The world is a cruel place.

  It doesn't care how much effort you put in. It doesn't care if you were born blind, or lame, or wrong.

  I know it.

  The hand you're dealt. The body you're given. Things that make the world harder for you before you even start.

  That I can't ever be what people want me to be.

  Because I'm a girl.

  Li Mei opened her eyes and found herself in the apartment. They had rented it a few days ago and they were still getting settled in. It was just her and her father.

  She didn't know what her father was thinking about.

  He'd been in a daze in the last few days, like the light had gone out of his eyes. That bright flame of ambition that drove him no longer had any light.

  She thought back to her past.

  In Chinese, a person is given two names.

  A baby name and an adult name. One used by family. One used by the world. A name is a spell, meant to turn a child's fortunes. A good name to protect against bad luck. A bad name to ward off evil spirits.

  Your adult name is Mei, her father had said. Mei means beautiful. I hope you grow to be beautiful.

  Your baby name is Wanxi, her mother had said.

  Her mother looked so bright back then. A face pressed against her cheek.

  "Be a regular girl. Wanxi. Wanxi for being crowded with joy. I hope there will be many people around you. My bright little girl."

  Were there people around her? Perhaps her mother's wish didn't come true.

  "Dad, what are we doing here?" said Li Mei. "We should have gone back with the rest of the group to Hong Kong. We need to rebuild Wudang. We need to bring back the martial world."

  "Is that it?" Li Wentao smiled, grabbing a glass. "Does it matter anymore?"

  He swirled the alcohol.

  "I always believed in one thing. Power means everything. Once you lose once, you can only keep losing. Rather than wait for it to slip from my hands, it's better I give it freely now, while I have some sway."

  He drank.

  "Live a normal and ordinary life. What is there in an ordinary life? Nothing."

  "You shouldn't drink," said Li Mei, gently taking the glass from his hand. "It's not good for you."

  "She used to say the same thing too. Your mother."

  Li Mei flinched, and then sat next to him.

  This wasn't like her father at all. He always had a plan, an idea. He was the arrow pointing to the future, and all she had to do was follow him, to achieve their dreams.

  "Let's make a new world. Let's not get beaten anymore. Fight against the trends of the times. Remember tradition. Remember your grandfather's dream."

  Now, what were they doing?

  The scariest thing as a kid isn't fighting your parents. Or trying new things. It was when you realized your parents don't know any more than you.

  That they weren't always right.

  That the clear path isn't there anymore, and you had to make your own decisions without knowing if they were right or wrong.

  No one to give you the right answers on the test.

  That's scary.

  She set the glass down on the table. The apartment was quiet.

  She closed her eyes.

  She remembered Hong Kong. That's where it started. Walking with her father. They had just gotten their bags ready, to travel all of China. She was eight.

  The streets were changing. Every year more signs in English, less in Chinese. Women in skirts cut like the ones in British magazines. Boys with their hair parted to the side. Shop windows full of Western suits and leather shoes. A mother on the tram scolding her daughter in English, the daughter answering in English, neither of them noticed they'd stopped speaking Cantonese.

  Her father walked fast and she had to jog to keep up.

  They turned a corner and there were two British soldiers. Off duty. Drunk. One of them had a Chinese man pressed against the wall of a noodle shop. The man was older. He wore a changshan.

  The soldier had him by the front of the robe. He was laughing. He said something to his friend and his friend laughed too. Then he shoved the man and the man stumbled and the soldier shoved him again and this time the man fell. He hit the pavement and his hat rolled into the gutter.

  "Get up," the soldier said. "Look at this. Still dressing like it's the fucking Middle Ages." He turned to his friend. "No wonder this place was a fishing village before we got here. What a fucking backwards culture, looking like a bunch of clowns."

  The man got up slowly. His hands were shaking. He picked up his hat and walked away without looking back.

  People passed. Western suits. Leather shoes. Handbags. Nobody stopped.

  Li Wentao stood there holding his daughter's hand.

