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 Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 5:10 am
Bringing Helene up to his Wonder for this very important task just made sense, if you asked Kaifeng. With the blessings of the Code, that was possible, and as they teleported to his Wonder, Kaifeng instinctively edged closer to his zhiyin. With how sparsely the fields of Kaifeng the Wonder were decorated, it was difficult to tell that anything had happened.
But even though all the gnarled trees seemed to remain standing, and the bridge over the river had stayed intact, and much of the exterior decor did not seem too mangled, Kaifeng felt like something at his Wonder was very, very wrong. Like visiting someplace that had survived a recent hurricane, knowing that something about the ostensibly unruffled appearance probably wasn’t right but not knowing what had happened.
“This adventure would be a lot easier,” Kaifeng admitted, “if I had actually found my Code…Piece……before we……just……” He trailed off as he noticed a shimmering trail on the ground, leading toward the tower. “That would probably be the help that the Code mentioned sending us—or at least some of the help it meant, anyway.”
Without a second thought, Kaifeng entwined his fingers with Helene’s and started following the trail. Part of him wanted to ask if Xingyi-ge had ever brought Helene to see the Code Piece before, if that had ever come up on or after one of their adventures together for whatever reason, but Kaifeng’s nerves about the whole situation had him too on-edge to ask. Later, he’d probably want to ask more about that history—but as he and Helene crossed the threshold into the tower, protected from the trapdoor by Kaifeng’s signet ring, Kaifeng’s throat felt too tight to even think of spitting out the questions on his mind.
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Posted: Fri Apr 19, 2024 3:40 pm
It felt right, Helene thought, to be here with his Knight and ensure that Kaifeng was safe on whatever quest he had to undertake to get to his piece of the Code. It was right, to be there and support him, now that Helene was allowed to do so.
"Likely, it is well protected," Helene said, and he glanced around, looking for anything that might suggest where to go--which was about when the trail appeared for them, which. Well. That would certainly do.
He let Kaifeng lead, keeping their hands entwined, and giving a reassuring squeeze after they stepped over the threshold of the tower. "Whatever is waiting, I am with you."
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 1:55 am
Strictly speaking, Kaifeng did not need to stick close to Helene’s side, much less close enough to gently nuzzle at Helene’s shoulder. However, consider: he wanted to do this thing, partly by way of letting Helene know that Kaifeng had heard him and appreciated his good fortune in having his zhiyin with him……and on the other hand, mostly because Helene’s shoulder was there to be nuzzled. Doing this thing provided Kaifeng with an extra shot of affirmation as they headed up the stairs, following the sparkly trail up and up.
At one flight on the way, a fluffy black loaf of antlered, vestigial wing-having rabbit joined them. Despite her size seeming quite large by rabbit standards, Xiao-Qióngxiān easily kept up with them, nimbly maneuvering herself up the stairs, hopping at Kaifeng’s side that was not currently occupied by his zhiyin.
Ultimately, the shimmering trail that the Code had provided led them to a door that, like so many others in the tower, seemed to be locked behind a sliding tile picture puzzle. “Xingyi-ge must have liked these kinds of locks,” Kaifeng said pensively, kneeling before the puzzle so he could get a better look at the tiles. “Fair enough, since it’s also seemed like he’s painted all the puzzle locks I’ve found before? One was a portrait of his mother, one was a landscape of Selenga’s Wonder on Ida, and another one was a cityscape? It looked like it had Huan-ge, Xingyi-ge, and Airan in the scene, and the architecture around them didn’t look very Saturnian? So maybe it was on Murikabushi? Either way, can’t fault Xingye-ge for being proud of his art.”
As he spoke, Kaifeng looked over the tiles. Plenty of blues and wisps of white that could’ve been clouds.… Plenty of green tiles that had been textured to look like grass.… Some flowers that looked very similar to white carnations, save that they had soft blue lines down the centers of the petals.…
“Seems like maybe another landscape for this one? Or maybe a small outdoor scene,” he said, partly thinking out loud and partly inviting Helene to offer his own insights.
Humming pensively, Kaifeng squinted at a cluster of tiles with color palettes that didn’t quite fit the soft, outdoorsy look he was getting from everything else. Instead, they had mixed violets and magentas with folds that looked like fabric (possibly billowing sleeves or some kind of over-robe), and blacks with some designs done in very bright green (a very different shade from the grass, quite like the robes Huan-ge had worn when he’d first come to Earth).… Different tiles in the cluster had texturing like hair, with some in a mix of yellow and sherbert green like Helene’s hair, and others in a mix of nearly black purple moving into a very bright pink, similar to the way that Xingye-ge had painted his mother’s hair.
Looking up at Helene, Kaifeng gently tapped on the tiles. “…Maybe definitely a scene? If Xingyi-ge painted figures in it?”
Figures that seemed, at present, fairly likely to be Xingyi-ge and Huanxi.
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 3:48 pm
It was always a pleasure simply to be in his zhiyin's presence, as far as Helene was concerned. The extra affection that Kaifeng always seemed so eager to bestow was received gladly, and he turned to press a kiss to Kaifeng's temple, given that the opportunity was there and he was allowed to do so.
It was a delight to be joined by Xiao-Qióngshān; their friendly little rabbit companion was always a pleasant presence, and Helene had come to be quite fond of her. The magical wisp that had made her was a fascinating thing--Helene wasn't sure he'd ever seen its like before, and it made him curious about how many other things were out there that he simply had no knowledge of.
"Mm. Xingyi was quite talented, and this does seem to be his work," Helene said, as he knelt next to Kaifeng and pondered.
Something about the scene felt....familiar, even scrambled as it was. Helene ran his thumb over one of the flower tiles, and hummed.
"These...they are a native Helenian flower," he said. "My mother...maintained a garden, before her death. These were her favorites."
He spoke little of her. Less of his father. Better that his father remained forgotten, but the wound of his mother's passing was one that, even after all this time, Helene found seemed to refuse to close.
"I think..." Helene's fingers traced over shapes whose familiarity suddenly felt more apparent, and then he began moving the puzzle pieces, awed at the familiarity he felt, as the scene began to take shape. "This is...my home. My private residence. On Helene."
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Posted: Sat Apr 20, 2024 11:12 pm
Hearing Helene identify the flowers so easily, Kaifeng softened (an honestly remarkable feat, considering that his default state of being around Helene made marshmallows and Alaskan Malamutes look hard as diamonds). Looking at his zhiyin, he couldn’t help the way that his eyes sparkled, full of earnest concern. Huan-ge didn’t talk about his parents much. He didn’t talk about his gege or his world very much either, sharing sometimes but not often, and usually he needed to be asked first.
All up, it felt like Huan-ge had lived for too long feeling like he couldn’t talk about too much of his own feelings and experiences, and then for even longer with that being true (because Chaos had come to his world and everyone had died). That he said so little about his parents made a lot of sense, and wasn’t necessarily special. All the same, though, hearing more about his mother and her garden made him smile—a small, reserved sort of smile, because the subject of Huan-ge’s dead beloved mother was naturally sad, but earnest all the same.
