Chapter 20: Blind Diviner (3)
Lu Nianqi wiped away his tears and resumed his obstinate and hard-headed expression. Clutching a corner of his clothes, he did not look at Xuan Min and Xue Xian but had his head tilted to stare at the slowly shrinking tongue of flame in the fire basin, depressedly saying, “About half a month ago, Lu Shijiu told me that he would go to Grave Mound Island in the middle of the river…”
Every segment of the river around Wolong County was relatively shallow and narrow compared to the areas farther upstream and downstream. Most of the small islets were like pellets of land. Even the islet on which the small, chicken cage-like courtyard of the Lu brothers was located looked exceptionally congested. The slender white sogon grass that grew all over those small islets provided the water birds in the river places to rest during the day.
The only islet that could be considered larger could barely be considered a small island in the middle of the river.
From far away, that small island could be seen to be covered by a wild forest with interconnecting branches and looked like a green steamed bun and also like a grave mound. Because of this, the locals called it “Steamed Bun Island” or “Grave Mound Island”.
Ordinary people were not inclined to go to Grave Mound Island. After all, other than weeds, only miscellaneous trees grew there and it was desolate and dark. It was not a good place. The only people who went to Grave Mound Island were the apothecaries from near and far as it was said that the soil of the island was fertile and moist and many medicinal herbs grew there on their own.
Lu Shijiu had gone there three times.
At daybreak on a day half a month ago, Lu Nianqi woke up to find a brief note left at his bedside. Lu Shijiu could not use a brush and so he always dipped his finger in ink to fumble out words, making his handwriting especially recognisable. There was only one sentence written in the note in a trembling scrawl: Going to Grave Mound Island.
As outsiders could perceive, the Lu brothers were not very close. Lu Nianqi acted as though he was covered in thorns from head to toe and had a crabby temper that made him hard to raise. Lu Shijiu had an eccentric temperament and scarcely spoke; leaving a brief note and going away like this was something he would normally do.
And so, Lu Nianqi did not think much about it. He just grunted and stepped out to pick up firewood to cook himself food and continued his daily work while waiting for Lu Shijiu to return.
As a result, he waited until nightfall. It had even started to rain, but he still did not see any sign of Shijiu.
“I went to the ferry crossing. The boatman whose boat was anchored there said that the rain was falling heavily and so he wouldn’t go to the middle of the river. Anyway, he said that Shijiu went on Old Man Liu’s boat and he hasn’t returned yet. They are probably resting there because of the heavy rain.” Lu Nianqi, despite looking young, spoke very clearly. “I vaguely saw a fishing lantern on a boat in the middle of the river, reckoned that they were taking shelter from the rain, and so I came back. Who knew…”
Who knew that it would rain continuously for three days, even causing the river level to rise a bit. Lu Nianqi went to the ferry crossing every day and only came back after seeing the fishing lantern as he restlessly waited for the rain to stop. He grabbed several copper coins, went to find a boatman at the ferry crossing and set out for Grave Mound Island in the middle of the river. Who would have thought that he would find neither Lu Shijiu nor Old Man Liu.
“I walked almost all over Grave Mound Island and still couldn’t find him. But I did hear his voice once,” said Lu Nianqi. “But when I called out to him, that sound had already disappeared.”
Just like this, Lu Nianqi went back and forth six or seven times to and from Grave Mound Island, but he still could not find Lu Shijiu. Over the past few days, a dark whirlpool had formed in the vicinity of Grave Mound Island and two boatmen had their boats capsize there, one after the other. The boatmen were no longer willing to go there, regardless of how much Lu Nianqi bothered them.
What was even more annoying was that over the past few days, Lu Nianqi always heard the sound of someone knocking on the door early in the morning and in the middle of the night. The first two times, he thought that it was Lu Shijiu returning. He hurriedly ran to open the door, only to find that there was no one there. When he returned to the house after searching for a while, he sensed that the boxes in the house seemed to have been moved by someone.
“The four strings of coins we had collected and stored inside were all gone! Not a single coin was left! What could I use to hire a boatman?!” When Lu Nianqi brought this up, he was like a wild dog with all its fur exploding.
Hearing this, Xue Xian clicked his tongue and tutted, “No wonder you splashed a whole basin of water on me when you opened the door. Which asshole could be so virtueless and shameless that they would steal from an eight- or nine-year-old child? Even so, you can’t steal my orb just because someone stole your four strings of coins. What kind of reasoning is that? Luckily for you, I can’t move freely right now, or else I would have certainly hung you upside down and dipped you into the river twice.”
