3 A New World, A New Home

Seven days had passed uneventfully. Yang Qing spent most of his time sleeping and strengthening his meridians before his mother woke up. Then, he would drink his breakfast quietly and quickly. Unlike his first time, he hesitated each time before he drinking. He wasn't distracted by his hunger and swept in nostalgia this time, unlike when he was first breastfeed. He had time to think now. He may be but a baby, but he was old enough to be his mother's grandfather. Something he couldn't quite overcome as he tried to eat his mother's dinner of some type of yellow starch and some steak, but was quickly captured by his mother. After a while, however, he realized having no teeth and lacking the strength to tussle a chicken or sit up defeated all sense of dignity he could have about self-care.

He was helpless and, while embarrassing, the breast milk his mother gave him was his only sustenance. Yang Qing had heard tales of the old while sages drank of the Qi of the world and ate heavenly and earthly treasures as their food, their bodies pure and removed from earthly food. How he wished he could do that right now, but then again, these tales were probably myths. After all, these were the same people who had caused the Thousand Year War, which nearly destroyed the Yang Dominion and allowed for the two hundred years of peace that Yang Qing to enjoy. So perhaps this was the best option, however, embarrassing it may be.

After he drank his embarrassment away, a middle aged woman with dark blue hair and bright blue pupils walked into the room. She was a maid and wore an entirely black dress that reached her knees. Her hair was short and only the faintest traces of wrinkles were beginning to show. Around her, a water element swirled around her. She was one of the two maids that he seen so far. He didn't like her much. She usually came to bring his mother dinner, but a series of touches and prods would always accompany her visit and it was far too early in the morning for such a thing.

The other maid was a younger woman, with silver hair and pupils. Her hair was always tied into a single ponytail. Yang Qing guessed she was twenty or twenty-five given her looks and liked her much better. The wind element wrapped around her body, unlike this maid who would bring the water element Qi with her, slightly disrupting the sanctity of the wind element in the area. Although she didn't stay for long, her presence would linger much longer and it would dampen his ability to breathe. Again, being a baby was difficult. If he knew how to speak the language, or at least could write it, he could have the other maid come instead, but alas, this was one of his top priorities. Babies learned languages quickly after all, right?

Breakfast was the longest and most important meal of the day, especially for Yang Qing who could only watch his mother eat. Unlike dinner, which had a meat and a couple of vegetable dishes, along with a yellowish, almost but not quite liquid starch, or lunch which only had vegetable soups, breakfast had several courses, almost all soups and some type of pancake. He envied the pancakes and could hardly stop staring until they were long gone. He wanted, craved, a treat, but his mother was ignorant of his plight, thinking that he was merely curious, surveying it, so she moved it just out of his reach.

After breakfast, the maid returned and gathered the dishes before disappearing as quickly as she came. She left a change of clothes for the both of them, which his mother help in change into. It was a light blue silken shirts and pants, unbelievably fine clothing. He elevated his mother status by another level. Although there were maids here, Yang Qing had assumed this was more a hospital and the maids were at the beck and call of the midwife, who he hadn't seen yet.

His mother surrounded him with her wind elemental qi before carrying him outside. Instead of a dirt or gravel street, like he was expecting, a small stream greeted him. He couldn't tell how deep the water was, but the stream was nearly thirty feet wide. On the other bank, a two-story mansion could be seen in the distance. A decadent front garden separated the bank of the mansion.

The two maids he met before in his room each stood at an end of the small gondola. The gondola was ivory white and had a small cabin at the center of it. His mother made her way into the cabin. The cabin had a small box with runes inscribed onto its sides and looked like a picnic box. The walls of the cabin was purple while the thick clothes covering the seats were a light blue.

Once seated, Yang Qing looked at his mother. She looked much colder or perhaps sadder now that she came out. He reached up to pinch her face before she broke out into a smile, saying more words he couldn't understand and raising him up high. He smiled as well. A smile suited her much better.

As the boat stopped, Yang Qing felt thankful for his mother's wind elemental qi wrapping around him. He thought the water elemental qi that nearly drowned him at birth was devastating, but it couldn't hold a candle to the density of water elemental qi present in the stream. The purity of water elemental qi was beyond natural.

The four elements of Qi - fire, water, wind and earth - were normally mixed together, forming a balance harmony with each other. However, here, there was only the water elemental qi. Earth elemental qi was present only on ground while the wind elemental qi was like a torch faraway in the darkness, seen but couldn't be touched, outside of a person's own supply of qi.

He had seen lamps every five feet outside, with fires blazing, and thought it was overkill, but it must have sucked away the fire elemental qi from the river. Someone with water elemental qi would be blessed, but his wind elemental qi simply threatened to end his life if his mother wasn't here. A normal person would have to reach the third realm, when they could remove the elemental aspects from the Qi and convert it into something more suitable for them. This only made him question how his wind elemental maid and his mother could even bear to live in such a place.

The arrived at some sort of stadium. Rows of seats encircled a small pond and the water depths were much shallower. A few girls were dancing near its edges. One of the girls was around six and could completed their dances gracefully, while one who looked slightly younger completed it with some difficulty. They had sky blue hair tied into twin tails and wore dark blue, cotton dresses that covered their knees. Each of the girls had a giant birthmark on their thighs, though each of them was on a different leg. A woman with the same hair and eye color sat at the edge of the pond. She wore a white dress and didn't look real so much as the focus of a painting, with her surroundings the background. She watched the girls dance and spoke to them as they finished.

A third girl - much younger than the other two, perhaps around three - had silver hair and sky blue eyes. She was the first person Yang Qing saw in this world that both water and wind elemental qi wrapped around. She looked like a younger version of his mother, except her pupils were blue instead of silver. was copying them, or trying to at least. She would repeat a move but take twice as long without much grace or coordination. She skipped the moves that she missed and promptly moved on, without accounting for the distance she was going. She missed the twirls and forward, backward steps, and basically only copied the moves that took her to the left, so she practically flew from one side of the pond to the other. The woman picked her up, who had strayed far, far away and walked to the gondola.

By this point, his mother brought him out of the gondola and held him above this girl not much older than he was. The girl lifted her hands to touch his face, but put too much strength and nearly smashed his unfortunate face between her two hands. Yang Qing kept a straight faced, for an entire two seconds, before her lovely hands paid a sorely missed revisit. Once again, he lamented his powerlessness.

Luckily, the woman moved the girl away to the shallower parts of the pond after the second clap. His mother gave him a kiss on each check before handing him to the woman and took the little girl with her, speaking in a rather stern and frantic voice. Once again he felt breathing became harder; first a chore, then an impossibility. Yet, once the woman's qi surrounded him, he could breathe once again. Her water elemental qi was foreign to him. If the water elemental Qi in the surrounding was a turbulent, uncontrolled river, her qi was a directed gentle, calming energy, bringing him both air and vitality. This, he understood, was the pure water elemental qi.

Yang Qing was so gobsmacked, it wasn't until he was carried away by his mother with the three year old trailing behind him that he realized he was within his mother's arms again. Once they returned to the gondola, his mother put him within the girl's arms. She wrapped her arms around him as her head hung overhead, before him. He closed his eyes and started to cultivate. If he lay still, maybe she would let him go and live.

The gondola stopped in front of a small island, one with a small cottage and a garden on one half and some trees, beach and dock on the other. Unlike the rest of the areas they visited, the cottage was surrounded with wind elemental qi. A gentle breeze passed through the area and the air felt remarkably fresher than the surroundings. Here, he could venture around the small island without losing his breath. Here, was home.