Chapter 16: The Shadow of the Past – Part II

"It was about a year after the funeral when I received a summons from my father. By then, I had thought that me and him had gone our separate ways so the fact that he would ask me to come meet him was surprising. Even so, I hadn't wanted to go until your father convinced me to hear him out. I went alone to see him ready for a confrontation, but surprisingly when I saw him he was bedridden and pale. He was sick; he had been for a while even before he had summoned me. The doctors attributed his deteriorating health to stress from work or grief, most likely both. At the time it didn't matter to me, though. I just wanted to hear him out and get it over with, so it was shocking when he asked me to return to the Clan. He even assured me a position as the Head Sorceress of Hong Kong, a position I held until not so long ago."

"Well, 'asked' is a generous term; he demanded I return to the Clan. If you've learnt anything about your grandfather by now, Xiao Lang, is that he was incredibly hard-headed, so I responded equally. I pointed out how questionable it was that he would do suddenly do this after years of denying the family your father and I had built, but he waved off my questions and continuously insisted that it was more than I deserved."

Yelan shook her head. "I suppose both of us weren't really ready to talk to each other; too much had already festered between us. I left the mansion with an emboldened hatred for the Clan and your grandfather and promised I would never talk to him again. Sure enough, I never did. He died before we could speak again." She sighed. "It's the one promise in my life I wish I hadn't kept."

For a few moment, Yelan didn't say anything and kept her lips sealed. Her breath was quiet but had a harsh force behind it and Syaoran could see that she was anxiously nibbling on her lips. It occurred to him then that his mother had been recounting the most painful moments of her life, things that she hadn't thought of or perhaps even avoided thinking about for a long time, and this was the first time in a long while that she could confront them head-on. It was clear that it had taken a toll on her normally composed countenance, so he stayed silent and gave her the time to process the emotions that came with it.

After a few minutes, her breath calmed down and her posture relaxed. She had fought off the turbulent wave off emotion at least for the moment.

"I'm sorry about that. Where were we?" Yelan asked.

"You left after the talk with Grandfather." Syaoran reminded.

"Ah, yes." Yelan thought back for a moment as she tried to pick up the thread of conversation she had been on. "Well, a few weeks after that visit, sickness finally overtook my father and he died. I was notified immediately and told that he had left me his house with a sum of money and the title he had promised in his will along with a letter and some documents. However, I was determined at the time to hold to my resolve and shut out attempts to try to contact me about my father. Fortunately for me, I had your father by my side."

A smile laced with underlying sadness appeared on her face. "Your father always was able to see through my actions. I suppose he saw that my stubbornness for what it was; a fear to face the ghost of my father. He tried to convince me to look at what my father had left for me but I didn't want to hear it. For a while the matter remained unresolved and things were tense between us, but I came around eventually and agreed to look at the things my father had left me; the money, the mansion, the title of Head Sorceress. But perhaps the most important thing he left was the letter because it was where he explained everything; his thoughts, motivations, and it all comes back to the problem the Clan faces today."

Yelan turned to her son with a serious look on her face. "Do you have an idea what it is, Xiao Lang?"

Syaoran looked at her dumbfounded at the unexpected question. He tried to think of a reasonable answer but found none came to mind, at least not the one that he thought she had, so he shook his head.

Yelan answered for him, sensing his confusion at the situation. "It's power, Xiao Lang. The Clan wants power."

"Power." Syaoran repeated in whisper. The word left a tingling sensation in his mouth and sent shivers down his spine.

"Yes, power. The arranged marriage of powerful mages, the large expansion of the Clan, your training and your mission to capture the Clow Cards; all of it have been in pursuit of acquiring more power."

Syaoran processed her words. He could follow the logic behind her words, but there was one thing that didn't seem right to him.

"Why would the Clan be worried about power?" Syaoran asked. "We're one of the most powerful clan of sorcerers in the East or even the world. Our name is recognized within the international magical community. There's no reason why the Clan would be insecure about power."

Yelan nodded. "What you say is true. The Li Clan still hold a tremendous amount of influence within the magical community and even outside of it, but this was not always the case. In the ancient past, the Li Clan comprised only of a few family of mages, powerful in their own right but small nonetheless. That all changed, however, thanks to one particular event: the birth of Clow Reed."