Watching as Helene put the scene together, hearing his realization, the different colors made perfect sense. When they slid into place, they revealed that Kaifeng’s guess had been correct: painted figures of Xingyi and Huanxi. They appeared as themselves, the people behind the Knight and the Senshi, with Huanxi wearing robes like the ones he had worn when first arriving on Earth, and Xingyi wearing something like the outfits that his cousin Kaede often wore when she showed up in Xingyi-ge’s memories, a colorful over-robe with billowing sleeves overtop of tight black pants and boots with several many buckles. Sitting in the grass outside the modest residence (Xingyi-ge’s painting made it look so cozy and welcoming), the Xingyi figure held his violin while the Huanxi figure had his hands on a zither sort of instrument that looked incredibly similar to an Earthling qin.
“Putting this painting as the lock for his Code Piece makes a lot of sense,” Kaifeng said softly. “From a practical perspective, landscape puzzles can be harder to put together than portraits, and if very few people ever saw Huan-ge’s personal residence, they wouldn’t know what to look for. But from an emotional perspective…” Kaifeng shrugged, knowing full well that he was guessing about Xingyi-ge’s thoughts and emotions but nevertheless, feeling a strong sense of This is what I would have done. “If Huan-ge’s personal residence was somewhere Xingyi-ge felt safe,” And it was, Kaifeng thought, it *must* have been, “then it makes sense to use it as a lock around something he’s trying to protect.…”
Nudging around a few tiles himself, Kaifeng noticed something else. “There isn’t any alcohol,” he pointed out. “I’ve seen a few of Xingyi-ge’s solo self-portraits, and he pretty much always painted himself with a bottle, or a wine-glass, or something.… And maybe it’s just a conceit to realism, with the Helenian council’s rules about alcohol? But……I don’t know, maybe?”
Maybe it meant something else. Given the idyllic character of the painting, maybe it meant that Xingyi-ge’s feelings about his drinking problem had been more complicated than Liánlí-Kaifeng had gleaned from what he’d unlocked here so far……more nuanced and conflicted than all the memories of Xingyi-ge laughing about it while falling all over himself drunk, or snapping at Kaede Kurogane for mentioning his drinking but never saying he regretted it, or flat-out telling His Grace, Zhiguang-gege, that he was hungover as if that would scare him off from asking after Xingyi-ge’s intentions with Huan-ge and moderating his behaviors exactly not at all.
Maybe Xingyi-ge had wished that he could’ve stopped.
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 1:31 am
As the picture came together, Helene felt a sort of weight in his chest. The scene was so idyllic--himself and Xingyi, practicing music in front of the home that he loved and had not seen since he returned to Earth, that it brought on a tidal wave of nostalgic grief. His thumb brushed over the painting of Xingyi's face, and lingered, for a long moment.
"I....hope that he did feel safe there," he said, softly.
He loved Lianli. Loved that he had a second chance with a new Kaifeng. But Lianli was not Xingyi, and sometimes....sometimes Helene missed him, fiercely.
"Mn. I...am glad to see a version of himself that he saw as sober." Especially given where they were, because Huanxi preferred Xingyi be sober in his home. Not because of anything the ruling council wanted, but for Xingyi's well-being.
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2024 9:38 pm
Helene often left much unsaid, much to be read between the lines of his actions, his choice of words, the smallest shifts in his facial expression. Yet, Kaifeng rarely ever felt as though he didn’t understand his zhiyin. At the moment, whatever exact feeling Helene was expressing in the lacunae of what he didn’t do or chose not to say—a kind of yearning, a kind of grief—it felt more than reasonable. Really, it would have worried Kaifeng more had Helene felt perfectly fine with coming into a space that Xingyi had protected so well, and with such a painting on the puzzle-lock.
Although he would’ve liked to have something sensitive and intelligent and soothing to say, Kaifeng couldn’t think of anything. Instead, once the last tile slid into its proper place and unseen chains began lifting the handle-less door up and out of the way for them, Kaifeng caught one of Helene’s hands in his own. Gentle as a caress, he brought that hand to his lips and kissed Helene’s knuckles. It’s okay to still miss Xingyi-ge, he hoped he could make Helene feel, even just as vibes radiating off Kaifeng. Grief is messy, and it’s complicated, and it makes perfect sense that Huan-ge still misses Xingyi-ge. Even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else, feeling it would be okay.
(Part of Kaifeng did wish that he knew better how to ease the grief that Helene felt……but aside from letting Helene know that he could feel it without judgment and Kaifeng would be here for him no matter what, Kaifeng didn’t know that any cure existed. Certainly not a perfect one. Even if it had, he felt like the practical execution of such a thing would’ve ultimately proven horrific, like carving out one’s own heart because the pain grew too great. Besides, dulling one’s ability to feel would’ve removed the capacity for great joy as much as the capacity to experience deep pain. Maybe that was just one of the ways the universe kept itself in balance.
Either way, the door before them was almost up all the way and there were matters of greater cosmic significance to attend to tonight.)
Crossing the threshold that had opened before them, Kaifeng combed his gaze over a room set up not entirely unlike a study. Something about it felt off, though. The desk and its chair looked perfectly fine, but they looked as though they’d been set up on a stage. A lounge sofa sat near one wall—Liánlí-Kaifeng would always think of the style as a “fainting sofa,” because it looked like it needed an emotionally manipulative wealthy Victorian white lady to swoon and faint on it while trying to browbeat her children about gods only knew what—and likewise, it looked as though a careful set designer had placed it so that it would create a functional image of an office or a study.
For all Kaifeng knew, the books lining the shelves and the one on the edge of the desk were just props, empty of words but with enough substance to look real for an audience. All the gilded and bejeweled bookends, the silver candle-holder on the desk that looked suspiciously free of wax, the decorative sculpture beside the fainting sofa (a black marble column with vines decked out in roses and a long dragon-looking beastie with inlaid amethysts for eyes curling all around the pillar)—the more he looked at them, the more Kaifeng felt like they couldn’t have been placed here genuinely. For one thing, Xingyi-ge had tended to use his bedroom in the cottage as his actual office, as far as Liánlí-Kaifeng knew. For another, though, everything about the scene before him felt too perfectly curated for him to believe it.
No obvious Code piece, but also no obvious doors.
“Okay, thinking like Xingyi-ge,” Kaifeng said, more thinking out loud than anything else. As he spoke, he paced the room, rubbing at his chin and scrutinizing different pieces of the setup. “I have a piece of the Code at this Wonder. Protecting it is one of my duties as Kaifeng of Saturn. Doing so is of especial importance, because enough idiots try to grave-rob here that I needed to build a tower full of puzzles and death-traps so they would leave the dead interred here alone.”
