"Young Master, did you take a powerful elixir recently?" Yiao Mochen, the President of the Alchemist Association asked as he checked Feng Shen's health. "Your health appears to be much better than I have ever seen it. What did you use?"
"...I haven't used anything besides the usual as of late, save for the Red Yang Ginseng, but that didn't appear to have any effect at all." Feng Shen said.
Feng Shen was a medicine pot, someone who had been consuming high quality medicines since he was nine just to stay alive, so he could tell when a medicine was effective and when it wasn't.
"...If that is the case, then why is your condition so good? After falling into the lake, you should be on death's door from your illness." Yiao Mochen said, stroking his beard in confusion.
That had been the question on everyone's minds, and there was only one possible answer, as far as Elder Mu was concerned.
That girl, Ye Lingyue, had done something.
It was clear from the start that she wasn't ordinary. Beyond the way that the Sea Mountain Group treated her like a sacred idol, she shouldn't have been able to lock lips with Feng Shen, lest his cold illness infect her lungs and knock her unconscious with a sudden burst of cold.
While others were skeptical, the elder had gone out to search for information on Ye Lingyue and found out that she was credited with healing Lan Yingwu's injuries and allowing the man to proceed into the Reincarnation Realm, and that the girl herself was a 9th Cauldron Alchemist, whose exam was overseen by Yiao Mochen himself. She'd also somehow raised a ridiculous amount of money in order to purchase both the people and properties of the Sea Mountain Group, despite supposedly being a commoner.
Elder Mu had wanted to look further into the girl's background, but was stopped when he returned home to find Elder Lao dead at the 'other' young master's hands.
Even if Elder Lao was someone placed into his position by the Emperor, Wu Chong had never killed a member or guest of the Feng Household. He had often dealt with any assassins who had meant the harm, but he had never turned against them.
Was Elder Lao a spy in bed with the assassins?
Maybe, but according to Dao Nu, the Ghost Emperor had merely killed him in a fit of anger before leaving for some unknown pursuit. The man had been so full of anger, that the Royal Guard had been almost too afraid to speak, despite having watched over them for their entire lives.
However, when he returned later that night, his mood appeared to be much lighter. He even appeared somewhat happy and Elder Mu even thought he saw a smile on his face. He gave them orders that made no sense to them, telling them to ignore any spies that the Sea Mountain Group might send to look into the dead men and to not send the report about the assassins back to the homeland for at least the next month.
He threatened to kill anyone who disobeyed this order.
What was perhaps even more confusing was when the man went to sleep and Elder Mu was seeing to the sleeping Feng Shen. ...There was the faint scent of an unfamiliar shampoo on him. Where had that come from?
As usual, Feng Shen had no idea what his other half had been up to, barely even noticing a lapse of a single day. So Elder Mu decided to shield him from what happened, telling him that Elder Lao had gone back to the homeland in order to personally deal with the matter of the assassins.
Wu Chong's unusual behavior must have had something to do with that girl Ye Lingyue, given his insistence on not interfering with the Sea Mountain Group, after having tried to wipe it out with his own hands. But what would a psychopath like him want with her? What made the girl so special? She was talented, but they had only ever seen her while she was soaked from the lake, in boys' clothes and a complete mess from crying. She was a bleeding heart and a frightened child, he was someone who made people bleed and that people told stories of in order to frighten children. What possible relationship could they have?
Perhaps it was simply because he would be able to touch her without her being hurt by the cold aura. Perhaps even the Ghost Emperor desires a woman he can hold, even if said woman was his complete opposite.
While the elder contemplated such things, the health check up came to an end and Liao Mochen gifted Feng Shen with a few yellow Alchemy papers, the sheets of papers used to create their paper crane messengers. Each sheet was charged with the president's Spirit Force, so that they could move without Feng Shen having to apply any of his own, as the Young Master was not an Alchemist.
They could be used to contact the man, but they were really meant more as a toy. Something to amuse the Young Master.
There was curiosity in his face as he looked at the pages, but it was only curiosity, no joy. This was not surprising. In all of his years watching the young master, he had not once smiled from his heart, not since his mother had died.
"Oh wow." An Ming Xia said as she looked at the ten barrels of wine that they had produced that morning.
Even without aging and with the lids covering them, she could still feel the energy contained within those barrels, and they were already equal to some of her best work from before. Lingyue had had more rare and overly ripe items than just the fruits, each of them appearing to have been aged by over fifty years.
