December, 2018 continued

The boys settled into their seats on the plane. Michael couldn't hold back a smile; he was going to Disney! Even having to get up at four in the morning on Christmas Day to get to the airport for their seven o'clock flight didn't dampen his happiness. Taking another 'look' at Ming Lim, however, did lower his spirits a bit. The older boy's meridians were purple tinged. "Meditate, please. I don't want a repeat."

Ming Lim refrained from sticking his tongue out at his boyfriend. It's not fair, he grumbled. Michael plays his violin for half an hour and clears his meridians up completely, while I can play for hours and not get a single one! He suspected that it was because Michael played to clear his mind while he played for improvement and understanding.

The first class seats were not wide enough for a full lotus position, so he settled for spreading his knees as wide as his seat allowed, letting his ankles cross, and resting his palms, face up, on his thighs. He could almost hear Sheng Lin's instructions. "Breathe deeply. Think about your belly button. How it moves out as you breathe in. How it moves in as you breathe out. Feel your muscles growing softer, feel your ligaments growing looser. Listen to your heartbeats. Measure it. Breathe slowly. Breathe in: hold... two... three... four... five..., and out: hold... two... three... four... five... Until your heartbeat is measurably slower." It wasn't a true meditative state by any definition, but he had to start somewhere. And it was good enough that his body would clean up his purple meridians caused by improper cultivation.

It wasn't that they were trying to cultivate without being trained. It was almost like muscle memory: the soul remembered how to do things, and did it without conscious determination. Like the way Michael cleaned himself up or the way they both now could sense the people around them; it was involuntary for the most part. But since these bodies never learned how to do it the proper way….

The boys had an absolute blast. Their hotel was right on the edge of the animal park, so they woke up to seeing animals every morning. They absolutely loved the rides: from the kiddie ones in boats to the roller coasters. They got selfies and 'autographs' of the various characters, ate at themed restaurants, and munched on mouse-head shaped treats all day long. After dark, they watched the night shows and went back to their room with feet aching from walking several miles and standing in line for hours. They would meditate on the way back from the park, allowing their Cores to soothe and heal their sore feet and over-stuffed tummies, so that when they were finally in the privacy of their room, they had plenty of energy to make love.

By unspoken agreement, they did not discuss the aftermath of Ming Lim's qi deviation. Ming Lim did his best to avoid even thinking of their former names; an offhand mention of Wei Ying or a stray thought about Lan WangJi brought pictures and partial memories flooding into his brain. Memories he wasn't quite ready to deal with.

It was one thing to see a 'psychic' and hear that he was an incarnation of some magical prince and laugh off the coincidences he felt with Michael. It was another thing to know that he was the current incarnation of that magical prince, to see what that magical prince had looked like, what his friends and family looked like. What his lover had looked like. To feel that previous incarnation's emotions, needs, wants….

He wasn't sure if it was better or worse that Michael didn't have this to deal with. Mentioning Wei WuXian, Lan WangJi, Jiang Cheng, and so on caused no issues, no pictures, no memories. The name Jiang YanLi made him feel hungry and a little sad, but that was it.

January, 2019

The boys arrived back in Cambridge, flushed with happiness, love, and too much sun to find that Sheng Lin had bought the entire house memberships at a gym to aid with any New Year's resolutions. And while Lin didn't seem overly concerned if four of the housemates used the memberships or not, he insisted upon going to the gym with Michael, Ming Lim, and for some reason, Wang Lina. The three students found themselves forced to run for miles on the treadmill, then weight training with either the machines or the free weights. When Michael tried to complain that he did enough exercise walking to and from school, Sheng Lin scowled at him and reminded him that his mind was connected to his body and he would never be able to be even a half-way decent cultivator if he insisted upon neglecting his body. Wang Lina complained nightly that she had no need nor desire to be able to run for ten miles at a time nor build up her body. Sheng Lin would simply increase the intensity of their workouts when he tired of listening to her complaints; she found it hard to complain out loud when she was breathing so hard trying to get much needed oxygen to her sore muscles.

On top of that, Michael and Wang Lina were given instruction in Chen Song's version of sign language.

April, 2019

With the days getting longer and the temperatures less frigid, Chen Song took the students to a park along the Charles where after running for five miles and doing some calisthenics to warm up, he had them doing some basic steps.

"I'm not learning Tai Chi," Michael grumbled. "That's for old people."

It's not Tai Chi, although that would be useful for you to learn. This is sword training.

"Sword training?" Wang Lina whined. "Why do I need to learn how to use a sword?" She was learning the rudiments of meditation and had grudgingly accepted that she had a golden core, but she didn't see why she had to train like she was a warrior.