  It was disappearing. Slowly, but surely. The world had decided. To be Chinese was to be lesser. To be corrected. To be fixed.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Don't you know? There is a better way to do things? Why stick to traditions? No one does those things anymore. No one cares.

  They walked home in silence. Li Mei kept looking back, but the soldiers were already gone. The noodle shop was open. People were eating inside like nothing had happened. A waiter was wiping down a table near the window.

  Her father didn't say anything that night. He sat in his chair and stared at the wall and Li Mei went to bed, listening to him sit alone in their room.

  Wudang was great. That's what her father always said.

  They had stopped by a temple on their first night. The candles lit on the old abandoned temple floors. The Land God wasn't here and the rituals were off to the side.

  "It is said according to legend that the founder of Wudang Zhang Sanfeng watched a snake and a crane fight," he said. "Three times the crane struck. And yet every time the snake avoided certain demise."

  Li Mei sat on the floorboards and listened.

  "He understood something that day. That one can overcome one's nature. That living things can alter fate. That the natural order can be moved with the right frame of mind. Out of that came Taijiquan. And from Taijiquan came Wudang.

  During the Mongols in the Yuan Dynasty. War was everywhere. Tumultuous times. For hundreds of years, the only place martial arts existed was in Shaolin when the first Buddhist monks came from India. But Zhang Sanfeng made martial arts Chinese. Wudang arose out of chaos and brought upon a new era. One after another, the Great Sects arose. An era, China could call its own. Taoism lived on, creating its own myth.

  "But we're still here," her father said. "We're inheriting the same line through thousands of years. Don't forget, Wudang isn't just a name. It's China."

  The candles flickered. Li Mei looked at the empty shrine where the Land God should have been.

  Wuxia. That was the word for it. The world her father was describing. Martial heroes who fought for something bigger than themselves. Men who stood up when everyone else looked away. She believed it was real. She believed they were part of it.

  Hubei first. A village in the mountains, a man her father knew from letters. He was the child of one of her grandfather's friends. But they had already settled down to a normal life. The man listened and poured tea and at the end he said: "Brother, that world is gone. Let it go."

  Her father didn't let it go.

  They walked to Fujian. An old associate who taught out of a back room. Her father talked about the sects. He shook his head. "The Cultural Revolution took everything. There's nothing left to rebuild. They burned it all to the ground."

  They kept going. Sichuan. A temple that used to train Emei swordsmen. It was a tourist site now. A woman sold tickets at the gate. Her father stood outside looking at it for a long time and then they left.

  Yunnan. A man who claimed to know Baguazhang wouldn't see them. Hunan. An old woman who had studied under a Wudang student before the revolution said she'd forgotten everything and asked them not to come back.

  Town to town. Li Mei carried her bag and followed her father and watched him get turned away and get quieter each time. She was eight and then she was nine and they were still walking and the doors kept closing.

  In Guangdong an old master of Taijiquan named Chen Guowei agreed to see them. He had a courtyard behind his house and a son named Chen Yujin who'd been training since he was four. Tall for his age, lean, with the posture of a kid who'd been told he was exceptional every day of his life and believed it.

  "Rebuild the sect? Who would want to do that?" the man said to her father. "Besides, is this child supposed to inherit it when she grows up? She's just a girl. You want to learn my skills, but is she even worthy?"

  "She's skilled. I trained her myself. Let her practice."

  Her father looked at Li Mei. She stepped into the courtyard.

  "Fine, Chen Yujin. Do the drill with her."

  Chen Yujin looked at her and then looked at his father as if to ask if this was serious.

  "Tui Shou is about understanding each other as deeply as you'd understand yourself. The idea is that if you can feel what someone is about to do before they do it, you don't need to be stronger. Remember, the goal isn't to push your opponent, it's to feel their intentions."

  They stood facing each other. Forearms touching.

  Chen Yujin pressed forward hard from the start. Li Mei tried to redirect, tried to yield. His arm came through hers and his palm hit her sternum and she was on the packed dirt looking at the sky.

  She looked up.

  "That! He wasn't supposed to hit me."

  "So, what?" said Chen Guowei. "You expect your opponents to go easy on you? Get up."