Kaifeng paused in his pacing and took a deep breath, slowly dragging his eyes over the bookshelves. “Maybe the Code piece is hidden in the desk or somewhere ostensibly obvious? A little ‘trick them because they’ll expect something complicated’ ploy? But for something this. important. that feels like leaving too much up to chance. Feels like relying too much on somebody else overthinking things when, statistically speaking, a lot of would-be graverobbers—would-be robbers of a lot of things—actually don’t think enough. It’s why they get caught in some appallingly stupid mistakes.
“Distraction makes sense as a ruse from Xingyi-ge, though. See, the entire tower. So……what if you put some ostensibly valuable things out in front, while hiding the truly important thing behind a door that doesn’t look like a door.”
In his mind, Kaifeng would have perfectly demonstrated this idea by applying pressure to one of the bookshelves and having it swing back to reveal a secret passageway.
In reality, the bookshelf he pressed on didn’t budge.
Shoulders slouching, Kaifeng pouted at the bookshelf as though it owed him money. “Okay,” he said, “that doesn’t mean my theory is wrong, though. Just that I picked the wrong bookshelf. Or maybe I guessed wrong about the mechanism.”
(No one had asked for Xiao-Qióngxiān’s opinion, but she stayed close to Helene’s side as Kaifeng took to pacing. Not that she begrudged her person the need to pace like this while he thought things over, but she didn’t enjoy doing it herself. Besides, Helene might have needed a soft companion beside him.)
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Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2024 11:04 pm
It was....comforting, how well Kaifeng knew Helene. How he always seemed to pick up just as much on what Helene didn't say as what he did. To be so well-understood was a privilege, and he hoped that he made Kaifeng feel the same way.
The kiss on the knuckles was more than enough. An acknowledgement, an offering of comfort. And Helene would not--could never--forget that for all his grief and loss, he had Lianli, and he would not lose that.
It was not a perfect salve. The loss still hung heavy on his heart, especially stepping through the door into this hidden study, which felt...both like his space and not like it all at once. An imitation, of the type of study Xingyi actually used. Somewhere to divert attention.
"Mm. The Code piece may not be in the desk, but that does not mean it is not part of the answer," he said. "Perhaps too obvious, but worth a try. If not, there are several other things that seem...out of place, but carefully so. Difficult to recognize for one not familiar, but they feel....incorrect. Distractions, perhaps, as you said." He reached down to pat Xiao-Qióngxiān on the head, to thank her for standing next to him, before he stepped over to the desk and pressed on the candleholder, curiously, as if it might be the proper switch.
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Posted: Thu May 30, 2024 1:13 am
Kaifeng needed to think. Puzzles like the one that Xingyi-ge had set out before him and Helene now, they required a certain approach to thinking that Liánlí-Kaifeng……wasn’t a stranger to, exactly? But he still hadn’t practiced this sort of thing as much as he had other ways of thinking.
Leaning back against the bookshelf he’d pouted at, Liánlí-Kaifeng had to admit (in his own queer little brain, at least) that he often tended to take an approach less oriented toward solving the problem (or the puzzle, as the case was right now) and more geared toward observing the problem, letting it exist while figuring out what its deal was, and finding ways to address it that usually didn’t feel quite so confrontational. More nuanced and less practical than figuring out the way to access the Code Piece. Distinctly less direct and to-the-point than what Xingyi-ge had put in front of him.
When Helene pressed on the candleholder, it sunk into the desk. Unseen but clearly audible, gears and chains started turning somewhere. Kaifeng perked up—but he didn’t react quickly enough. The piece of bookshelf behind him slid out of the way, slipping slightly back, then sideways behind one of the other shelves. But Kaifeng didn’t notice until he realized he wasn’t leaning against anything anymore. In a brief moment of clarity, it occurred to him: he was going to fall over. Flailing helplessly did nothing to prevent that; his hands didn’t grab anything solid and his legs moving mostly hastened the process.
The floor rose up to meet Kaifeng, and he toppled into it with a thunk!
“……Not my best moment—ow,” he said, groaning softly as he took quick stock of where he’d fallen. Craning his neck a bit, he could see a hallway stretching out behind the shelves, lit up by the shimmering trail on the ground. Sitting up, Kaifeng didn’t see the same shimmering trail out in the main area of the room. Maybe the Code had a sense of humor, or desire to protect the Code Piece by concealing the specific path to this hidden corridor, or something. “But I think you found the way to the Code Piece.”
He meant to stand up and get moving down the corridor.
But as Kaifeng shifted onto his knees, he noticed something on one of the desk’s drawers: a little oval that looked about the perfect shape and size for his signet ring. Humming softly, Kaifeng pressed the ring into the indentation that it matched so well. From there, a quick twist left made a set of tumblers loudly turn. The drawer creaked open.
Inside, Kaifeng found three things. First, a tarnished silver ring with several heavy keys dangling from it on chains (Kaifeng gently placed it atop the desk).
Second, a heavy silver medallion on a necklace made of braided ribbons. Placing that beside the keyring, Kaifeng took in the cameo relief that decorated the surface: a pair of full-bloom roses crossed with each other, carved in some black gemstone (maybe black jade?). Even before he clocked the engraving between them—a very familiar, perpetually unsatisfied ouroboros—Kaifeng felt like he knew where the amulet might have come from. If not from Airan, the Sailor Murikabushi who’d done the job a thousand years ago, then definitely from the world, Murikabushi.
And third, a large, heavy book with a lock on it that reminded Kaifeng of the “secret diaries” that people made for young girls. Possibly an old journal of Xingyi-ge’s, then? The biggest difference was that this book’s lock, like the drawer the book had been in, seemed perfectly sized for Kaifeng’s signet ring.
Again, this proved to be the answer. But opening the book revealed, first and foremost, that the pages had been hollowed out in a way that marked them as containing something interesting.
Hiding that something interesting, though, was another of Xingyi-ge’s sliding tile puzzles. Unlike all the others Liánlí-Kaifeng had encountered, though, this one was already mostly solved. Only a few tiles needed to move to unlock it, and the endgame image was already clear: a lovingly painted image of Huan-ge—as Huanxi rather than as Sailor Helene, lying down and positioned as if someone was looking down on him from above. The painted Huan-ge didn’t seem to be doing so well, either; he seemed a paler shade than usual, his eyes were closed, and Xingyi-ge had painted a sheen of sweat on his neck and forehead.
It was hard to tell with so little of the room around him visible, but it felt like Xingyi-ge’s bedroom in the cottage. The perspective in the painting, likewise, seemed to be Xingyi-ge’s: a pair of pale hands attached to crimson arrow sleeves tended to the Huan-ge in the painting, with one mopping up the sweat on his brow, and the other curled ever so gently around Huan-ge’s wrist.
Frowning bemusedly, Liánlí-Kaifeng turned the book so Helene could see the painting right side up. “Did…… Do you remember anything like that happening,” he asked softly. “Or is this another scene that Xingyi-ge imagined, do you think?”