You will learn the sword path which means you need to learn to wield a sword. You're starting more than a decade too late. Stop whining. His hands started clapping a beat and the children unwillingly moved their feet and hands in what they hoped were the correct positions; Chen Song had a bamboo pole strapped to his back and he was not afraid to whip it out to force a leg or hand to move correctly.

May, 2019

Michael giggled uncontrollably as he scrolled through Instagram. "LimGe, you gotta see this: the real life Mulan and company." He held up his phone to show his boyfriend a picture of the four of them practicing by the Charles. "Chen Song plays the part of Li Shang. Whatdaya think? I think I'm more handsome than either of them…." They were lying in bed, freshly showered and exhausted from their morning's exercise. And both of them were wishing they were exhausted from a completely different sort of 'exercise'...

At least Chen Song and Sheng Lin hadn't insisted on teaching them a type of cultivation that required full abstinence. Sheng Lin had threatened it more than once, but then slipped up and informed them that that particular type of cultivation could not be practiced once the cultivator lost his virginity. And virginity, in that case, prohibited any type of self-gratification as well as sex with a partner. Michael had deadpanned that if that was the case, he hadn't been a virgin since he was thirteen.

"I don't remember a Li Shang in the stories about Mulan," Ming Lim offered, looking at a picture of Chen Song looking fierce.

"He's not in the stories. He's in the Disney animated movie." Michael flipped apps on his phone and flicked his fingers rapidly. "This guy," he said, showing a picture from their winter trip of a young man standing next to a young woman on a parade float, both of them wearing a mock set of Chinese traditional robes.

"Are we also part of this real life animated movie?"

"Yeah, but you're not gonna like it. I'm guessing the Gramer doesn't think we're cute. They've cast you as Yao and me as Ling." He giggled again as his fingers rapidly typed a web search and pointed out which cartoon characters they were aligned with. Ming Lim scowled looking at the image of Yao. "I'm not fat or short and I don't have a black eye," he groused.

"Well, I'm not that ugly, either!" Michael insisted.

"You're skinny enough," Ming Lim teased and sent a questing hand underneath Michaels t-shirt to probe at the increasingly defined muscles hidden there. Michael moaned softly, and leaned into the touch, thanking his lucky stars that he was the bottom in this relationship. And that sometimes it was really nice to just lay there and let LimGe do all the hard work. He could feel his nipples hardening, yearning for the playful fingers, feel his cock starting to strain at his jeans. "I want you," Ming Lim sighed, leaning over to kiss the junction of Michael's neck and shoulder.

"Yes, Er'Gege," Michael pleaded. His hands abandoned his phone to search for other, more tangible, treasures.

June, 2019

Michael ignored Chen Song's increasingly frantic hand motions as he smiled as placidly and politely as possible at the police office dispatched to arrest the four people trying to kill each other in the park. "Officer," he explained. "Mr. Chen is simply teaching us martial arts. We're not actually hurting anyone. Just getting a few bruises here and there."

Office Jensen frowned as he examined the bamboo swords. "Why don't you study in a dojo?"

Michael held up his hand at Ming Lim, forestalling what he knew was going to be a protest about the word 'dojo'. "We're housemates, but there isn't room there for us to be training. Mr. Song is just helping us out; he doesn't actually have a studio or anything where we can practice."

"And he don't speak," the officer commented, looking up at Chen Song's hands still moving.

"No, sir." Michael answered smoothly and continued the lie. "He was part of an elite military group under the direction of a sadist who falsified intelligence. When Mr. Song found out they were killing civilians instead of insurgents, he was tortured by the sadist and got his tongue cut out." He shivered for dramatic emphasis.

"And where do you study again?"

"I'm at MIT. Lim and Lina are over at Harvard. Mr. Chen isn't a student; he works for the QishanWen Medical Group. I think in their pharmacology department. I don't know exactly what he does but it has something to do with using plants for medicine or something. I can ask him if you want…."

Officer Jensen handed the bamboo sword back to Chen Song and the IDs back to each of them. "Stay out of trouble, folks. Promise me you won't hurt anyone else with these things, and I'll put a word in at dispatch that you're just practicing. That way the next time someone calls about Chinese triad guys trying to murder each other with swords out here, the dispatcher can talk them down. And gal, 'scuse me," he added with a nod at Wang Lina. "Just don't start playing out here with real swords or you will be arrested. You hear me?"

"Yes, Officer," the three students chorused. Chen Song bowed slightly in acknowledgement.

He was right about one thing, Chen Song signed. We should rent a place for your training. Somewhere out of the public eye.

