“Her Ladyship has already prepared a gift on Your Highness’s behalf. This is a joyous occasion.” The nurse smiled obsequiously, very cautious, speaking almost humbly to the small boy in front of her. “When it is time for the little Viscount’s ‘hundred year celebration,’ the weather will have warmed up, and Your Highness can go in person to the Marquis Manor to have a look…”
The boy ignored her, continuing to scrawl on drawing paper. The nurse accidentally caught a glimpse of the paper, gave a start, and forgot what she was saying.
The third prince Zhou Ying, child of Yuying Palace’s Imperial Consort Xi—everyone said he enjoyed particular favor.
Because he had been born frail and sickly, His Majesty sent someone to ask after him every few days. No matter what was being distributed in the palace, His Third Highness was sure to get the first share; even the crown prince had to get in line. Princes and princesses under ten couldn’t leave the palace at will; he alone had that freedom. He could say a word and have the Yongning Marquis Manor submit a tally and take him to stay in Dangui Lane. Having inadvertently caught a glimpse of him casually scrawling, His Majesty had invited Mr. Tanghua to come the following day, making the famous expert of the day entertain a child.
Zhou Ying learned drawing quickly. He copied still lifes with his teacher and soon had something to show for it. But when no one was watching, he drew and drew, and the clumsy trees and stones became surrounded by savage faces that coldly looked out at people through the drawing, like one vicious ghost after another inhabiting the drawing.
The nurse took fright each time she saw it. She thought that this child had an extremely evil disposition.
The third prince was as quiet as a dead person. He practically never cried, and he didn’t laugh, either. He plainly wasn’t deaf or mute, and he wasn’t simple-minded, but at four or five years of age, he didn’t speak. The Office of Imperial Physicians could find nothing wrong with him.
But quiet didn’t mean that he was easy to look after. The nurse had never seen such a ruthless and temperamental child. He might be as tranquil as a calm sea one moment, and without anyone bothering him, he would turn nasty the next.
Dropping paperweights and smashing cups and plates was nothing. Setting dogs to bite people, refusing to eat, harming himself—he could do anything until he got what he wanted. That was how he had obtained the tinderboxes he had on him.
This was the worst of it: he also liked playing with fire.
Other children had candies and pastries in their purses. His purse always contained a tinderbox; when he was bored, he would play with fire.
Once, when he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, this young master had been inspired with some “marvelous idea” and lit his bed curtain on fire, nearly burning down Yuying Palace.
With such a catastrophe taking place, naturally it wouldn’t end well for the palace servants. The eunuch who had been keeping watch that night was going to be dragged out and flogged to death. He wailed, asking His Highness to “consider the many years he had served him,” be merciful and speak on his behalf. He kowtowed until his head was bloody. Zhou Ying stood by looking on indifferently. When he saw this person who had been with him since early childhood dragged away like a dead dog, he smiled.
The nurse knew then that a vicious ghost had reincarnated in this little prince.
He had no heart and no sentimental attachments. He didn’t consider consequences and knew no fear. He was like a snake that wouldn’t warm when you held it. No matter how you praised him or humored him, it wouldn’t win his good opinion. If you dared to be disobedient, you were asking for death.
Most horrifying of all, his expression would sometimes change suddenly while looking into empty space, as if communicating with some…invisible thing. Though he didn’t speak, his lips moved, and from the movements of his mouth, he clearly wasn’t saying anything nice.
The Imperial Consort had a weak temperament and couldn’t control him at all. His Majesty must have been bewitched; he didn’t think there was anything unusual about his son who seemed to have been possessed by an evil cultivator. If he heard gossip about him, he would have the gossiper beaten to death. Who would dare to be indiscreet?
The Yuying Palace servants could do nothing but carefully keep their eyes fixed on him twelve shichen a day, carefully attending on him with fear and trepidation.
Strange to say, only in front of the Marquis of Yongning could this evil child restrain himself somewhat.
Of course the Marquis couldn’t beat or scold a prince, but he never minced words with this precious nephew.
He would pour a cup of sugar water and say, “Would Your Highness please sit? This subject has no choice but to give you some counsel.” Then, stern-faced, he would deliver a long lecture. Once he started “counseling,” he could go on for at minimum most of half a shichen, and there was no upper limit. It would continue until the old lady or his wife came to the “rescue.”
The nurse, to her amazement, had watched the third prince “sit upright” in a grown-up’s chair, his two short legs dangling in midair, his head drooping, the cup of warm sugar water clasped in his hands, not daring to drink and not daring to put it down. He really did seem somewhat chastened.
But however stern and inflexible the Marquis might be, His Third Highness was always willing to go to the Marquis Manor to be reprimanded. As long as he wasn’t sick in bed and unable to leave the palace, he would spend around ten days out of every month in Dangui Lane.
This continued until it was discovered that the Marquis of Yongning’s wife was pregnant.
After the third prince heard this, he stared blankly for a long time and didn’t go out all winter. He only went to the Marquis Manor when he was invited for the Lantern Festival. He went there and back in a hurry, as if calling roll in the morning; he didn’t stay the night.
That day, when the nurse was lifting him out of the carriage, she trembled when she touched his icy little hands. For some reason, Zhou Ying hadn’t used the heater. His whole body was tense. His pitch-black eyes were focused on emptiness as he met the gaze of some unknown monster.
