Chapter Text
Although a member of the High-Cloud Quintet and one of the most respected lieutenants of the Cloud Knights, Jing Yuan rarely receives summons from anywhere. So when, one day out of the blue, a guard from the Seat of Divine Foresight crashes his and Jingliu’s sparring match to inform them of someone asking for him, he heads for the Exalting Sanctum without a word to Jingliu. She’s quick to follow though, as are Dan Feng and Yingxing, both having been spectating their match
Jing Yuan spends most of the trip wondering what reason could lie behind the summons. As a lieutenant, Jing Yuan only ever has status out on the battlefield. Unlike Jingliu and the current Arbiter-General of the Luofu, his power on the ship proper is limited unless a crisis is upon them. He entertains the idea of it being an old friend but then has to immediately reckon with the fact that, besides the other members of the High-Cloud Quintet, he has none left.
“What do you think it might be?” Asks Yingxing as they board a starskiff.
Jing Yuan startles at the question, unused to any sort of attention at all from Yingxing, but understanding dawns on him when he sees Dan Feng across the ship, arms crossed and eyes closed. “No idea,” he answers honestly. “Maybe they want to introduce me to a new group? I heard from Jingliu that we’re getting transfers Yuque, but that shouldn’t be for another year.”
Yingxing hums and leans back against the starskiff, mirroring Dan Feng’s position and resting his head against the wall.
Jing Yuan lets himself inspect the rest of the passengers and makes brief eye contact with Jingliu. She raises a single eyebrow, and Jing Yuan only shrugs in response.
The only hint that he’s been summoned for a somewhat important reason is the unusual amount of people running around the Seat of Divine Foresight once they arrive. Even Jingliu seems confused, which sends a spark of anxiety through Jing Yuan’s entire body. The excitement of being wanted suddenly dissipates, replaced by the anxiety of being needed.
Once they arrive, Yingxing and Dan Feng fall behind them slightly, while Jingliu and Jing Yuan walk shoulder to shoulder, sending worried glances at the amount of cloud knights stationed at the Seat of Divine Foresight.
Another burst of anxiety wells inside Jing Yuan when he sees General Teng Xiao in the middle of the floor, not behind his desk, surrounded by cloud knights. He seems to be calmly speaking to someone, and it isn’t until Jing Yuan shoulders through the gathered guard that he can see who it is.
The person Teng Xiao seems to be chiding is remarkably young, which Jing Yuan suspects might be the cause of his unusual rationale when dealing with troublemakers. He’s dressed in a heavily modified cloud knight uniform, and two ornate swords stick out of scabbards fastened to his back. Little silver swallows adorn the hems of his robes and his belt.
They seem to be in the middle of shouting something at Teng Xiao but immediately cut himself off once Jing Yuan enters the circle of Cloud Knights. “General!” He instead exclaims and straightens, turning away from Teng Xiao. When their eyes meet, the child startles, whatever smile has appeared on his face wilting into a confused frown.
“Oh, thank Lan you’re here,” says Teng Xiao, who takes a step forward, putting himself between the two of them.
Jing Yuan briefly studies the child, who seems somewhat distressed and deep in thought, before turning to the General. “What’s wrong?”
“This,” says Teng Xiao, attempting to rest a hand on the child's shoulder, who sidesteps the gesture with remarkable ease, “is Yanqing. He walked into the Seat of Divine Foresight an hour ago demanding to talk to the Arbiter-General.”
Jing Yuan waits for him to continue, and they stand in an awkward silence for a moment as he realises that is the end of the statement. “Was he unhappy with your service?” Jing Yuan inclines, holding his hands behind his back and fiddling with his fingers.
Teng Xiao brings up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, in a bizarre gesture of discomfort and sighs. “No. For some reason, he believes that you are the current Arbiter-General of the Luofu.”
Jing Yuan looks back at the child, again. He’s standing straight, this time, stature conveying some years of training and discipline as a Cloud Knight.
Jingliu cuts through the gathering of guards and comes to rest next to him, crossing her arms and asking, loud enough that the rest of the hall quiets down, “How is it that a child manages to walk into the Seat of Divine Foresight without, at any point, being stopped?”
Again, Teng Xiao lets out a long-suffering sigh, which is highly strange for his usual composure, and says, “He carries Cloud Knight authentication with him. We thought it was strange, but saw no point in questioning him until his outburst.”
Jingliu stops for a moment, meeting Jing Yuan’s stare. Her eyes give way to mild bewilderment, but she hides it well. “Falsified or stolen?” She asks after a moment, uncrossing her arms.
“Falsified,” says Teng Xiao.
“It isn’t!” The child speaks for the first time since the conversation started, his voice making Jing Yuan suspect he might have been overly generous when first surmising his age. “I told you already,” he continues, digging a hand into his robes and pulling out an authentication jade. “This is valid! Do I look like I have the resources to falsify jade badges?”