A few weeks later, the four of them entered a revamped warehouse. The renovation company had turned about eighty percent of the warehouse into one and two bedroom condo units and left the remaining twenty percent for business use. Sheng Lin rented half of the available business space and through the power of unlimited money, had it turned into a martial arts studio complete with mats on the floor and shatterproof mirrors as well as free weights and a weight machine.

All year, Michael became closer to Sheng Lin. With Ming Lim having quasi panic attacks with the mention of any of their original incarnations and friends or relatives, Michael could only talk about his past lives with Sheng Lin.

They talked about the Jiangs a lot. Sheng Lin wasn't overly familiar with YanLi as both of them had been too shy to talk to each other during the few times they were together. But he had spent a significant amount of time with Jiang WanYin after his marriage to Wen Qing. No matter how Michael worded his questions, Sheng Lin would not confirm that Eleanor and Matthew were the reincarnated Jiang siblings. Since he had only the two tokens for Wei Ying and Lan Zhan, he had no way of knowing with any absolute certainty that any of their former friends and relatives were ever reborn. Privately, Wen Ning thought it far more likely that the outspoken and fiercely protective Eleanor was a reincarnation of Wen Qing than the shy and reserved Jiang YanLi.

They also talked a lot about what it meant to be gay men over the various incarnations. After the first reincarnation, the two men kept their relationship pretty much a secret. They were never born anywhere near each other, so Wen Ning and Song ZiChen had to move one of them to the new area and introduce the two men to each other. As far as outsiders knew, the two were just very good friends. In most of the reincarnations, the two men were married to women and had children with them. Marriage and children were familial expectations and basically the only way to get out of an arranged marriage was to leave the family: love for a spouse was neither required nor expected by either partner.

Even if homosexuality wasn't always a death sentence in China, it was never really accepted as 'normal'. With each of their rebirths, Wei Ying and Lan Zhan had had to balance their love for each other against societal expectations and allowances. It wasn't easy for Michael to accept that his past selves had not remained faithful to either their wives or to Lan Zhan. But in a society that not only accepted but encouraged men to have wives, plural, was there really such an expectation as remaining faithful to a wife or lover, singular? His past selves probably did not see that having a relationship with Lan Zhan impacted their marriages in any meaningful way….

Wen Ning told Michael the stories behind the only three times that Wei Ying and Lan Zhan were not reunited after rebirth. Once, Wei Ying's reincarnation died of a childhood illness. Once, Lan Zhan's was killed by raiders on his way to meet up with Wei Ying. And the third time, in the 1700s, Lan Zhan's ship capsized in a storm on its way from China to England where Wei Ying had been reborn (and where Wen Ning learned to speak English). Song ZiChen had tried to rescue his charge, but had ultimately failed.

September, 2019

Lan Qinyang exchanged her suit jacket for a doctor's white coat and fiddled with the collar. Director Zhang shifted impatiently behind her. "I will remind you, Director, that I am a practicing physician in addition to my duties as Secretary. I work in a free clinic three days a week and in a hospital once a week. I am quite capable of working with flu patients." The Silver River Hospital in Wuhan was full of people experiencing this new flu that had shown up a few weeks before. It wasn't odd to have beds full of flu patients; the air quality in cities was so poor that any widespread upper respiratory infection could send thousands every day to the hospital for treatment. What was odd was that this was not flu season….

"But Secretary Lan," the Director hedged. "This is…"

"Director Zhang, you have six attending physicians out sick today. I saw the ones here who have been working the emergency room and the clinic; they look exhausted. Are you really going to try to deny my assistance simply because I have another title within the Group besides 'doctor'?" Lan Qinyang smiled serenely at the older man. Try ignoring that my other title overrules yours. I double dog dare you. She had seen that phrase in an American movie and liked it. She ignored his further blusters and walked quickly to the clinic.

The clinics were her baby, her idea. Every hospital had one and they were entirely needs based. The rest of the board had not understood that concept; however, they saw the advantage when a wealthy patron tried to abuse the system thinking that 'needs based' meant 'free for everyone'. He had ended up paying far more than he would have by going to a doctor outside of the clinic. He had sued them to reduce the amount owed, but since he had signed the document that clearly explained how fees were charged, not only did he lose the case, the clinic had also persuaded the judge to award them the lawyers' fees as well.

