Shāng Bù Huàn and Mù Tiān Mìng leapt onto the walls as Làng Wū Yáo entered the town through the main entrance on the well-traveled path. A humble market had been thrown into absolute chaos. Friend fought friend, brother against brother, parents against child. Pots were thrown and fresh food spilt on the ground.

"What a mess this is!" Líng Yá commented.

Làng felt that was a bit understated. He closed his eyes, briefly listening to the world around him. The movements were staggered and forced as before, reading malicious but not evil. The malice felt overwhelming, but these people were not to blame. They did not intend to do evil things, so they would not need to be justly killed. No, this was not their fault. He had to remind himself of that as the feeling threatened to overwhelm him.

Turning the knobs on the pipa, Làng pulled at the strings. The plucked notes quickly garnered the nearest people's attention, and that was just enough to turn their false ire towards the sound.

Làng leapt backwards, quickly evading a thrown pot. He landed on the roof of a nearby stall. He plucked a few more notes before leaping up and landing on another stall to avoid a thrown bowl of noodles.

"What a waste of noodles!" Líng Yá scoffed.

Another bowl and pot avoided and Làng stood on the opposite roof from where he began. It was time to appease his heart's desire. He opened his mouth, singing a favorite song as the enchanted tune rang out over the quarreling. He'd sung it many times, entertaining the taverns and the sadistic princess as he belted out the tune, fulfilling his desire to sing. He was being used back then, but it was the only life he'd come to know.

He knew now he was something more than just a sorcerous blade. Mù Tiān Mìng had told him that much and he believed it. Perhaps he had always believed it somehow and her words just stirred up what he'd already known.

"The land is cloaked in deepest blue!

The shadow of eagles across the moon!

Let all the pain and scars now fade away into the past!"

He leapt into the air avoiding another bowl, landing on the next rooftop. As the bowl struck the roof tiles, the crowd was beginning to simmer down. They released the robes and hair and weaponized chopsticks used against one another, turning to face Làng. It had been some time he'd sung for ordinary people. Not since he sang at the taverns who had used him to incite euphoria. He knew that now, probably at the time as well, but he didn't have a strong resolve at the time.

Singing right here and now was different. He was using his supernatural voice for something that didn't feel like a curse. He still had to be careful not to use it too much as it still could cause a lot of trouble. It had an addictive quality to it at times, sometimes worse. At least that seemed to be with the princess and the taverns, the former may have just been an obsession. Here, he simply wanted to break the sway of a sorcerous sword, then he'd stop before the people demanded more. It was a simple tune.

"That sword has tight control over them, doesn't it?" Líng Yá observed.

Làng could feel it too, the maliciousness still threatening to overwhelm him. Slipping into a seated position, he shifted Líng Yá on his lap and twisted the knobs again. His heart cried out for peace, and the only way to do it was to sing. He had the strength to overpower some musical-based sorcerous sword spell. He was a musician and a blade after all.

The song carried over into the neighboring courtyard. Even the locals this far out were being attracted to the song, not making a move to attack Shāng or Mù as they stumbled towards the song.

"He certainly knows how to draw a crowd," Shāng commented. It was that same enchanting effect he noted when invading the palace. Làng's voice truly was something "This will make it easier with less innocent bystanders in the way."

"We can't take too long retrieving the sword," Mù warned. "His voice tends to have an alluring, even addictive quality to it and I'd rather not enthrall the people here.."

Shāng had heard this before. Mù had spoken about Làng a number of times, a songbird in a seedy tavern. He was caged there in all but the environment. He came and went as he pleased, visiting Mù and singing with her several times, but each time, he always returned to the tavern. She could feel the power he had, the way he felt trapped by a curse and his situation but had no will to do anything about it. She knew of the voice he heard that turned out to be Líng Yá. Things were different then. Làng and Líng Yá we're now with them and no longer caged. Better for the both of them.

"This plan is pretty risky. Perhaps we shouldn't have made the suggestion to do this given his hesitations with his voice," Shāng frowned.

"He is his own person now," Mù objected. "He wants to sing, just as I do, just that his voice makes that difficult.

Shāng frowned some more. "To want to sing but never be able to."

"At least he can still sing around us when we're traveling," Mù said. "He has such a powerful voice, supernatural effects aside, that it would be a shame he went silent completely. At least he now has Líng Yá to help speak for him so he doesn't have to worry so much."

Shāng tried to imagine what it was like, not being able to sing or even talk when his heart cried out for a song. The closest thing he could think of was that Lang was suppressing his voice much like Shang suppressed his own qi. It was to control the effects it could have.

"And I get the feeling even if we hadn't suggested it, he would've sung here even with his hesitations about his voice," Mù added. "Líng Yá did say he'd already made up his mind."

"One day I'll figure him out," Shāng said.

Mù laughed. "In time. It is a bit harder now that he doesn't speak as much anymore. But even back then, he had a subtlety about his movements likely from having to bottle everything up inside. I'd imagine even having Líng Yá able to speak for him from now, Wū Yáo would still speak his mind."

With Líng Yá now at his side, Làng no longer had to worry that his voice would cause trouble. The pipa could speak for him, and that pipa liked to talk a lot. But Mù could still pick up quite a bit from Làng with his subtle expressions and movements. Placing a hand on her shoulder, the soft smiles and frowns, that his face wasn't always in a concerned, trapped knot like it had once been.

