[Young Master Xian]—❈—68:: Family Dinner [II]

You know that thing I said about how this dinner will be an unmitigated disaster?

Yeah, I fucking hate being right.

The actual dinner hasn’t started yet and I’ve already almost died once.

Actually, it’s worse than that, because I’m only now stepping foot into the house for the first time tonight, and already I’ve suffered one act of attempted murder from a sibling.

What the fuck would have happened by night’s end?

“Hello, brother.”

The voice comes from a few steps beside me, and I’m not at all ashamed to say I jump.

I’m a cultivator, and while I have zero delusions that my qi sense is somehow better than the average, and I even generally go out of my way to keep it reined in so as not to suffer constant distractions, I don’t get snuck up on. Certainly not by people as obviously powerful as the man who’s approached me.

The man smiles at me in that way that leaves the eyes closed.

It’s… cute. Harmless. Guileless even. And all of my alarm bells explode with warning at the sight of it.

Being that I practically wear my emotions on my sleeve, the man must know my reaction to his expression, because his smile changes in some subtle way and his eyelids open slowly.

His eyes are brown, ordinary, quite beautiful even, but one look at them sends a strange, nameless terror shooting through me, and my skin rises with goosebumps.

Xiuying rushes forward, putting herself between me and the man.

It’s like she doesn’t even think about it. Like she sensed the same danger I had and immediately jumped forward to shield my body with hers from any attack.

One of the man’s perfectly manicured eyebrows climb.

“Well, looks like you’ve found yourself a faithful little servant, brother. How nice for you.” And with those words, he releases whatever he’s been doing to hide it and reveals his cultivation to the world.

Divine rank, late Qi Realm.

Somehow, even though this is a substantial amount of power, it feels wrong. Like he is so much more powerful than his cultivation might suggest, impressive as it is.

“I wonder why she failed to protect you in the face of Mei’s wrath though,” the man, who is obviously my older and sole brother, says, putting on an obviously fake thoughtful expression.

Xiuying stills at the remark, while I step forward and gently push her aside.

“I suspect that’s because Meng Yi here—” I gesture to the shorter woman “—held her back,” I say, realizing only as the words come out that this, in fact, is the only likely reason why Xiuying hadn’t done something as insane as attack a Domain Realm cultivator for my sake.

“Oh?” my brother says and stares at Meng Yi.

She bows low to him, Xiuying almost reluctantly aping the motion a moment after.

“Well met, Manager Meng,” my brother says, casually making it obvious that he knows who she is. “And I thank you for holding back our little tiger tamer here. It would have been rather embarrassing for the family for poor Mei to receive a trashing from a mere Foundation Realm, ha-ha.” He laughs. Just the two short sounds. Ha ha. Head tilted back, eyes closed, expression amused. Like he hasn’t just thrown some serious shade a Domain Realm’s way by implying she’s so weak even Xiuying could beat her.

This is so obviously a dig at whatever is wrong with Mei’s cultivation that it couldn’t be more obvious even if he was holding up a sign saying so.

I might even be bothered to get offended for her sake, if I didn’t clearly remember what the Domain Realm in question had been saying about Zexi to her face.

Words that cutting deserve an aggravated assault charge.

Behind us, Weiju enters the manor accompanied as always by Lin Jian, and without even acknowledging our presence with a glance, she begins to march past.

In less time than it takes to blink, our brother is beside her, one hand across her shoulders and that happy, closed-eye smile on his face once again.

“Ju Ju,” he exclaims happily. “It’s been so long.”

Weiju halts in her tracks and takes a deep, slow breath.

“Ru,” she says, tone flatter than a pane of glass.

Ru pouts. “You hurt me with your cold reception, Sister,” he says. “It’s been decades since we last saw, have you truly not missed me?”

“No,” Weiju says simply, not even looking at him.

Ru feigns like she’s dealt him a blow to the heart. “You wound me, Sister,” he says.

“I know,” Weiju says. “You’ve mentioned it.”

Ru tsks, then pulls away from her.

He looks genuinely offended that she’s refused to properly engage him, but then he covers it up with a dramatic sigh.

“Alas,” he laments, “so many siblings and yet so few friends. Nevertheless, I can tell when I’m unwanted. I shall see you two at the dinner table.”

With a dip of his head, he bids us farewell and walks off down a random hallway, humming a tune.

“Hey, Weiju, Lin Jian,” I call in greeting to my sister and her companion.

Lin Jian bows smoothly. “Good evening, Seventh Young Master Xian,” he says.

“Good evening,” I say back.

Weiju turns to me.

“If that man hugs you, check your back for a knife,” she says.

My brows climb up to somewhere in my hairline. “That bad?” I ask.

Weiju looks at me with an expression almost like pity, then she turns and walks off.

Lin Jian gives me one final nod, looking somewhat apologetic as he follows after his mistress.

I sigh. “This family is a mess.”

“At least only one of your siblings have tried to kill you so far,” Xiuying says, not a single trace of levity in her tone.

I appreciate it.

“At least there’s that,” I agree.

Zexi, Mei, Ru, and Weiju, that’s four siblings. There are only two left that I haven’t met yet.

I let my Qi sense stretch through the house in the hopes of finding them and getting it over with.

There are many powerful Qi signatures, their presences so great they almost overwhelm my senses.