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Posted: Tue Jul 02, 2024 5:45 pm
Honestly, Helene was a little surprised that he'd managed to get it right so quickly. Perhaps, all other things aside, he did know Xingyi quite well--on some level or another. Enough, at least, to guess at his thoughts and motivations in such a situation.
It brought a smile to his face, until he heard his Kaifeng stumble and whirled to look--and he was not quick enough to get to him, to catch him before he hit the ground with a thunk that made Helene wince.
"Are you alright?" He asked, concerned. The path was illuminated, yes, and they needed but to follow it--but Helene was more concerned about the Knight before him, even if Kaifeng now seemed distracted by the desk itself.
And by what his signet ring revealed within it.
All three items felt significant--especially given that they were hidden here, in this false study that protected Kaifeng's Code piece and only accessible with the Knight's signet ring--but it was the book, and the puzzle within, that made him exhale softly.
"It is...not imagined," he said, and he reached out to brush a thumb over his own painted forehead. "Xingyi and I had occasion to chase after the Nameless on a world I no longer remember. Xingyi was drunk, and things went...badly. I became very ill. He must have...brought me here. Looked after me. Why he would have painted that, I....do not understand."
Still, he let his fingers slide the remaining tiles into place, unsure of what they would find within.
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Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2024 3:30 pm
“I’m alright, gege,” Kaifeng told Helene with a little smile that he hoped was reassuring. Falling like that hadn’t been particularly dignified, but as much as Kaifeng preferred to give his best to his zhiyin, he didn’t mind looking a bit silly in front of Helene. In his heart, he knew that Helene loved him as he was, without him needing to pretend to be anyone else.
It was a privilege and an honor to have that kind of love in one’s life.
As Helene solved the little picture puzzle inside the book styled to look like Xingyi-ge’s journal, Kaifeng watched in rapt attention. Yes, focusing on resonating with his Wonder’s Code Piece was more important, but he couldn’t help taking an interest in these pieces of history. Everything about this adventure had so many questions wrapped up in it, and everything about Xingyi-ge always fascinated Kaifeng. A chance to learn even more about his predecessor excited him.
When Helene slid the last tile into place, the picture stayed still a moment, then seemed to separate into four quarters. They edged apart, revealing……a little statue? It sure looked like a little statue anyway, carved into a shape Kaifeng recognized immediately because he saw the same shape right near him, embroidered on Helene’s sleeves and the bottom of his fuku’s over-robe. Those examples came in sunset purple, while the white stone’s particular luster made Kaifeng think that it might have been jade, but there was no mistaking the heart-shaped knot-work design.
“Serenity and moral integrity,” Kaifeng said softly, listing some of the associations that came to mind for white jade. Its alleged healing properties. The spiritual significance traditionally linked to it. What people used it to promote, in his experience. “Encourages hope but not naiveté. Promotes a sense of balance. And having it carved into gege’s symbol might indicate a desire for more self-restraint? Like a protective talisman or a personal reminder? And putting it behind that specific painting of Huan-ge……”
Kaifeng hmm’d, gently lifting the little statue out of its home—then paled a bit and swallowed thickly as a possible answer came to him. “It might’ve been like Xingyi-ge telling himself ‘Remember what might happen if you don’t exercise self-restraint.’”
A little statue of Sailor Helene’s symbol carved from white jade. Hiding it behind a painting of Huan-ge, ill and suffering, after a mission where he’d only gotten sick because Xingyi-ge had gotten drunk and it had caused problems. The painting on the picture-lock to even get in this false study had been of Xingyi-ge and Huan-ge, sitting outside of Huan-ge’s personal residence on Helene, playing music together without any signs of alcohol or indications that the figure of Xingyi-ge was meant to be drunk. And all of these pieces of evidence happened to rest around the place where Xingyi-ge had safely secluded their Wonder’s Code Piece, the little fragment of cosmic power that the Knight of Kaifeng protected, something so vitally important to Xingyi-ge that it often seemed like only his family and Huanxi had rivaled it in his life (a sentiment that Liánlí-Kaifeng also felt very deeply).
It all felt extremely suggestive. It all made Kaifeng’s chest ache. Made his brain itch to know more.
Looking at the collection of things he’d found and put on the desk, Kaifeng sighed. He scooped up the medallion (letting it dangle off his wrist), the keyring (letting it dangle off his fingers), and the little white jade statue (gently caressing it in his hand). It didn’t feel like Xingyi-ge’s style to not have another piece to this adventure somehow, another puzzle to solve. And if there was one, then Liánlí-Kaifeng felt certain that at least the medallion and the white jade talisman were part of it.
The medallion and the talisman felt too personally significant to Xingyi-ge to ignore as possible clues. He’d struggled endlessly with feeling both connected to and estranged from his Murikabushian heritage, with wanting his father’s family to love him and feeling ashamed of their criminal enterprises. If it had come from Airan himself, then that likely made it even more significant. Maybe Xingyi-ge and Airan had been friends, maybe they hadn’t been, or maybe they’d only been work friends, but they’d had enough respect between them for Xingyi-ge to petition to have the scroll that had gone into Liánlí-Kaifeng’s weapon brought back to Saturn and for Airan to agree.
The little white jade talisman’s significance felt obvious: Sailor Helene’s symbol had clear emotional weight for Xingyi-ge both as a symbol of the man he’d loved—the man he and Liánlí both loved—and in terms of what its association with inhibition represented.
Given where they were going and what they were here to find—as well as Xingyi’s fondness for puzzle-locks—Kaifeng didn’t think they’d find a simple “insert key and turn” lock, but one never knew. The sheer number of keys might have been the puzzle hiding in plain sight. If they wound up being irrelevant to the matter of the Code piece, then perhaps they would open up other doors around Kaifeng’s wonder and let him explore more places he hadn’t visited before. (For Xingyi-ge’s sake, even only posthumously, Liánlí-Kaifeng really hoped that he didn’t find his way to a third wine cellar with these keys. Two fully stocked wine cellars were more than enough.)
Reaching for Helene’s hand, Kaifeng gave him another small, hopeful smile. “Come on, Huan-ge,” he said. “I think we’re close.”
Slipping into the corridor revealed by the sliding bookshelf revealed that Kaifeng was likely correct. Although the corridor stretched on for a while, its walls seemingly lined top to bottom with different portraits, at the end of it sat a door. A statue sat outside the door, resting on a pedestal and looking like some kind of great beast. From here, Kaifeng could only guess what its shape might have been up close, but he thought about the family crest that he’d seen on some of Xingyi-ge’s things. The Kuroganes had taken as their sigil a wolf-looking beast with wings like a bat’s and a serpentine, scaly tail like a dragons. Soon enough, though, he and Helene would get to judge better.
Getting there might have been difficult for someone else, though. No traps came for them, but as they drew closer to the door and the statue, it felt as though the walls were closing in on them. They weren’t moving—at least, when Kaifeng reached toward them, they seemed to stay more or less the same distance from his hand—but they must have had an angle to them that made them feel closer than they were.
