Hán

There are many legends about Master Dove. Some say he was always serene, like a cat perched on the rooftop, uncaring of the bustle below. Others say it took a great tragedy to get him to be so calm, that after suffering so badly early in life, nothing could faze him. The art depicts him as the closest to the immortal master, with silver hair, eyes always closed, grand white robes that flowed like a calm river seeking pacifism. Others depicted him as a force to be reckoned with. Whichever story someone listened to, Hán Yuè was beneath it, because he was immortal.

Hán's memories of the temple he called home in his childhood were of a cold, empty place. It was just him, with no one allowed to distract him from his studies except for his qi instructor, Yin Lihua - or Mistress Lihua, as she constantly reminded him. While his parents lived in a cozy house further down the mountain, the temple Hán inhabited sat solitary at the top, a short walk away. This temple was sparse and barren, its bland white stone walls adorned only with statues of the gods. Hán's world comprised just two rooms: the meditation chamber that doubled as his training and sleeping quarters, and the washroom, where he'd have to boil water using his qi to bathe himself with plant ash and rice water.

Hán had no memory of his mother, who had given him away to the village as soon as he could walk and talk. Instead, he remembered Mistress Lihua, a cruel and draining presence. She would disguise her rare affection behind screaming and the crack of her palm. Each night, she'd come to his room as he prepared for bed, and if she didn't find him meditating, she'd take away his blankets and open the windows. The bitter cold would keep Hán awake until he mastered enough qi to warm himself. Sometimes, he'd pretend to meditate just to avoid her wrath.

On some days, however, Hán could forget the abuse. He'd run to Mistress Lihua in the middle of the night, and she'd let him sit by her bedside, stroking his hair as he asked endless questions. In these moments, she would murmur that she knew he was destined for greatness, and that if he only listened to her, he could become a god.

"Why would I want to be a god?" he asked, tilting his head slightly. The movement caused his shaggy black hair to fall over his eyes.

The woman's crimson lips curled into the faintest of smiles. With a delicate hand, she swept Hán's locks away from his brow in an almost motherly gesture. "Because gods are perfect, precious one," she cooed, her words honeyed. "What child wouldn't dream of such heights?"

Hán worried his lower lip, considering her words. To be perfect - no flaws, no failings. The idea both entranced and terrified him. He met the woman's piercing gaze, emerald eyes brimming with trepidation. "Are you perfect?" he murmured, bracing for her displeasure.

But instead of rebuking him, the woman merely sighed, her breath warm against his cheek. Her fingers trailed along his jaw with practiced tenderness. "No, my sweet Han," she breathed. "But you?" A ghost of a smirk played across her features. "You will be."

“What if I don’t end up perfect?” Hán finally whispers, and she turned his head to look at her. The intensity in her eyes made dread gather at the pit of his stomach.

“You will be. That doubt is keeping you behind, I’ll have to increase your training. Until you can’t doubt yourself anymore.”

“Yes Xiansheng.”

Hán cherished those rare moments when Mistress Lihau's punishing regime of abuse and arduous training relented, if only for a fleeting respite. The screaming, the beatings, the endless drills that left him on the verge of collapse – they were the harsh reality of his existence. And yet, he knew that it was this very torment that had forged him into the prodigy he had become. By the age of ten, Hán's skills had grown to the point where he could single-handedly protect his entire village. As he descended from the temple, his teacher would proudly present him to the villagers, demonstrating his protégé's abilities to reassure them of their safety. But Hán never took any joy in these displays; the immense pressure weighed heavily upon him, for to disappoint his Xiansheng would invite even more intense and arduous training.

The night before these visits, Hán would lie awake, unable to find rest. He would watch enviously as the other children his age ran and laughed, carefree in their innocence. What had he done to deserve this path, he often wondered, to be so cruelly separated from the simple pleasures of childhood that his peers so readily enjoyed?

Yet, even as he grappled with these conflicted emotions, Hán knew deep down that his suffering had forged him into something greater. He was no longer just a child, but a weapon honed to perfection, a guardian destined to protect his village at all costs. It was a burden he had no choice but to bear, for it was the only life he had ever known.

Her frail hand extended, gesturing vaguely at the world beyond their sanctuary. Hán's jaw tightened, his fists clenching reflexively. The words he had heard a thousand times before never lost their power to lacerate his heart.

"Your qi..." Lihua continued, savoring the revelation as one would the first bloom of spring. "It courses through you, a torrent of infinite potential. You could topple empires with the merest exhalation of your essence."

Hán swallowed hard, his eyes squeezing shut, desperately willing the words away. Yet they burrowed deeper, a paradoxical poison and elixir.