These ten barrels had used a considerable fortune in materials to make, and An Ming Xia had found herself greatly underestimating the powers of a 9th Cauldron Alchemist. Ye Lingyue might not have known anything about the finer details of brewing, but once she focused herself and drew out that fire, her abilities as an Alchemist were second to none as far as An Ming Xia could tell. To compare what they made to her mother's Five Treasures Wine would be a joke. Even before being properly aged, these barrels were superior.
She knew that the girl could do what would take most Alchemists weeks in just hours and produce unbelievable results, but this was the first time seeing her performance in person. Her ability to cleanse away impurities and meld Yin and Yang energies together was astonishing. This was the power of an Alchemist capable of producing Red Patterned Pills of the 5th rank.
"How long do you think it is going to take to ferment?" Lingyue asked curiously.
"The longer the better, but I'm setting a minimum bar of three weeks." An Ming Xia said.
"...Three weeks huh?" Lingyue said, biting her lip. "I was kind of hoping it would be sooner than that."
"Well, you can't rush perfection. Just like with Spirit Herbs, the wine will need to absorb the Yuan Energy in the air for a while to bring out its best properties. That's what these magic arrays are for." An Ming Xia said, patting one of the barrel's inked on magic cycle.
"Is that so?" Lingyue said, something entering into her eyes. "Lady An, would it be alright if I took one of the barrels back with me? I want to try something with it."
"They are just as much yours as they are mine. Feel free to try whatever you want." An Ming Xia said. "Also… sorry about the other day." The noblewoman looked away from the girl, flushing with embarrassment. "I know I said a lot of rude things, figuring you were just a pretty face who was trying to leech off of Lan Cai'er kindness, but I'll admit I was wrong."
"It's alright. You were just trying to look out for your friend, that's all." Lingyue replied with a smile.
"I… I am not friends with that knuckled headed idiot!" An Ming Xia loudly objected. "Honestly, how can a civilized lady like myself be friends with such a muscle headed fool. The only reason I'm stuck with her is because my eldest brother is in love with her."
"...Ah…" Lingyue didn't know how to respond as An Ming Xia flushed further.
"I wasn't supposed to say that. You can't tell Lan Cai'er I said that, okay!?" An Ming Xia said in a panic.
"Alright, I won't say a word about it." Lingyue said to assure her.
An Ming Xia gave a sigh of relief before looking down. "Honestly, what was my brother thinking, falling in love with a girl like her?"
"Well, Cai'er is beautiful and has a fun personality. ...I was more surprised because I thought she didn't have any suitors." Lingyue said.
"She doesn't, because no noble family would want anything to do with her. Not with the only royal heir and the rising Hong family both hating her guts, not to mention at least two second class Sects and the daughter of the Mercenary Guild's leader. My father and his wife were horrified when they heard my brother confess to loving her and threatened to disown him if he made it publicly known." An Ming Xia said quietly.
An Ming Xia didn't know why she was telling Lingyue this. This was the kind of dirty laundry that nobles usually buried six feet deep in somewhere far off the beaten path. Yet here she was, confessing it all to a girl she had known for barely a week.
And it all just kept coming.
"...I think my brother thought that the two of us would be kindred spirits, in that we are both 'ladies' who have never received handouts. We both had to earn everything we have through hard work while everyone else around us, those who were served life on a silver platter, looked down on us for our heritage. The Lan family is less than thirty years old and has no history or industries to fall back on, while my clan is part of the Noble Faction. Even if I am allowed to use the An name, my mother and I receive no help from them. To them, we are nothing but upstart commoners. They didn't even let me have an introduction to high society when I came of age, saying I would only tarnish the family name." An Ming Xia said, remembering how her cousins had looked at her as she waited tables at her mothers store. "I made fun of Lan Cai'er, saying that she was basically exiled to Glass City, but the truth is, so was I. Not that I'm not glad for it. Here, my family name makes me a somebody and I was able to make a business of my own."
While in the capital, she had been a girl who worked at a high end bar, like a common wench. Then, she and Lan Cai'er established one of the most successful restaurants in the country in less than a year and An Ming Xia could afford to hire her own servants and bodyguards with the money she made. Now, because of Lingyue, she was going to be a manager of a large part of the city, with an annual income ten times that of her mother's, even more if they continued to make more wine like this.