The portraits both helped and didn’t. Kaifeng kept his fingers entwined with Helene’s as they walked, and on one hand, looking at the different portraits proved quite fun. Several seemed to be of Huanxi (whether as himself or as Sailor Helene), which just made sense, considering he was Xingyi-ge’s favorite subject to paint. But the ones of Huanxi numbered fewer than Kaifeng might have expected; several other faces joined him in the rows of Xingyi-ge’s work.
One painting depicted someone who looked like a princess with a white dress and space-buns atop her pigtails. Her painting hung beside one of a dark-haired young man in equally dark, ornate-looking armor and a red cape. Kaifeng didn’t recognize either of them, so the best he had were guesses. But whoever they were, Xingyi-ge had painted them with care. He’d made them look both beautiful and quite happy.
Two more paintings hung beside each other, one another portrait of Xingyi-ge’s mother and one of a man who looked similar to Kaede and Keishi, just older and a bit more kind. No question that he was wearing the Kurogane crest on his brooch, though. Xingyi-ge’s father, probably. Qí Yáolán-lǎojiàng’s portrait hung beside a portrait of a Jupiter Knight with a warm, open smile. She looked an awful lot like Qiye-jiejie, honestly. So much so that it was almost eerie. On her other side hung a portrait of a young man who looked similar to her, wearing what obviously seemed like a Knight’s uniform, but Kaifeng didn’t recognize the colors or the symbol that decorated the uniform’s decorative hems.
Many of the paintings Kaifeng spotted depicted some of Xingyi-ge’s fellow Saturn Knights. Liánlí-Kaifeng didn’t recognize all of them—frankly, he didn’t even recognize most of them—but he did pick out one who strongly resembled Aokigahara-gege, just looking somewhat more mischievous than Aokigahara did in this life. Another Saturn Knight wore a gray hood and a haunted expression; his portrait hung beside one of a Neptune Knight with an ample chest, long hair in multiple pastel colors, and eyes that seemed like they were open a bit too wide.
Another of these Saturn Knights, looking at him, Liánlí-Kaifeng felt as though he should have recognized him? His long, wild, ombre hair reminded Kaifeng of midnight and the light of the full moon, and his grin matched the wildness of his hair, off-kilter and eager in a way that suggested he was looking forward to doing some homicide. What stood out most, though, sat on the left side of his face. A faded scar ran down his skin, starting on the forehead and ending on his cheek, going right over the eye. That injury, whatever it had been, must have taken the eye from him; where his right eye looked relatively normal, a dark rich shade of green, the left eye had been replaced with glittering purple gemstone that entirely filled the socket.
“………Asshai?” Kaifeng squinted and frowned up at that painting, unsure why that name had come to his mind. He’d heard it in a few of Xingyi-ge’s memories before, but never connected the name to a face. “Do you recognize that Knight, Huan-ge? I don’t know why my mind’s coming up with the name ‘Asshai,’ looking at him?”
Moving deeper down the corridor, he spotted a portrait of Grieve, grinning in that endearingly feral way she still did today, and one of another senshi, smirking roguishly with leaves strewn throughout their hair. Kaede and Keishi got portraits as well, put right next to each other. In another painting, Kaifeng spotted the symbol that Helene had once identified for him as that of Sailor Farbauti; the senshi wearing it seemed very large but also very thin, and they had skin a bright, cold shade of blue, coupled with vibrantly red eyes. Whatever his story was, his painting hung next to the one of the Saturn Knight whom Kaifeng suspected was Rin, Aokigahara-gege’s previous incarnation. In yet another painting, someone with finned ears and black sclera around their differently colored eyes held up a hand with webbed fingers as if daring the viewer to mess around with them.
“They were with the Nameless, right?” Kaifeng pointed at the painting. “In the memory I got in late December, the one with Huan-ge’s brother? Xingyi-ge called them ‘Alexis’?”
Speaking of Huan-ge’s brother, though, one of the paintings of Huanxi had a painting of His Grace Zhiguang-gege hanging beside it. They sat on opposite sides of their respective frames, bodily angled so that it looked like they were facing each other. His Grace looked very similar to how he’d appeared in the memory Kaifeng had retrieved on December 26th, smiling peacefully and openly, as though he were the sort of person who would have invited his world’s orphans to his wedding feast and donated any leftovers to them. In the portrait beside him sat a very beefy senshi with blue hair and impressive horns; he grinned like he was ready for anything. They’d almost finished passing the paintings of him and His Grace when Kaifeng noticed something: both of them wore little golden lockets, which had fallen open, each revealing the other’s portrait.
Possibly Huan-ge’s brother-in-law, then? But rather than ask directly when Helene strongly preferred to reveal things on his own time, Kaifeng simply squeezed Helene’s hand to remind him that Kaifeng would listen if he ever wanted to share.
Another pair of paintings depicted someone who Kaifeng recognized as Madriu, looking cocky with his haughty expression and the tilt of his head, and beside him, someone wide-eyed and kind-looking, with white rabbit ears atop his head. Looking more closely at the painting of the bunny-boy, he gave an aura of mischief, while looking more closely at Madriu’s portrait, Kaifeng picked out some subtle lining around his eyes and a use of gray tones in shading his fuku that, overall, made him look more tired than his cocky facade initially suggested.
One quintet of paintings seemed to form a chain. In the first, a corpse-pale, round-faced a senshi with black-iridescent hair and eerily wide eyes looked distinctly displeased about something. One of his arms reached out of the frame, though, and started up in the next picture, where the equally pale hand reached its webbed fingers toward what distinctly looked like snackfood. The actual subject of the second portrait, another senshi, looked significantly more cocky, with his silver-gray wolf ears angled confidently and his face pointing toward the third portrait, seemingly unaware that the first subject was stealing his food.
In the third portrait, Kaifeng found one more senshi. This one looked rather like an elf, albeit with dark gray skin that Xingyi-ge seemed to have painted with purplish undertones that nicely complemented the violet coloring in his fuku. His hair had been pulled into a bun resting low against the back of his neck, likewise purple. His blood red irises sat beneath vibrantly teal bangs, and he seemed to be looking back into the second portrait with a cocksure smile. The subject of the fourth portrait looked very similar to the third, in that he was also a senshi and a dark gray elf—so similar looking to the previous dark gray elf that they could have been family by blood for all Liánlí-Kaifeng knew—but with hair a softer shade of blue……except in some places where it also seemed to have a lavender tone. Also unlike his maybe-cousin, he waved “hello” at the viewer with a broad grin and his eyes closed like he was too eager to focus on keeping them open. Xingyi-ge had painted bright purple makeup onto and around his subject’s eyelids, though.
In the final painting of the five sat another elf, his skin a pale, pinkish tone. His messy, caramel-colored hair was tied back in a ponytail, and something about him had the air of a scholar. He wasn’t dressed as a Knight or a senshi, but whoever he was, he smiled at the dark gray elf in the fourth portrait as though said elf-senshi had hung the moon and stars in the sky by hand.
