The city of Songying served as the entrance to the White Mountains province. Mountain springs merged with a great river meandering ever South and East, and the city boasted a fine river port. Stone houses with Imperial-style curved roofs made Huang Jin feel at ease, even among the noisy crowds; a shadow, a cheap imitation of palace fineries. The surplus of people didn’t appear to bother Dog, either.

  He didn’t know where to start looking. No money to open mouths, no connections to ply without resorting to his status… he could only go around, asking questions. Just as he steeled himself for this task, the sound of music caught his ear. It rose above a great commotion of laughter and cheering, and he couldn’t help feeling that this music was important.

  What a song! It was a woman’s voice, and she sang a love song unlike any he’d ever heard. Ballads, smooth and lovely, comparing the object of affection to the moon and flowers and all that… these, he knew, though at his age he couldn’t summon much interest in the subject matter.

  This woman sang about fire. One moment, she proclaimed her lover’s passionate affection, the next, she cried out to the very heavens about being consumed by flame. The tune bounced and rolled, the pace of the music consistent and fast. Her instrument sounded unlike any he had heard in the palace.

  “-Like the sweet song of a choir, you light my morning sky, with burnin’ love~!”

  When he reached the front of the crowd, he discovered that the lyrics and instrument were the least astonishing thing about this performance. The woman wore long sleeves and pants, all silver and shining in the morning light. Her shirt was partially undone, revealing her neck and a scandalous amount of chest. Tiny glass jewels were sewn into the fabric in dazzling starburst patterns. Long, midnight-black hair stood in contrast to the blinding outfit, and she wore dark glasses that hid her eyes.

  She danced and gyrated as the song rippled out and reached a fever pitch. “I’m just a hunk, a hunk-a burnin’ love!” she repeated over and over, and after several altering repetitions the song cut off abruptly.

  The silence after she finished was deafening, the applause that immediately followed equally so. “Thank you, thank you very much,” she said in a low, mannish drawl, pointing to the crowd.

  Applause smoothed away to murmuring and laughing as the crowd began to disperse. Townsfolk returned to their business, several bidding farewell to the songstress as if they’d known her for decades. Then she, too, turned to leave the little plaza.

  Someone this unusual, in exactly this place? It could be no one else. If she chose to leave quickly, she could. One turn down an alley, and this window might close. If he lost sight of her… He lunged forward, just catching her flared sleeve between thumb and forefinger. She turned to face him at the contact.

  Her attention struck him like a wave on the ocean, as though he were being carried away on the tide. With her other hand, the woman reached up and lifted the dark glasses to reveal slate-grey, shining eyes. Wordless, penetrating observation.

  The prince did not wait to recover. He knew his purpose. He let go of her sleeve and in the same motion, he sank to the ground with his forehead on the pavement. “Honoured Immortal of the Great River, please forgive my rudeness. I beg you to make me your disciple.”

  He waited there on the ground for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he heard, “You know what, I appreciate the initiative. Here, get up for a second, let me get a look at you.” His forehead left the ground and he settled into a position sitting on his knees, eyes fixed on the Immortal. “There. Now, let’s see what your deal is.”

  “My name is Yu-”

  “Apapapap, shut the fuck up. I want to do the Holmes thing.” She put a finger in front of his face. “Give me a minute, just gonna look at your stem cells real quick.”

  “My-” but no further words came out. At that moment, he knew what it meant to be ‘examined.’ He thought he understood the word and what it meant, but now it was real. Her eyes cleaved flesh from bone and turned bone to dust; then, all was as it had been, no harm done. The process left him shivering on the stone cobbles.

  The Immortal paced in a circle around him, muttering under her breath. “Genetic markers from the Tiger clans, plenty of Yulong in there, too... That makes you the child of the Emperor and the Rosegold Paragon. Nine years old, Spring baby… Bananas auspices, what the fuck? Assuming you were born in the palace, that confluence would have lasted maybe ten, fifteen minutes. And… born late preterm. So your mom wanted to ‘make a seven the hard way.’ You ended up with a bad case of necrotizing enterocolitis. Yikes.”

  She clicked her tongue and shook her head at this. “I mean, I get it, luck is important, especially for a royal. But early eviction…”

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  “Please forgive me, but, what do you mean?” The prince couldn’t keep quiet at this. Based on what little he remembered, this was beginning to sound like ‘the diagnosis.’ But what did his mother have to do with it?

  She waved the question away. “Necrotizing enterocolitis. It means your guts started rotting because you didn’t have enough time in the oven. She took a gamble, and it didn’t totally work out. Anyway, don’t blame her. You do have Heaven’s favor on your side, that’s a great boon. Your dantian just kinda took a stray in the process.”

  “A stray?”