"I was chosen to nurture you, to prepare you to protect this village. The awakening of your gift ushered in this timeless spring, these verdant hills reborn in your radiance."

"But what if I don't wish to protector their kind?" The question slipped out in a hoarse rasp, dripping with visceral anguish.

Hán remembers the way his teachers eyebrows furrowed, the veins bulging in her neck in a rather unladylike way. Lihua's Features contorted, her mask slipping as the familiar words twisted the dagger. She’d grabbed him by the shoulder, leading him out of sight and throwing him onto the ground. His eyes were glued to the cracked stone tiles beneath his feet, unable to meet Lihua's withering glare. Her severe bun and the tight lines around her mouth and eyes made the young woman seem decades older than her years. Though he had witnessed her ferocious temper many times before, the disappointment etched into her features cut deeper than any physical blow.

"You don't want to protect everyone? Your family? Me?" Lihua's words sliced through the tense silence like a dagger, her voice gravelly with barely restrained fury. “Are you cruel? Did I raise you cruel?”

Hán's throat constricted as he fought the urge to cry or vomit. It had been a reflexive lie, an attempt to finally find some semblance of freedom and normalcy that the other village children took for granted. But of course, Lihua's hawk-like gaze had seen through the feeble deception immediately.

How could he admit that sometimes he dreamed of running away and leaving this all behind? No more grueling hours practicing stances and forms until his hands bled. No more being forced to meditate for days in that tiny, suffocating room reeking of stale incense. Just...being a child, without the crushing responsibility of carrying on his family's sacred duty as guardians.

But one look into Lihua's blazing eyes, and Hán knew there was no point in voicing such selfish desires. There would be no understanding or leniency, only escalating punishments if he didn't immediately correct his misconduct.

"I...I lied," Hán finally muttered, unable to meet Lihua's piercing stare. "I'm sorry, mistress. I didn't mean it."

A heavy silence hung between them, the distant festival sounds now seeming to mock Hán's anguish. He couldn't even find solace in the fact that his torment would be brief; Lihua's self-control was as legendary as her skills.

Finally, with a stiff nod and a curt "Very well," she turned on her heel and strode away, her long fitted robe billowing out behind her. Hán let out the shallowest of breaths, his body still coiled tighter than a spring, ready for any sudden reprisal. “Don’t make lying a habit, Hán. That is an ungodly trait.”

It was years later when he realized why Mistress Lihua was so angry with him when he’d dissented. She was scared of him. Scared of what he’d become with his potential.

---

One day, Hán was in bed feeling sickly. The sickness had seeped into Hán's bones like a malevolent spirit, possessing his body with an insatiable fever. His skin burned as if he had been plunged into a vat of molten bronze, each pore weeping salty perspiration. The rough linen sheets clung to his sweat-slicked form like a second skin as he tossed and turned, tormented by the phantoms of delirium dancing at the edges of his vision.

His eyes were leaden, crusted shut from endless nights spent adrift on tempestuous seas of feverish nightmares. Even the softest shafts of morning light piercing the curtains felt like knives against his throbbing skull. Hán's cracked lips parted to draw a rasping breath, the arid air scraping his raw throat like shards of broken pottery.

That was when she materialized in the shadowed doorway like a vengeful goddess summoned forth from the underworld - Mistress Lihua. Her silk robes whispered across the floor as she glided towards the bed, dark eyes blazing coals in her porcelain visage. Hán quailed beneath the withering scorn etched into those regal features, for he knew he had committed an unforgivable transgression simply by falling ill.

"Why aren't you training, Hán?" Each word was uttered like the crack of a disciplinarian's cane, lashing his very soul.

He could only croak a feeble response, "I feel...bad. Terribly bad."

In an instant, Mistress Lihua's hand was fisted in the sweat-dampened fabric of his robes, wrenching him bodily from the tangled bedsheets. His head swam, the room tilting precariously as he was dragged into her overwhelming presence. She loomed over him, as implacable and immovable as an ancient monument while he was but a hapless leaf buffeted by storms.

"That is no excuse," her voice was low, resonant with a command that could bend the very laws of nature to her indomitable will. As she leaned closer, close enough for Hán to taste the sandalwood perfume clinging to her skin, he understood with a sickening certainty that she wouldn’t let him rest.

"Now apologize for keeping me waiting..." Those words were the first lash "...and go." The second seared into his very core, filling him with anxiety.

Hán remembered that he’d slept barely a wink the last month. He felt a teetering tension, always on a verge of a panic attack he wasn’t allowed to have. Tension in his jaw, his chest, his stomach, he’d barely ate. Last week, an influx of evil spirits had come to the village. He’d been dispatched, and fought day in, day night, until they were all vanquished. He’d barely slept.