"Hopefully he knows that he can always talk around us," Shāng said.

Mù nodded. "I'm sure he does."

Before he'd gained his own resolve, Làng had opened up to her. He still had a bit of awkwardness to him as he adjusted to a new style of life. He no longer let people walk all over him, but he was still attempting to understand this newfound resolve budding within him. Having friends also complicated things as he just wasn't used to trusting people. Shāng was still a new addition to his very small circle, but Làng could tell that Shāng was a good and trustworthy person with his strong sense of good and evil. They were just a bit awkward around each other, but they had to get to know and understand one another better.

"We have company," Shāng warned.

"I noticed," Mù admitted.

Several imperial soldiers stepped out from the shadows within the stalls. Just a handful but thankfully no sign of the Hunting Fox yet.

"It's the Sword-plundering Nemesis!" one of the soldiers shouted.

Shāng frowned, wrapping a hand around his sword's hilt. "No time for talk, right to the point and ready to throw their lives away."

"Did you expect anything less from Xī Yōu imperials?" Mù shook her head. She pulled the guqin from its resting place on her back, pulling the strings and sending soundwaves at several of the soldiers. The impact knocked them backward into an empty stall, sending wood flying in all directions.

Shāng sighed, pulling the sword from its sheath, the blast of qi kicking up dirt and dust nearby. He'd made himself the enemy of the imperial court, so what did he expect? They saw him as the villain, someone countering a cruel and heartless empire that wished to subjugate its people and turn sorcerous blades against them.

What was he supposed to do? Sit back and watch his own people get murdered? That idea didn't sit right with him at all. This was the only path that felt right, and now with the Sorcerous Sword Index, he could keep those blades away from the imperial sadists and hopefully find a way to dispose of them properly.

Right now, they had to get rid of these imperial lackeys and find the Sorrowful Soul before their new ally ran out of song material. Figuratively. He would need to stop sooner rather than later to prevent the sorcerous effects from setting in on those who heard his songs.

A quick slash of the sword and Shāng's qi extended past the wooden blade, slicing into the soldiers and shattering the bamboo fencing behind them. All the soldiers had quickly fallen. There weren't exactly many of them in this tiny assault.

Mù plucked a few notes on her guqin. That was uneventful, but perhaps for the better as their goal wasn't to squash the imperial soldiers. It was to find that sword before more people died. As the battlefield quieted, she could still hear Làng's voice ring out in the town but something more distant caught her trained ears. "A battle horn."

Shāng pursed his lips as he sheathed his sword. "I thought we would have more time."

"Seems these were just advanced scouts." She placed the guqin back on her back, shaking her head. "Wū Yáo can certainly handle a fight against them, but I'd rather retrieve this sword and fight them on our terms, together."

"And they'd be after me more than they would the people here," Shāng understood. "Though knowing the empire, they'd probably slaughter the whole town anyway."

"They might be after Wū Yáo to some extent," Mù frowned. "He is the escaped songbird that bit his master's hand. For the better. No one should live like that." She headed out of the courtyard with a sense of urgency.

"Agreed." Shāng followed her towards the largest building in the town. He had only known Làng for a short time at that point, but even he could see the sorrow in the musician's eyes at the time they first met. It was different now, fortunately. That sorrow was gone.

The pair met no resistance on their way to the building, discovering a rather gruesome scene inside. The imperial had been slain, driven through by a sword that was then mercilessly ripped out afterward. He was hunched over the table, a single silver sword tightly in his dead grasp. Blood spattered the walls, chairs overturned and scrolls sliced and scattered on the floor.

"Someone got to him first," Mù observed. "Could that truly be the mystic sword left behind?"

"I can just hear it, Líng Yá shouting 'trap' right now," Shāng said.

She turned, searching for anything that didn't belong, particularly bugs. "I don't see signs of Huò Shì Míng Huáng's agents anywhere. But if not them or the imperials, who did this?"

"Something doesn't feel right," Shāng agreed as he pried the silver sword from the dead man's grasp. He turned it over in his hand a few times. It looked like an ordinary sword and these mystic swords liked to be fancy and over the top. No beads, no ornate and intricate designs, no unusual shapes, not oversized either. "Ordinary. There is no magic in this." He turned, finding Mù staring at the doorway. "Someone else has the sword."

"Bù Huàn." She continued to stare past the courtyard. "Wū Yáo has suddenly stopped singing."

Something was wrong.

...

Author's musings

The Pili website notes that Lang does not communicate emotions much at all, mostly expressing himself through song and through Ling Ya blabbing too much. In Season 2, Shang can interpret this pretty well, mostly. He still is off sometimes, but for the most part, he can understand Lang and his more subtle movements.

But this is young Shang, his friendship with Lang is very new. Mu knows Lang better, but I don't think either has had enough time to fully understand how Lang communicates now that he's stopped talking. Not that Lang really showed his emotions before that point save some subtle movements.

I imagine that Shang does really concern himself for Lang's wellbeing in these early years. He does in the movie, and now that Lang is with him, that concern is probably every day. And now that Lang has suddenly stopped singing, that concern is probably hitting him hard. I wonder what Lang has encountered on the other side of town. Hm.