Xiu Yi relationship chart

There are people left who will willing to work with her. Few want to flock with a “Devil Cultivator who killed her entire clan”. While not wrong in the slightest about the latter part, she never was and never will be a Devil Cultivator.

Never. For this reason, she treasures the few relationships that passed the test of time and numerous bounty hunters. Some have interests in a cultivator who fell for grace, despite the severe lack of resources she is as strong as ever.

Heavenly Pact plays another factor, many would try to steal it even if the swords burn them all to a crisp. They are stupid, but she appreciates the feelings even if they are fake, at least they stick together to her.

Yet it is more than many can say. As she walks, a heavy downpour falls on her reinforced bamboo umbrella. Instead of her usual dress, she wears heavy-duty boots thick pants, and a shirt for the appropriate heavy rain pouring down on her.

Mud splashes with her every step, and green fields are shaded brown, as water and earth weave together by the climate. The smell of dirt, rainwater, and grass mixing. A smell reminiscent of long-gone peace and easier days.

The pleasant smell of earth rewards the hard work of mortals who toil and labor on it every day. A smell that doesn’t reek of blood, cruelty, or maliciousness. Untainted from evil and carnage made in vain.

A faint smile on Xiu Yi’s lips as she walks forward, the mud splashing with her feet driving in deep in the mood, but she doesn’t care. Many cultivators, those of the same rank as her, would hate to cross these lands.

For these lands are too crude, too rural, and filthy for them. Blow away the clouds and be done with the natural beauty of a storm pouring down on earth, all for not dirtying their precious carriages and boots with wet earth and roots from plants.

Yet on these lands, there is beauty that few things can compare. In the greyish blue afternoon invoked by the storm, a two-store floor building of strong foundations presents itself, in the middle of nowhere.

The lights of lambs and lanterns are beacons for weary travelers in this storm. The romantic scenery of a lone giant tower in the middle of an unsurmountable ocean invoked in her mind, tidal waves crash against a strong foundation with thunderous storms raging on the skies.

However, those images are but romantic imaginations of a lonesome woman, but the small building is a sight for sore eyes. Maybe this is where she will be in as well, if not, just advance a little more and see if she is in the next building a couple of thousands of miles away.

She takes her time, unbothered by the weather and the mud, and in a few hours, the building will be reached.

(...)

After hours, the doors are before her, whispers of people drinking and eating audible. This is where she enters. Closing the umbrella As she enters it, all eyes fall on her. All eyes fall on her, weary eyes tainting with fear as animosity fills up the air.

With a quick scan of the area, there are no elders, as expected of a place so rural and without greater influence of any faction. She is someone easy to remember, her deeds speaking about herself more than anything.

They are all smart enough to realize they cannot win against her. Nor contend with the sword on her back. People get out of her way, as eerie silence stalks the floor. Heartbeats tightening, with some people fleeing back into the storm, rather than face or be in the same place as her.

Honestly, it is all her fault, and the path she choose, but they should have the tact to be there, if she wanted they all dead, dead they would be. On the farthest table from the entrance, someone waves back at her.

A woman of small stature, wearing a fox mask that covers half of her face, red eyes gleaming with interest and malice one expects from a Devil Cultivator, because she is one. As well as one of her few friends.

While Xiu Yii enjoys luxurious clothes, her friend’s dress is provocative in another sense, the same sense a femme fatale and seductress chooses her clothes. A black qipao, makeup on the visible part of her face and body, long gloves, and high thighs, wearing high heels as well.

With a sigh, she goes to meet her friend, Heavenly Pact changes positions to make it less bothersome to sit on a chair with its presence on her back. “Long time no see, Xiu Yi, it has been thirty years already. Thirty years on the run. Even us of Devil Sects didn’t manage to find a hair of yours this time!”

The reek of sound muffing techniques and enchanting mind control fills the air, it doesn’t affect someone like her, but the poor disciple-grade cultivators are all enthralled in a moment, unaware of what is happening in that side, their perception of reality is changed.

Hallucinious poisons reeked from her clothes and filled the room in a pink haze. A bitter taste fills her mouth upon seeing the preparations and paranoia of her friend, half-closing her eyes as a bit of anger bleeds off her heart, but Xiu Yi relents.

