle the phone’s camera to best capture the large slab of jade sitting against one wall of the cave. The place was surprisingly cool and I could already feel the chills coming up my legs. Hopefully I’d be able to get this done quick.

"Mm... It’s too blurry," was Yidi’s reply. "See if you can use the Shengnü app directly to input the data."

"Okay."

I lowered the phone and did as I was told and as I did, I saw Zhan’s curious face enter the range of Yidi’s laptop’s webcam. To make the whole process go along more smoothly, Yidi had relocated himself and his laptop into the room where Zhan was being held. Risky I know, but it didn’t feel like we had much of an option.

I finished capturing the left side of the slab, then moved to doing the front. "Do you have a sister, Zhan?" I asked.

Zhan immediately tensed and I saw that even Yidi got a little spooked by the intensity of it. "Why?" he asked. His tone was sharp and hard and for a moment I worried for Yidi’s safety.

"Oh, nothing," I said quickly. "Just, I saw like a vision or something when I touched the jade. Nothing bad, really. Just a big sister and a little brother..."

Zhan’s stern face relaxed somewhat. "Oh... I see..." His voice trailed off and I continued recording the jade. After a moment, he spoke again. "What did you see?"

I’d been expecting this question and was prepared to tell him exactly what I saw. It was a brief moment and didn’t take long to describe and I watched the screen carefully as I talked to gauge his response.

"Zhan and Doudou... Yes, Zhan is my older sister," he said after I was done.

Yidi’s head perked up. "Huh? But isn’t your name Zhan too? Doesn’t that get confusing?"

Zhan rolled his eyes. "My name as a child was Dou. I never received a proper adult name, so I used my sister’s instead."

I was done collecting data with the phone camera so I switched to using a little sensor Yidi had given me before taking the portal. "Are you," I began as I followed the on-screen instructions of where to hold the sensor and for how long, "older than you look?"

Zhan smirked. "Depends," he said. "Do you consider over two thousand ’old’?"

"Two-!" Yidi nearly knocked the laptop over. The memory I’d briefly glimpsed was set in some ancient place so I was prepared for the response, but poor Yidi was completely shocked. "You’re... you’re not a little kid?"

Zhan’s smirk disappeared, replaced by a glare. "Do kids normally talk like this?" he asked.

"I have no idea," replied Yidi. "I don’t know many kids." Honest to a fault.

Zhan sighed dramatically while Yidi looked confused and I suddenly felt like, instead of a small group of relative strangers (and adversarial strangers at that), we were a team that was working together. It felt like a step toward friendship.

The sensor in my hand beeped the final time, bringing me back from my thoughts.

"All done," I said to my phone. "So do I just..." I looked towards the part of the cave wall that was still shimmering.

"Yeah, just pop that back through the portal and I’ll get to analysing it," said Yidi.

I went to the wall, held the sensor in hand, then reached through.

"Got it," said Yidi and I felt the bit of tech leave my hand. I pulled my arm back to my side.

"How long will this take?" asked Zhan.

"Depending on how complicated the internal structure is, maybe five minutes to half an hour?" replied Yidi.

"That quick?" Both Zhan and I were surprised by that response.

"Yes...? Oh, but if it’s really complicated it may take an hour," Yidi said quickly, though I still noted the admiration in Zhan’s face.

"An hour huh... I suppose that’s enough time for me to convince you two to help me break the jade," said Zhan.

Yidi and I immediately perked up and I could tell Yidi was about to mention that Zhan had said before that he was going to wait until after we confirmed we could help him before telling us, so I spoke up instead. "I’m all ears."

I got the sense from Zhan that it had been a long time since he’d ever told this story, or that maybe he never had done before, and like getting a boulder going, it took a bit of momentum.

"My sister and I were born towards the end of the Kingdom of Shu1. I think, it’s known as Ancient Shu now," said Zhan. Yidi nodded but, thankfully, said nothing. "My family were artisans, many people were - bronze, gold, jade, ceramics, everything. My family worked with jade and we had skills to embue our works with spells. Compared to the things people do today with crystals and all that, what we did wasn’t anything fancy, but it was cutting edge for the time and we were well off, relatively."

"What happened?" Yidi asked quietly.

"What always happens," replied Zhan. "Everything ended. The king and his younger brother had a falling out and things got violent. The marquis 1

got backing from the Kingdom of Ba, then they brought in the Qin. The Ba were like us Shu, both from the modern Sichuan Basin, but the Qin..." He smiled, but there was no mirth in his eyes. "They were from the Central Plains and had fought every day to survive, so of course, we were taken over. But in those days before, when we still thought we could still have unity, everyone turned to making weapons, but what my family brought to the table was different, special."

This time when Zhan smiled there was pride in it.

"Have you heard of Soul Forging?" he asked.

I shook my head. Yidi thought a moment then also gave a negative.

"It’s a rather rare art these days," said Zhan, "but it was pioneered by my family back then. It involves placing a source of soul into a block of jade to draw the energy out of them. My family... we used this to create superpowered soldiers to turn the tide." He sighed. "But of course, in the end, we were still defeated."

"How does this relate to your sister?" asked Yidi. His tone suggested he had certain ideas about this. Zhan seemed to pick up on this.

"My sister and I were really from the branch family and by the time we were born, our country was already deep in conflict, so we were both sent to be trained to be warriors. My sister excelled and eventually received the honor of becoming one of those superpowered soldiers. I on the other hand... was slated to become the battery for her."

Yidi gasped. "That’s awful!"

"But she didn’t go through with it, did she?" I said. I’d seen the memory from the stone. I knew this sister would never hurt her brother in any way, not if she could help it.

Zhan shook his head. "No, she did not, though sometimes... I wish she had." Yidi and I were both silent as we waited for the tale to continue. "The day the city walls fell, and our battalion was deployed, she switched places with me. To make the process smoother, those being placed into the jade are made unconscious first, so I had no idea what she had done until I woke up. And by then, it was already too late."

Along with the memory had been a deep sadness, one that I hadn’t been able to pinpoint until now.

"I’m sorry," said Yidi quietly, echoing my sentiment.

Zhan shrugged. "What’s done is done. Shu is long gone, so is Ba, so is Qin. The world’s moved on. I’ve made my peace with it."

"And your sister..." I looked to the jade slab sitting all alone in the empty cave.

"I want to let her soul finally rest. Or at least, whatever is left of it."

And right on cue, Yidi’s laptop beeped.

"Shengnü’s finished the analysis!"

This, along with the later kingdoms mentioned (Ba and Qin), were real kingdoms in ancient times. Working with bronze, ceramics, and gold were also real. If you’re curious, I recommend looking up the archeological findings in Sanxingdui 三星堆.The marquis mentioned here was in fact the younger brother of the King of Shu. This happened in 316 BC.

Ancient Shu is written as 古蜀 or just 蜀, Ba is 巴国 or just 巴, and Qin is 秦国 or 秦. This Qin is the same kingdom that would eventually lead to the first emperor Qin Shihuang and the Qin Dynasty.

Oh, but all this talk about Soul Forging is just stuff I made up.