“Who’s eight or nine years old?” Lu Nianqi was entirely red from being lectured, biting the bullet to retort back.
“You!” Xue Xian sighed, exasperated. “Who else could it be?”
“I’m fifteen!” Lu Nianqi’s entire face was twitchy and he shouted angrily. “It’s only because I was sick before and so didn’t grow much taller. Don’t go randomly guessing a person’s age by simply looking at their face.”
Xue Xian was somewhat flabbergasted. However, how old this bad-tempered brat was and how tall he was were none of his business. What he was more interested in finding out was whether Lu Shijiu was still alive or not.
Obviously, he was not the only person thinking this.
As soon as Xuan Min lifted his sleeve, the gradually weakening tongue of the flame in the fire basin completely went out with a pfff, leaving only green smoke spiralling upwards in the air. He passed his finger through the green smoke and plucked Xue Xian and Jiang Shining down from the winter branch. The two thin paper men had already been roasted completely dry without any major issues.
Everything was fine except for one small detail: the strokes on the paper men’s faces were rather smudged because the ink had run.
Jiang Shining, still confused, hurriedly transformed into human form off to the side. The running ink had made two black streaks under his eyes that formed dark circles, which were much more obvious than they had previously been, spreading nearly halfway across to his cheeks. He looked as if he had an incurable illness and had one foot in the grave. On the other hand, Xue Xian looked even more wretched, unable to walk and not in an appropriate state to transform back into human form. The smudged ink marks on his paper form looked even more eye-catching after the ink ran, directly flowing from the corners of his eyes down his nose.
Originally, he had only been dead with his eyes open, but now, he had directly turned into someone bleeding from the seven orifices.
Truly…a horrifying sight.
Xuan Min glanced down at him and decisively stuffed him into his hidden pouch, his cold expression showing a trace of the apathetic feeling of “what remains unseen is deemed to be clean”.
Lu Nianqi saw this cold monk lifting his feet and preparing to leave and so he could not help but ask, “Where are you all going?”
“The middle of the river,” Xuan Min responded.
Hearing this, Lu Nianqi leapt up and chased after him, asking urgently, “Are you going to look for Lu Shijiu? Can you bring me with you? I’ll go too!”
“As you wish.” Xuan Min did not even turn his head when he threw out these words and strode towards the ferry crossing.
After not staying in Xuan Min’s hidden pouch for several days, Xue Xian discovered some new things inside as soon as he entered. Other than his precious golden orb and that cloth bag holding silver needles, there were some additional hard bits and pieces. Xue Xian silently moved over, lifting his hand to touch them and even tried to take a bite…
They were small pieces of silver and there were quite a large number of them, with no sign of where they were exchanged from.
It was flurrying at the ferry crossing. Several black-awning boats were anchored there and all the boatmen were probably taking shelter under the awnings of their boats, looking especially cold and cheerless.
Xuan Min shook the copper bell hanging next to the flag. Several boatmen stuck their heads out from the cabin one after the other and one of them lazily shouted, “The fog is too thick to cross the river. Wait and come back later.”
“I don’t want to cross the river.” Xuan Min pointed towards the middle of the river. “I wish to go to the Grave Mound Island.”
As soon as these words were spoken, those boatmen all shook their heads and withdrew back under the awnings of their black boats without another word. Only one boatman who seemed to be a bit more talkative explained to him, “There’s a dark whirlpool near Grave Mound Island where boats have capsized. Little master, you’re not a local, are you? Whatever it is you want to do, I advise you to switch to a different place. There are no boatmen here who would be willing to go there.”
Xuan Min quietly listened until he finished speaking and asked, “How much would it cost if I only wish to rent this boat?”
The boatman stared blankly.
There were often people who wanted to rent pleasure boats but those who wanted to rent such a small boat with a black awning were very rare. After all, a customer would find such a narrow and small boat difficult to control; without a boatman, an ordinary person would find it very difficult to safely row the boat to the opposite bank of the river.
“This…” The boatman was somewhat hesitant.
Xue Xian, who could not see anything on the outside of the hidden pouch, pulled out two pieces of silver and silently lifted them through the opening of the pouch.
Xuan Min, “…”
With a lightning move of the hand, he grabbed the silver rummaged out by that vile spawn and pressed his claw back inside. Without any delay, Xuan Min directly gave the pieces of silver to that boatman.
