Fate's promise

Chapter 1: The heart asks pleasure first

Si Yin, 17th disciple, Kunlun Mountain

On the 600th anniversary of the day that the Jade Purity Fan had chosen her and she had became Si Yin, Mo Yuan's 17th disciple, Bai Qian found an unlabelled bottle on one of her visits to the cellar. The bottle was hidden among larger casks in a place in the cellar that she habitually avoided – her only experience with one of the wines here left her feeling ill for weeks. When he was told what she had been drinking Mo Yuan had fed her bowls of sobering soup himself and tended to her while she moaned about being poisoned. When she had sobered up enough to realise who was sitting next to her, she was told gently but firmly not to drink any of the wines in that part of the cellar. Later she found out from Ninth that Shifu kept his experimental wines there. Sometimes there were many barrels and bottles on those shelves and sometimes there were none. Ninth warned her that only Shifu knew what was good or not so if 17th wanted to stay alive he had better listen and do as he was told. It was Shifu's gentle admonishing that kept her from trying any of the wines again.

If her fan hadn't lead her to the shelf and forced her to climb the ladder to collect it, she would never have known it was there. As she reached up towards the highest shelf to call the fan to her, she felt the bottle slide into her hand instead. Reasoning that she wasn't disobeying Shifu because she hadn't taken the bottle herself, Bai Qian happily pulled off the seal and breathed in the fragrance. It was a scent as familiar to her as her own – an unspoken desire and understanding of home. A choice had been made.

Her first sip connected her to Kunlun's divine energy, a connection that only other one person in her world could make because it relied on soul more than it did on cultivation. As the connection took hold, she felt herself opening up to the immense power running through Kunlun and she wept at the beauty of it. 'This is life,' she realised, 'this is what we protect.' With this realisation came a new understanding of her Shifu. Her thoughts of him drew her into the energy channels feeding the water in Kunlun's pools, rivers, lakes and waterfalls. She traced her way to the Golden Lotus that she shared her feelings and thoughts with and she felt happy as it responded to her touch. She spent hours exploring the sensations brought on the closeness to her Golden Lotus. Her heart felt full and she was content to simply be together with it.

After some time she searched for and found a skein of energy that led to the fountain in her master's seclusion cave. By the time she had finished the small bottle she had willingly imprinted her energy signature within the mountain's energy core, a core energy that was tied to both Kunlun's master and the Golden Lotus. She gave her soul willing and it was willing accepted. At the same infinitesimal moment that their souls connected, the Rock of Fate began to shift and change. The inner core into which Tiandi and the Celestial Empress's names were etched vibrated as two new names were woven into the layers that made up the rock, names that became as much a part of the rock as those of the divine couple who had created their world.

The wine, rather than getting her drunk, made her euphoric for days. When she finally came down off her high and realised she had finished what must be that best wine Shifu had ever made, she promptly returned to the cellar and got herself blind drunk. When Ninth found her she was halfway between tears and laughter and hugging her knees; it was Mo Yuan who carried her to her room. In her drunken haze she thought it was Ninth feeding her sobering soup, and she confessed to having tasted the best wine in the world but not to tell Zhe Yan it was better than his wines because he would cut off her supply. It wasn't her fault, she said, because her fan had lead her to the shelf and that the wine ended up in her hand when she called the fan back to her. In her stupor, she boldly declared that the bottle had chosen her just as the Jade Purity Fan had and if the wine hadn't tasted that good then she wouldn't have had to finish it all. So it was really Shifu's fault for making taste irresistible.