The nurse didn’t dare to breathe loudly. She carried him back and offered him up as if she were carrying a bomb, thinking that the Marquis Manor’s little Viscount was in danger. If he died in the womb, it would almost certainly be because this prince had cursed him.
The Imperial Consort had been pregnant last year. As soon as word got out, the people in Yuying Palace had felt insecure. The shrewd people said that while His Majesty loved His Third Highness, this child was peculiar and seemed unlikely to live to adulthood; the future of Yuying Palace would lie with the little one.
Unexpectedly, a dog in the palace, not watched carefully, had peeled off a section of a vibration repelling inscription in a corner while no one was paying attention. That section just happened to be struck by lightning during a stormy night, immediately bringing down half the courtyard wall. That night, the third prince out of nowhere ran a high fever that wouldn’t go down, and the Imperial Consort went out in the rain to see him. She was struck head-on by the explosion and spiritual wind from the inscription and lost the child.
Not long after this was the incident of the bed curtain being lit on fire. All the restless “shrewd people” anxious to go elsewhere were sent by this fire to the torture chamber. Their “wishes were granted,” and they went to join that little prince or princess.
The bloodless smile on the third prince’s face that day gave the nurse nightmares for a month.
The third prince wasn’t close to the Imperial Consort. The nurse had seen that he was even a little impatient with her. And even so, he couldn’t tolerate another child, so if one arrived in the Yongning Marquis Manor, where he was “close,” what would become of him?
The nurse was on edge. She gave secret instructions to the palace servants, telling them to stay alert, not let that demon incinerate Guangyun Palace.
In the third month, with the Southern Sage’s blessing, the child in the Marquis Manor wasn’t killed by the demon. He was born without a hitch.
Rip. Zhou Ying had torn the drawing paper in his hands.
The nurse watched him tear the scrawl with the ink not yet dried into strip after strip. Then he raised a hand and pointed.
“W-would you like to see…the gift list?”
Zhou Ying took the gift list and glanced over it expressionlessly. He raised the brush he had just used to draw ghastly faces and made some strokes on the list.
The childish handwriting bore a trace of the rough edges of the brush being wielded unsteadily, but the structure of the characters was very correct. The writing said: One congratulatory drawing.
Part of the word “congratulatory” was written in a now rare ancient Wan character. It not only didn’t seem joyous, it looked a little horrifying.
This was another peculiarity that no one dared to mention. The third prince was literate—he hadn’t started his schooling. He could read and write without anyone having taught him, and all he knew was ancient characters.
Born with knowledge—if he wasn’t a reincarnated vicious ghost, then what was he?
The nurse shuddered, but Zhou Ying ignored her. He turned and took out a rolled up drawing, already mounted, and put it in a brocade box, indicating that she take it away.
The nurse’s lips moved. She wanted to say that this was after all a joyous occasion, so it wouldn’t be too appropriate for His Highness to send a ghastly scrawl like a gift to the bereaved, would it? Even if the Marquis didn’t make a fuss of it and the child wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t it cause problems later? She took a look at Zhou Ying’s expression and didn’t make a sound—it wasn’t her business.
Decades later, before handing over the Yongning Marquis Manor to the Kaiming Department, Xi Ping returned home to tidy up old possessions and turned up that old congratulatory drawing, then invited Bai Ling to help him sort out having it removed and mounted, prepared to take it back to the Xuanyin Mountains.
This wasn’t a “ghastly scrawl.” It was a drawing of the Marquis Manor’s courtyard, decked with lanterns and colored streamers. The kindly old lady was seated in the center of the courtyard, the solemn Marquis was welcoming guests for the joyous occasion, and Madam Cui had a baby in her arms. The colors were extremely warm, full of joy.
Xi Ping glanced over this sign from the past and asked in surprise, “Did san-ge draw this when he was little? How old was he?”
Bai Ling said softly, “This was a congratulatory drawing for the occasion of the Viscount’s birth.”
Xi Ping blurted out, “Oh? Was he a prodigy whose talent came to nothing through lack of education?”
Bai Ling: “…”
Would you dare to ask such a question to his face?
Zhou Ying had been taught by experts. Naturally he was skilled at music, weiqi, drawing, and calligraphy—but only at the not completely incompetent level societal norms required for noble children; it didn’t amount to any particular talent. He had no inclination toward the arts.
The scenery and composition of this congratulatory drawing were very childish. The stones, flowers, trees and other such things drawn as embellishment were very stiff, and showed signs of having been copied; only the people in the drawing were stunning. Naturally people were harder to draw than objects; he might not have learned to do it yet at the time. Each person was drawn vaguely, with a few strokes. But in just those few strokes, which didn’t even fully describe their figures, seemed to be an impression of their vital beings. Anyone who was familiar with them would know who they were as soon as they saw the drawing, could even imagine the expressions of the people in the drawing.
Xi Ping considered it briefly. “These people weren’t drawn, I think. How did the two of you manage it?”
“You can tell, Viscount?” Bai Ling said, smiling. “Actually, I helped him make an ‘impression’ for this. I had only a paper body then. I connected to his consciousness and helped him make an impression of the images in his consciousness on my paper body, and then he went back and copied it onto the page.”
Xi Ping stared. That really was a method that only a child would think of, circuitous and clumsy.