All of the paintings were astounding in their skill and craftsmanship……especially around the eyes. Somehow, Xingyi-ge had painted their eyes in such a way that, no matter where one moved in the corridor, the paintings always seemed to be watching you. Even if they were looking at someone in another portrait, they were also always watching you.
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Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2024 4:12 pm
Finding what was inside that box made Helene's chest hurt. Not least because the explanation Lianli-Kaifeng laid out made....far, far too much sense. Had Xingyi really blamed himself so strongly for what had happened? So much so that he felt it needed to serve as a warning, to remind himself of the consequences of his drinking?
It was strange, how far their perceptions diverged. Huanxi had never once truly considered it Xingyi's fault. Yes, things likely would have gone different if he were sober, but.....
Well. It felt unthinkable to hold that against him. And yet Xingyi seemed to have held it against himself.
"If he took it as inspiration to take better care of himself," Helene said, "then I would be glad to have inspired that in him. I wished for that, very deeply." It had been most of what he wished for, once he had decided for himself that them being together was simply too much to ask--too unlikely, and too likely to get Xingyi involved in complications he did not need or deserve.
He fell in beside Kaifeng, winding their fingers together with half a thought. His eyes drifted over the portraits--so many familiar figures, rendered by Xingyi's careful, talented hand. Xingyi's adoptive family. His fellow knights--Aokigahara, d;If, d'If's Dunwich.
He narrowed his eyes at the one Kaifeng called out. "Asshai of Saturn, yes. A neighboring Wonder to Kaifeng, minded by a Knight with little care for his duty who gleefully let his amoral Senshi beloved run rampant." He shook his head. "Would not be surprised to find the two of them serving Chaos, in this life."
Which was about the bitterest judgement he could cast, but he felt it was justified.
The group of the Nameless made Helene smile, wryly. "Yes. Troublesome. Violent, but incredibly skilled at the use of it." And his eyes drifted further, landing on Zhiguang, and next to him....
"Xinzhang. My brother's husband." His eyes scanned for another portrait, but--no.
Well. Things had gotten. Messy. There.
He exhaled, and continued down, noting all the other faces he recognized. Old friends, all potentially lost to time. But more than he had expected had appeared alive and well, and it gave him hope.
But even all the familiar portraits felt eerie, with their eyes continually turned upon you. A clever artist's trick, Helene knew, and certainly well within Xingyi's skills. But it was still unsettling.
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Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2024 11:32 pm
Kaifeng frowned, hearing that judgment out of Helene, about where Asshai of Saturn and his beloved senshi might have been in this life. He didn’t enjoy thinking about the possibility that a fellow Knight of Saturn would have been with Chaos—maybe that they could have been with Chaos and had never known what was waiting for them at their Wonders—but he couldn’t deny that, firstly, it sounded very possible. Murikabushi had said that the Captains, Lieutenants, and Generals of the Negaverse became Knights if they ever purified.
Secondly, from what Huan-ge had to say about Asshai and his beloved, whoever they had been? Liánlí-Kaifeng got the distinct sense that maybe the two of them would have willingly embraced Chaos. Not a situation like how Muri had described his own—where he’d only gotten Awakened into Chaos because he’d known and trusted the person who’d first taken him out to Mirrorspace, and Muri simply hadn’t had all the information because he would have chosen very differently if he had—but a situation where they might’ve looked at both Order and Chaos, and decided, for whatever reason, that they strongly preferred the latter.
Somber from just the thought of that, Kaifeng instinctively squeezed Helene’s hand. Maybe it wasn’t fair of him to preemptively judge two people he’d never met based on what Huan-ge had to say about who they’d been a thousand years ago? But at the same time, Chaos had done horrible things to Huan-ge’s world, to the worlds of all the long-surviving senshi who came to Earth from space. Personally, Kaifeng didn’t see the appeal. He didn’t know what would need to happen to somebody to make them gleefully embrace that sort of destruction.
At least he didn’t need to dwell on that too much. Before too long, they had reached the statue sitting before the door where the Code’s helpful, shimmering trail led. Up close, Kaifeng saw that he’d been right to think of the Kuroganes’ family crest: the statue waiting for them might have sat there like a lucky cat, or like guardian beasts outside a temple, but it was unmistakably a wolf, with bat wings folded up around it, something glittering around its neck (though Kaifeng didn’t look closely enough to completely notice what it was), and a scaly tail curled so it rested before its feet. Also by its feet were three shallow holes—indentations, more like, carved into the pedestal—and a closer look revealed barely-perceptible but still present space between the bottoms of the indentations and their walls.
Liánlí-Kaifeng didn’t touch them. He’d seen enough of Xingyi-ge’s puzzle locks to guess that he had to put the right things in these places. Getting things wrong with Xingyi-ge’s traps, as well, could all too easily throw someone into a death-trap—a conclusion that seemed very strongly supported by strange patterns of cuts in the floor beneath them. Perhaps the outline of a trapdoor? Probably, yeah. Xingyi-ge did enjoy putting those all over the tower. Considering that their Wonder’s Code Piece almost certainly lay on the other side of the door, Liánlí-Kaifeng didn’t want to know what would happen if you put the wrong objects on the platforms.
(It helped with exactly nothing, but he did, briefly, glance over at the door. As he’d expected, he didn’t see any keyholes. So, perhaps the keys would open up other doors around here.)
“There’s usually more of a clue with Xingyi-ge,” Kaifeng said, largely thinking aloud but also inviting any help from Helene, if he had any insight to offer. “They may not always make sense at a first glance, but he does like to put them in plain……” His gaze drifted above the door, “sight.”
Three more paintings hung above the door.
At the left, sat a painting of Huan-ge, once more as himself rather than as Sailor Helene. Full-body, rather than the bust shots that filled the corridor behind them. As in the picture that had provided the puzzle lock to access this part of the tower, Huan-ge sat outside his private residence on Helene, in the grass with his eyes closed and his beautiful fingers astride the strings and frets of his qin. The coloring and sense of lighting said early morning, and the way Xingyi-ge had painted the sunlight on Huan-ge’s mother’s beloved white flowers seemed clear and warm. Only one oddity pulled the eye, a black violin—no doubt Xingyi-ge’s own—sitting in the grass beside Huan-ge’s qin.
On the right, a character study of Xingyi-ge’s parents, standing together. Like Huan-ge, they’d been painted in full-body, standing out on a busy city street, surrounded by architecture that looked not entirely dissimilar from the buildings in the settlement near Kaifeng the Wonder. Their outfits were intriguing. Liánlí-Kaifeng didn’t really know the words to describe the fashions they wore—he could think of other people who would’ve known, but not him—but it seemed intricate and highly decorative. The various purple shades looked similar to the violets and indigos in Kaifeng’s own uniform, so perhaps this could have been some sort of Saturnian Gothic kind of vibe?
