Chapter Nine: The Benevolent Mentor

In the blink of an eye, half a month had passed, and Yue Zhe’s injuries had all but healed. Father and son had bid their farewells and departed, leaving the Ye household to return to its usual rhythms.

“Hey, Mother, I’ve got skewers for you after practice!”

On the training ground in the early morning, a long spear spun and danced in Ye Pei’s hands, while Ye Feilan and her maid Ye Fei sat below, watching with a large platter of roasted meat skewers.

In the study, Lady Ye yawned, picked up a book, and quietly began to read.

General Ye had already left for the Ye Army’s encampment outside the city two days earlier, and was now overseeing the soldiers’ morning drills. The Ye Army, named after the family, was established to showcase the Ye clan’s significant contribution to the martial strength of the Snow Kingdom. Its duty was to garrison Shunxing City, though at the emperor’s command, it could be dispatched to battlefields anywhere.

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With books, time seems long; without them, short. The tranquility lasted only a few days before it was broken by the return of Ye Pei’s mentor, Mu Piaoyan.

Ye Pei had never seen his teacher in such a state of exhaustion. In his memory, his master was always spirited and vigorous, eyes bright despite the years etching their marks upon him. But now, Mu Piaoyan’s face was sallow, his eyes bloodshot, and his movements as he dismounted were painfully slow—had Ye Pei not been quick, the old man would have collapsed right there. Uncle Meng Huaicheng, who had traveled with him, was nowhere to be seen.

“Master! What happened? Where is Uncle Meng?”

Mu Piaoyan hesitated, coughed, and finally said, “Help me to my room first, young master. If I push myself any further, I fear this old body will give out…”

Hearing this, Ye Pei didn’t press for Meng Huaicheng’s whereabouts, but hurried to support his teacher to rest. Clearly, something had happened, but since his master was not one to lose sight of priorities, if he asked to rest, then Meng Huaicheng was likely not in immediate danger.

Unexpectedly, Mu Piaoyan slept for nearly an entire day before awakening.

To understand what had happened, one must look back to Master Mu’s own story.

As a young man, Mu had been well-read, but his family’s poverty forced him to become a local schoolteacher. At that time, he believed his life would pass in quiet obscurity—sometimes, he would sit alone in the courtyard with a jug of wine, lost in melancholy. But fate had other plans, and the turning point came through his younger sister.

Mu’s sister, Mu Feiyan, was famed for her beauty since childhood. Thankfully, the local customs were simple and honest, so she grew up untroubled. Not long after reaching adulthood, opportunity arrived.

As tales go, fortune smiles only on those with the so-called “protagonist’s aura.” Without it, one’s end is more likely to be tragic—falling off a cliff, drowning, starving, or worse, dying right at the entrance to some legendary master’s burial cave without ever entering. But with it, surviving calamity leads to unexpected blessings: discovering some ancient master’s legacy, inscribed with words like, “I have lived a life of such and such, but fate left me stranded here. With no disciple to pass on my knowledge, I leave this treasure for the worthy—use it well. Signed, Supreme Grandmaster Zhao Ri Tian (or perhaps Ye Liangchen, Long Aotian, and so forth).” Thus begins the rise to glory.

Now, in those days, a noble youth surnamed Zhang from the Xia Kingdom, having read some sensationalist novel, heard a legend of a fallen master in the Snow Kingdom who had left behind mysterious relics. Defying his family, he slipped away with his personal guard.

What happened next is easy to imagine. Lacking the protagonist’s aura—otherwise this story would be about Zhang from Xia, not Ye from Snow—he and his guard got lost in the snowy mountains. They wandered for days, unable to find the master’s relics and nearly starving. That afternoon, Mu Feiyan, washing clothes by the river, saw two filthy, ragged, pitch-black figures emerge from the woods opposite. Frightened, she ran home to fetch Mu Piaoyan.

Little did they know, the two strangers were on the verge of tears themselves, having not eaten for days. Spotting a living soul, they mustered their last strength to swim across the river—being from the south, they were good swimmers—and chased in the direction Mu Feiyan had fled.

A young girl could not outrun two desperate men. As the distance shrank, the noble youth, not intending harm, was about to shout a greeting to show his peaceful intentions.

However, children playing outside the village had seen it all from afar.