"...I'm glad you have a good relationship with your brother, and I'm glad you are happy here now." Lingyue said with a soft smile before looking down. "My mother and I were also considered damaged goods back in our hometown. My mom was the discarded wife of a noble, her honor and body too damaged for anyone to want her, while I was the brain damaged daughter who had no father. As far as the clan was concerned, we were trash. But I still had a few cousins who I was close to and could call family. I loved them dearly. And I'm glad I came to Glass City and met people like you and Big Sister Lan."
An Ming Xia was a little taken aback. The 9th Cauldron Alchemist had been considered trash by her family? She was the discarded daughter of a noble?
Perhaps the two of them had more in common than she had thought.
"Big Sister Lan is going to be alright, isn't she?" Lingyue asked her.
She was clearly worried about how the older girl would do, having to return to that viper pit, where all the biggest and meanest snakes were all her enemies.
"...I'd be more worried about the capital than I would be about that headstrong girl. She has a lot of powerful enemies there, but none of them can touch her as long as the Queen Dowager is still around. I'd say she'll be there for a week before she knocks out some poor idiots teeth and they ship her back here with a request to keep her away forever." An Ming Xia scoffed.
"Thank you for the vote of confidence." Lan Cai'er said flatly as she entered the scene, leaning casually against the doorway. "If I knock out any of the Gin family's teeth, I'll be sure to bring them back for you."
An Ming Xia had to stop herself from smiling at the thought of her brother's cousins walking around with mouths that were missing a few teeth. There really were times when she liked Lan Cai'er, though she would never admit it to the brute of a woman.
"When are you going to learn not to eavesdrop on people." An Ming Xia said, giving Lan Cai'er a look.
"And when are you going to learn not to talk about people behind their backs." Cai'er snapped back. "Besides, I'm not here to eavesdrop. President Yiao wants Lingyue to go to the Alchemist Association building."
"Huh? What for?" Lingyue asked.
"They have the containment array set up for Fang Hao and want to ask you how exactly you're supposed to melt him out of the ice."
...Who was Fang Hao again?
"I can't believe you forgot about Fang Hao, the Evil Alchemist who attached his corrupted soul to my father in order to leech off of him. It was kind of important, you know?" Lan Cai'er said bitterly as they reached the room the Alchemist Association had set up for the containment array.
"I said I was sorry, but a lot has happened since then." Lingyue said for what felt like the hundredth time.
While to Lan Cai'er, Fang Hao was the enemy of her father and the battle between the two deserved to be remembered by the national for all of time because what it meant for her dad, to Lingyue Fang Hao was… mah?
He had come and gone in the course of a few seconds and been just the kind of momentary hindrance that sometimes popped up when she was Natsumi, like the guy's in the cameron suits, or that one kid for her class who had been from a rival Famiglia... what was his name again? They were just a day commodity that she had learned to simply forget about for the sake of her sanity.
A disembodied spirit who had left the cycle of reincarnation and had attempted to possess her body, That could describe at least four different people that Lingyue could remember. Honestly, it could be more.
And if Fang Hao attempted to go one on one with either Mukuro or Daemon, the two of them would have ripped him apart.
"Ah, you're here." Liao Mochen said as he saw them walk into the room. "It wasn't easy, but we managed to set up a containment array that should be capable of holding his soul in place. However, we are unsure of how to remove the ice from the tainted soul without damaging it. I was hoping you would know a way of doing so."
"Well, I can't exactly promise that he will be completely undamaged by I can melt the ice." Lingyue said, awkwardly scratching her head. "I've never actually frozen a ghost before this, so I don't know what kind of effects it will have had."
"Well, at this point it is the best we can do. None of our tools has the precision to melt it without destroying the soul, or break it without doing the same." The President admitted. "Just do the best as you can, and if we end up losing him, then we will just have to try to research the remains rather than questioning him directly."
"Alright." Lingyue said before tentatively entering the circle and placing her hands on the block of ice, with the black fog still trapped inside of it. She took a deep breath before turning up the heat.
Similar to dry ice, the ice created by the zero point breakthrough didn't leave any traces behind as it melted away. Her bright orange flame penetrated deep into the ice block, and within a matter of seconds, the soul was thawed out and it was freed into the binding array.
The first thing Fang Hao did was slam against the boundaries of the prison shouting loudly. "I'll never talk! You can't make me!"
The belligerent spirit ignored Liao Mochen as the old man attempted to speak to it, only shouting obscenities in reply.
"This isn't working." Liao Mochen mumbled. "How does he even know that we wanted to interrogate him?"