At least, Liánlí-Kaifeng felt pretty certain of that guess until he noticed the lamp posts around Xingyi-ge’s parents: each of them had garlands of black roses, winding around them from bottom to top.
Finally, in the center painting, Xingyi-ge himself, sitting outside……somewhere? Wherever it was—Helene? Murikabushi? Another Knight’s Wonder? somewhere else entirely?—the idyllic waterfall seemed nice, and Xingyi-ge seemed too busy playing his violin to notice literally anything. The dead tree behind him said that it might have been somewhere in this Wonder’s very fields, but both the waterfall and the flowering bushes in the foreground muddled that assessment up considerably. In the left-hand side of the painting (to Xingyi-ge’s right) sat a bush of black roses, which should have meant Murikabushi, if the symbolism was consistent. But in the right-hand side of the frame (at Xingyi-ge’s left), Liánlí-Kaifeng noticed a bush of the same white flowers that Xingyi-ge had painted in the two previous scenes at Huan-ge’s private residence.
“I think……” Liánlí-Kaifeng started, raising the arm where he’d hung the medallion from Murikabushi and the ring of keys, his fingers still caressing the Helene symbol carved from white jade. “I think……the idea here might be matching up trinkets to the paintings.” He pointed carefully at the indentations at the statue’s feet. “One trinket for Xingyi-ge’s parents, one that matches with Huan-ge, and one for Xingyi-ge himself. Putting the right thing in the right place must trip some mechanism that will unlock the door. Like……”
Humming the first tune that came to mind—the melody that Xingyi-ge had composed for Huan-ge—Liánlí-Kaifeng gently disentangled his fingers from Helene’s. He took similar care in working the medallion off his arm, then placing it in the right-hand slot, the one that lined up with the painting of Xingyi-ge’s parents. That made the most sense, he thought. The black rose garlands on the lampposts said that they were most likely on Murikabushi in the painting, and an amulet bearing the senshi’s symbol probably would’ve made them proud to see, had they been alive whenever Xingyi had earned it.
From somewhere unseen came the sounds of something turning and clicking—but the trapdoor didn’t open beneath them, which felt like a good sign. Kaifeng sighed in relief, but frowned as he looked down at the white jade in his hand.
“Did…… Do you think we missed something in the study?” The keys jangled against each other as he lifted his wrist again. “We have the medallion and the white jade, but I don’t think the keys are related to this? I think Xingyi-ge maybe just put them in the fake study to keep them safe?” Not that Liánlí-Kaifeng knew the whole story of what had happened when his predecessor had died, but……perhaps, if things had gone badly very quickly, but he’d still had time to handle his affairs in the tower? Or perhaps he could have put them there ahead of time, if he’d maybe expected something to happen but not known when? “But if the keys aren’t related, then we still need a third something, so……did we miss it?”
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2024 7:22 pm
It was troubling, to have to think on Asshai and his Senshi and their utter disregard for anything even vaguely relating to morality. But they were likely long dead now--or, at least, he hoped so. The thought of that woman having been preserved throguh the centuries.....he shook his head. It seemed unlikely, given...everything he knew of her.
But they were at what he suspected was the final door, before they found Kaifeng's Code piece, and Helene let his eyes drift over the entire scene in front of him, taking it in piece by piece. The three paintings, the three indentations, the two pieces of the puzzle they had.
"Mn, seems logical, yes," Helene said, and his eyes drifted over the paintings, considering all the tucked away little details. "And means we need a third key." He shook his head, briefly. "Do not think we missed anything in the study--found no other hidden places, and Xingyi would not have left one piece laid out while the others were secreted away. But..."
Helene made a soft "hmm" noise, and turned around, and his eyes fell once again on the guardina wolf statue. The Kurogane family crest. Xingyi's family crest.
And a glimmer around its neck.
With care, he lifted the object up--and found an amulet. A silver silk moth, decorated with Saturnian amethyst, the right size to fit in one of the locks.
He held it up so that Lianli-Kaifeng could see.
"Our third key, I suspect," he said, and then he turned to the paintings once more. Considered, heavily. Remembered where they had found that little idol--and what silk moths had meant to him and to Xingyi.
"A silk moth. Allowed to live its simple, beautiful dream." And himself, with Xingyi's violin. A simple, beautiful dream they had not been allowed. "I believe that this corresponds to my portrait, and the jade piece to Xingyi's. Most would have reversed them. Most would be wrong."
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Posted: Mon Sep 23, 2024 4:12 pm
When Helene found the amulet around the statue’s neck, Kaifeng couldn’t hide the way he grinned. He nodded at Helene’s idea for where to place it, feeling that it sounded very like Xingyi-ge, placing the simple, beautiful dreamer of a silk moth with the portrait of Huan-ge (representing the dream Xingyi had held in his heart) and the Helenian jade symbol with Xingyi-ge’s own portrait (perhaps representing some desire for more self-restraint? or else some form of self-chastisement? or maybe Xingyi-ge simply carried Huanxi’s symbol with him, in the same way as e.e. cummings had meant with “i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)”—any of those explanations felt solid).
When Helene placed the amulets, something lurched inside the walls. For a moment, Kaifeng felt his heart stop. Had they guessed wrong? But no, they hadn’t. The sound was probably just the gears and chains that made so many of Xingyi-ge’s locked doors throughout the tower work—as evidenced by the fact that the door before them slid aside, revealing a room that, even from outside the door, gleamed with gold, deserving nothing less than awe.
Still, the new room before them needed to wait a moment. Because Kaifeng needed to give Helene a small, warm smile and make sure that he heard, “Lucky to have Huan-ge and his insights with me.”
At this point, after coming so far and already seeing so much, Kaifeng expected the Code Piece to make itself immediately obvious on the other side of the door. Maybe the golden glow would be from the Code Piece itself—but it wasn’t. Instead, the most immediate source of gold stood maybe ten feet away from the door, a table. Atop it sat a closed box (peeking inside, it seemed to contain incense sticks), an open box containing candles of different lengths and colors, and a little statue that simply demanded Kaifeng’s attention.
Mostly gold, the statue looked like it belonged in some of the Buddhist temples in mainland China that Liánlí had seen photos of but never visited. Had the statue sat on the ground, it might have come up to Helene’s knee. The portion of it that wasn’t gold looked like black marble, and it exclusively stuck to the bottom of the statue: a bed of black roses that the statue’s figure stood upon, the way that bodhisattva statues often stood on lotus blossoms. Little candle-holders sat around the statue’s feet, surprisingly clean (which prompted Kaifeng to notice a bowl on the table where Xingyi-ge seemed to have collected the wax at least one last time before he’d died).
“……Huh,” Kaifeng said, focusing on the statue, absent any judgment and solely as a commentary on the curiosity of the figure.