  She got up. Dirt on her palms. Dirt on her knees. Her wrist ached where she'd caught herself on the ground.

  Chen Yujin was already back in position, looking bored.

  They started again, and he put her into the dirt four more times. He didn't care about practice, when they moved, he'd trip her, hit her when he thought no one was looking. And then laugh saying she was clumsy.

  She never felt worse in her life.

  Her father never brought her back again.

  "She's just a girl. I told you," Chen Yujin smirked. "She'll never amount to anything."

  They were on the road ten minutes later. Her father walked ahead of her carrying both bags and didn't look back.

  She told him she'd do better. She'd train harder. She'd be better.

  He kept walking. Said nothing.

  Please...don't give up on me.

  Li Mei opened her eyes.

  Her father's glass was still on the table where she'd left it.

  Did she change? Did she get better? Or did the world decide it wasn't worth it and take everything away from her again.

  What… does she do now?

  "Dad, let's open a bread store."

  It wasn't that simple. Nothing ever was. There were papers to file, permits to chase, landlords who didn't want to rent to someone with no history in the business. But being a criminal had its perks. You had money for days, and you knew people who knew people, and after a few zoning issues they took a spot in Chinatown.

  Her father would scowl and look strange, but somehow it felt a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, day by day, his face which had been in perpetual gloom slowly lightened.

  "Dad, would you have really married me to that idiot," said Li Mei, making a new batch.

  "Hm? Why do you ask?" said Li Wentao, making a new bun.

  "Nothing. I just wondered."

  "To admit. I lost a lot of hope for you."

  Li Mei's shoulders slumped, as if expecting it.

  "If you weren't going to be strong enough to inherit Wudang. It'd be good to marry someone who'd take that responsibility instead. But it all fell aside anyway. You remember what you said before when I asked?"

  She recalled back at the temple.

  "And if you can't make it, if it gets too hard. Please help whoever takes over. Be by their side. See this string? It's called the red string of fate, it ties your destiny to mine, and mine to this temple. It's said people become whoever they are meant to be."

  "Okay, dad. I'll do it. Anything. Let's work together."

  "Still that was a long time ago," said Li Mei. "And we didn't end up protecting or reviving Wudang. We got stuck halfway and didn't make it. Fate isn't all it's cracked up to be."

  "I guess you'd be right about that. You know, at one time I was thinking of marrying you to that Chen kid. He was rough as a boy, but I hear he's doing quite well in China."

  "Heh, if I had to marry him, I'm afraid he won't survive the first night," laughed Li Mei. A knife flew out of her hand and chopped a bao in half.

  It's said the red string of fate ties two people together. They keep meeting each other till something happens.

  "Still…" the image of Daniel came to her head. "Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad."

  "Hmm?"

  "Nothing. Just thinking to myself. Who believes in fate anyway?"

  Then again, it wasn't as if all the stories were fake.

  Daniel…did he even know what he said that day? I will show you the way? The Way. The Dao. Did he mean to bring everything back himself? That did sound like him, being an idiot. Saying things without knowing what anything meant.

  Still…If she had to put a name on what she saw that day, it was more than martial arts. More than any old story from a fairytale. Was he the second coming of those xia who could turn over a nation? Turn the tide of the times? No, this was something else, slipping on the tip of her tongue. Older, wiser.

  Martial Hero? No. This was…. Immortal Hero.

  Xianxia.

  She shook her head. Nevermind, why was she thinking about that idiot anyway.

  Look to the future. She was a girl, but she was also just herself. Why compare herself to the past. She's doing quite well for herself now. She can do whatever she wanted. She didn't have to protect Wudang. She didn't have to be more than she was. She was…free.

  Fate doesn't exist.

  Right?

  The bell above the door rang.

  Li Mei looked up. Henry walked in first, hands in his pockets, looking around the shop.

  "I'm telling you," he said over his shoulder. "This place has always had the best bao."

  Daniel walked in behind him.

  Li Mei's hand stopped on the counter.

  Daniel looked at her.

  "Eh?"