It was said that a paramount spiritual sense could see through a person’s soul at a glance. Indeed, the impression on the paper was of their souls.
But then, Xi Ping noticed that there was something about the old lady in the drawing. To one side of her were lively maids, but to the other, there was nothing. There was clearly a blank part of the drawing.
The joyous page was missing a person.
“He was having a fit of temper.” With his deftness at judging people’s feelings from their words and gestures, Xi Ping understood the meaning behind this drawing at a glance. “My dad said that because of me, he didn’t come visit for over a year? Abominable. I don’t remember any such thing. If I’d known he loathed me so much, I never would have gotten close to him. He disliked me on sight?”
Bai Ling smiled.
“Hey, Lao Bai, have you ever thought that my brother is especially like my dad in this way? He didn’t pick up any of his good qualities, but he learned inflexibility from the old man. He couldn’t accept new things.” The once-rejected “new thing” said, dissatisfied, “Every year he had new clothes made for him that looked just like the last year’s, wouldn’t try anything he hadn’t eaten before… Even when it came to growing flowers, it was the same—over and over it was just a few varieties. What do you say, didn’t he have the slightest curiosity?”
“He did,” Bai Ling answered mildly. “He always wanted to see what it would look like when the sky fell.”
Xi Ping: “…”
Was this human curiosity?
“But I don’t remember him being ‘mute.’”
Not only had he not been mute, he’d had quite a bit to say. Words came to him especially easily when it came to chiding and telling ghost stories.
“Yes, this was before you were born, Viscount,” Bai Ling said. “When he was little, he couldn’t tell the Impassable Sea and Jinping apart. The demon host varied in intellect. Some could only shout, and there were those like the heart demon, who knew all mortal languages. A majority of the rest would go on and on repeatedly in some place’s ancient local dialect. He started hearing that at birth. Though he could understand speech, when the words came to his lips, he mixed them up. After he scared the Imperial Consort to tears once, he simply stopped talking.”
Xi Ping was silent for a while. “My aunt wasn’t crying because she was scared.”
Bai Ling agreed—the two of them knew, but a child wouldn’t know.
Once he knew, he wouldn’t be a child anymore.
“Actually…” Bai Ling took a look at the obtrusive blank space in the drawing. “It might not entirely have been because of a fit of temper.”
“Hm?”
“He had never seen himself, so he couldn’t draw himself.”
There was a kind of person in the world who, despite having all his faculties intact, couldn’t speak his mother tongue and had “never seen” himself.
There was an ice mirror in Guangyun Palace that could reflect a person’s pores, clear as if it had absorbed their soul. Many people didn’t dare to use it. But even standing in front of the ice mirror, Zhou Ying still couldn’t see himself clearly.
In his eyes, countless threads of karma incomprehensible to him were wound around each person, and their surging thoughts were always churning at the centers of their brows. When he was little, he couldn’t distinguish the subtle differences between sadness and anger, malice and fear. He would only roughly and ignorantly separate “good” from “bad,” and the vast majority of people were “bad,” including himself.
He was wrapped up in billowing blackness, his face blurred. For many years, Zhou Ying hadn’t even been able to work out whether he was a person or a skeleton.
When he was little, he had been unable to control his consciousness. When his surroundings constrained him, it was easy for him to skip into the Impassable Sea. A child’s memory wasn’t so long. When his body and mind fell out of sync, he was likely to be confused when he returned. And by coincidence, just when he was at his most bewildered and helpless, the people around him would become more frightening. They would do their utmost to pretend nothing had happened, not daring to look him in the eye.
In the vastness of Guangyun Palace, even the milky white light of the gas lamps rejected him.
He was immersed in this loneliness, enduring it day after after. Only when he went to the Marquis Manor did he have a chance to relax.
In his grandmother’s courtyard was a little room with a blue window screen. It was his. When he opened the window, there was the old lady’s garden, with cluster after cluster of tuberoses planted at the foot of the wall.
There was an inexhaustible store of legends in his grandmother’s belly, and inside the room were new toys that Cui Ji had collected from all over, hunting high and low. If he only went there, she wouldn’t do anything else all day, only play with him, cherishing this first grandchild like a pearl, often saying, “If the old man could see A-Ying, he would be so happy.”
As if this “vicious ghost reincarnated,” this freak, were some…some great treasure that, if you missed seeing it, you would take that regret to the underworld.
When she occasionally saw his gaze become empty, she was never surprised, only gently patted him on the head, pulling him back from the den of demons, then slowly continuing what she had been saying—and this was also extremely rare. When Zhou Ying came to the Marquis Manor, as if he now had a foothold in the human world, his consciousness would hardly ever be drawn by the Impassable Sea. Apart from the old lady, who was always with him, no one else had seen it happen.
Even when the “wind rose” and his marrow was sucked by the demon host, and the pain came through his spiritual bones to the human world, his youthful consciousness would always be gently led by a pair of warm, dry hands.
The old lady wasn’t very learned, but she knew how to do everything. Though the Xi family hadn’t wanted for money, they still weren’t notably rich, and naturally the appropriate match hadn’t been with some grand family’s young mistress. She had had to attend to household affairs and do needlework when she was young.