Folding his arms over his chest, he tilted his head at the little statue.… She? The figure looked like maybe a “she”? But whoever she was, with her long hair cascading down her back, her long gown looked like it would’ve been painfully heavy on a real person. Sure, the wide shape of the hip area would’ve been the creation of panniers or some other undergarment, but the skirt still would’ve needed a lot of fabric for the vaguely cupcake-looking tiered look it had going on. The craftsman who’d made the statue had taken time to lovingly carve detailed folds in the fabric, and what looked like pearls stitched into the folds. Then, you had the bell sleeves, detached just so from the rest of the dress, sticking out in Kaifeng’s mind for some reason.……
Said reason didn’t click for him until he spotted the statue’s necklace. The charm it bore had the same unsatisfied ouroboros symbol that Murikabushi had on his brooch. Kaifeng very badly wanted to ask, but it also felt a bit rude to do so until the poor boy could purify.
Beyond that statue, though, the shimmering trail toward the Code Piece led further into the room, winding around even more statues. The closest one, which had to be a good twelve feet tall, Kaifeng recognized instantly. While the stone it had been carved from didn’t look like any he’d seen on Earth, the familiar figure stood, barefoot, on an equally familiar lotus blossom. Draped in the robes of a Buddhist monk, his serene face framed by both a crown (each frame of it featured carvings of Amitabha Buddha) and an ornate halo, he carried a round wish-granting gem in one hand and a staff in the other. Just as ornate as the halo, the staff’s finial had intricate metal curves with rings dangling off of them. Meanwhile, the arm that held the wish-granting gem had strands of prayer beads dangling off the wrist—and not carved from the strange black stone, either. Xingyi-ge had seemingly acquired strands of beads made from different materials, some that looked like wood, some that looked like colored glass, and some that looked like precious stones.
“Dìzàng-púsà,” Kaifeng said, standing back from the statue enough to stare up at its beatific face with appropriate awe and reverence. “He’s a bodhisattva, a figure of great spiritual significance in Buddhism, back on Earth. Our lore holds that he swore a vow not to achieve Buddhahood—supreme spiritual enlightenment, but there’s a lot of debate about what exactly that means? And even though Dìzàng-púsà could have achieved that for himself, he swore a vow that he never would……not until every Naraka had been emptied, and all the tortured beings inside those Hells, redeemed.”
The old Knight Academy had been on Earth, Kaifeng had heard? So, had Xingyi-ge gotten into Buddhism while studying there? Or had people brought their practices with them while bringing others to be buried at Kaifeng the Wonder? Could’ve been a lot of things.
But another statue called Kaifeng’s attention next, on the other side of the room from the first, just as tall as the one of Dìzàng-púsà and equally recognizable to Liánlí-Kaifeng, standing atop the same kind of lotus blossom bed and wearing a similar halo, even. Carved out of white stone that felt as unearthly as the black stone in Dìzàng-púsà’s statue, this one depicted a more feminine figure. More feminine but still somewhat indistinct, the more you looked at it. Wearing more intricate, decorated robes than her counterpart and a serene expression spelled out with soft eyes and plump lips, this statue stood with a bottle in one hand and the other one raised, holding a willow branch.
“Guanyin Ma,” Kaifeng explained, face alight and eager. “Remember the dish I made for you, your first night on Earth? It’s specifically vegetarian in honor of her……him……them?” Eh, pronouns. So complicated, all the time. Kaifeng huffed, waving a dismissive hand at nothing in particular. “Guanyin-púsà is usually a woman in Chinese tradition, but there’s a longer history of Guanyin being sort of genderfluid? And bodhisattvas are supposed to be transcendent beings who don’t need to deal with gender or physical sex. In the Lotus Sutra, she’s a shapeshifter. Whoever calls for her aid and compassion, Guanyin will answer, regardless of their age, gender, social status, or anything else, and her appearance changes based on who’s calling on her. In times of fear and despair, we turn to Guanyin. She hears the lamentations of the universe and works tirelessly to help others.”
Although he didn’t cry, Kaifeng did go misty-eyed, thinking about what it meant for Xingyi-ge to have statues of these specific Bodhisattva in……what was this supposed to be, a temple? A shrine? The faint light coming in from outside illuminated red curtains and walls like one would have expected to see in certain temples (though the shade more closely matched Kaifeng’s dress than the bright reds that temples tended to prefer). Whatever this place was, the ornate nature of the statues would have distracted any thieves who had somehow managed to make it here……but it could also have simply been to honor the beings depicted in the statues.
“One bodhisattva who devotes herself to compassionately helping others and another who sacrificed his own enlightenment to save beings whom everyone else had forsaken……” Kaifeng swallowed thickly. “Feels very fitting for Xingyi-ge.…… Can understand why he might have been drawn to them.”
They did have an important task to attend to, though, and the shimmering trail from the Code led further into the temple or whatever this was. Following it, they wound past a pair of statues about Huan-ge’s height, both wearing necklaces with the unsatisfied ouroboros of Murikabushi.
The one on the left, closer to Guanyin Ma, also wore elegant robes, posed with his arms open and carved flowers seeming to fall from his billowing sleeves. He looked……eerily like Huanxi, if Liánlí-Kaifeng were perfectly honest? Carved out of white stone, he was missing Huan-ge’s antlers and the tail, and he had the same pointed elf ears that Xingyi-ge painted himself with. But in the face, though, something looked so. similar. to Huanxi that Kaifeng wanted to linger. Another statue over on the altar at the center of the room looked like the same being.
Closer to Dìzàng-púsà, the statue on the right, meanwhile, looked like Xingyi-ge’s self-portraits. Really, the only thing that differed was his outfit. Where Xingyi-ge usually painted himself dressed in the uniform of a Saturn Knight, or maybe wearing clothes that seemed reminiscent of either how he painted his family or how he painted Huan-ge, the god in this statue seemed to be wearing rags. He carried a walking staff and a large bag with the strap draped over his chest, and gods, Liánlí-Kaifeng wanted so much to study these works of art—for what else could they be called?—but the shimmering trail didn’t lead to any of the statues, nor to the grand altar in the center of the room (where statues of these same gods were accompanied by small, framed paintings that, had Kaifeng stopped to examine them, would have looked like dead ringers for Huanxi and Xingyi).
The shimmering silver trail from the Code led to a little shrine in the back corner of the room, the furthest spot from the door where Kaifeng and Helene had entered. Relative to the rest of the room, the shrine was modest and understated. No gilded platforms, or vibrant red paint, or opulent purple cloths on the tables with the desiccated petals of what had probably been fine black roses once. Just a simple altar carved from polished black wood, not even waist-high but with a nice-looking sitting pillow on the floor before it. There wasn’t even an obvious statue or anything; the Code Piece seemed to sit behind a locked set of door.
The key was obvious, though. The lock had to be the Saturn symbol in the middle of the doors, so Kaifeng would open this last door with his signet ring.
Before he knelt to do so, though, he looked back to Helene with a hopeful smile. “Can I get a little kiss for good luck, gege?”
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