Xue Xian was unhappy about being pressed back into the bag and so he noisily slapped Xuan Min’s waist and said, making a show of being very much in earnest, “It’s not very convenient for me to fish out money in my current form. But don’t worry, I won’t take advantage of you, Baldy. I’ll pay back double later with thanks.”
Xuan Min treated him as if he did not exist.
The boatman received the silver pieces. Even without weighing them, he could tell that the amount was significant. He felt rather awkward and said, “I can’t take these.”
However, Xuan Min’s expression was extremely cold, making people feel even colder than when the entire sky was filled with snow dregs floating indiscriminately. The boatman saw that he did not have the slightest interest in changing his mind and could only embarrassedly alight from the boat to allow Xuan Min and the others to board it. Just as they went on board, he could not help but ask worriedly, “Can you really row a boat?”
Lu Nianqi had the same worry as the boatman. But he was also afraid that if he asked anything, Xuan Min might change his mind. And so, he could only choke back his doubts. He stared at Xuan Min and Jiang Shining impatiently and with some suspicion in mind and followed them onto the boat.
Before Xuan Min stepped onto the boat, he casually picked up a water reed.
While Lu Nianqi was puzzled as to why he wanted to bring a water reed, he saw Xuan Min pull out a folded talisman from his chest, slap it onto the bow of the boat and say “Go” before putting the reed in his hand into the water like a pole. The boat responded to his command and moved, slowly breaking through the water. Xuan Min shook the reed pole lightly and the bow of the boat changed direction, heading straight towards that cluster of islands in the middle of the river.
Nianqi stared at that familiar-looking talisman for a while and finally recalled that this was what Xuan Min had previously stuck onto his forehead. Instantly, he became angry and thought, can you please use a different move?!
Even though there was the talisman that caused the small boat to move as soon as it was commanded to and there was also the reed pole to control the direction, Xue Xian still felt somewhat uneasy about Xuan Min. He silently crawled up to the opening of the hidden pouch and stared at the reed pole in Xuan Min’s hand without a sound, unable to tear his eyes away.
After watching for a while, he could not help but look up and ask Xuan Min, “Why are you looking for Lu Shijiu? Is it also to use his skill to search for someone?”
Xuan Min was just about to open his mouth to reply when he heard Lu Nianqi at the side suddenly crying out with an “Ah!”
Chapter 20: Blind Diviner (3)
Lu Nianqi wiped away his tears and resumed his obstinate and hard-headed expression. Clutching a corner of his clothes, he did not look at Xuan Min and Xue Xian but had his head tilted to stare at the slowly shrinking tongue of flame in the fire basin, depressedly saying, “About half a month ago, Lu Shijiu told me that he would go to Grave Mound Island in the middle of the river…”
Every segment of the river around Wolong County was relatively shallow and narrow compared to the areas farther upstream and downstream. Most of the small islets were like pellets of land. Even the islet on which the small, chicken cage-like courtyard of the Lu brothers was located looked exceptionally congested. The slender white sogon grass that grew all over those small islets provided the water birds in the river places to rest during the day.
The only islet that could be considered larger could barely be considered a small island in the middle of the river.
From far away, that small island could be seen to be covered by a wild forest with interconnecting branches and looked like a green steamed bun and also like a grave mound. Because of this, the locals called it “Steamed Bun Island” or “Grave Mound Island”.
Ordinary people were not inclined to go to Grave Mound Island. After all, other than weeds, only miscellaneous trees grew there and it was desolate and dark. It was not a good place. The only people who went to Grave Mound Island were the apothecaries from near and far as it was said that the soil of the island was fertile and moist and many medicinal herbs grew there on their own.
Lu Shijiu had gone there three times.
At daybreak on a day half a month ago, Lu Nianqi woke up to find a brief note left at his bedside. Lu Shijiu could not use a brush and so he always dipped his finger in ink to fumble out words, making his handwriting especially recognisable. There was only one sentence written in the note in a trembling scrawl: Going to Grave Mound Island.
As outsiders could perceive, the Lu brothers were not very close. Lu Nianqi acted as though he was covered in thorns from head to toe and had a crabby temper that made him hard to raise. Lu Shijiu had an eccentric temperament and scarcely spoke; leaving a brief note and going away like this was something he would normally do.
And so, Lu Nianqi did not think much about it. He just grunted and stepped out to pick up firewood to cook himself food and continued his daily work while waiting for Lu Shijiu to return.
As a result, he waited until nightfall. It had even started to rain, but he still did not see any sign of Shijiu.