She could make a kite, a big swallow with several long tails behind it, which flew up more steadily than those made in the palace workshop; she could make imposing tiger head hats and all kinds of clever rag dolls; she could also turn the hidden demons in Zhou Ying’s drawings into silly faces, stitch them onto little sandbags, and give them to him to play with…
It will end now, Zhou Ying thought when he asked his paperman friend in the Impassable Sea to make an impression for the drawing.
The tuberoses and the evening breeze, the sweet soup and the opera highlights, the roomful of rag dolls, the big kite hanging on the wall… These things weren’t his to begin with.
That was the Marquis Manor, and his surname wasn’t Xi. He had always been an outsider.
Luckily he had already “grown up.” He could split his attention to interact with both sides simultaneously, and he had gradually learned to distinguish the human world from the sacrificial altar, could even carefully speak complete sentences in Jinping dialect. He no longer needed to go to that little garden to “take refuge.”
For the Marquis Manor’s little Viscount’s Hundred Day Celebration, he sent a gift but didn’t go. In the seventh month of that year, when the old lady’s birthday came, Zhou Ying had already started schooling. He only went over with the Imperial Consort’s gift to pay his respects. He was gone before his tea was cold. During the Double Ninth Festival, he was sick again, confined to Yuying Palace… Anyway, he could always find an excuse.
It wasn’t until the following year’s Dragon Boat Festival that the old lady, bringing wrapped up zongzi and an embroidered purse, came in person to see the Imperial Consort and, brooking no argument, took Zhou Ying back with her.
That was the first time he saw Xi Ping.
When Xi Xiaobao was fourteen months old, the swift feet that would easily take him climbing over walls when he grew up already existed in a fledgling stage.
As soon as Zhou Ying walked into the courtyard, before he could find his bearings, a “ball” rolled out and bumped right into him.
The “ball” himself plopped onto the ground and knocked Zhou Ying, whose soul wasn’t at home, into the old lady’s arms.
“Hey, you naughty little thing, go, go, run along.” The old lady, in a “tie him up and lead him away” tone, called over the nurses and directed a group of people in carrying away the kid trying to climb Zhou Ying. “Rude little darling, he can’t take you bumping into him…”
The threads of karma on the child were shallow and faint, and his mind was incomplete. Zhou Ying didn’t see anything extraneous on him, only a plump dumpling with unwiped drool on his face, clucking “gege, gege” like a hen while reaching out his dirty paws trying to throw himself at him.
What was this? Zhou Ying was alarmed. He was frozen in place, unmoving…and then he saw Xi Xiaobao’s eyes.
Xi Ping’s eyes weren’t small after he grew up, and when he was little, he had been all eyes. In the huge black eyes was Zhou Ying’s reflection. He was startled. For the first time in his life, he saw his own face clearly.
Only a child’s eyes could reflect such a limpid view. For those couple of years, Zhou Ying, relying on his eyes, understood what the world must look like in the eyes of others, refined himself until there was no fault to be detected.
Later, Zhou Ying learned that the ball on legs had already ploughed through the Marquis Manor, inside and out, several times; only the little room in the old lady’s courtyard had been locked so he couldn’t get in.
“Because that’s your cousin His Third Highness’s room. When gege comes, you have to ask him for permission to go in.”
The more he wasn’t allowed to go in, the more he wanted to, especially since you could see the little swallow kite hanging on the wall of the room from out the window. Xi Xiaobao made a circle outside every day, longing day and night for his cousin to come. As soon as he saw him, he was as ardent as if they had known each other in a past life.
In Xi Xiaobao’s childish heart, his cousin was a door god with great power in his hands. In order to win the right to come in and play for a while from the door god, he would sing or roll around, whatever was asked. Zhou Ying’s words were more effective even than the Marquis’s discipline rod.
Later, san-ge became a symbol for Xi Xiaobao that he “could eat Grandmother’s hidden candy,” “could get out early from being grounded,” “could skip out on a beating,” “could not have to study for a day.” Without saying a word, their grandmother had turned A-Ying into Xiaobao’s holiday, charging him with a heavy responsibility, so he would have to come, couldn’t get out of it if he tried.
The moment he escaped the spiritual mountains, Zhou Ying at last saw the true, free and unobstructed heaven and earth—what he had wished for all his life.
And, in the stone that was as reflective as a mirror, he saw his own soul.
Spotless, complete, unencumbered.
Zhou Ying met his own eyes briefly, then traced his own image on the surface of the stone—the drawing he had given many years ago had been missing a person.
He had to make good the omission.
He had used up all his tricks just to see himself again. So when the old woman had let him see himself for the first time, how much painstaking effort had it cost her?
“A-Ying is wonderful.”
“If the old man could see A-Ying, he would be so happy!”
His wish in life had been fulfilled. Looking back the way he had come, every drib and drab of it turned out to have flavor to it.
The journey had not been made in vain.
The drawing was complete and a line of small writing left beside it. The artist’s whereabouts were unknown. Presumably he had lost interest and returned. On the third day of the year, according to precedent, the various nations’ ambassadors to Wan finished their rounds of social engagements in Jinping and went together to the Xuanyin Mountains to pay their respects for the new year.
On this day, the Latent Cultivation Temple opened to the public, and all the toilet bulletins came to gather and observe, sending their people who were best at weighing others’ words and expressions, hoping that they could discern something from various interactions during the New Year’s greetings and make a judgment about the coming year’s disposition.
