Li Tongya and Li Xiangping pushed through the reeds. They parted one final curtain of stalks and peered out — the gray-green mirror in Li Xiangping's hand pulsed warmly with white light.
Xiangping checked their direction. "Moonview Lake. Half an hour along the Old Li Road."
"No," Li Tongya said. "We don't take the road. We cut through the reeds."
Xiangping nodded and they moved on, bent low.
Inside the mirror, Lu Jiangxian felt the pull strengthen with every step. As they entered the reed bed, something flickered in his vision — a blurred image: a clear, cold lake, a dozen white egrets standing on one leg at the shore, asleep.
The further Li Xiangping walked, the hotter the mirror grew against his palms. He shifted his grip, uneasy, and glanced at his second brother. Li Tongya's face was a stone mask, but his eyes were full of dread.
*Can mortals even touch immortal fortune?* Xiangping thought, clutching the mirror. Oddly, the heat no longer bothered him.
"Good mirror. Good little mirror. We're almost there," he murmured.
They burst through the last wall of reeds. Moonview Lake glittered before them, a flock of startled egrets lifting off the water.
Lu Jiangxian stared straight at a rocky islet in the middle of the lake. Among the moss-covered stones, a piece of white jade gleamed — wedged tight in a crevice.
The mirror in Xiangping's hand flared. A stream of pale moonlight shot across the water. Before the brothers' eyes, a hazy vision of the islet took shape: the stones, the crevice, the glowing jade.
Li Xiangping and Li Tongya traded a look — shock and joy mixed in equal measure. Xiangping nodded hard, stripped off his clothes, and made for the water.
"Wait!" Li Tongya grabbed his arm. "I'll go. You stay on shore with the mirror. If the moon reaches that spot in the sky and I haven't come back — "
He pointed to a spot above.
" — you hide the mirror in the reeds and run. Take the Old Li Road. Don't go home. Wait until the sun is high before you come back to check."
"Alright..." Xiangping's voice cracked. He wiped at his eyes.
Li Tongya gave him a crooked smile, stripped off his own clothes, and waded into the lake. His shoulders were broad and corded with muscle. Behind him, Li Xiangping crouched among the reeds and did not look away.
Tongya and his father had swum this lake together for years. He knew the crossings in his bones. He reached the islet's center in the time it takes to burn half a stick of incense.
He searched the crevices, working carefully through the rock. He pulled out five or six little river crabs. Nothing.
*Nothing?* He frowned and searched again, slower, every stone. Then his fingers brushed something smooth and cool. He pinched and pulled.
A jade stone, two fingers wide, surfaced in his hand.
The stone was elongated, its surface carved with ancient script. Li Tongya angled it toward the moonlight and squinted. "Supreme... Moon... Qi... Nurture..." He had studied under the village teacher as a child and could recognize most characters, but the script on this stone was archaic, dense with ornamental strokes and bizarre forms. Much of it eluded him.
He looked toward the shore, steady-eyed, tucked the jade into his palm, and swam back.
"Third Brother!" He kept his voice low as he reached the reeds.
Li Xiangping scrambled out. Li Tongya opened his hand to show the stone — but the jade dissolved into white light and shot straight into the mirror.
Both brothers flinched. The mirror's surface churned with white radiance. Moonlight from the sky spiraled down in streamers, pouring into it.
Lu Jiangxian felt as though he had been struck by lightning. The white light slammed into him, and an ocean of knowledge flooded his consciousness. He let out a silent cry and blacked out.
Li Tongya and Xiangping watched the mirror swallow the jade and slowly settle, its glow dimming.
Golden-red dawn light crept over the horizon, gilding Li Tongya's bare chest and shoulders. He looked down at his brother. "Let's go home."
---
Li Mutian sat at the red-lacquered table while his two sons told him everything. He nodded at Li Tongya. "Well done."
He and Li Changhu had spent the night tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Seeing the boys come home whole settled a stone in his chest.
"Our front and back yards aren't small," he said, unhurried. "The rear yard backs against the hill. I've been thinking we should clear those two melon patches in front and build two more wings. Left and right, flanking the main hall, all one big compound. Shut the front gate and no one can peek in."
The idea had been in his mind for a while. The boys were growing up. Sooner or later they would divide the household.
The Li family, by Li Mutian's savings, was a force in the village. After his army days, he had bought more than ten mu of paddy fields. Add the five mu of good land inherited from his father, and the family held close to twenty mu.
Lijing Village was kind to its people — good water, good soil. The reeds and the mudflats were both gifts. After accounting for hired labor, twenty mu in a good year could feed a dozen mouths. The Li family had long since crossed the threshold to becoming landowning gentry.
It was because the Li family had grain and land that all four sons had learned to read. Li Mutian had never been able to stomach idle rich men, so he insisted his sons both study and work the fields. That way, even if they split the household one day, each could stand on his own.
"Now dividing the household is out of the question," he said. "And when we bring in wives, they'd better be our own kind of people."
He thought of the great estates he had seen in the cities — the main compound housing the direct line, sons studying for office, sons training in martial arts. What a sight! While poor farming families split cleanly apart, each to his own.
"That's how we'll do it!"
Li Mutian's eyes lit up. "Go get your eldest brother from the fields and tell him to level the foundation. The tenant farmers can handle the rest. Your fourth brother — no more mulberry picking in the afternoons. He'll study with the teacher all day."
"On it." Xiangping, still buzzing after a sleepless night, vanished through the door.
Li Tongya studied his father for a moment. "Father... are you planning to model us after the clan laws in the old books? Build an ancestral hall, open a clan estate, raise scholars for office and soldiers for warfare?"
"The Li family has been saving for two hundred years. It's time."
Li Mutian waved a hand, smiling.
"As for scholarship and martial arts — the Old Li Road is treacherous, and the Great Li Mountain is a death trap. Even if we could produce a scholar or a soldier, we couldn't sell them to the emperor of Yue. We just want to pass something down, protect what's ours..."
Li Tongya nodded and said, low: "Maybe there's something even better than scholarship and martial arts."
"Don't talk nonsense." Li Mutian laughed and clapped his son on the shoulder, then walked out with his chin up and his hands behind his back.