It is bad for them to associate with her in the first place. “You… yes, long time no see, Meng Zhen.” She knows it won’t be good to seek a fight against a friend for something so asinine. They won’t die, just have the night of their lives.

‘It isn’t that bad.’ Xiu Yi lies in her mind as if it will make the whole ordeal better. The lengths people must go for merely associating with her nowadays… Unceremoniously, she sits in the chair opposite Meng Zhen, who wears a big and goof smile on her lips.

“So, you want to know the news, right? You were out of the loop for thirty years, after all. I thought someone finally managed to kill you after so long, but is a pleasant surprise to have you back, sister.”

Xiu Yi allowed a small smile to break through her lips, a pleasant heartwarming filling in her chest after decades. Even if it is but an ephemeral happiness, she will enjoy it fully.

“Yes, it has been a long time, Meng Zhen.”

Even if there are evil cultivators, too many of them are in Devil Sects, not all of them are inherently evil, nor are all of them unsociable monsters. She had lived far too long to realize this.

It hurts her already destroyed image, but it is nothing in the face of the few friendships kept after all those years. The feeling is reciprocal, as a joyful smile appears on the temptress's lips. “Let’s see what I have here, about important people. Who knows, we can find your long-lost pupil and battlefield brother this time around.”

Meng Zhen takes out a few scrolls, rolling them out on the table.

Disciplines:

Yasha:

“While I doubt he can ever be your pupil, given his… crippled Qi Gathering state. His tao is not all different from yours in a sense, but his story also doesn’t match. Hongjian Devil Sect—”

“Wants him deader than dead. I saw the aftermath of those freaks running around like headless chickens.” It is one of the worst Devil Sects around, with an ancestor to back them up.

Xiu Yi clicks her tongue. “Last I heard out of this Sect, they fleed with a tail between their legs after they bought a fight against an Immortal Empire. Can they spare resources to chase away a child?”

While a child being chased by a Devil Sect is pitiful, for one of them to go to such lengths for someone small as a discipline… they are either too wicked or something happened.

Her heart beats with anticipation to know what it is. The chances are impossible of him being her discipline, yet he can become someone important in the far future.

“I heard he led a rebellion in their vaunted Crimson Prison realm, even some of us who were undercover but gone for decades came back with information. He made quite a hassle while there.”

Meng Zhen’s smile widens, like how a predator sees a succulent and defenseless prey, her lips twitching uncontrollably in a twisted smile. “He won, and did a nasty damage to Hongjian Devil Sect.”

Xiu Yi’s eyes widened with surprise for a fraction of a second, impressed with how such a child managed to achieve this realm of prowess. “Do you want to recruit them? It is not every day this type of talent appears.” With a teasing voice, she provokes her old friend, who sighs in annoyance.

“No can do, the kid still is too traumatized for us to get him in, but I will try to get him in the future, few can resist my charms.”

Even if this day turns out as a drag, it warms her heart to see an evil sect get dragged down a peg, and for a child no less!

Ming Ming:

“Hm, there is nothing great about her, contrary to the previous boy I never heard anything out of her. Is there something I’m missing, Meng Zhen?”

Staring at one of the scrolls, Xiu Yi fails to identify any important trait or relevant information about the girl, bringing a strange uneasiness, since her friend never does something that is merely whimsical.

It is not in her at all. “See hails from a family of merchants, and is of the same race as I. While they are below what you used to have access to, I can pull some strings and get you to have a connection to a merchant family and goods, without needing to go as far as black markets for goods.”

Her friend smiles with a sweet smile, quickly taking back the scroll. While Xiu Yi is glad for her friend’s worry about her well-being, it is a turning and thrashing feeling to get someone involved with her after so long… “I would rather you didn’t. I think no one like her should be burdened with the crushing weight of my association.”

Instead of answering, her friend’s smile widens. With a deep breath, Xiu Yi closes her eyes, a silent prayer for the best and a good future for the girl, should Meng Zhen go as far as to get this child’s family involved in their business.

