Re-birth: The Beginning after the End - Chapter 66

Chapter 66: VILLAGE FESTIVAL PART 1

The days flew by quickly as the siblings honed their concealment techniques, each practice session bringing steadier control and more natural results. On the morning of the festival, they completed one final training session before retiring to prepare for the celebrations.

Li Hua donned her new cotton hanfu, the black fabric dyed carefully to avoid appearing too rich. Simple white trim adorned the edges, with a modest red sash at the waist—nice enough for a festival, but still appropriate for a farmer’s daughter. The cotton was softer than her everyday clothes, though nowhere near the quality of the silks they privately owned. She’d helped her mother carefully distress the hems and edges to ensure they looked properly worn, like clothing that had been carefully maintained through multiple seasons.

Her brothers wore similarly modest attire—cotton hanfu in muted browns and grays that any village family might afford for special occasions. Li Wei’s was slightly faded, as befitting the eldest son who would have inherited his father’s old clothes, while Li Hao’s showed the careful patches and mending common among village children’s festival wear.

“Your nose is slipping again, Eldest brother,” Li Hua teased Li Wei, watching him adjust his features for the tenth time that morning.

“At least my ears aren’t slowly climbing up the sides of my head,” Li Wei shot back with a grin, gesturing at Li Hao, who quickly corrected his gradually migrating features.

“Says the one whose eyebrows keep trying to merge into one,” Li Hao chuckled, dodging his brother’s playful swat.

Their parents had also dressed the part perfectly—their mother in simple blue cotton with practical darker patches at the knees and elbows, their father in the worn but well-maintained clothes of a diligent farmer. Both had already settled into their village personas with practiced ease, their features transformed to match their carefully cultivated appearance of humble rural life.

“Are we ready?” their father asked, performing one final check of their disguises in the fading daylight.

The siblings nodded eagerly, each unconsciously touching their faces to ensure their altered features remained stable. Li Hua felt Little Firefly’s reassuring presence in her mind as they began their journey, his quiet excitement matching her own.

They made their way down the winding dirt path toward the village, their father leading the way with an oil lamp swaying gently in his weathered hand. The evening air carried a hint of autumn’s approaching chill, and the first stars had begun to appear in the darkening sky above. Their mother walked slightly behind him, maintaining the proper distance expected of a village wife, while the siblings followed in birth order as tradition demanded.

As they descended, the village below gradually came into view—a tapestry of flickering lights and moving shadows. Red lanterns swayed between houses like terrestrial stars, their warm glow casting dancing patterns on the packed earth paths. The sound of drums and the sweet scent of festival foods drifted up on the evening breeze, along with the distant laughter of children and the murmur of gathering crowds.

Other families joined them on the path, their own lanterns adding to the procession of lights winding down to the village. Li Hua noticed her brothers automatically adjusting their postures to match the slightly hunched bearing of other village children, while she herself adopted the demure gait her mother had taught her. Gone was the practiced grace of their true selves, replaced by the natural awkwardness of common village youth.

“Remember,” their mother murmured just loud enough for her children to hear, “you’re the children of Farmer Li tonight. No martial arts, no cultivation terms, and…” she cast a meaningful glance at Li Hao, who was already eyeing a group of village boys gathering near the festival grounds, “no showing off.”

The siblings nodded, her brothers much more solemnly than herself, causing Li Hua to chuckle.

Near the village square, Li Hua noticed two familiar figures hovering near one of the lantern-strung stalls. The village chief’s granddaughter, Liu Mei, was attempting to appear nonchalant as she peeked around a corner at their approaching group. Her usual confident posture had wilted somewhat, and her painted lips turned down in clear disappointment as her eyes tracked Li Wei’s transformed appearance. Beside her, the merchant’s daughter, Yang Xiao, wasn’t even trying to hide her dismay as she stared openly at Li Hao’s newly ordinary features.

As they passed a group of young men gathered near a wine stall, Li Hua caught fragments of their conversation that made her lips twitch with suppressed amusement.

“Ehhh? Didn’t you say she was a beauty?” One man exclaimed, gesturing none too subtly in her direction. “She looks so ordinary!”

“Well, the last time I saw her was 5 years ago,” his companion defended weakly, scratching his head in confusion.

Li Hua had to bite back a smile at their bewilderment. Little Firefly’s amusement rippled through their connection. “Master, it seems your disguise is working perfectly. Though I must say, their disappointment is rather entertaining.”

She caught her mother’s knowing smile and remembered their earlier conversation about the family’s natural allure.

Li Wei and Li Hao walked ahead, their expressions a comical mix of pride at their successful concealment and wounded vanity at going completely unrecognized by their usual admirers. Liu Mei had already turned away with a disappointed sigh, while Yang Xiao had apparently found the hanging lanterns far more interesting than Li Hao’s mundane appearance.