“I went to the ferry crossing. The boatman whose boat was anchored there said that the rain was falling heavily and so he wouldn’t go to the middle of the river. Anyway, he said that Shijiu went on Old Man Liu’s boat and he hasn’t returned yet. They are probably resting there because of the heavy rain.” Lu Nianqi, despite looking young, spoke very clearly. “I vaguely saw a fishing lantern on a boat in the middle of the river, reckoned that they were taking shelter from the rain, and so I came back. Who knew…”
Who knew that it would rain continuously for three days, even causing the river level to rise a bit. Lu Nianqi went to the ferry crossing every day and only came back after seeing the fishing lantern as he restlessly waited for the rain to stop. He grabbed several copper coins, went to find a boatman at the ferry crossing and set out for Grave Mound Island in the middle of the river. Who would have thought that he would find neither Lu Shijiu nor Old Man Liu.
“I walked almost all over Grave Mound Island and still couldn’t find him. But I did hear his voice once,” said Lu Nianqi. “But when I called out to him, that sound had already disappeared.”
Just like this, Lu Nianqi went back and forth six or seven times to and from Grave Mound Island, but he still could not find Lu Shijiu. Over the past few days, a dark whirlpool had formed in the vicinity of Grave Mound Island and two boatmen had their boats capsize there, one after the other. The boatmen were no longer willing to go there, regardless of how much Lu Nianqi bothered them.
What was even more annoying was that over the past few days, Lu Nianqi always heard the sound of someone knocking on the door early in the morning and in the middle of the night. The first two times, he thought that it was Lu Shijiu returning. He hurriedly ran to open the door, only to find that there was no one there. When he returned to the house after searching for a while, he sensed that the boxes in the house seemed to have been moved by someone.
“The four strings of coins we had collected and stored inside were all gone! Not a single coin was left! What could I use to hire a boatman?!” When Lu Nianqi brought this up, he was like a wild dog with all its fur exploding.
Hearing this, Xue Xian clicked his tongue and tutted, “No wonder you splashed a whole basin of water on me when you opened the door. Which asshole could be so virtueless and shameless that they would steal from an eight- or nine-year-old child? Even so, you can’t steal my orb just because someone stole your four strings of coins. What kind of reasoning is that? Luckily for you, I can’t move freely right now, or else I would have certainly hung you upside down and dipped you into the river twice.”
“Who’s eight or nine years old?” Lu Nianqi was entirely red from being lectured, biting the bullet to retort back.
“You!” Xue Xian sighed, exasperated. “Who else could it be?”
“I’m fifteen!” Lu Nianqi’s entire face was twitchy and he shouted angrily. “It’s only because I was sick before and so didn’t grow much taller. Don’t go randomly guessing a person’s age by simply looking at their face.”
Xue Xian was somewhat flabbergasted. However, how old this bad-tempered brat was and how tall he was were none of his business. What he was more interested in finding out was whether Lu Shijiu was still alive or not.
Obviously, he was not the only person thinking this.
As soon as Xuan Min lifted his sleeve, the gradually weakening tongue of the flame in the fire basin completely went out with a pfff, leaving only green smoke spiralling upwards in the air. He passed his finger through the green smoke and plucked Xue Xian and Jiang Shining down from the winter branch. The two thin paper men had already been roasted completely dry without any major issues.
Everything was fine except for one small detail: the strokes on the paper men’s faces were rather smudged because the ink had run.
Jiang Shining, still confused, hurriedly transformed into human form off to the side. The running ink had made two black streaks under his eyes that formed dark circles, which were much more obvious than they had previously been, spreading nearly halfway across to his cheeks. He looked as if he had an incurable illness and had one foot in the grave. On the other hand, Xue Xian looked even more wretched, unable to walk and not in an appropriate state to transform back into human form. The smudged ink marks on his paper form looked even more eye-catching after the ink ran, directly flowing from the corners of his eyes down his nose.
Originally, he had only been dead with his eyes open, but now, he had directly turned into someone bleeding from the seven orifices.
Truly…a horrifying sight.
Xuan Min glanced down at him and decisively stuffed him into his hidden pouch, his cold expression showing a trace of the apathetic feeling of “what remains unseen is deemed to be clean”.
Lu Nianqi saw this cold monk lifting his feet and preparing to leave and so he could not help but ask, “Where are you all going?”
“The middle of the river,” Xuan Min responded.
Hearing this, Lu Nianqi leapt up and chased after him, asking urgently, “Are you going to look for Lu Shijiu? Can you bring me with you? I’ll go too!”