Yexin:

“That child is… problematic to say the least. She is the scion of a particularly nasty demon king I’ve been trying to kill for so long… either way. She is what we can call a catastrophe in the making.”

Surprisingly, her friend clicks her tongue in what can be told as the greatest show of suppressed rage, veins popping up on her chin as her neck trembles and veins jump in anger. While not someone to ask about the personal motives of her friends in this type of situation, a spark of interest burns in Xiu Yi’s heart.

“How much of a catastrophe? I’m under this category after executing my clan with my sister’s help.”

“I dare to say the All-Devouring Devil Sovereign type of catastrophe. That brat will be the cause of another wave of destruction, I guarantee you.”

Xiu Yi frowns at the mention of the accursed name, a small drop of sweat dripping from her face. If someone like Meng Zhen says something like this… things are not looking good for the future.

Elders

Guan Chao:

For some reason, her stomach turns and knots upon the mere citation of this name, like how one feels after seeing an especially putrified carcass left in the sun for far too long. “His name sounds rotten.”

“Then I’m glad you quick witty and senses are sharp as ever!” With fake cheerfulness and happiness, Meng Zhen claps her hands. “He is one of the greatest cultivators of the Perilous Four in these modern times. So much I doubt anyone has greater faith in that creature than him.”

Her fake cheerfulness is quick to disappear, replaced by disgust and contempt. “He is a creature of pestilence and rot. He is a spiritual abomination with a corpse. This is the prime zone for him to act. Take care, he is an abomination in all senses of the word. There isn’t such thing as “enough” safe measures for the likes of him.”

Xiu Yi frowns, the putrid smell of his name alone infecting her nostrils. The sign of the greatest and vilest devil cultivators can have… even their name is cursed. A small weep came from Heavenly Pact, agreeing with her mental statement.

“From where this maggot crawled from? Never mind, it was the Five Commissioners of Pestilence, wasn’t it? They somehow surpassed themselves in the creation of another abomination…”

“Yes. They surely did, and they don’t know the type of mass grave they are digging.”

Gyldenwulf:

A strange name she never heard before. Who could this be? Even the structure of how the characters are organized is foreign to her, For someone who never had the proper clan backing and tutelage for cultural studies, there should be something familiar in any kind of language under the great empires under the Heavens…

“Worry not. he is but another nameless barbarian who thinks too highly of himself. A paper tiger enters the den of immortal dragons. All he does is pillage weak villages and the defenseless, no sect or empire worth their salt will ever bathe an eye to such small fry.”

Xiu Yi raises an eyebrow at those words, surprised at the frankness of Meng Zhen. “He is a savage, but even savages can be proven a threat in the right context. The reason you speak of this to me is because he is unpredictable enough to cross paths with me, is that right?”

Unsurprisingly, Meng Zhen nodes. “Yes. We can be a threat to a lone cultivator like you if you are taken with your guard down. His skin is resilient, but this is the only important trait he has. He can punch hard, move, and take a beating, but besides those things? There is not a thing worth worrying about him.”

Meng Zhen flicks her fingers, a teacup appears in her free hand, and she takes a sip of it. “Nothing changed, then. Barbarians will always attack weak points and think of themselves as high warrior or demigod. How pathetic they are.”

Shu Luxing:

“I say for you to get in touch with this woman. It is a jealous thing, but she smells like me. I don’t want my dear friends to get other someone like me in their lives. You can comply with this little whimsical wish of mine, can you?”

Without the weight of shame, Meng Zhen begs in a way a seductress like her shouldn’t, trying to appear to cuteness unfitting of someone of her presence… and body.

“I will think about this. Anyway, if she is like you, there is anything I should worry about her? If she shares the same temper as you, I fear for what may happen to this world and the heavens.” With a teasing smirk, she pokes fun at her friend, who pouts at her teasing words.

“No, she is chill and collected. Maidenlike even. As long as you don’t cross paths with her and are antagonistic, she will leave you alone for long enough, but not friendship! I’m the only one allowed to be friends with you!”

Her pout is adorable, enough to make Xiu Yi laugh. “Okay, Okay you jealous thing, I will keep in mind this. She doesn’t appear to be so bad, then.” Meng Zhen scowls.