“I guess looks really do matter,” Li Hua thought to herself, sharing a silent laugh with Little Firefly at how their mother’s lessons about their family’s unique qualities were being proven right before their eyes.

The festival grounds buzzed with life and laughter as the siblings explored each attraction with barely concealed wonder. Li Wei proved surprisingly skilled at touhu, though he carefully maintained a farmer’s son’s awkwardness, occasionally missing the wine vessel entirely to avoid suspicion. The way he held the arrows betrayed none of his true martial prowess, instead mimicking the clumsy grip of village youths who had never trained in projectile weapons. Li Hao, meanwhile, entertained himself by sampling every food stall they passed, his usually refined manners replaced by the enthusiastic eating habits of a village youth.

Their parents watched from a distance, their practiced farmer’s facade occasionally slipping to reveal proud smiles. When their father succeeded at a pitch-pot game, winning their mother a paper butterfly, his deliberately clumsy throws nonetheless managing to land true, their mother’s delighted laugh carried traces of her true, melodious voice before she caught herself.

“Master,” Little Firefly whispered in Li Hua’s mind as she watched her family’s joy, “I believe your mother just snorted most un-lady like at your father’s victory dance.”

Indeed, their father had launched into an exaggerated celebration that had several nearby villagers chuckling good-naturedly at the honest farmer’s enthusiasm. Their mother’s hastily covered laugh had drawn a warm glance from their father that made Li Hua’s heart squeeze with affection for her parents.

After trying their hand at diabolo—where Li Hao’s spinning top flew wildly into a cabbage cart instead of performing the intended graceful arc—they found themselves at the poetry riddle lanterns. The siblings huddled together, deliberately taking longer than necessary to solve the simple verses while their parents pretended not to notice their children’s staged confusion. Li Hua had to bite her tongue to keep from immediately answering a riddle about the moon that any educated child would have known.

It was just after they’d finished a particularly entertaining round of “guess the herb” at a medicine master’s stall—where Li Hao had dramatically gagged on a bitter root he normally consumed daily in their morning tonics—when Li Hua felt it. A presence. Not threatening, but… intent. The sensation prickled at the edges of her consciousness, making her instincts hum with awareness.

“Shall we try the fish catching next?” Li Wei suggested, already moving toward the shallow wooden tubs where children knelt with paper scoops, attempting to catch the darting golden carp. The delicate paper nets were a test of both skill and patience—qualities that cultivators like themselves had in abundance but had to carefully suppress tonight.

Li Hua followed, her senses still tingling with that strange awareness. As she knelt beside the wooden tub, the paper scoop feeling delicate in her deliberately clumsy grip, she felt it again—stronger this time. Almost like a pull.

“Master—” Little Firefly’s voice caught in her mind, his usual protective concern giving way to something else entirely. His spiritual energy, normally so steady and assured, trembled with an emotion she couldn’t quite name. “I feel… strange. Like something is calling to me, pulling at my very essence.”

She looked up then, across the rippling water where lantern light danced on its surface, and met a pair of eyes that made time itself seem to pause. They were extraordinary—honey-brown irises that seemed to glow in the lantern light, marked by an unusual pattern where the black of his pupils bled out into the iris like ink drops in water, creating dark streaks that didn’t quite reach the edges. These strange, beautiful eyes seemed to look straight through her carefully maintained disguise, past her present life, beyond even her past incarnation, to something deeper she hadn’t known existed.

The young man who owned those eyes appeared ordinary at first glance—the kind of face that should have been easy to forget. But something about him caught and held her attention with gentle insistence. He knelt at the opposite side of the tub, his own paper scoop forgotten in his hands as he stared back at her with an expression of wonder that mirrored what she felt stirring in her own heart.

A golden carp chose that moment to leap between them, sending droplets of water sparkling in the lantern light like scattered stars. The moment should have broken whatever strange spell had fallen over them, but instead, it only seemed to deepen it. His lips curved into a smile that felt achingly familiar, though she knew she’d never seen it before.

Her heart, which had faced down enemies without flinching in her past life, suddenly couldn’t remember its proper rhythm. Little Firefly’s presence in her mind had gone unusually quiet, as if he too were holding his breath.

“Sister?” Li Hao’s voice broke through her daze and she turned to him. His usual mischievous expression had given way to genuine concern. “Are you ok?”

Li Hua nodded and turned back to look at that man—but he had vanished, leaving only ripples in the water where his paper scoop had fallen. Something in her chest tightened, a peculiar ache she’d never experienced before. Had she imagined him?

“Master,” Little Firefly whispered, his own confusion evident in their connection, “that feeling… it’s fading, but it was real. Whatever—whoever—that was…” His voice trailed off, uncertain how to describe what they’d both sensed.

Her fingers unconsciously reached for her jade bunny pendant as she stared at the empty space where those extraordinary eyes had been moments before, wondering why its absence felt strangely like losing something she’d never known she was missing.