“As you wish.” Xuan Min did not even turn his head when he threw out these words and strode towards the ferry crossing.
After not staying in Xuan Min’s hidden pouch for several days, Xue Xian discovered some new things inside as soon as he entered. Other than his precious golden orb and that cloth bag holding silver needles, there were some additional hard bits and pieces. Xue Xian silently moved over, lifting his hand to touch them and even tried to take a bite…
They were small pieces of silver and there were quite a large number of them, with no sign of where they were exchanged from.
It was flurrying at the ferry crossing. Several black-awning boats were anchored there and all the boatmen were probably taking shelter under the awnings of their boats, looking especially cold and cheerless.
Xuan Min shook the copper bell hanging next to the flag. Several boatmen stuck their heads out from the cabin one after the other and one of them lazily shouted, “The fog is too thick to cross the river. Wait and come back later.”
“I don’t want to cross the river.” Xuan Min pointed towards the middle of the river. “I wish to go to the Grave Mound Island.”
As soon as these words were spoken, those boatmen all shook their heads and withdrew back under the awnings of their black boats without another word. Only one boatman who seemed to be a bit more talkative explained to him, “There’s a dark whirlpool near Grave Mound Island where boats have capsized. Little master, you’re not a local, are you? Whatever it is you want to do, I advise you to switch to a different place. There are no boatmen here who would be willing to go there.”
Xuan Min quietly listened until he finished speaking and asked, “How much would it cost if I only wish to rent this boat?”
The boatman stared blankly.
There were often people who wanted to rent pleasure boats but those who wanted to rent such a small boat with a black awning were very rare. After all, a customer would find such a narrow and small boat difficult to control; without a boatman, an ordinary person would find it very difficult to safely row the boat to the opposite bank of the river.
“This…” The boatman was somewhat hesitant.
Xue Xian, who could not see anything on the outside of the hidden pouch, pulled out two pieces of silver and silently lifted them through the opening of the pouch.
Xuan Min, “…”
With a lightning move of the hand, he grabbed the silver rummaged out by that vile spawn and pressed his claw back inside. Without any delay, Xuan Min directly gave the pieces of silver to that boatman.
Xue Xian was unhappy about being pressed back into the bag and so he noisily slapped Xuan Min’s waist and said, making a show of being very much in earnest, “It’s not very convenient for me to fish out money in my current form. But don’t worry, I won’t take advantage of you, Baldy. I’ll pay back double later with thanks.”
Xuan Min treated him as if he did not exist.
The boatman received the silver pieces. Even without weighing them, he could tell that the amount was significant. He felt rather awkward and said, “I can’t take these.”
However, Xuan Min’s expression was extremely cold, making people feel even colder than when the entire sky was filled with snow dregs floating indiscriminately. The boatman saw that he did not have the slightest interest in changing his mind and could only embarrassedly alight from the boat to allow Xuan Min and the others to board it. Just as they went on board, he could not help but ask worriedly, “Can you really row a boat?”
Lu Nianqi had the same worry as the boatman. But he was also afraid that if he asked anything, Xuan Min might change his mind. And so, he could only choke back his doubts. He stared at Xuan Min and Jiang Shining impatiently and with some suspicion in mind and followed them onto the boat.
Before Xuan Min stepped onto the boat, he casually picked up a water reed.
While Lu Nianqi was puzzled as to why he wanted to bring a water reed, he saw Xuan Min pull out a folded talisman from his chest, slap it onto the bow of the boat and say “Go” before putting the reed in his hand into the water like a pole. The boat responded to his command and moved, slowly breaking through the water. Xuan Min shook the reed pole lightly and the bow of the boat changed direction, heading straight towards that cluster of islands in the middle of the river.
Nianqi stared at that familiar-looking talisman for a while and finally recalled that this was what Xuan Min had previously stuck onto his forehead. Instantly, he became angry and thought, can you please use a different move?!
Even though there was the talisman that caused the small boat to move as soon as it was commanded to and there was also the reed pole to control the direction, Xue Xian still felt somewhat uneasy about Xuan Min. He silently crawled up to the opening of the hidden pouch and stared at the reed pole in Xuan Min’s hand without a sound, unable to tear his eyes away.
After watching for a while, he could not help but look up and ask Xuan Min, “Why are you looking for Lu Shijiu? Is it also to use his skill to search for someone?”
Xuan Min was just about to open his mouth to reply when he heard Lu Nianqi at the side suddenly crying out with an “Ah!”