Xiu Yi smiles.

Wen Lifen:

“A daughter of the Wen clan.” At the mention of those words, Xiu Yi scowls deeply. The names of those hedonists and the poisons in the air were more than enough to sour the mood. This type of thing is their face, if it wasn’t being done by Meng Zhen.

“Why are you telling me about those wretches?” There are already far too many evils in this world. To be reminded of another one so soon after. Meng Zhen sighs deeply, putting her cup of tea aside on the table.

“I have a favor to ask for you, and that fragment of a God you carry around.” Xiu Yi forces her eyes, staring deeply into Meng Zhen’s eyes. The sound of Heavenly Pact’s eyes moving rapidly started to sound around them.

“Shoot. You already started this topic, may as well start talking now.” Xiu Yi clicks her tongue. An isolated cabin in the middle of nowhere is not a place to discuss topics regarding those people, even less the wrenches that compose the Wen clan, but it hardly can be helped when faced against a Golden-Faced lady.

“I see you are in a good mood. Well, I ask you to run some hit-and-runs on them, their special places. Don’t need to kill any children or their progeny— we will do it, what we need to do is to lure a pesky demon good out of its hiding.”

To hear Meng Zhen’s willingness to go this far to lure prey is sickening, but this is something she has been aware of ever since forging this friendship. “I will think about this case. To get another clan’s blood in my hands will hardly improve my social standing.”

A clan killer is a clan killer anywhere they go. To get drenched in more blood, even if it is from wretches like the Wen clan is far too much as of now… “Besides, you have an awful long list of enemies, and I have the lingering doubt I will be dragged into a fight against your enemy within the Weng clan if I help you…”

“Well, maybe. Cannot blame a gal for trying, can you?”

Lei Daiyu:

A grin appears on the fox’s lips, showing her sharp teeth as a glint of excitement and anticipation shines in her eyes. “An exorcist is using the element of Thunder nowadays. I think she may be of interest to you.”

With her curiosity peeked, Xiu Yi adjusts her position on the chair, resting an army against the table. “Now, speak your theories and conspiracies, Meng Zhen. You have my attention.”

Meng Zhen gives a wave of her left hand, a proud and self-assured feeling coming off her. “As you see, few are the ones that use lightning to that degree, even fewer are the ones who can use it to the same extent as her. Which leaves some questions regarding where she got it.

The only lightning and thunder user I recall who fits the bill is your dear sister. That girl is not yet manipulating gravity, but if she is a student of hers, then it is a matter of time until she eventually manages it.”

While it fits the bill and ability of that person, it is out of character for her to take discipline, and not keep them close to her chest. Xiu Yi closes her eyes, pondering about the prospects around this girl who controls purifying thunder.

The more she thinks of it, the more it doesn’t make sense for someone as careful as her sister to leave a discipline roaming around without a leash on their neck, and this makes her sick to the stomach.

While never close to her sister, she always had a pattern she followed to a Tee. “It doesn’t make sense. She never would allow a discipline to wander far from her gasps, and even then, the nastiness of her powers is bound to her, I don’t think it is something that can be taught…”

XIu Yi chews on the insides of her mouth, a feeling of uncanny oddness surfacing the more she thinks about this girl. “It is not every day two users of purifying power appear at the same age. While it cannot be passed down, one can mimic it.

“I don’t think she is related to my sister. She is not the type to let anyone she teaches be free to fly on their own, but is interesting to see more people willing to face the evil of these lands in the present day.”

Xu

With her quota of social interaction done for the next few decades, Xiu Yi rises from the chair ready to go out and leave Meng Zhen to clear up the place. However…

“I have a piece of sound advice to give you. Consider this a gesture of friendship of mine. I don’t go around messing with Ancestors this often, but this is a special case for a special person.”

Xiu Yi stops on her track and turns around to stare at the now stone-faced fox. “IF you ever see someone who looks, feels, and emits an aura similar to a hole in reality, run away, as fast as you can. No endeavor near him is worth it. He is like a void in this world, a sin as big as mine if I have to say.”

“Does this void have a name? So I can properly run with my tail between my legs when I see him?” Xiu Yi knows the time to tease, and the time to be serious with Meng Zhen, for her to treat this with seriousness, means there is no run for leverage or teasing between them.