But when it came to General Zhi, all thousand-li eyes and ears to the wind had to lay down arms. In his rebellious disciple’s words, all the Xuanyin Mountains’ auspicious animals tied together couldn’t match up to shifu when it came to presiding over a situation.
He stood beneath a moonlight frost tree, smooth and easy, neither familiar nor distant, even-handed and impartial, treating everyone with the same regulation cordiality, guaranteed not to give any of the toilet bulletins the slightest opening to embellish.
Even with spiritual energy prohibited, Zhi Xiu still satisfied all of people’s fancies about celestial beings…
On the surface.
“That’s the Xiuyi ambassador to Wan, Li Zhen, courtesy name Gucheng, from Zhaoye, a member of a collateral branch of the Xiuyi’s Li family… Shifu, didn’t he come just last year? And he publicly composed a verse in praise of your wine. I have goosebumps from it to this day.”
“Here you are, Gucheng, come warm yourself up. Winter here isn’t as warm as it is in Zhaoye.” As if nothing were the matter, Zhi Xiu hid the piece of reincarnation wood he was using to cheat at his fingertips and greeted the Xiuyi ambassador to Wan familiarly; there was absolutely no sign that he actually couldn’t remember who the person in front of him was. “You must take another couple of jars of wine back with you.”
“Oh! General Zhi, I am overwhelmed by flattery, really overwhelmed…”
Xi Ping lowered his head to hide that he was rolling his eyes.
Since spiritual energy had been prohibited, apart from the old injuries and illnesses that gave life a bit of “flavor,” perhaps the greatest inconvenience Zhi Xiu felt was that he couldn’t “consult celestial phenomena” anymore.
So General Zhi’s masks of “ease and skill” and “steadiness like a mountain” had fallen and shattered to bits in front of his disciple.
After skillfully dealing with the Xiuyi ambassador to Wan, Zhi Xiu quietly squeezed the reincarnation wood in his hand. “Shifu’s getting old. These foreign ambassadors come and go like images on a revolving lantern. How could I remember their faces after seeing them once or twice? When they’ve come a few more times…”
Xi Ping shot a glance at his shizun, elegant as a jade tree facing the wind, and numbly said, “This brother has been stationed in Jinping for six years.”
Zhi Xiu: “…”
Xi Ping said, “This is the sixth time you’ve asked me ‘Who is he?’”
There were people who lost the ability to tell left from right as soon as they started to fret, there were people who naturally couldn’t tell directions, and there were people who could recognize written characters but not faces—none of that was rare.
But based on Xi Ping’s many years’ understanding of his shifu, Zhi Xiu didn’t have any of the above problems.
He simply didn’t pay attention.
The Sword of the South’s special skill wasn’t the sword, and it certainly wasn’t celestial divination, already determined to be a lost art; as Xi Ping saw it, shizun’s particular supreme feat was that no one ever noticed when his mind was wandering.
For rather dull occasions like ancestral sacrifices and social engagements, a peevish person like Zhou Ying would send a low-level paperman to disgust people, and a rude person like Xi Ping would of course simply not go.
But not so Zhi Xiu. He could be present from start to finish, behave so that no one could detect a hint of discourtesy about him, and if you asked him afterward whom he had seen, he would have to ask the stars.
Zhou Ying had always taken exception to General Zhi’s style of handling affairs. Mentioning it on occasion, he would snidely say, “Doesn’t he get tired?”
….No, he didn’t get tired at all.
Everything he wasn’t interested in, that wasn’t important to him, Zhi Xiu was guaranteed to forget as soon as he saw it. That person or thing certainly wouldn’t stay the night in his brain.
The Sword of the South’s way of the sword was the same. A sword had only a narrow cutting edge, and a person’s mental forces were also limited. It was enough to give one’s full attention at the important moment; for the rest, you could muddle through, relax when it was time to relax.
So neither of his disciples had obtained his full teachings: Xi Ping didn’t know what it was to “give one’s full attention,” and Xi Yue didn’t know what it was to “relax.”
It took a battle of wits and valor to get Xi Ping to practice the sword, and Xi Yue…
The expression Zhi Xiu said most to Xi Yue was That’s enough.
Especially after the sword heart he had inherited melted.
“What has little Xi Yue gone to do? Why was I the one selling my charms here this year?”
Having concluded an entire day of entertaining guests, neither teacher nor disciple wanted to smile again. They roasted tangerines and ate them with the door shut, expressionless. Even the tangerines became grave.
“Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s examinations are coming up. He’s gone to help Wenchang.” Zhi Xiu tapped the karma beast that had climbed up his sleeve. “Go ask Xiao Yue whether he’ll come back on the fifteenth to eat tangyuan.”
The karma beast rolled over indolently and came to the back of his hand. An image flashed over it as it sent an avatar to Heaven’s Design Pavilion.
“Isn’t there still another month before Heaven’s Design Pavilion’s examinations…?” At first Xi Ping was perplexed. Then he realized something. “What’s wrong with him now?”
“He advanced prematurely and suffered backlash from the sword traces at the back of the mountain. If he had continued to cultivate, he would have lost his mind.” Zhi Xiu frowned. “I told him to leave the mountains to cool off for a while, think about why he wants to practice the sword, and to stop practicing for now if he can’t understand it. This isn’t the way to cultivate one’s body.”
After Ways of the Heart had vanished, only half-immortals remained. Of course there were differences among half-immortals, but at Xi Yue’s level, he was capable of leaving the mountains to handle any situation.