"Did… Did I forget to mention that the ice doesn't actually stop people from seeing and hearing the things around them?" Lingyue said weakly.
"Is that so." Liao Mochen mumbled. "Fang Hao, if you do not cooperate with us, then you will leave us with little choice but to be rough with you!" The old Alchemist shouted as a threat.
"Go fuck yourself you aggragent bastard! Your status of an 8th Cauldron Alchemist means nothing when you are brought up with such a weak understanding of the arts! I will never betray my people's secrets to you!" Fang Hao shouted back.
"He really is a piece of shit, huh?" Lan Cai'er said angrily. "At this rate, he won't even be worth the time we have put into him."
"Let me talk to him alone for a bit." Reborn said, surprising Lingyue.
"Reborn, you want to talk with him?" Lingyue asked in surprise. Interfering with such things usually wasn't his style.
"Yeah, so get your friends out of here." Reborn said with his usual smile.
"If… If you say so." Lingyue said nervously. "Lets go."
"Huh, what?" Liao Mochen said, confused.
"If Reborn wasn't to handle this, then I'm not going to stop him." Lingyue said heading for the door.
"...Her imaginary friend?" The old man said, glancing to Lan Cai'er, who shrugged her shoulders.
"Just humor her… and don't ask questions you don't want the answers to." Lan Cai'er said grabbing onto the man's robe and pulling him out.
As the door closed behind them, an orange mist condensed into the shape of the fedora wearing baby who then looked up at Fang Hao with his usual smirk. "Ciaossu."
"Wh...What are you? Where did you come from?" Fang Hao said, moments before sharp tendrils of orange smoke shot out of the baby's form, penetrating his body and squeezing his soul from the inside. The Evil Alchemist let out an ear piercing scream as he felt his soul being slowly peeled apart by the creature in front of him as it scrapped away small bits of him to be devoured
The experience only lasted a few seconds, but when it stopped, the remnant was shaking. Barely anything was taken, but the pain had been beyond anything he could have imagined, more than he thought possible for him to experience when he was nothing more than a soul.
"You are a piece of shit, aren't you?" Reborn said, his small squeaky voice not matching his powerful presence. "You honestly don't deserve to exist and to be frank, I would like nothing more than to tear you to pieces. However, Natsumi thinks that you can be saved, so I'll let her have the chance."
Fang Hao was panting in panic, despite not having any lungs as he stared down at the dark unblinking eyes of this demonic creature. "What… what kind of demon are you?"
Reborn didn't answer him, only stabbed into him again, making him scream.
"I suggest you cooperate with her, otherwise, I will slowly peel away your soul, layer by layer, like an onion. I will do it slowly, just like this, drawing it out for days upon days until you are begging for the sweet embrace of hell." The baby figure said as he twisted into the black smoke.
"I… I understand." Fang Hao gasped through the unbelievable pain.
"Good to here, but let me just make sure that the message sticks." Reborn said, and the screaming became even louder and the orange smoke burned its way through the mist, branding it with a soul tether. "With this tether, I will be able to kill you any time I want, making your soul rip itself apart from the inside." Reborn said his voice cold as the ice that the Evil Alchemist had been trapped in. "So remember, don't be difficult."
Reborn dissolved back into the orange smoke and disappeared from sight.
Out in the hallway, Liao Mochen was nervously looking at the door as he heard the screams and begging for mercy coming from within. "What… exactly is going on in there?"
"I don't know, and I don't want to know!" Lingyue shouted, curled up on the ground and with her hands clasped over her ears. "Reborn is really scary when he wants to be."
Hopefully next chapter will start the wrapping up of Meng Yao and Anqiu's subplot. Unless I have Lingyue completely failing to defeat the Sect boss so that she can come back later and smash his face into the dirt.
I've made An Ming Xia a little more sympathetic, mostly because I want to keep her around.
I'm still going to have the same thing from canon of Lingyue finding the poem paper crane that Feng Shen makes, but rather than replying to it with the 'stop whining' that the canon Lingyue writes, it is going to basically tell him 'you're wrong' and go into Lingyue's personal views on dying with regret.
I'm going to have Lingyue saying that nothing is sadder than dying without regrets because it means that you lost your connection with what gave life meaning in the first place. With regrets being proof that your life still has value. I feel like it is something pretty profound and something that Tsuna might have decided himself after being kept alive by his regrets after each time he was shot by the Dying Will Bullets.