“Wuji.”

‘Infinite, void.’ A metaphor for his true nature, do not speak the name of a devil lest you want him to hear you is a true saying sometimes. “I will bear it in mind, my friend. Take care of yourself too. Do not overstep your boundaries in stupid plots and tomfoolery. I don’t want to see you die again.”

Xiu Yi goes out of the inn, back in the heavy downpour, opening her bamboo umbrella and stepping beneath the storm clouds raging like an angry god above her head.

Jian

Beneath the rain once again, her heavy-duty boots hit the mud, sinking deep but not hindering her movements in the slightest. The smell of wet dirt and roots once again hit her nostrils, cleaning up the vicious and thick smell of the poisonous perfume of Meng Zhen.

A thick rain in a place forgotten by the world, so forgotten few remember her, only cultivators…

it makes her reminiscence of those days when she was a youngling forgotten by the world. Locked away in a cycle of violence and death under stormy clouds like those ones.

The land was thick with blood and water as if like an overripe juicy peach, ready to burst in a visceral fruit of carnage and pain underneath the chaotic rain that made the earth soft and volatile, swallowing bodies and weapons to places long forgotten.

A river of blood washes away the old wounds so a new river can be blood with new and fresher blood. With the reminiscent smell of iron and the sour bitter taste of carnage and putrified blood all around.

Where life and death lost all meaning. The living strolled on the ranks of the dead, while the dead joined the living in endless battles and misery. With every step, her world grows distant. Time loses meaning as she walks through those green fields painted brown by the mud and landslides.

Heavy raindrops collide with her umbrella, the only way she keeps count of reality as she wanders aimlessly once again. Her mind draws parallels to what happened years ago in her childhood.

Drawing parallels between this beautiful, peaceful scenery and the hell she saw as a child. The hell she helped to perpetuate. The smell of rusted iron and grasslands mixed in a nauseous and spinning world in her head.

The memories of corpses littering every nook and cranny of her vision, although there are none in this place, the only constancies of now and then are the fact she wanders alone. Like she always did.

Like how she is meant to be. To yearn to touch and love, but incapable of doing so. The world won’t allow it, her life won’t allow it.

She breathes languidly, the hot air of her breath expelled to let inside the cold and wet air of the rain. As if a corpse breath again, in an attempt to regain the unique taste life has.

However, she is far from dead. the other constancy of her life, to walk amongst the dead despite living.

Even with heavy clothing, and boots, an umbrella over her head, cold still reaches her body. A lonely cold, as her mind pieces together remnants of hazy memories. There was someone else too.

On that battlefield, she grew on. Someone with the same eyes as her. Of all the friends she had, the treacherous family she had, and the few friends that remain. She was unique…

That cold and swampy battlefield, where she was scared for her life, at every waking moment of her life, where one couldn’t safely sleep, lest nightmares and dangers came their way.

She met that person, one that made her feel safe. By the rules of a battlefield, and if they wanted to live. They should have killed themselves in battle or attempted to do so. Yet, they didn’t not.

Maybe her limbs were too tired, and her mind too weak to continue to battle, or maybe that person hadn’t found her worthy prey. Whatever the reason, they had found a strange kinship in battle. A dark, small shadow follows a taller, white one.

They cut down people left and right. Maybe some were allies, maybe on the same side of her clan, but nothing of it mattered in that swamp made of carcass and putrified rotten blood. All that mattered was their survival, and they stuck together for each other.

Fought for each other. They survived, long enough for her family to retrieve her, and the strange woman to vanish, as if she never existed in the first place.

Yet, she can’t help but wonder what happened to that person. They never gave their names to each other, or rather, they never spoke a word to each other.. Yi is sure her childhood self was unable to speak. Too scarred by battle to speak, but she doesn’t remember that person’s void either.

Maybe she had forgotten how to hear? Maybe her ears were clogged by the sound of battle and blood spilled.

“I wonder, what happened to you, my friend?”

On the farthest point of her vision, thunderclouds strike the ground with bright lightning, a silhouette showing amidst the storm beside them.