“Your parents might,” says Jingliu, reaching out to grab the badge. The child pulls it back out of reach, and Jing Yuan sees her eye twitch, just slightly. “Besides, that’s not even a good fake—the shape and colour is wrong.”
The child jumps at her response and shoots her a distressed glance. He spends a few seconds simply staring at her, wary, as though anticipating a blow or a strike, before his shoulders relax. Then, the confused expression from the beginning returns, and he turns back to Jing Yuan again, staring at him with a frown.
Most of the room has fallen quiet at this point. Jing Yuan can hear the faint voices of Dan Feng and Yingxing conversing outside the gathering of cloud knights, but otherwise little is being said inside the hall.
The child looks away from Jing Yuan and down into the jade badge in his hands. Then, he looks up at the General, and asks, very quietly, “Are you Teng Xiao?”
Teng Xiao seems slightly surprised at the question. “I am,” he says.
“You’re really General Teng Xiao?” The child urges again, the jade badge held tightly in his fist.
“I really am General Teng Xiao.” He says, exasperated. “Might you tell us who you are now?”
The child turns back toward Jing Yuan, who feels almost bad at how distressed he looks now. “Oh,” the child says, again looking back to the badge in his hand. “Oh, I see what’s happening.” He looks up at each of them, and says, “General Teng Xiao…” He makes eye contact with Jing Yuan and asks, “Lieutenant?”
Jing Yuan gives him a single, curt nod.
“… And you,” Yanqing looks at Jingliu, “are Grandmaster Jingliu.”
Grandmaster? She mouths, levelling the child with a curious stare which goes ignored.
“Grandmaster?” Asks Teng Xiao, cocking his head to the side in confusion.
The child opens his mouth to respond, but nothing but a curt ah comes out. He clamps his mouth shut and stands still for a moment. After a while, he slowly starts again. “Who is your current Master Diviner?”
Thanks to the help of the Divination Commission and its Master Diviner, they find out that Yanqing has, somehow, travelled almost seven centuries into the past. Even with the Master Diviner next to him confirming all of this as fact, Jing Yuan struggles to believe it.
Where Yanqing is from, Jing Yuan has become the next Arbiter-General. This doesn’t surprise anyone besides himself, it seems, so Jing Yuan isn’t allowed time to inquire further about it. Yanqing refuses to say anything else about the future, except that he is the current lieutenant of the Cloud Knights and Jing Yuan’s protege and retainer.
Jing Yuan had initially assumed he was one of Jingliu’s, as he carries around swords and not a guandao, as well as the wary looks sent her way every so often, but grows concerned when he realises that Yanqing’s unease toward Jingliu does not stem from having trained with her daily for several centuries.
When inquiring as to how he’s travelled so far, Yanqing answers that he doesn’t know.
“I was on a data retrieval mission by Pathfinder 38 and returned to this,” he says, growing more and more distressed with each word out of his mouth. He’s been plastered to Jing Yuan’s side for most of the interrogation, using him as a shield to keep between himself, Jingliu, Dan Feng and, for some reason, Yingxing.
“Pathfinder 38?” Dan Feng asks, leaning forward to make eye contact with Yanqing, who expertly avoids it.
“It’s, uh, a gravity well by the…” He tapers off, thinking for a moment before sighing in frustration. “Well, it’s a gravity well in the Nihilous system—it’s called something different right now, I think. It was created by some followers of The Nihility when they took over the star cluster, but that won’t happen for a few more centuries. Diviner Fu,” he says, “worried it might interfere with our flightpath, so I was sent out to investigate.”
“Why not use the Divination Commission’s jade abacus instead?” Asks Jingliu.
“We had no data on the gravity well, so the Master Diviner was unable to surmise anything. I was sent out to retrieve information to get a better read on the situation.”
“This… Diviner Fu is the one who ordered the expedition?”
Yanqing nods.
She frowns. “A mere Diviner has the ability to order around a lieutenant of the Cloud Knights?”
Yanqing seems to catch himself, startling suddenly and glancing warily at her. “Uh, yes.” He eventually settles on. “Fu Xuan is our Master Diviner. Initially, the General wanted to send out someone else, but I was bored and wanted to see Pathfinder 38, so I volunteered.”
Master Diviner Suling, who has been standing silently to the side, speaks for the first time in minutes. “This Fu Xuan of yours… Is she currently on this ship?”
Yanqing blinks, processes the question, and then shrugs. “I don’t know. We don’t know each other very well. I’m not actually…” He pauses for a second, raising his thumb to his mouth and chewing lightly on his fingernail. “I’m not sure how old she is. She’s been the Master Diviner since before I was born, that’s all I know. Also, talking to her is kind of a drag, so I try not to.”