Syaoran realized that she had switched her role from mother to teacher. It brought him back to the nostalgic times she had taught him about other magical histories and techniques in his early days of training.

"The birth of Clow Reed signified an important event; the birth of one of the most powerful mages to have ever lived to this day. The Li Clan claimed his power as a result of their heritage and took him as proof of their strength in magic and capability of producing strong magicians, despite the fact that Clow Reed's heritage was not fully of the Clan. Even so, this reputation has carried it through centuries all the way to our current times."

"But this reputation is far from solidified. To maintain it, the Clan must always produce strong magicians. This is what motivated them to arrange marriages between strong magicians. At first, the Clan married mostly within limited circles, with inter-family marriages being common. An ironic step considering the birth of Clow Reed was due to a union outside of the Clan. After a few decades, the Elders of the time began to realize the dangers of continuous intermarriage so the Clan revised it's marriage policy and implemented an allowance to marry outside of the Clan provided the pairing was of a mage of sufficient capability in magic. However, all mages who marry into the Clan must then adopt the name Li to solidify the name of the Clan. These powerful mages eventually saw the Clan's need for strong mages and bargained with the Clan, adding their power to the Clan under the condition that their families or even relatives to be allowed to enter the Clan and benefit from it's protection. The Clan Elders of the time accepted, seeing it as a way of not only bolstering the Clan's power but also it's numbers."

"However, this gave rise to another problem; the Clan now had a large number of people as it's extended family. Out of the tremendous influx of families now under it's banner, only a small percentage actually had met their qualifications. In desperation, they began to establish training centers in their territories to increase the magical abilities of their new recruits and created multiple policies to help increase their magical affinity. One of these was sending 'gifted' Clan members to help train young mages, which if you recall I was briefly a part of in my youth. Today the Clan has created more restrictions to it's marriage policy to trim the fat, so to speak, but despite their efforts, it continues to face this problem to this day. This has not escaped the eyes of the world, so the pressure on them to produce strong mages continues to mount. The Clan's goal to create an impact in the magical world again to keep pressure from it's rivals away, it wants-"

"-another Clow Reed." Syaoran concluded.

"At the very least, it wants to make a ripple in the magic world once again." she added.

Syaoran worked out what his mother had said. There was so much to take in, but it did provide some clarity to some of the Clan's actions and the urgency it had to finding strong mages.

She voiced his exact thoughts in question. "It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is." Syaoran nodded weakly.

"What I've told you is a concise version of events. The letter my father left me was much more detailed and was accompanied with various copies of historical documents supporting it, some of which aren't publicly available to even the higher members of the Clan, with the exception of the Elders. As an Elder himself, he had explained how he had been introduced to this problem and dedicated his efforts to solving it. As such, he was overjoyed when he had managed to sire two children strong in the magical arts. He wrote on how he saw me as the perfect person to further this goal when he put me in charge of training our young mages and eventually tried to marry me off to Zhang Wen, and his disappointment when I gave it all away for a life with your father. That was his justification for his actions."

A moment of silence rose as Yelan stopped talking and again reminisced on old times. Syaoran looked at her curiously before cautiously enquiring.

"Did you accept his reasons?"

"I wonder..." Yelan spoke almost in a whisper. "To this day, I'm not sure what to think of it. He never apologized in his letter and showed no regret for any of his actions, but he showed some understanding to my point of view; more than he had ever told in real life at least. Perhaps leaving me with his home and title was his way of apologizing, or perhaps he wanted to justify his actions with his motivation to help the Clan."

Yelan looked to nowhere with glassy eyes as she pondered on her words before she turned to her son. "Whatever his intent was I'll never know now, and I'll always carry that regret of not resolving things when I had the chance. If there's anything for you to take away, Xiao Lang, is that it's often the things left unsaid that leave behind the largest regrets."

Syaoran nodded. "I'll remember that." he replied wholeheartedly, remembering how close he came to that regret during his time in Japan.

Yelan nodded leaned back, satisfied with his reply. "After that, I made a decision; I couldn't settle things with my father in life, but I'd at least honor his memory in death and accept the things he had left me. I told your father this and he accepted my answer. There were some legalities and formalities to take care of, but afterwards we moved to this house and I was officially appointed as the Head Sorceress of Hong Kong. We had become a part of the Li Clan once again."

