Gods didn’t need to worry about hunger, but mortals needed to eat. Xie Lian had never had to consider these matters when he was young, so this was the first time in decades that such a problem really seized him. Still, how could a god possibly understand the feelings of a starving devotee if they didn’t even know how it felt? How could they possibly empathize? At this point, he could only try to think of this experience as a form of training.
A sudden cacophony of gongs and drums came from not far away, and a large crowd started to gather to see what was happening. The three followed along and went over to watch. A few clowns and martial artists were hollering with all their might—they were martial street buskers.
“If all else fails, why don’t we go busk?” Mu Qing tried suggesting, not for the first time.
Xie Lian was considering the same thing, but Feng Xin spoke up before he could respond.
“Don’t be silly,” he said as he watched the buskers perform. “His Highness is highborn. How could he do something like that?”
Mu Qing rolled his eyes. “We’ve already carried bricks, so how is busking any different?”
“By carrying bricks, we feed ourselves using our own physical strength,” Feng Xin said. “Busking is entertainment for the masses; we would be forced to act as fools purely for their amusement. Of course it’s different!”
One of the clowns who was hopping around tripped and fell. The crowd roared with laughter as he pulled himself up and bent at the waist to bow, then picked up some scattered coins the crowd tossed to the ground. A deep discomfort surfaced in Xie Lian’s mind at the sight, and he shook his head forcefully, striking out busking as a viable path of employment.
“Fine,” Mu Qing replied, squinting at the display. “Then let’s start pawning stuff.”
“We’ve already pawned a lot of stuff,” Feng Xin said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have made it until now. Anything that’s left can’t be pawned.”
At that instant, surprised shouts rippled across the crowd. Someone yelled, “The soldiers are here! The soldiers are here!”
With that, the crowd broke up. Soon, a band of soldiers strutted down the street with an impressive air, holding weapons in their hands and sporting shiny new armor. They were interrogating anyone who appeared suspicious. Xie Lian and his coterie hid in the crowd and overheard the conversation of the people nearby.
“Who are they after?”
“Don’t worry, they’re not here to arrest us. I heard they’re trying to capture the Xianle royals who are still at large.”
“Apparently someone saw suspicious characters around here, so the city has been really strict with their searches lately.”
“Really?! My goodness, did they actually flee here?!”
Xie Lian and his companions exchanged looks.
“Let’s hurry back and check on things,” Xie Lian whispered.
The other two nodded. They silently left the crowd, splitting up. They only met up again after they’d walked a fair distance and confirmed they hadn’t attracted any attention, and once reunited, they hurried away.
They ran until they reached a small mountain forest out in the middle of nowhere. Xie Lian could see a thick column of smoke coming from within the trees, and terror struck him. Could the Yong’an soldiers have already discovered this place and set fires to kill them off?
They rushed until they found a rundown little cottage hidden in the trees, left behind by some unknown hunter. The thick smoke was coming from inside that cottage.
“Mother!” Xie Lian blurted. “What’s going on?! Are you there?”
A woman immediately emerged and greeted him happily. “My son? You’ve come?”
It was the queen. She was dressed in simple clothes and had grown quite thin—she looked fairly different from the noble lady she’d once been. Seeing that his mother was fine and that her face was full of delight, Xie Lian relaxed—but he quickly asked, “What’s with the smoke?”
“It’s nothing, really. I just wanted to do a little cooking today…” the queen replied, embarrassed.
Xie Lian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Don’t! What cooking? Just eat the food Feng Xin and Mu Qing bring you every day. The smoke is too conspicuous; where there’s smoke, there’s people. You’ll attract the Yong’an soldiers. We bumped into them in the city earlier. This city is tightening its security, so we’ll need to move again.”
Feng Xin and Mu Qing entered the cottage to extinguish the source of the smoke. The queen didn’t dare to be negligent either, so she went to the back room of the cottage to talk to the king.
Feng Xin came back outside. “Your Highness, you aren’t going inside to see His Majesty?” he whispered.
Xie Lian shook his head. “No.”
The two of them, father and son…one the king of a fallen kingdom, and the other a banished god. It was hard to say which was the more pathetic, the more disgraced of the pair. If they were forced to sit down and face each other, they’d only glare at one another instead of having a heart-to-heart. Avoiding that confrontation entirely was for the best.
“Mother, why don’t you start getting packed? We’ll leave today,” Xie Lian called out. “We’ll come pick you up in the evening and head out.”
The queen hurried outside again. “My son, you’re leaving so soon? You haven’t visited in days. Why leave so quickly?”
“I have to go train,” Xie Lian said.
In truth, he was going to look for work—they couldn’t possibly support this many people if he didn’t.
“Have you eaten yet this morning?” the queen asked.
Xie Lian shook his head. The three of them were starving.
“That’s terrible for your body,” the queen said. “Fortunately, I just stewed a pot of congee. Come in and grab a bite.”
Xie Lian wondered, Why was there so much smoke if it was just a pot of congee? It looked like an entire palace was in flames…
The queen turned to Feng Xin and Mu Qing. “You two children come eat with us too.”
Feng Xin and Mu Qing hadn’t at all expected to receive such treatment and tried to decline, but the queen was adamant. The two could only timidly sit down at the table, feeling rather surprised. In a good way.
But when the queen brought the pot over, their surprise soon turned to dread.
Even after they got back to the city, Mu Qing’s stomach was still churning. “I thought…the congee, smelled like, bran water, but I hadn’t imagined, it’d taste like, it too!” he said, stumbling over his words.
Feng Xin gritted his teeth. “Shut up! Don’t force us to remember that stuff! The queen is…highborn, after all… Never cooked… This is already… Ugh!”
Mu Qing humphed. “Am I wrong? If you don’t think it tasted like bran water, why don’t you…go ask the queen to grant you another bowl?! Ugh!”
The two were heaving as they argued back and forth, and Xie Lian grabbed hold of both of them to pat their backs.
“Get ahold of yourselves! Look, up ahead…it seems there’s some work available!”
As the three stumbled over, they could see a couple of little ringleaders shouting on the streets, looking for hired help. The pay was fairly decent, and there wasn’t a limit on the number of hands needed; they would take anyone who came. The three of them quickly signed up and joined the large group of disheveled, bone-skinny paupers. They were led to a muddy, empty field. It seemed the landowner intended to build a new residence here, so the area needed to be overhauled—and filling in the grounds came first. The trio worked hard, and they were quickly covered in mud.
Feng Xin hauled earth as he hugged his stomach, his face green and his mouth cursing. “Fuck me…! I think that pot of stewed bran water turned into a spirit in my stomach!”
Xie Lian was carrying a basket full of dirt. He looked back and said in a hushed voice, “Can you hang in there? Or…do you want to sit down for a bit?”