Suling nodded, leaning back away from the conversation. A new Master Diviner being instated sometime in the future wasn’t strange, but it was rare for one of the Six Charioteers to retire unless they were physically unable to continue their work.
“How old are you, then?” Jing Yuan asks, speaking for the first time since arriving at the Divination Commission.
Yanqing straightens and says, “Fifteen, sir.”
Jing Yuan was expecting something around that age, but hearing it said was still shocking. To become Cloud Knight lieutenant at such a young age? Was he simply the only viable option, or was he skilled enough to surpass all the centuries-older cloud knights?
“How long have you been a lieutenant, young man?” Asks Jingliu. Jing Yuan sees her arms twitch, the remnants of an abandoned gesture to bend down and meet his gaze—a comforting gesture if offered to someone who wasn’t seemingly terrified of her.
“Since five years ago.” He does not deign Jingliu with any honorific, though it seems Jing Yuan is the only one to pay special attention to this fact.
Jingliu hums and prods further. “Is there no other cloud knight more suited for the job? Say, what about your Sword Champion?” It's a clever attempt at inquiring about her status in the future, while still digging for information about Yanqing’s identity and the general circumstances of the future.
Dan Feng hides a snort behind a fist and Yingxing looks away, smiling.
Yanqing stares at her for long, unease ebbing away and replaced with a smug leer. “I am the current Sword Champion.”
The slight mirth at Jingliu’s self-serving question dissipates in an instant. She straightens the smallest bit. “Oh.”
News that Master Diviner Suling would abdicate from his position in the next seven-hundred years is no surprise—he is older than all of the High-Cloud Quintet combined, and spends most of his days talking about his retirement plans—but Jingliu? The only reason for her to retire is death or worse.
“For how long?” She asks, a slight crease appearing between her eyebrows.
Yanqing stares at her intently, extreme vigilance replacing his earlier unease. “Since two years ago. But the position was vacant for a while before I took it.”
Dan Feng shoots Jing Yuan a wary gaze, which he can do nothing but return in kind. He’s certain that, if not stopped, Jingliu will prod further, and decides to interrupt her while they’re ahead.
“How did you become Sword Champion at such a young age?” He asks, taking a slight step forward to put some space between Yanqing and Jingliu.
It has the desired effect. Yanqing seems to forget about Jingliu entirely, turning toward him with a bright and confident smile. Words begin spewing out of his mouth at rapid speeds. “I won the Stellar Martial Competition!” He exclaims, huffing with pride. “I actually won it back when I was ten, but the General didn’t want to make someone so young the Sword Champion. Instead, he chose to make me his retainer and lieutenant. But later, during the Stellaron Crisis that happened a few years ago, he seemed to change his mind and chose to promote me. My duties haven’t changed much, so I honestly don’t understand why he was holding out on me,” he finishes and shrugs, a relaxed air returning to his limbs. “But, he’s sort of like that, I guess.”
Yanqing seems to suddenly come back to himself and shoots Jing Yuan a somewhat bashful glance. “Well, you would know better than anyone.”
Strangely enough, Jing Yuan cannot fathom it. From what he’s heard, this future version sounds nothing like him at all. He’s lazy and seems to ponder over decisions for decades longer than he ever would in the current day. It’s as if his future self has slowed down, travelling along a different stream entirely.
“I suppose I would,” he says to Yanqing and gives him a single nod and a smile to disguise any discomfort.
Yanqing seems to await something more but eventually returns a sheepish smile.
“Why was the Sword Champion position vacant for so long?” Dan Feng removes himself from the slip of the wall he’d been leaning against, coming up beside Jingliu.
The ease that had briefly returned to Yanqing shrinks away in an instant, replaced with similar wariness. For a moment he considers the question, frowning all the while. He opens his mouth, closes it again, and looks away. “I don’t know,” he says after stalling for a few seconds.
Jing Yuan has only known this child for a few hours but believes he has managed to craft a good image of him. Yanqing’s mouth seems to work much faster than his brain, and he doesn’t seem to harbour a habit of lying. Jing Yuan suspects it is simply due to the fact he does not live in a time nor work a job that requires a lot of opaqueness and has failed to develop solid deceptive abilities.
Yanqing does know why the title was left vacant but refuses to say. All three of them, Jing Yuan, Jingliu and Dan Feng make eye contact, all silently inquiring whether or not they should inquire further or respect the child finally clamping up.
The radiant unease wafting off Yanqing is what gets Jing Yuan to silently strongarm his master and friend into laying off, and they both lean away, Jingliu nearly audibly grumbling while Dan Feng shrugs and walks back to Yingxing’s side.
“I think you’ve told us enough now,” says Jing Yuan, watching as Dan Feng strikes up a hushed conversation with Yingxing. Then, he turns back to Yanqing and shoots him his most comforting smile. “Let’s see if we can’t figure out a way to send you home.”