#'i don't desire riches for peace (anle) is king'

[peridot-tears]

Ficlet:

Di Feisheng and Fang Duobing outlive Li Lianhua by decades. On the twentieth anniversary of the day he finally succumbed to the bicha poison, Di Feisheng and Fang Duobing park the Lianhua Lou by the East Sea to visit his grave.

They are about to leave when the ocean mist clears, and they see smoke in the distance. Perhaps a raided village? Judging by how thin it is, it has been burning for some time. Di Feisheng and Fang Duobing are not as spry as they used to be -- gray streaks in their hair -- but they are prepared to investigate when they hear a cry.

The current washes up a baby in a basket, like an offering to them both. Fang Duobing rushes to pick it up, and when they finally make it to the village, they find that a local family has been massacred, their manor burned to ashes.

They raise the child as Li Anle, but call him Xiaohua or Huahua as a nickname. For the child is precocious as he grows, taking to martial arts as if he was born to carry a sword. When Di Feisheng first teaches him to spar, he rams the wooden sword into his chest as if he could see the spot where his scar is. When Fang Duobing brings home a dog, Huahua insists on a list of increasingly outrageous names, beginning with Qilin and ending on Hulijing.

The first time Xiaohua hears Di Feisheng call Fang Duobing by his milk name, he giggles and sings out "Fang Xiaobao!" the rest of the day, careless and unfilial. Fang Duobing does not have the heart to chastise him. And when Xiaohua begins dueling with the neighbors, he always uses his winnings to make Di Feisheng chicken legs for dinner. They try to convince themselves that it's because they miss their friend, that they're old and sentimental, but they're terrible liars, even to themselves. So they watch the child skip rocks along the East Sea, and when he turns around, they catch the sharp and clever glance of someone who did not merely wither into the earth, but like a lotus, transformed.