"I see." Syaoran mulled this over in his head, fitting the continuity with what he already knew from Fuutie. For the most part both stories fit and little by little the picture was becoming clearer. "How did the rest of the Elders react?"

To his surprise, Yelan gave a light smirk. "Not well, as you can imagine, but there was little they could do. The position of Head Sorcerer had actually been vacant for a while before my return so my father had taken on duty as both the Elder and Head Sorcerer in charge of Hong Kong. As such, he had complete power of who he could put in the position of Head Sorcerer even if the rest of the Elders disagreed. He had also managed to keep this a secret from them as long as he could, so by the time they realized it was already too late."

"Of course, the rest of the Clan didn't take kindly to us either. Having a former exile be appointed at a high position within the Clan didn't sit well with a lot of people, so naturally they reacted negatively to us. I didn't mind the jabs directed at me as much as I did the ones directed at your father and sisters. Surprisingly, there was also a large amount of people who were supportive of my appointment. Some were old friends of your father's while others were members who had similar stories to ours; people who were forced break off their relationships or marry someone they didn't want to due to the Clan not willing it to be, or others who were disadvantaged by the Clan's policies. My foothold in the Clan wasn't as weak as I had believed."

"For a few years, things went on peacefully. Both me and the Elders were rarely in contact. As long as I did my job, they left our family alone. Still, your father and I wasn't swayed by the uneasy truce and worked to establish a foothold as to not have the rug pulled under us at any moment. While I managed Clan affairs, he handled business and gave us a significant amount of financial security to stand on our own two feet. After a few years, we had settled into life within the Clan and everything seemed to be going smoothly. However, life is always moving in ways you can't predict. It came as a surprise to me when I suddenly found out I was pregnant."

Yelan eyed Syaoran with an expression of motherly affection. "I was so excited then and so was your father. We were having another child and this time we could afford to raise him in a better environment. However, the knowledge of your birth came with unfortunate news."

He already knew what she was talking about, but he asked nonetheless. "It was Father, wasn't it?" Syaoran asked with a somber tone.

Yelan looked away from him. "Yes."

The grief that his mother felt and his own lack of knowledge of his father had combined to create a dark aura which weighed on both of them. Syaoran felt a sense of guilt for not being able to fully feel what his sisters and mother felt and blamed himself for it even though he shouldn't. He realized he was on the verge of triggering an emotional nuclear bomb for both him and his mother by asking the cause of his father's death. It scared him, but a primal feeling rose in his chest to press on nonetheless; a hunger to fill the hole in his heart where his father should be.

"Tell me how he died." he finally spoke with determination.

Yelan looked at his son's steadfast gaze. She could feel his energy, a yearning for a father he never got to meet. Seeing his determination, she could only respond in kind. With a steady breath, she calmed herself and prepared to tell him the most painful tale of her life.

"It started off small at first, with him getting tired from time to time. Then, he'd complain about having pains in random spots all over his body. Then one day, he collapsed for no reason. It was then that we checked with doctors, but they found no probable cause and instead gave him some medicine for muscle pain. For a while we thought that it worked as he seemed to return to health and even became more energetic but then the symptoms came back worse. Soon he started coughing up blood and periodically losing sensations within his limbs. We continued to seek medical treatment and treated the symptoms but they didn't last and no doctor could offer up a concrete answer for the cause of his ailments."

"It was then that I suspected the problem wasn't a medical one as much as it was a magical one. It didn't occur to us for so long because your father hadn't used magic in a long time. I first suspected foul play or spells, perhaps by the Elders or their agents, and increased the protection wards around the house to counter it. But as it turned out, it wasn't a curse or anything of the sort. It was something far worse."

The first tears began to fall as she continued on. "As you know, Xiao Lang, magic users rely on magical circuits, ethereal channels in the body for magic to flow, to have access to magical energy for them to cast spells, but there is an innate resistance in our bodies against these circuits which creates a loss of energy from the magic we put onto a spell to the spell itself. This resistance will decrease overtime to very small amounts as the body acclimates to using magic more often. However, some people like your father had a very high resistance to magic."

Syaoran was once again in awe of her mother's ability to shift roles as teacher at the drop of a moment. However, this time she hadn't been able to fully shed away her sadness and a current of sorrow ran under her words. "Now, this alone wouldn't normally be a problem. This is the reason why some people don't have an affinity for magic and since most people will live their lives not using let alone knowing about magic, they wouldn't need to worry about this."