This was the era of upgraded immortal tools. There was truly no need to be so eager for rapid progress.
“What, does he want to usurp Lao Pang’s position?” Xi Ping tossed a tangerine segment into his mouth. “Shifu, what are you glaring at me for?”
Zhi Xiu waved a hand. “You scoundrel… Fine, enough nonsense, go find me the locator, I don’t know where I tossed it again.”
The locator was another product of the next-door Moon Plated Peak, tailor-made for Zhi Xiu by Master Lin. This was a board about half a chi square that automatically recorded the locations of all the items inside the cottage. If you couldn’t find something, you would pick up the board to search, and it would automatically give directions. Special treatment for the scatterbrained—since he could no longer practice divination, apart from Zhaoting, Zhi Xiu could lose anything.
The only problem was, he also frequently couldn’t find the locator.
Teacher and disciple were both young masters. The lazier of the two set the other to the task, and after turning everything over, there was still no trace of the locator. A few days later, Xi Yue returned, travel-weary, to save his sloppy shifu and useless big brother; he found the wretched locator in the wine cellar under the cottage—the temperature in the wine cellar had previously been maintained by a talisman, and after the spiritual energy prohibition had begun, that had been changed to a half-mechanized upgraded immortal tool. There were two pipes of spirit-conducting gold, one to cool and one to heat. To economize on spiritual stones, it wasn’t always running. It only turned on when it detected a variation in temperature.
On Immortal Lady Shen’s birthday, Wen Fei had come over to find someone to drink with. When Zhi Xiu went down to get wine, the temperature stabilizer had just happened to be inactive. He hadn’t taken notice and had made a random grab, carrying back a wine jar and leaving the locator on the heating pipe.
When Xi Yue found it, the locator had been cooking on the heating pipe for over half a month.
Xi Ping craned his neck to look; it was quite well cooked, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. “Shifu, should I sprinkle on some spiced salt?”
Zhi Xiu: “…”
Xi Yue sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and, working hard without complaint, cleaned up the mess added to the already messy cottage after his older brother had “swept” it, then went to Moon Plated Peak with the medium-well cooked locator.
Xi Yue was taciturn. Outsiders might think that he was cold, but actually he was very easy to get along with.
He was attentive and generous, and never appeared impatient no matter how many of Flying Jade Peak’s trifles were left for him to handle. How could such a person nearly lose his mind over and over out of eagerness to make rapid progress?
A chestnut flew at Xi Ping’s head and bounced off. He snatched it, and before Zhi Xiu could say anything, he sighed. “Yes, shifu, I know.”
Zhi Xiu, hands behind his back, walked over to him. “When he occasionally makes progress, he always unconsciously looks around, but he never knows who he’s looking for.”
That “eliminate the past” had swept away the concerns of the first half of Xi Yue’s life. Now, for the half-puppet, Xi Ping was only a very close older brother who liked to tease him. When he returned, Xi Yue was as happy as shifu and all the auspicious animals on the mountain; when he went abroad with the Luwu, he might be gone for three to five months at a time, and Xi Yue couldn’t be especially concerned about him—when ordinary brothers grew up, they always had their own things to do; the two of them, moreover, weren’t brothers by blood, and the mortal relatives who had maintained their connection had passed away.
But unexpectedly, the “eliminate the past” had left behind dust.
Xi Yue had forgotten the sense of helplessness of his youth that could make him spit blood, but an unease that had no explanation remained. The goal he was pursuing was gone, but his legs were still fruitlessly racing.
Xi Ping squeezed the chestnut open and ate it. “Shifu, I’m taking a trip.”
The medium-well cooked locator was naturally unsalvageable. Lin Chi took it back, the corner of his eye twitching; he would have to remake it. And after that day, Xi Ping once again ran off somewhere unknown. He was nowhere to be found on the Lantern Festival.
Three months later, a message came from Moon Plated Peak. The new locator was done.
The new locator was only palm-sized, so thin it was like a little mirror, much more exquisite. But while exquisite it might be, even the big one had been casually roasted. Wouldn’t the little one be even easier for its careless owner to lose?
The instant Xi Yue saw the object, he made to speak, then held back.
“This one won’t be so easy to lose,” said the understanding Master Lin. “This version of the locator can enter dreams. If you’ve touched it within the last twelve shichen, when you’re asleep or in meditation, it will link up with your consciousness. If there’s anything you’ve forgotten, it will automatically straighten it out for you, and it will ‘appear in a dream’ to tell its owner to find it when he wakes up.”
Xi Yue: “…”
Master Lin had really put a lot of thought into this.
Lin Chi said, “I also made it resistant to water and fire. This time there won’t be anything to worry about even if you drop it into a furnace pit. Go ahead and roast it.”
The “good neighbors” who were always coming up with outrageous requests could claim a large share of credit in the fact that Moon Plated Peak could always be first under heaven, making outstanding contributions in the field of upgraded immortal tools.
Xi Yue brought the new locator back home and reported on his task, then relegated this matter to the back of his mind.
Unexpectedly, that very night, he became the first person to receive a visitation in his dreams from the locator.
While meditating, Xi Yue already felt that his mind was a little unsettled. It was considerably harder than usual to remove distracting thoughts. When he finally managed to settle his mind, hardly an incense stick of time passed before his spirit once again shook faintly.
