The Flood Controller's Wife

Chapter 1: I don't want to be a girl anymore

"Aying, stop running around... Stop climbing on trees!!! Geez this girl will be the death of me!"

"Naima why can't I play with the boys or train with them outside?"

"Young mistress, its not proper to do that. You have been told so many times."

"But I'm a boy! I want to learn martial arts like the other boys!!"

"Shhh... Don't let anyone hear you or they will kill you."

"Why would they kill me if I'm a boy? Why do I have to dress like this everyday?? I don't want to be a girl!!!!"

The little child ran crying to the living room. His mother and father were having tea with his father's right hand man Yuxi. Yuxi had been a trusted servant who stayed by his father's side since his father was young and would follow him everywhere as his trusted aide.

"Mom! I'm tired I don't want to be a girl anymore. I want to play like a boy!! I want to learn martial art like Yubinge and Yuwen ge."

"A-ying, your father is a strategist and advisor to the emperor. You don't have to learn martial arts, just study hard and be a good scholar then you can follow his footstep."

"But I want to learn to defend myself too!"

Yuxi could not bear seeing the crying child who could not live his life normally. He said: "Master, perhaps young master could use his identity as a boy and enter military school as my child along with Yubin and Yuwen. Both older boys could protect him."

"Please Father!! pleaseee I promise I will be good and I won't create trouble."

His father looked at him with a sad smile.

"Okay child. If you can draw for me the water map of the kingdom within a week I will let you go."

Thank you dad!! Aying hugged his mother and father, then ran to his study and began to work on the map. It was no difficult feat for him as he loved reading maps since he was little. He was fascinated at how simple symbols could represent real huge attributes of nature. There was nothing he loved more than reading and studying maps. The simple drawing of symbols scattered on a piece of scroll told a story of a landscape that he longed to see and experience for himself. Every time his father took him to a place he would draw the place from memory and drew it in his thick book of places.

His father massaged his temples and sighed wondering if it he had made the right decision. He looked at his wife, a pained expression washed across his face.

"Its not your fault dear, you did your best at the time you needed to." His wife comforted him.

Back then, they had wanted a healthy male child more than anything in the world. ZhaoSiLing was pregnant six times and gave birth to a baby boy six times but none of them made it past the first month of life. The midwife who helped with the delivery pronounced a healthy baby boy but they mysteriously died one after another. Zhaosiling and Weiming were overcome with grief and sometime on her seventh pregnancy, they decided to take a trip back to Shu kingdom and meet her previous master Shu Xuan Jin for guidance.

The Oracle Shu Xuan Jin frowned as she saw her beloved discipline and her husband. The first thing her old master spoke of was the dark aura circling the rounded belly of her discipline. She was six months pregnant at the time. She said that Weiming was also carrying that same dark aura.

It was then as she questioned him and he let it slip about the trip he had made long ago to the Wens. He carried a curse that was written on a forbidden book. The book was missing around the same time Wenxu left the mountain. Wenxu had been apprenticing under the Oracle's tutelage.