饕餮大餐
Tāotièdàcān
Great meal fit for a dragon's son.
A sumptuous banquet.

The next morning Kageyama woke to the sound of birdsong. He was where he had fallen asleep, in the armchair. His neck was stiff and he could feel the sting of insect bites on his face and hands.

"Why did I fall asleep here?" he asked the morning air, voice hoarse.

Zakhar was also sleeping on his sofa. Judging by the pink welts covering the exposed skin of the man's arms and legs, he had received attention from the forest's insects in the night as well.

Kageyama looked around. Empty bottles littered the table and the patio around the legs of the chairs and sofas. Ao and Sanli were nowhere to be found.

They didn't... no. Or did they...?

Not that it would surprise him. In fact, with the way the two flirted it would be a bigger surprise if they hadn't already.

Kageyama got up and stiffly made his way down the stairs from the terrace and across the courtyard toward his rooms.

"Good morning, Sho Sensei!"

The bright cry seemed to lance through his temples and he clutched at his head. "Ah, good morning Ermi," he said, looking up at the girl's approach.

Ermi was dressed in a peach colored gown and the too tall sandals that were fashionable among young women at the moment. The girl seemed to have just come from the direction of Ao and Sanli's rooms. A piece of folded paper was in one of her hands.

When she saw Kageyama grab his head, she frowned. "Oh no, Sho Sensei, did you have too much to drink?"

Kageyama sighed. "I did." Then he remembered Ermi's rosy cheeks from the night before. "And so did you. How is your head this morning?"

"Fine!" sang Ermi brightly. "Liang'yi said it's a miracle I'm not sick. She says I have a gift."

"I'll say," agreed Kageyama. He nodded to the note in Ermi's hand. "What's that?"

"Ah, could you give this to Ao-jie when you see her? It's a list of supplies we'll need for when we start at the university tomorrow."

"Ao is going with you?" Kageyama said, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. She's not in her rooms though. Nor is Uncle Sanli. I wonder where they are this early?"

I wonder... thought Kageyama.

"Well, I'll see you later Sho Sensei. I'm very much looking forward to your class!"

Ah that's right... I haven't prepared at all... With all that had happened recently, Kageyama had not thought much on what he would be teaching that semester at the university.

Kageyama waved until Ermi left, tottering away on her giant raised sandals. Then he continued to his rooms.

He made his way along a raised wooden walkway, which crossed over the stream that ran around and through Wo You Nai. Ferns springing up on either side of the walkway had swept their fronds up and onto the planks. He would have to tell the gardener to cut them back.

Just outside the door to his rooms he stopped. Laughter and voices, male and female, came from inside.

They better not of...

"What in the seven hells do you two think you're doing in my room!" he roared as he threw the door open. Then he choked and covered his eyes.

In the split second before his hands had blocked his vision, he had seen Ao, sitting on the large map table in the center of his room, her slender legs dangling from one side. The girl's goldfish covered robe was in a heap on the floor at her feet, with her other articles of clothing.

Her long black hair flowed down her back. Otherwise, she was wearing nothing.

"Ah, Sho Sensei, calm down, it's not what it looks like," said Sanli from a corner of the room.

"And what the hell is it then?!" snarled Kageyama, groping his way forward with one hand. His other hand still covered his eyes.

"I— we needed the big map table. For a spell. I'm looking at Ao's seals."

The hand clamped over Kageyama's eyes loosened a fraction. "What?" he asked.

"Oh please, Lord Kageyama," Ao's voice was coy and mocking as ever. "Why don't you stop being shy and come see for yourself?"

Still growling, Kageyama hesitantly lifted the hand from his eyes and approached the table.

The girl sat at the edge, her legs hanging off one side. On the wood of the table around her, in white chalk, zih had been scratched in Sanli's familiar hand. They surrounded the half circle where the girl sat, like white butterflies flocking around a flower.

Ao had leaned forward to grab her robe from the ground, and now clutched it to her chest, hiding her front from him. Her back was still bare, though hidden beneath her long hair.

"What is..." Kageyama muttered, leaning forward to brush the girl's hair out of the way, before he caught himself.

Smiling, Ao obliged him, pulling her long hair over one shoulder so her back was exposed, and Kageyama could at last see what was written there.

白日依山尽
黄河入海流
欲窮千里目
更上一層樓

The white sun slips to the mountains,
The yellow river runs to the sea.
Longing to see 1000 li further,
I climb one more storey.

Kageyama's eyes traced the zih. "That's... that's the Golden Emperor's seal," he said, rubbing the stubble of his chin absently.

"Yes," said Ao.

"Wait..." His eyes finished the poem, and then then went onto the first line, repeated again. "It's not just written once. It's written two, three..."

"Five times," said Ao. "Five times altogether. Three on my back, and two on my front. Would you like to see?" she went to move her robe.

"It's fine!" said Kageyama, throwing up a hand. "Lady's love... five times..." Kageyama's hand subconsciously reached toward his stomach, where the single seal he had received from Lu was inked. "Wait, why didn't I see these before, in the river?"

"What do you mean, before?" asked Sanli sharply, approaching the table with a book open in one hand, a piece of chalk in the other.

"Lord Kageyama spied on me, bathing in the river, that day we almost got robbed by the fake bandits from Mengxiang," explained Ao. Sanli's frown deepened.

"I was checking to see if you had any mu'ren characteristics," said Kageyama defensively.

"He seemed to check for an awfully long time," said Ao. "If you ask me, he was stroking the monkey while—"

"I wasn't! I wasn't stroking any monkey!" yelled Kageyama, furiously mortified. "You were bloody suspicious and I thought you were hiding something. And I was right!"