If your spirit shook while you were in meditation, normally it was due to major, insoluble matters appearing in your mind; pushing them down by force was not conducive to cultivation. Xi Yue knew that he had experienced no difficulties lately and figured that this was happening because he had touched the locator during the day, so he relaxed his mind and allowed his thoughts to wander, wanting to see what dream the locator would send him.
Soon, he seemed to be transported beside a long river. An event from the past flashed before his eyes: while he had been a walker in the mortal world with Heaven’s Design Pavilion in his youth, he had fulfilled a filial duty on someone’s behalf at the Marquis Manor…
Fulfilled a filial duty on someone’s behalf? Whose?
Before he could get a clear look at this thought, time continued to flow, and he saw himself following his big brother off the mountain to the Land of Turmoil, beset by terrors and alarms the whole way…
Further back was the Latent Cultivation Temple…
Xi Yue stood beside the river of memory, a little confused: hadn’t Master Lin said that the locator would only send a dream to remind you of things you had forgotten?
He hadn’t forgotten anything.
The past was long. There really were some trifling details he didn’t remember—like who had worn what color, what they had eaten for three meals a day; he wasn’t a camera.
But he knew the sequence of events clearly. Could it be that because he didn’t like to forget things, the locator would pursue them to perfection, remind him of all the details?
It seemed that this thing had no sense of priority.
Xi Yue wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. If even he was getting this treatment, wouldn’t shizun be overwhelmingly busy tonight?
Master Lin could also be unreliable sometimes. He would have to pay a visit to Moon Plated Peak tomorrow morning…
Xi Yue had meant to focus and break free, but he tried a few times and couldn’t rid himself of the past events before his eyes, so he just had to make the best of it, allow that demented locator to lead him into the past. He felt that his memory was pretty good, so there shouldn’t be too many forgotten details. He might as well get it over with quickly so this thing would let him go.
When he saw his big brother lazing in bed on the ship, asking him to do his assignment for him, then immediately being discovered by shifu far away in the Xuanyin Mountains and getting chased around and beaten by sword energy, Xi Yue smiled involuntarily. This really was something he would have done.
He also remembered that after this da-ge had used an immortal tool to drag General Commander Pang next door down with him…
In the memory, the hither seal flashed; the pleasure at another’s misfortune had yet to be wiped clean off Pang Jian’s dumbfounded face. All the details were recreated, true to life, by the locator. Xi Yue seemed to find himself once again on that ship, surrounded by chaos.
Suddenly, Xi Yue froze, noticing that something was wrong.
He very rarely recalled the past, so he had never realized that the scenes of events that came clearly to mind had absolutely no feeling of authenticity. There was a strange insubstantiality about them, as if he had read about them in a book…or as if someone had “written” them into his mind.
Only now had this memory truly “come to life” in his mind, becoming once again his own experience.
A familiar sense of consternation arose, filling his chest. Every time Xi Yue overdid it when practicing the sword and entered a condition of forgetting self, he would feel this consternation, forcing him to become a little stronger, a little stronger still, or else…
Or else what?
Or else…
He recalled his childhood, spent starving, in a constant state of anxiety, and all his joints began to ache. He was only a half-puppet who had been born at death’s door. Being “useful” was his entire guarantee of safety.
“Useless thing, I’ll chop you into firewood one of these days.”
This was the first sentence he had understood in his life.
Or else…
He was caught by Heaven’s Design Pavilion, a dragon-taming chain put around his neck. He was afraid, angry, dove headfirst among the tantalizing blue jade, and with a bit of the relief of this is how it ought to be, he waited in perfect contentment for death.
The sharp knife hadn’t cut open his belly. He had found a new cornerstone for his misshapen life.
Or else…
With a rumble, the dams laying across his heart cracked, and love and hate came roaring out like a flood, bursting the calm, waveless river of his emotions.
He remembered being forced to throw the inscription in the Latent Cultivation Temple, the dragon-taming chain shattering in the Resurrection Vortex, the seemingly unending five years of waiting, the wind and intermittent singing blowing past him at the funeral of the Marquis Manor’s old lady. It was as if he were lame, never fast enough. Using all his strength, he could only glimpse a retreating figure.
Or else…what was the point of a half-puppet’s life?
During the sudden attack in Jinping, he destroyed his half-puppet core, was taken back to the Xuanyin Mountains by shifu. An icy hand holding spiritual light touched the center of his brow, bit by bit wiping away the marks etched deep into his soul, turning his past into emptiness.
The big clock on the first floor of the cabin ticked off a character. The phoenix representing the “Grain Rain” solar term flew past the karma beast’s nose. The karma beast, asleep on its back with its limbs splayed out, slitted open its big eyes and was just about to close them indolently when its eyelids suddenly moved. It rolled over and sat up. There was a human figure leaning toward it, seated in the rattan chair by the window.
Xi Ping, who had been gone for several months, had returned at some point. He hadn’t turned on the light. His breathing was shallow and urgent. There was a sword in his hands. He was practically collapsed over that sword.
The karma beast sniffed in alarm and sniffed out a faint scent of blood. It strolled over along the wall, jumped onto the side of a flowerpot, and stared at Xi Ping.
Xi Ping, following the karma beast’s gaze, looked at himself and realized that a wound on his chest had begun to bleed; it had soaked through the front of his clothes.