Not that she had intended the 'needs based' fee structure to achieve that result. She was an executive and a doctor in a global corporation that could more than afford to treat the poor who needed healthcare. Her ancestors were doctors because they wanted to heal the sick, not so they could become wealthy. They had amassed a fortune by investing in the right resources and people; it was only right that that fortune was used to give back to the people. American conservative pundits would call her a 'bleeding heart liberal' while simultaneously blaming communist China for failing to uphold one of the most basic tenets of communism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Denying healthcare to those in need was definitely against what Marx had envisioned in his perfect society. Without a shred of a sense of consistency or hypocrisy, those same conservative pundits proclaimed that healthcare should be a right reserved to those who could afford to pay whatever rates and fees the for-profit health insurance industry deemed acceptable. Luckily, she didn't live her life to the tune of those repulsive people. Those conservative pundits can go fuck themselves.

Her first patient was a sixty-three year old woman; Qingyang ran through the standard vitals' check, and then held the elder's wrist, checking the pulse and sending her senses inside the woman's body looking for the source of the infection. Lan Qinyang withdrew her mind; I've never seen this pathogen before. I don't know what it is, but this is more than a simple influenza…. She found the same pathogen in her next two patients and immediately ordered a hospital wide mandate: all patients with these flu-like symptoms were to have a full panel work-up and the lab was ordered to identify the virus causing these issues. Not that it looked like any flu virus she had ever seen before. Nor was it acting like other influenza viruses, either. This one was causing issues in multiple systems and wasn't even consistent with which systems it attacked. Some patients had only trouble breathing while others had heart problems and so on. On top of that, it was predominantly age-based; approximately eighty percent of the patients were over the age of sixty.

Not that seasonal flus didn't target the elderly more than younger adults, but they usually targeted children and infants, too, as these populations tended to have decreased or compromised immune systems.

A week later, Lan Qinyang was as ragged looking as the rest of her colleagues. This disease had no rhyme or reason. Who it targeted, other than age, and what and how it attacked seemed completely random. Patients were dying at faster rates than any flu virus she'd ever dealt with. Every hospital in the city was being overrun with this thing. And government officials were starting to huddle together with hospital executives trying to contain and control information rather than contain and control the infection.

She could heal the sick. Through her cultivation she could send spiritual energy into their cells to increase production of the necessary white blood cells to fight this disease. She could alleviate chest congestion and repair cell damage. However, she was limited to healing one person at a time. There were too many people sick and dying for her to spend hours at a single person's bedside healing them. On top of that, it would be too obvious that her patients were recovering at rates much higher than her colleagues. She did what she could, surreptitiously sending spiritual energy into as many patients as she could hoping that her efforts were not entirely in vain.

They were in a race against death and losing far too often. She was in a fight with her colleagues; whether it was her fellow doctors, fellow administrators in other hospitals, or board members, she was outnumbered. "It's a flu," they all claimed and resisted her efforts to research more about this disease. Her efforts to shut down the city as much as possible, reduce the exposure to the healthy citizens and keep it within the city limits were blocked.

Even with the QishanWen Medical Group, she was quietly opposed. She had ordered Purchasing Managers in each building in every country to order surgical gowns, gloves, cleaning supplies, and the best filtration masks available in bulk, at least ten times their normal order each month. She released Executive Office funds for these purchases as well as to rent warehouse space to store the additional equipment where needed. In early November, she realized that her Purchasing Managers, especially her international managers, had treated her orders as offhand advice to be ignored or adhered to at their leisure; the following day she had new Purchasing Managers in virtually every facility.

By December, the World Health Organization's focus was laser focused on researching this new disease, now commonly called Covid-19. International governments were starting to pay attention to what was going on as the disease had started to spread to other countries. The international business community was making angry noises about how this disease would affect shipments in and out of China, which in turn would affect manufacturing and sales worldwide. She fumed that they seemed more concerned about the loss of revenue and productivity rather than the loss of lives.

Lan Qinyang returned to the Group's Beijing office to coordinate the flow of information from her doctors to her researchers, both domestic and international. Every employee worldwide that was able to do their job remotely was sent home and ordered to minimize their exposure. Her family was sent to her ancestral home.

The one personal luxury she allowed herself was a few hours each week to watch a new web drama. A few weeks after it first aired, her legal team called her to see if she wanted to sue the production team and the author of the web novel it was based on. Apparently, they thought the depiction of the QishanWen Sect was demeaning to the QishanWen Medical Group. Lan Qinyang told them to write a simple press statement reminding the public that the Sect portrayed in a television drama and novel was entirely fictitious and was not affiliated in any way with the Medical Group. And to ask the drama's marketing team if, in return for not suing, they would allow the 'nice' Wen actors to promote the Medical Group. She was mostly kidding about that last part and was unsurprised when it was denied.

Privately, Lan Qinyang thought the portrayal of the Wen was spot on. Her Wen ancestors were healers, but their relatives were monsters.