Chapter 56: Hut of Despair
The night sky looming over us was cluttered with an expanse of stars. Looking up at them, I couldn’t help but think there were just as many pinned against the dark as the tear droplets Yanyin had shed over the course of the entire day.
We had tried giving her some space, stepping back to leave her alone in the hope that solitude would act as a cure, to see if the quiet would somehow make things better. It didn’t.
The tears didn’t stop, and the soft sounds of her weeping stripped away whatever resolve we had left.
With dinnertime approaching, a new anxiety settled over the group. What if she continued like this, and skipped out on eating too? Her tiny frame couldn’t handle the physical toll of both grief and starvation.
She was curled up in the furthest corner of the hut, her knees pulled tight to her chest. She was shivering slightly with her breath catching in wet sniffs. She wouldn’t look at us. She wouldn’t talk to anyone.
She just kept repeating the same, heartbreaking line on a loop, ’I want my uncle back.’
We sat right there in the room with her like a circle of helpless guardians, racking our brains and silently wondering about how to make her smile again.
The first option for a solution was actually the most obvious one, and theoretically, the simplest. I had pulled Longwei aside earlier and asked him, or rather begged him, to just use that godly lightning speed of his.
All he had to do was barge into the palace, bypass whatever pathetic security was in his way, grab Zhenhao, and bring him straight back to Yanyin. A five-minute errand for someone of his caliber.
He simply refused. Stood there with that immovable expression and stated that it had to be me who did it, no matter the circumstances. It was a teeth-grinding situation to be honest.
The solution was right there, staring me in the face, locked behind the stubbornness of a centuries old deity.
So, we were left to ourselves. And the harsh reality was that none of us were equipped, emotionally or practically, to manage a grieving kid.
The best we could muster were generic whispered "It’s okay"s and a few awkward, occasional hugs that felt more like stiff obligations than genuine comfort.
It was a brutally ironic picture.
Here we were, a group full of highly skilled cultivators who could manipulate the very fabric of the environment, who could casually play with roaring flames as if they were toys, and who could knit flesh back together to heal almost any physical injury in question. We were powerful. We were formidable.
But when it came down to it, none of us were even remotely close to being a mood changer. All that elemental power meant nothing in the face of a child’s broken heart.
If only Mei’s incredible healing capabilities were emotional rather than strictly physical, am I right? I certainly would’ve taken that service in a heartbeat. I needed it just as much as Yanyin did.
Then, a thought struck me. It was ridiculous. We were a group full of elite cultivators, and we couldn’t figure out a way to make a single child smile? It was no longer just a tragic situation, my friends. It was a challenge!
I gestured subtly, gathering my friends in a tight circle in the center of the room. Keeping my voice to a barely audible whisper so as not to disturb Yanyin’s crying, I pitched a few rapid-fire ideas. I saw nods of agreement, a few hesitant shrugs, and a spark of determination in their eyes.
And so began our grand attempts to try and lighten the mood.
We immediately broke the huddle, all taking our separate, pre-planned positions scattered throughout the hut. We moved with exaggerated purpose, making it seem like we were incredibly busy with our own mundane work.
I stood awkwardly at a far corner, crossing my arms and intensely observing the blank walls as if studying ancient murals.
Mei took a hold of a nearby vase, holding it up to her ear and starting to knock on it rhythmically, pretending to test its structural integrity with a look of scholarly focus.
Qinyue walked briskly to the oil lamp hanging on the wall and started manipulating the flames inside, making the fire twist to see if she could make any "improvements" to the lighting fixture.
Longwei, ever the detached observer, just stood at his own corner, leaning against the wood, silently observing us all with a look that hovered somewhere between mild amusement and utter disdain.
Jian and Liangyu took center stage. They took a few heavy, exaggerated steps here and there in the center of the room, stomping their boots as if they were critically testing the soundness of the floorboards.
Liangyu sighed loudly, rubbing his chin. "Man, this place is so cramped! No fun at all."
"Agreed," Jian said, rolling up his sleeves with theatrical flair, acting as if he was about to enter into a fierce negotiation with the ground itself. "Stand back."
"I see," Liangyu replied, his voice booming slightly louder than necessary. He gave a sideways glance at Yanyin’s corner. A look to see if she was responding to the commotion. "We’re just going to... improve things a little," he announced to the room, dramatically pressing his open palm against the dirt floor.
From the shadows of her corner, Yanyin paused her sniffling. She peeked out just a little, her tear-streaked face framed by her arms, curious to see what these strange adults were doing.
There was a vibrating rumble beneath our feet, sounding exactly like an old man clearing his throat. Clay bricks pushed outward, rearranging themselves. The ceiling lifted a full foot too fast, sending a puff of dust raining down on everyone.
Through the settling dust cloud, Yanyin sniffled again. Her expression remained completely unimpressed.
"See? More space," Jian said, gesturing grandly with sweeping arms toward the expanded boundaries of the hut.
Just as the words left his mouth, a massive section of the right wall groaned and bulged inward. It stopped abruptly, forming a massive, lumpy protrusion of earth and clay that looked vaguely like a sleeping cow.
Jian slowly lowered his arms, staring at the earthen lump. "That’s... decorative."
Liangyu immediately rushed outside to the back, waving us to follow. We all piled out through the back door. The sudden movement of it all was enough to pique Yanyin’s curiosity.
She slowly got up, wiping her nose with her sleeve, and walked to the backyard to watch.
The ground trembled once again as Liangyu focused his qi. Through the doorway, which was now, due to their previous "renovation," twice as wide as intended and completely asymmetrical, we watched a large patch of raw earth rise up like bread dough.
It flattened itself out roughly, then suddenly sprouted uneven stone tiles in a chaotic zigzag pattern that hurt the eyes to look at.
"A courtyard!" Liangyu announced proudly, turning back to us with a grin.
As if on cue, the stone tiles shifted again, grinding against each other as they seemingly tried to align themselves into a proper grid, before finally giving up halfway and settling into an even more disorganized mess.
Liangyu’s grin faltered. "And... a path with character."
Not to be outdone by his partner’s architectural failure, Jian stepped forward and stomped his foot hard onto the grass. A small mound erupted nearby, dirt flying in all directions. It began rapidly reshaping itself into what was clearly, hopefully, meant to be a swing.
The wooden seat formed rather nicely out of compressed earth. However, the supporting arch above it clearly had some insecurities. Instead of standing upright, it leaned dramatically to the left, looking as though a stiff breeze would topple it.
"It’s... stable," Jian said defensively. To prove his point, he cautiously walked over and tried sitting down on the earthen seat.
Inside, the hut, which was now an awkwardly expanded house, groaned loudly as a new window popped open in the wrong wall.
Yanyin blinked.
Jian pointed a triumphant finger toward the new, useless opening. "Now you have ventilation."
For a second, the heavy silence returned. Then, Yanyin’s bottom lip trembled. It wasn’t a full smile yet, not by a long shot, but the corners of her mouth twitched. It was extremely close.