“I can’t.” Hán whispers, his voice shaky. He hated admitting that, that he was less than imperfect, that he couldn’t listen to Mistress Lihua.

The crack echoed through the hall, Hán staggered backwards as stars exploded across his vision. His back slammed against the hard wooden cabinets, the impact driving the air from his lungs with a guttural grunt. He blinked up at Mistress Lihua, her face a twisted mask of fury, eyes glinting like polished obsidian in the dim candlelight. In that instant, her features seemed to shift and morph, taking on an aspect of malign sentience that turned Hán's stomach.

Chest heaving, he pushed himself away from the cabinets, stumbling in a desperate bid for freedom. Mistress Lihua's iron grip seized his shirt, yanking him back with a strength that belied her lithe frame. Panic finally overwhelmed Hán's addled senses, a scream burning in his throat as he lashed out with his qi. Unseen force rippled outwards, flinging the Mistress away as he broke into a dead sprint.

The temple's halls blurred past in a dizzying kaleidoscope of shadow and dim torchlight. Hán's bare feet pounded against the wooden floorboards as he fled, Lihua's shrill shrieks following him like the hunting cries of some unearthly predator. His ragged gasps tore at his parched throat but he couldn't stop, wouldn't stop, not until he'd put as much distance between himself and...whatever she had become.

At some point, the temple's confines gave way to the mountainside, the night air biting at his flushed skin. Hán ran until his legs could carry him no further, collapsing–

Only to be caught by the gentle touch of a warm hand on his chest. A soothing warmth seemed to spread through his veins, replacing the feelings of sickness and dread with a sense of tranquility. Startled, the young Hán raised his head, only to be met with a pair of piercing eyes gazing intently back at him. There was a power and intensity in those eyes that captivated Hán, as if the stranger possessed some enigmatic, otherworldly quality.

Hán found himself transfixed, the world around him fading into the background as he became lost in the depths of those piercing eyes. The warm touch on his chest seemed to anchor him, grounding him in the present moment and cutting through the turmoil of his troubled mind.

His journey to immortality began like any other story did, with tragedy, with emergence, with peace. With his birth weighed down by duty, with nights of sobbing to the Gods on why he was even alive if not to be a servant to others, with those fleeting nights of over-exerting his qi until he’d faint and wake up in a pool of his own blood, but it also started with a kind face looking at him.

---

The humid air hung thick with the perfume of night-blooming lotus flowers, their purple-blue petals unfurling amidst the steaming pool's glassy surface. Hán Mu exhaled slowly, his eyes closed as the warm vapors caressed his bare skin like a lover's gentle touch. In this sanctuary of tranquil waters and living blooms, the burdens of the world slipped from his shoulders as easily as a silken robe.

Yet even in meditation, the celestial master remained tethered to the rhythms of the spirit realm, his qi ever vigilant. A quiet ripple across the pond's surface signaled the arrival of Luan Qing, one of his most devoted disciples.

"Master Dove," she murmured reverentially, using the honorific title as she knelt on the mosaic-tiled floor. Hán opened his eyes a sliver, revealing a glimpse of blue irises. "Spirits stir uneasily in the Indigo Quarter. Master Bull has already moved to quell the unrest."

A low chuckle bubbled up from Hán's chest at the mention of Shen’s epithet - 'Master Bull.' An apt moniker for the blunt instrument of a man who reveled in the thrill of spirit combat, tearing into the ether-wrought beings with fists like thunderclaps.

Shen Fang. Master of the Red District.

"My thanks, Disciple Luan." With a nod of dismissal, the woman rose and retreated through the bathing chamber's ornately carved doors.

The temple's eaves curved upwards like gnarled fingers grasping at the pale morning mist. Shafts of pale sunlight filtered through the haze, scattering across the tiled rooftops in fractal patterns reminiscent of spilled mercury. Within its serene halls, Hán's sandals whispered over the polished floors as he rose, robes trailing behind him like the wake of a lone vessel on still waters.

No longer alone in this sanctum, the low murmurs of acolytes and Jingshen Chedui echoed from the lower chambers. But solitude embraced Hán as he pushed open the balcony doors and stepped out onto the precipice. Drawing in a steadying breath, he channeled his qi, allowing the celestial energy to course through his being. His feet became feather-light as the force propelled him forward in a blur of motion.

Hán's body arced through the air, robes billowing like the wings of a great crane taking flight. For a suspended moment, the world seemed to still around his soaring form. Then gravity reasserted its dominion, and he tucked into a tight somersault, hands streaming out to meet the tiled rooftop in a controlled dive roll. The impact jarred through his bones, only for him to burst forth in a dead sprint, each stride fueled by the sinuous flow of qi.