"However, your father had trained to use magic and unknowingly forced himself multiple times against his own natural resistance to do so. It was why he struggled to use magic a lot, but we hadn't known that back then. What we also didn't know was that by forcing his magic relentlessly, it had caused an irregularity where it couldn't flow naturally even within an idle state. This had caused a build-up of magic within him that slowly accumulated over the years. Since it's magic in a passive state, it remained undetected for a long time, but eventually the energy built up will be too much and it reaches a tipping point."

Yelan's hands began to visibly shake as her eyes turned dark. The tears were know falling in greater frequency even as she continued to explain with thorough detail to her son. "The accumulated magic reaches a tipping point and activates itself. As it is magic in it's purest form without any conversion, it begins to affect the body in unpredictable ways, from random pains to sudden loss of sensation to even the occasional positive change like a sudden feeling of strength. However, the end result is the same; the body eventually wears out as it can't cope with the sudden changes happening to it. Health problems begin to occur even without the assistance of the anomaly. They gradually escalate in severity such as internal bleeding and cancerous tumors. However, the true cancer is the magical anomaly itself. Since it is connected to the person's natural magic circuit, it is constantly fed a supply of magic that flows naturally within the body, a flow which can't be completely stopped. Using spells against it risk aggravating the problem as the magic constituting is already too unpredictable to know how it will react. At that point, the only hope is if the magical anomaly will collapse upon itself but that is just to wait on chance, and the medical problems remain even if the anomaly stops. Until then, the sufferer's body will continue to be torn apart by his or her magic."

Syaoran listened wide-eyed as she described the events happening to his father in vivid detail. At some point halfway the tears had fallen from his eyes as well. He let them fall but he couldn't sob; even through the blur of his vision from his tears, he was transfixed his mother who was reliving the moment as she continued to tell it, her voice struggling not to shake.

"After that, all that can be done is to treat symptoms as they arise and try to alleviate some of the pain but in the end death is almost certain. That didn't stop me, though. I tried everything to save your father. I pored through thousands of magic books, tried various magical remedies and potions, tried countless medical treatments, all in the hopes of saving your father even as he continued to waste away in front of me and I couldn't do anything about it-"

A sharp sob broke off her sentence. She struggled to regain control of her breath but succeeded only partially as she breathed between gasps. They were subdued but frequent. As her tears flowed out, she put her sleeve onto her face to wipe away the tears and to cover her face.

Syaoran didn't fare any better. The image of his normally stoic mother crying in subdued sobs in front of him stabbed at his heart. His own tears fell in quick succession. Syaoran could sense her pain in every sob, he could almost feel how deep it ran, but he knew he couldn't feel I the way she did. Perhaps no one could.

All he could do was be there for her.

With a deep breath, Syaoran wiped away his tears and inched himself closer to her in minute movements to avoid provoking his injuries. He stopped as he was a finger's length away from her as she continued to sob into her sleeve. And then, he put his arms around her gently and squeezed slightly.

At first, it seemed like his mother hadn't reacted to his hug but soon enough she leaned slightly against him, still keeping her face covered by her sleeves. Syaoran could feel her shaking in his arms as she tried to gain control of her breath. Some time passed for a while for them like this as she continued to cry in his embrace. He didn't mind, though; she had every right to cry and he would be there as long as she was.

Eventually though, the shakes began to subside and her breath began to return to a normal pace. Gradually, she began to breathe normally as the sounds of sobbing finally came to a halt. She lifted her head up slightly, signaling Syaoran to let go of his embrace. As he unlocked his arms, his mother's face came fully into view. Her eyes were red and swollen with black tinges from the edges of her eyes from the makeup she had been wearing. For a moment, the look of sadness lingered on her but as her eyes met his, they quickly turned to a smile.

"You have your father's eyes." she spoke in a slightly nasal voice due to her nose being clogged up.

He looked down away from his mother. "I'm sorry I can't feel the way you feel or the way the others feel." He fixed his gaze downward but a hand touched his cheek and prompted him to raise his head. Once again, he was face-to-face with his mother.

