On the eighth day of the twelfth month, by some miraculous stroke of luck, Hongjun, who had escaped to wander the city, found Li Jinglong’s private school. He clung to the windowsill and peered inside. The room was packed with children reciting their lessons in high, ringing voices. He searched window by window until he at last spied Li Jinglong sitting at a desk at the back of one of the classrooms.
Li Jinglong was in the middle of a growth spurt. Within the past half year, he had shot up in height and was beginning to look less like a boy and more like a young man.
“Who’s that?” another child exclaimed in surprise.
Li Jinglong turned to look. Catching sight of Hongjun, he waited for his teacher to doze off before hastily crouching down and beckoning Hongjun over. Hongjun thought Li Jinglong would tell him to go home. But to his surprise, the half-grown Li Jinglong settled Hongjun down in the seat next to his own. His teacher didn’t seem to notice his new student when he opened his eyes, shook off his drowsiness, and resumed his lesson.
“Li Jinglong, who’s this?” another boy asked. “Your little brother?”
“My wife,” Li Jinglong said, pinching Hongjun’s cheek. It was Hongjun’s first time in a school, and he was curious about everything. He slapped away Li Jinglong’s hand and began flipping through the texts set out on the desk.
“Missed me?” Li Jinglong whispered into Hongjun’s ear with a chuckle.
Ignoring him, Hongjun continued sifting through Li Jinglong’s things, picking up each object and turning it over before putting it back on the desk. Li Jinglong’s maturing body was already more solid than his own small one, exuding a sense of safety and dependability.
After listening to the lesson a little longer, Li Jinglong leaned toward Hongjun’s ear again. “Did you miss me while you were at home?”
Hongjun’s head was bowed over the desk as he flipped through a volume of the Thousand Character Classic, which was covered in Li Jinglong’s annotations. “Mm,” he hummed. Unsatisfied, Li Jinglong grabbed his wrist. He hugged Hongjun’s arm to his chest as he stroked his fingers over the back of his hand, leaving Hongjun to flip through the rest of the books one-handed. After looking at everything, his eyelids grew heavy. Li Jinglong crossed his legs and allowed Hongjun to lay his head in his lap to take an afternoon nap.
From that day on, the young Li Jinglong lost any interest in learning. Studying was boring to begin with, and now he spent the majority of his time in school staring out the window until someone called out, “Li Jinglong! Your little wife’s here!” Everyone would burst into stifled laughter as Hongjun snuck in through the back door, his head ducked and the hem of his robe dragging along behind him as he dodged the teacher’s gaze and made his way past the students in the last row to sit beside Li Jinglong.
The other students took a great liking to this little interloper, but Li Jinglong rebuffed everyone who tried to talk to him. As for Hongjun, it was enough to have Li Jinglong; he had no inclination to make more friends.
One day, one of Li Jinglong’s schoolmates gave Hongjun a box of rouge. Hongjun had no idea what it was. He merely shook his head, rejecting the gift.
“You don’t know what rouge is?” the kid asked. “Wait a minute, you’re a boy?!”
All of them had assumed Hongjun was the daughter of some noble family who had disguised herself as a boy to come attend class—that he was really Li Jinglong’s fiancée. To think this child was actually a boy! Everyone was dumbfounded by the revelation.
“Actually—isn’t this Doctor Kong’s son?” someone pointed out. “He looks just like his dad.”
“Don’t tell anyone!” Panicking, Li Jinglong made all his schoolmates swear not to reveal Hongjun’s identity to anyone. Hongjun edged behind Li Jinglong, suddenly nervous. After all, aside from his parents, he knew only Li Jinglong. The attention of such a large group of children far exceeded his threshold for human interaction.
In the end, Li Jinglong managed to guard Hongjun’s secret, but not before his schoolmates extorted a month’s worth of his allowance by forcing him to treat them to food and drinks.
Later, after eating and drinking to their hearts’ content, Li Jinglong’s schoolmates pulled the smiling Li Jinglong aside and descended on Hongjun. “Who is he to you?”
Hongjun gazed at the other boys warily; he decided he didn’t like hanging out with these kids anymore. Turning to Li Jinglong, he said, “Let’s go home.”
Li Jinglong beamed. “All right, let’s go.”
“Ooh—going home together are you?” The schoolboys couldn’t resist heckling them. Li Jinglong ignored it; he knew Hongjun was scared of strangers, so he accompanied him home.
“What’s that you’re wearing?”
“Li Jinglong probably gave it to him.”
“Xing-er, don’t accept gifts from other people. Do you understand?”
“Mm.”
Before, when the boys played together at home, they never saw any outsiders, so they didn’t mind being dirty and unkempt. But now that Li Jinglong was growing up, he became increasingly self-conscious. Aware that he was a descendant of nobility, he began to take more care with his own clothes—but he also grew particularly concerned with Hongjun’s attire. He would often dress the boy in strings of agarwood or white marble beads, jade waist pendants, agate hairpins, and ornamental thumb rings, along with a white scarf of unknown origin. Sometimes, before heading out, he would even urge Hongjun to change into his own hand-me-down clothes to ensure Hongjun’s wouldn’t be stained by ink and thus alert Jia Yuze to their secret outings.
As the weeks went by, more and more of the Li family’s bits and bobs appeared within the Kong family residence, as if Li Jinglong had moved half his possessions into their home.
Half a month later, Li Jinglong got into a row with his schoolmates. The other boys had gotten used to poking fun at the two of them; they hemmed Hongjun in and teased him, frightening him again. Eventually, Li Jinglong grew tired of their antics and told the leader of their little gang to back off. One thing led to another, and the shouting match devolved into blows.
Li Jinglong had only punched the other boy a few times, but the humiliation was too great for his schoolmate to bear; the boy insisted on a proper rematch. In the end, Li Jinglong flattened the ringleader in a few moves.
That would have been the end of it—had not his schoolmate, more mortified than ever, gathered a group of idle ruffians to ambush Li Jinglong and Hongjun on their way home, vowing to teach the little bastard a lesson.
It was a bone-chilling autumn evening when six young men beat Li Jinglong, a nine-year-old youth, into the ground with wooden cudgels. Hongjun couldn’t stop shaking as he stood in the alleyway and watched blood stream from Li Jinglong’s nose.
“Let him go!” Hongjun screamed hysterically. Li Jinglong swiped a hand across his nose and struggled to his knees, only to be laid flat by another vicious blow.
A sound like a clap of thunder exploded in their ears as a burst of demonic energy swept through the dim alley.
Even under the cudgels, Li Jinglong’s eyes widened in shock. A long peacock’s tail had materialized behind Hongjun. Black flames erupted from his eyes, and bloodred ripples blossomed in the air around him, spreading rapidly outward.
“Chouxing…” Li Jinglong struggled to his feet, as if in a dream.
As he hung in midair with a glowing Lu Xu by his side, Hongjun’s pupils contracted, his body shaking as he gripped Lu Xu’s hand in his own.
The howling column of black energy roiled as it expanded outward, and the ground quaked as the entire city of Chang’an began to sink. The streets splintered, and the houses cracked and crumbled with the force of mountains collapsing, of seas flowing in reverse.