“There are two skinny black bear demons chasing Sister Feiyan!”

Such was the message delivered to the villagers.

So, just as the noble youth called out, “Miss, please wait!” he collided headlong with a crowd of villagers armed with sickles and shovels.

What followed was far more pleasant. Once the two strangers had been cleaned up in the village, their refined bearing became evident, and Mu Piaoyan’s precious sister soon caught the young noble’s eye.

It wasn’t long before the guard hastened back to Xia Kingdom for a wedding party. The Mu family had no intention of leaving Snow Kingdom, and the Zhang family did not insist. Instead, they quietly left a dowry generous enough that the Mu family would never want for anything again.

After some discussion, Mu Piaoyan’s parents decided he should use this windfall to travel. Though the Zhangs had left the dowry discreetly, it could still arouse suspicion among neighbors. Simple as the folk were, money can sow discord, and Mu Piaoyan, barely into his twenties, couldn’t spend his life in a mountain village. His parents, still in their prime, could manage the household, so with peace of mind, Mu Piaoyan set off on a journey that lasted eighteen years.

In those years, Mu Piaoyan traversed nearly every inhabited corner of Wangmai, his knowledge and experience far surpassing that of the village schoolmaster he once was.

When he returned, he was over forty, his parents now past sixty and no longer fit for farm work. He brought them to a village near Shunxing City, bought a modest home, and settled them there in peace. He himself took a position as a teacher at Shunxing Zhai, the city’s largest academy, and soon, thanks to his talent, rose to its deputy head. He rarely needed to teach, spending his days reading and writing, and drawing a comfortable salary from the court.

Mu Piaoyan truly believed his life had reached its contented conclusion—versed in all things, with students in government, his name and fortune secure.

But one day, while strolling through the city, he encountered a five-year-old Ye Pei and his stern tutor in a tavern.

At that time, Ye Pei had already mastered most of the literature and calligraphy his teacher could offer and was engaged in a debate about whether the Starfolk were gods.

Ye Pei, even then, found the world’s reverence for the Starfolk incomprehensible. As he argued, “Have you ever even seen them, yet you worship them as gods? Is your life today really a gift from the Starfolk?”

His tutor, undeterred, recounted the ancient tales: that the Star Gods taught humanity how to farm, how to make tools, and ushered in civilization.

Ye Pei, of course, did not believe these legends.

“Heh, I bet those stories were written by the Starfolk themselves,” he scoffed.

It was this remark that caught Mu Piaoyan’s attention from his seat nearby. Though the entire land of Wangmai accepted the Starfolk as the guides of human civilization—and the younger Mu had once believed so himself—years of travel had led him to discover several unusual ruins in remote places. Analyzing the clues left there, he’d drawn startling, even heretical conclusions—so unsettling he’d never shared them with anyone.

He realized then that Ye Pei’s offhand comment might have struck closer to the truth than anyone realized.

Soon after, Mu Piaoyan learned that this was the scion of the Ye family. Within days, he resigned from his academy post and presented himself at the Ye household, requesting to become Ye Pei’s tutor.

Ye Linhui, naturally, was delighted—who in Shunxing City didn’t know of the venerable scholar from Shunxing Zhai? To have him teach his son was a blessing, and it spared him the trouble of sending Ye Pei to the academy later.

As for the previous tutor, with Mu Piaoyan’s recommendation, he took up a post at Shunxing Zhai, where teaching less inquisitive children was an easy task.

Thus began Ye Pei’s tutelage under Master Mu. Over the years, Ye Pei learned from his mentor about everything from the stars above to the seas below, and a seed of doubt about the Starfolk was sown in his heart.

After Ye Feilan, his daughter, was born, Ye Pei, through observing this pure-blooded Starfolk child, noted that her most outstanding feature was her flawless beauty. She did possess a pair of wings, but unlike recorded descriptions, hers were transparent and usually lay flat against her back, rarely spreading. She was also in exceptionally good health. As for her intellect, she showed some talent in literature and history, but her abilities in martial arts and mathematics were, frankly, dismal.

“Master, if this is the extent of the Star Emperor’s lineage, then there’s no way our people’s knowledge and martial prowess came from that lot of fools,” Ye Pei would say to Mu Piaoyan in private.