"But you do feel it, Xiao Lang. That sadness, that yearning you have to see him; that is proof of it. You are your father's son, Xiao Lang, his legacy. You are the reason he fought for so long was to stay alive. In the days leading to your birth he held on to life because he wanted to see you with his own eyes, and he did. He made it all the way to your birth to see you and when he finally did, you gave him joy and peace in his final moments of life." Yelan raised her other hand and put it on his left cheek, fully coddling her son's face with her arms.

"And you give me joy every day in mine." She stroked his left cheek as a tear ran down it's path. "Even through the darkest days approaching your father's death, I didn't let myself give in to despair because I had you. You give me the strength to carry on, Xiao Lang. That is as true as it was back then as it is now."

This time it was her who put her arms around him. As he felt the warmth of her embrace, Syaoran returned it and buried himself between her head and shoulder. Again, they let time pass them by without worrying as both of them unburdened their sorrows. After a few minutes, they unlocked their embrace and looked at each other's tear-stained faces.

Yelan wiped the remaining tears away from her eyes. "I suppose it's about time we draw this story to a close. We only have a little more to go and there is something important that I must address before all this is over."

"Okay." Syaoran replied. He looked at his mother, her face still moist from tears, and thought it was jarring the straightforward way that she casually brought up the topic after opening up an emotional wound like that, but he supposed there was no comfortable way to continue on from the moment they just had. He felt relief that it happened though. He hadn't known the degree to which he felt disconnected from his family because of their father's loss until he cried himself out just now. Presently, it felt like a giant weight had been lifted off his chest and judging from his mother's expression, she felt the same. With renewed vigor, he listened closely as she pressed on.

"After your father passed, we did the rites and had his funeral. Suffice to say, I was deeply saddened afterwards but I didn't have time to mourn. You had just come into the world and I had to be there for you and with your father's death, the task of maintaining our finances now fell solely on me. Balancing the Clan, the family business, and baby-rearing wasn't easy. Thankfully, your sisters were helpful with the latter. They helped with more menial duties such as changing your diapers and feeding you when I was busy."

'I know that much.' he thought to himself. Before he went to Japan, his sisters used to hang that fact over his head and recount stories of tantrums or messy diaper incidents to him to get a reaction out of him. Thinking about it now, he supposed it was their way of getting his attention.

"Unfortunately, you had caught the attention of someone else; the Elders had heard of your birth. Specifically, they had heard rumors of your innate magic. I had known that you would draw their attention the minute you were born and I felt the magic within you so I tried to suppress the news of your power for as long as I can but the Elders' ears reach further than I can ever hope to cover. Once they heard of you, they immediately approached me and inquired to see you and I had little reason or power to turn down their visit."

Her face contorted with disgust. "I still remember the looks on their faces when they first saw you; those contemptible eyes full of greed looking a newborn infant. It infuriated me. I knew they would see you as nothing but a tool to fulfill the Clan's goal as I had been and this time, they had all the more reason to."

The last part of her sentence intrigued him. "What do you mean?" Syaoran asked.

Yelan's grief had been pushed back with only little traces of her tears that remain. She looked at him seriously now with an expression of gravitas.

"It's here that I make a confession to you, Xiao Lang. There is something I haven't told you about your magic. "

The mention of his magic made him all the more nervous, perhaps because it had become such an integral part of who he was that he was afraid of something bad about it being revealed. At the same time, it made him extremely curious.

"I've told you before that you were born with strong magic within you, yes?"

"Yes, that's true." That wasn't something she needed to tell him. From the early days of his training, he'd figured out that he had a massive magic pool. He always seemed to have magic energy on hand to spare for most of his training and putting power behind his elemental spells came naturally to him. It was only during his time in Japan and recently his training sessions with Fang Zhi that he had trouble accessing that power.

"That statement isn't false, but it is only part of the truth. I've held this back from you for as long as you've been alive, but after today's events I think it's time you knew just how far the extent of your power is."

"What? What do you mean?" Syaoran urged on, aware that the atmosphere had tensed again. He looked at his mother intently as she spoke the words that would surprise him.

"Xiao Lang, you are the strongest magic-born child the Clan has had in centuries."

A/N: This honestly could've been done faster but alas, nitpicking and correction got the better of me. I only hope it was worth the wait. Next one should be faster and conclude this little talk between Syaoran and Yelan.