  “I mean how you can’t cultivate for shit. Necrotizing conditions in early childhood can do some bad stuff to the development of your spiritual circulatory system. You get some wild tummy-aches when you’re stressed, right?” When he nodded, she continued, “Yeah, you’ve got a big, hardened scar there in the depths beyond flesh. Qi condensation is a compression reaction, and your ethereal body can’t withstand the pressure. Sucks, but these things happen.”

  Huang Jin swallowed. “But surely, it can be fixed with the right technique?”

  “What, you don't have physicians in the palace? I mean, I won't say I can't, but I will say I won't. I'd have to destroy your soul and rebuild it from the ground up, then you get into the whole ‘ship of Theseus’ situation… Miss me with that.”

  “Oh.” It was a small word, and it came out smaller. The kind of word that called to mind an orange slice with all the juice sucked out of it.

  The wrenching pain in his stomach consumed his whole world. When he regained awareness of his surroundings, he found himself seated on a bench nearby, still in the plaza. His hand rested on Dog’s soft back. Beside him sat the tall form of the Immortal, now clad in silk robes, as black and prim as her hair. For the first time, she looked the part of an ancient and wise cultivator.

  She spoke as if nothing had happened. “See? Lucky. No qi deviation, and you even had a friend close at hand to get you through the worst of it. You know, when I was a little girl, we didn't have dogs. They hadn't been invented yet! Just the occasional anomalously-friendly wolf, eating our garbage.”

  He couldn't meet her eyes. “I’m sorry. I've acted shamefully.”

  “Sweetie, you're nine.” She gave him a moment to respond, and continued when he didn’t. “You know, if you’d just walked up to me and said ‘pwease heal me,’ I’d have said ‘no’ and that would have been the end of it. A discipleship, now that’s a whole different ball game. Don’t tell me you want to rescind, after coming all this way? I warn you, it’s not easy to take back a kowtow.”

  “… You mean, you’d still take me on? Even though I have no potential?”

  “Define ‘potential.’ You figured out I existed, figured out where I was, got here, and picked me out immediately. That’s damn impressive for a kid! Consider this an application interview. I’m gonna ask one thing from you. Ready?”

  He straightened up in his seat, and pivoted to face her. “I am ready.”

  “Name one thing in this world that you really want to know about, outside of cultivation bullshit. No treasures, no ancient mysteries… just one thing that piques your curiosity. Go!”

  Huang Jin’s eyes wandered. There were actually too many things. His mind latched onto a single example. “One time, I asked Elder Fu how fish could breathe underwater. He told me, ‘a man lives on the land and a fish lives in the water.’” He tried his best to emulate his Elder’s gruff tone. “But I wanted to know how, and I never found out.”

  The Immortal’s face, unreadable and serene before this moment, broke into a wide smile. “There, you passed. If there’s one trait I consider to be indispensable, it’s curiosity. I’ll teach you how fish breathe. Probably more than you could ever possibly want to know about that subject, and many more!”

  The prince dropped down from the bench, and fell into another kowtow as protocol dictated. Only when he began to get up from this position did he look around, and notice that he, the Immortal, and Dog were alone in the plaza. “I wonder where everybody went?”

  The Immortal got up and stretched. “Oh, as soon as your forehead hit the ground the first time, I activated my [Go On, Get] technique on a wide range. It keeps anyone without the qi to resist from sticking around. We’ve been alone for the last, like, hour or so.”

  Dog cocked his head as Huang Jin looked at him. “Does that mean Dog is a spirit beast?”

  She laughed. “His name is just, ‘Dog?’ Okay, fine. Dog just powered through. I’ve told you before, you’re crazy lucky. You have a good fella there.” Then, she held up a finger. “But enough about that! We’re now officially involved with each other. Time for proper introductions.

  “You sit before The Immortal of the Great River, Dahe Yiji, The Relic and The Witness. I, alone among Man, stood beneath the Godless Sky, for I watched the opening and closing of the Age of Mortals. I am called The Starving Mind, The Mother of Gods, fuckin’... ectetera, ectetera. Mother of quite a lot of people, actually.” She waved her hand from side to side carelessly. Her hand turned palm upward, pointing at the prince. “Okay, your turn.”

  He placed his hands on his lap and kept his back straight, and he projected his voice as best he could. “I am Yulong Huang Jin, first son of the Great Dragon Emperor, called the Jade in Gold, Peace between East and West.” Smiling with sudden inspiration, he added “Also, my auntie Ling calls me ‘Ingot’ sometimes.”

  The Immortal shook her head, grinning. “What a nice smile. It occurs to me that you haven’t considered all the implications of that title, Huang Jin. I’d love to be there when you figure it out.” Then, she extended a hand down to help him up to his feet. “Now come on. We’ll head straight to my cottage. You have to get settled in, and I have to make up a syllabus. I can’t promise that this journey will be fun, but I think you’ll really be something by the end of it.”

  He let himself be lifted and led, Dog trotting along behind.