This was the only thing he had found inconvenient since shattering the hidden bones; his body didn’t heal as quickly.
“Shh…hss.” Xi Ping waved a hand at the karma beast and carefully put down the sword. “Don’t make a sound, or I’ll put a rat into your clock tomorrow.”
Hearing this, the karma beast’s fur stood on end, and it glared: Asshole.
“If shifu asks, say A-Xiang needed something and I’ve gone to winter in Southern He.” Xi Ping laughed and put down the sword. He left a note, turned, and ducked into a reincarnation wood tree.
The note said: For Yue-bao’er: The ancient sword Xiuluo, makes anyone who uses it powerful.
The famous sword Xiuluo, which had been out of the ordinary since its creation. According to legend, it had been created by the hand of the first Eternal Spring Brocade. After it was damaged, it had been repaired by the second Eternal Spring Brocade.
Hui Xiangjun had preserved the famous sword’s sword aura whole and entire, and used the Unbound Furnace to pare away the remaining violence in the sword, leaving this famous sword without any “airs”; it didn’t have a temper like Zhaoting and Wanshuang. It wasn’t picky about its master. Any living creature with hands could pick it up. Before spiritual energy had been prohibited, anyone who got ahold of it gained a tremendous aid that could spare them a hundred years of struggle. Even the good-for-nothing Xiang Zhao had been recommended for promotion to ascended spirit.
This sword had previously ended up in Qiu Sha’s hands, and had been taken by Xuanwu after Qiu Sha’s death. Out of selfish motives, he hadn’t turned it over to the Sanyue Mountains and had taken it with him when he had fled. Later, it had been forgotten in the no-man’s land of the All-Devouring Marsh on the Chu-Shu border. It had taken Xi Ping several years of scouting with reincarnation wood to find a trace of it.
It was only that there were fierce beasts among the spiritual creatures nearby. He had come in at the wrong angle and disturbed the clutch of lizards guarding the Xiuluo Sword. While being hunted by those big brutes, he had been scratched a few times.
Fortunately, the journey hadn’t been made in vain.
Xi Ping concealed his injuries and joyfully went to hide.
As expected, the Xiuluo Sword would let you get twice the result with half the effort. From then on, Xi Yue really didn’t have any more inexplicable instances of trying to rush ahead to make quick gains.
And maybe it was a mistaken impression on Xi Ping’s part, but Xi Yue seemed closer than before. Previously, apart from asking after an elder’s health as a matter of etiquette, Xi Yue had practically never voluntarily spoken to anyone—though when others spoke to him, he would always respond at once. Now, when he encountered something he couldn’t wrap his mind around in the mortal world, he would occasionally ask Xi Ping about it, and he had even asked for help once.
After Pang Jian retired from office with honor and entrusted Heaven’s Design Pavilion to Xi Yue, he kept the peace in the human world for fifty years.
He had spent his life proving that even though he was “useless,” he still deserved to be loved; though he had been born defective and needed to spend twice as long as others slowly growing up, he also had his place at last.
Only when Xi Ping had grown tired of being “Tai Sui” and duplicated the souls of the departed in the Law Breaker’s little space did he notice that he only had a score preserved for Xi Yue from his youth. After obtaining the Xiuluo Sword, for some reason, he hadn’t entered the Law Breaker again.
“What secret were you hiding that you were afraid would be revealed by the Law Breaker’s music for me to hear?” Xi Ping said to the puppet at his side.
The puppet smiled without answering and refilled his teacup.
After all, half of a half-puppet’s body was human. A puppet body could be repaired and have parts replaced without limit, but the human body always had an end. Xi Yue’s dying wish had been to have the puppet body he left behind made whole and left to Xi Ping.
“I’ll be able to make tea…young master…” He seemed a little confused and whispered the wrong form of address. “Too…bad…”
Too bad that a mechanical puppet can’t help you with your assignments.
“You silent type.”
Hundreds of years later, the Law Breaker was realized, and the human world returned to the human world. An old gentleman came along with his puppet and countless forgotten old tunes that had once been popular and began a retro fad. He had a head of white hair like satin. The puppet could always brush it shiny and smooth for him and tie a snow-white peony into it.1 His stage name was “Mr. Peony”; he dressed in whatever way was fashionable.
Mr. Peony made a movie. During the public screening, the old fellow shamelessly said that the leading man wasn’t as handsome and elegant as him, and spontaneously played the ending theme; for the first time, he accidentally played off-key.
“Hey, I’m losing my skills. I’ve gotten old.” He didn’t feel embarrassed in the least, as if “getting old” was yet another gift in life worth celebrating. Grinning, he put away his qin and turned his head to call to the puppet, “Yue-bao’er, we’re going home.”
There were those who said that he stumbled when he left the theater, and the people who stepped forward to help him into a car were dressed in blue.
There were those who said they had seen him in the vicinity of the Xuanyin Mountains.
The identity of “Mr. Peony” was a topic on which opinions varied wildly for a time, but his popularity quickly passed. He never appeared again.
“According to legend, Tai Sui is an ancient god—”
“No, that’s wrong, I did a search, it said ‘Tai Sui’ means a magic meat fungus.”
“And what’s a magic meat fungus?”
“Maybe it’s a big mushroom that gives you immortality if you eat it…”