As he blazed across the city's russet rooftops, the wails of the damned rose to greet him – shrill refrains that spoke of the Indigo District's fell reputation. An eerie silence blanketed those foreboding avenues, as if the very air itself had been drained of life. The master who oversaw this realm remained as mysterious as its denizens, his domain sheathed in inscrutable mystery.

Hán's footsteps slowed as he neared the border of the Indigo District. Perched on a precipice overlooking that otherworldly kingdom, Hán's gaze drifted inward, towards the war waging between the part of him that recoiled from the profane secrets harbored in that alien place, and the part that knew his identity was immutably bound to upholding its balance. It was the struggle that defined him, a battle with no clear victory.

"Oi, took you long enough."

A crimson mirage manifested beside him, the red-haired master dropping into a squat, wind whipping his fiery manbun into a blazing tempest. His remaining eye burned feral, alive with the bloodlust of primordial flames. With a brutal swing of his Huojian Qiang, spirit ichor splashed across the rooftop in an ephemeral blossom before the slain wraith dissipated like smoke on the breeze.

The hilt of Shen's weapon slammed down as a dark tide of shivering maleficent presences encroached, a veritable spectral army massing around them. Hán inhaled deeply, his next breath a meditative rite to center his qi.

Exhale...tsssssss.

Hán's eyes flew open, crystalline azure pools mirroring the boundless sky. At his subtlest beckoning gesture, the wicked spirits recoiled, their wretched forms contorting - massive segmented vines throttling ancient trees, haunted woodland primates with hollow, unblinking stares, serpentine shapes writhing like disturbed riverbeds. All succumbed to an ethereal pyre as Hán raised his palm in a sacred invocation.

A sweeping arc of his hand unleashed a crescent wave of qi, the immense spiritual force effortlessly bisecting the unholy legion. The foul entities dissolved into nothingness, their dread existences snuffed out in a fleeting, anticlimactic whisper.

"Showoff," Shen muttered at his side, rising with a weary scoff as a fresh onslaught of malign presences manifested across the rooftops in a relentless ebb and flow. “I don’t know why so many are showing up today, they must be looking for something.”

“Hm.” Hán murmurs, looking around. When he finds no answer, he squeezes Shen’s shoulder. “Take care of these spirits while I search.”

Without waiting for an answer, Hán leapt off the roof in the opposite direction. To tell the truth, his qi had sensed an influx of spirits somewhere else in the Indigo district. A tightly packed street with many homes. He lands on one of the bridge overseeing a small river in the district, crouching and searching for that influx until–

There.

Without awaiting a response, Hán leapt from the tiled eave, his robes billowing like indigo wings as he took flight. His inner eye had sensed a swell of anguished energy pulsing from the Indigo Quarter's densely clustered streets - an entire river of souls in turmoil, their ethereal forms churning with unquiet eddies.

He alighted on the arched span of a bridge overlooking the district's narrow waterway. Crouching like a heron poised to strike, Hán extended his awareness outward in widening rings, senses questing through the clamor of the living until that restless tide caught his inner eye once more.

There, cutting an errant course through the bustling crowd, moved a solitary figure - yet they were far from alone. A swirling vortex of spirits, both benevolent and malign, orbited the anonymous form in a dizzying, clamorous retinue that set Hán's teeth on edge. Near fifty shades trailed in their wake, a kaleidoscope of joy and sorrow, love and rage rendered in shimmering ectoplasm.

Hán rose and launched himself along the rooftops parallel to that bewildering, spectral parade. The oblivious person seemed utterly insensible to the spirits shadowing their steps. But why else would they surround them? Why were they begging to someone who shouldn’t hear?

The city's heartbeat pounded in the crowded market square, a relentless thrumming of footfalls and chatter. Hawkers bellowed over the din, their wares' scents - spice and smoke, fruit and incense - swirling in the dense air. Hán swept down from the rooftops, his movements both fluid and forceful, parting the throngs with an unseen authority. Never taking his eyes off of them.

Shades followed in their wake, wraithlike figures clinging to passersby. Wails echoed from their insubstantial forms, curses and pleas twisted into eerie melodies of the unfinished. Their graspings left no mark beyond a shiver down bent spines.

It was odd, all those who could see spirits eventually become Jingshen Chedui's. But what if this person was hiding their ability to see them...? His curiousity grew.

Hán pushed on through the press until he neared them. "Traveler," he murmured, falling into step. Hán kept his gaze forward as if oblivious to the trailing shades. “I have never seen you before, were you born here?”