The three Domain Realms stand out immediately: Mother, Father, Mei.

Mei seems particularly annoyed by my impertinence to seek her out with my qi sense, but I ignore her indignation.

Besides those three, every other Qi signature in the building is in Qi Realm.

Weiju’s stands out to me, of course, because I’m already familiar with hers, Lin Jian’s is non-existent as always, and Ru’s seems to have disappeared once again.

While all the unfamiliar signatures are Qi Realm however, they are not at all on the same level, and I soon notice the noble rank cultivator somewhere in one of the upper floors.

I focus on them, and as I do, I feel their focus turn to me too, then their voice, somehow, reaches out through our connecting senses to reach me.

“It is not very polite to watch people in this way, brother,” she says.

I start. “Oh... I’m sorry,” I say. “I was simply...”

“Your voice does not reach me, brother,” she speaks again. “That skill is well beyond your current level. Come up to meet me if you wish to converse.”

My cheeks grow a little warm.

Right. I’d just assumed that since she could talk to me... whatever.

“Come on,” I say to my companions. “I found my fifth sibling.”

The dinner starts at eight, and it’s still about thirty minutes before then so there’s some time to kill before we all have to be at the dinner table as one big, deranged family.

Before that, I would like to have put a face and name to all of my siblings, as well as get a feel for their personalities.

Of my six siblings, I already knew two. And of the four I didn’t know, I’ve now met two.

Mei has been classified in my head as a violent psychopath.

I know that there’s likely more to her as a person, but I don’t think there’s enough to overcome the fact that she tried to kill me on the doorsteps of our mother’s house with a smile on her face.

Ru has been classified as dangerous; potentially unstable.

Weiju, of course, is the brooder who doesn’t want to be here, and Zexi is... well, let’s just say it’s unlikely she’ll be saying or doing anything throughout dinner.

The sibling who I come upstairs to meet, who turns out to be my oldest sister, Xuegang, is the most unsettling of the bunch by a long mile.

She introduces herself to me, speaks politely, offers me tea, and then she asks me about my time in Silver Springs and tells me about herself, The Capital, and even her family when I ask.

Apparently, she’s married, and has children; twin boys, both about twenty years old. Both are training to be doctors like she is herself.

She’s so... normal, and classy. Like what one would expect of an aristocrat.

Socially intelligent, articulate, mannered, all that crap.

Not once do I get any hint of danger, or madness, or... cultivator-ness from her.

Is it possible that I actually have one normal fucking sibling?

Or is she the kind of person that I’m most terrified of? The guileless backstabber.

The one with a friendly smile on their face and a poisoned knife up their sleeve.

I don’t know, and I don’t get to find out, because soon enough, the meal is ready and we’re all congregating in the massive dining room for it.

It isn’t the same one in which we had the previous dinner with only Mother, Weiju, Zexi, and I. This one is much bigger. As is the table.

Just like the last time, each attendee gets food of their rank served to them, but unlike then, the seating isn’t random. They’re assigned.

Mother sits at the head of the table, and unlike normal tables that technically have two heads since they’re rectangular, the designer of this table seems to have taken lengths to prevent that by giving it the shape of an isosceles triangle.

While Mother sits at the flat bottom part, the ‘head’, Zexi is sat as close to the pointy tail end as she can be put.

The idea here seems to be that the closer one is to Mother’s end of the table, the more respect they’ve been given, so of course, my seat is right next to Mother on her left-hand side.

Father sits across from me on her right.

Weiju doesn’t seem to notice, simply taking her seat a few feet or so away from where Zexi looks so small, alienated from the rest of the family at the very end of the long table.

Ru says nothing either. All he does is shoot me what should be a friendly smile, but that simply sends chills rolling down my back before he sits down next to our father.

Xuegang too, says nothing, though she does give our mother a long, almost hard look before she takes her seat next to me.

Mei, who I fully expect to commit another act of attempted murder upon my person, also remains quiet. With great force of will and a murderous stare my way, true, but she does.

In the end, the sibling who does speak up about my placement on the table, is the one that I’m only now meeting, Ling.

“Wow,” she says, insincerity dripping from her every pore. “Congratulations, brother. I see saving The Empire one time has gotten you a seat at the head of the table. Keep this up and you may even unseat our father from his place.” And then she titters in a way so obviously fake the intent must be to insult.

I smile back at her. “You know, it’s funny that we think of this as the head of the table,” I say. “Because this is a triangle, and people normally don’t think of triangles as sitting on their pointy ends. So, looked at a certain way, Zexi is actually sitting alone at the head of the table, while the rest of us are jostling for space at the bottom.”

The room goes quiet like a graveyard in the dead of night. Then Weiju snorts, and she bursts out laughing.

Ling looks at me with an expression so sour it could curdle milk.

I stare right back without flinching.

‘Yeah, that’s right, bitch, this kitty’s got claws too. And with me, everybody’s catching strays.’

While Ling looks like she drank something unpleasant, our father looks downright livid.

“Weiju, shut up,” he says to the still laughing woman.

Weiju snorts at the command, though she tries to restrain it.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” she says, when he shoots her an angry look, “he said it.”

Father’s eyes turn to me. “You will respect your mother,” he commands after a moment, tone suggesting something dangerous if I disobey.

I smile with all my teeth. “Sure thing, Daddy.”