"Hmm," said Sanli, not looking happy. "Anyway, you wouldn't have seen anything Sho Sensei, because in addition to the Golden Emperor's main seals, there are a number of other seals, for concealment and silencing." As he spoke, Sanli pointed out the smaller, whispy zih drawn across Ao's skin, written in between the larger, blockier zih of the Golden Emperor's seal.

"I've managed to temporarily lift the concealment spells," said Sanli, pointing to the chalk zih written across the wood of the table. "It's why I needed to borrow your table."

"The silencing spells are a bit more difficult. I don't know if I'll be able to undo them completely. I'm trying to disrupt them instead..." Sanli trailed off, peering down at his book and chewing on his lip while he thought.

"What kind of silencing spells are they?" Kageyama asked, eyes still following the lines of black zih inked all over Ao's skin.

"They prevent Ao from saying who she is or talking about her past directly," replied Sanli, eyes still on the book.

"And who is she?" insisted Kageyama.

He already knew the answer. He just wanted someone else to say it first.

"Oh come Lord Kageyama. You haven't figured it out yet?" Ao gripped her robe to her chest with one hand. The other she held out to Kageyama, delicate fingers stretched long.

It was then that Kageyama noticed what he hadn't before, his attention caught by the seals.

Ao's rings were gone. In their place, she now had six fingers on each hand.

He took the girl's odd hand in his own, running his thumb over the knuckle of her sixth finger, tracing along to the tip, which he carefully squeezed. Solid, smooth, warm. It was real.

"All hells... you're her, aren't you?" said Kageyama, still staring down at the girl's strange hand. His stomach tingled and then dropped, as though it had become filled with rocks.

"I'm who, Lord Kageyama?" Ao's smile was mischievous.

"You're Xiyu. The bloody Sixth God." He turned the hand this way and that, as though expecting the sixth finger to suddenly disappear.

Ao grinned. Pulling her hand from his, she held it up and flexed the sixth finger. It moved just as a finger should.

"The tales are misleading, aren't they?" Kageyama said stepping back to look the girl over. "How does it go...'—the Golden Emperor sealed her in a deformed form, mimicking the six-clawed monster?' The only thing you got from Liu Zhua was the extra finger."

"I will take that as a compliment, Lord Kageyama," Ao purred.

At that moment Sanli stepped up to the table. "Alright, Sho Sensei. We're ready to begin. Would you stand by, in case something goes wrong?"

"I- wait, you're going to try and alter the Golden Emperor's seal? That's the highest seal there is Sanli. It's dangerous."

"That's why I asked you to standby," said Sanli, placing an ink stone filled with already ground ink on the table beside Ao. He picked up and brush and started slowly and carefully drawing characters across bare patches on the girl's skin.

Ao laughed and twitched. "Don't move," said Sanli. He finished, and returned the brush and inkstone to a table behind them, then drew his yinzhang out from his shirt, where it hung about his neck.

Sanli pricked his thumb with the pin affixed to his seal, then smeared the drop of blood that beaded on his thumb across the end.

"Alright, let's begin," he said.

It suddenley sunk in what his charge was about to attempt. "Sanli, wait—"

Too late.

The Third Prince brough his seal to Ao's skin, just beside the drying ink of the last zih he had written. The zih Sanli had just inked across Ao's back and sides blazed to life, shining brilliant, white light.

Bend. Twist. Turn. Zih designed to change and distort.

As they watched, the white light from Sanli's zih slowly seeped into the zih around them. The zih that had been inked there aeons ago, by the Golden Emperor himself.

At first these new zih blazed golden yellow. Then, almost imperceptibly, their color faded lighter, paler, till it was more cream than gold.

There was a faint smell of burning, as the ink that had guided the spell initially was burned away. Ao herself sat unmoved, looking over her shoulder at the zih that blazed across her skin. If the magic hurt her, she did not show it.

Light glowed from her body as though she was a lantern, and a candle had been lit insider her. Except this candle burned brighter than any other.

Then, suddenly, as though the flame had been doused, the light went out. Ao gave a small gasp and collapsed to the floor.

Both men hurried forward. "Ao?" Sanli asked, concerned.

"See," grunted Kageyama, helping Sanli turn Ao onto her back and quickly covering her with her robe. "I told you this was dangerous. Did you think I just meant for you?"

"Ao?" Sanli asked again, with more urgency. The prince put a hand to Ao's cheek. "Ao!"

Kageyama thought of the seals Sanli had used, and what they could do. Bend. Twist. Turn. He felt his own stomach twist.

"Ao?" asked Sanli again, voice shaking, reaching for his seal once more.

"Bloody hell Sanli, what have you done?"

Then Ao gave a gasp. Her lip twitched, and then she opened her eyes, dazed.

"Ao! Are you alright? Speak to me!"

The girl's eyes focused, unfocused, then focused on Sanli, as though finding him at last. "And what would you like me to say to you, Little Prince?"

Sanli sighed. "Anything... as long as you're alright."

Ao smiled then, and Kageyama felt his stomach drop as though it was filled with rocks once more.

"Hmmm... anything, my prince? Should I tell you I am Xiyu, the Sixth God?"

*~*~*~*~*~*

Author's note HERE!

The art in this chapter is called 'Ancient Shrine' by Hideyoshi on deviantart.com. Check them out! http://fav.me/dchijn1

Also... here is more amazing fanart that I received from soulimen of Nakamura! I just love love love it! His expression is perfect! And is that a disgruntled kitsune I see in the bottom left corner? Ahahaha!

Thank you so much soulimen ! ❤️