Chapter 44: Plague County (II)
His Honorable Lord Xue was a drama queen at heart. Even when he was running away, he had to run in an extravagant, awe-striking, tempest-whipping manner, as if it was an insult to his dignity to tone down his performance even by a little bit. But, due to his half-paralysis, his tail had a hard time cooperating.
"It was all thanks to the wind I'd summoned that we were able to control our direction," Xue Xian said lazily, patting his knee. He was reclining against a tree by the lake, his entire body dripping with water. "It's like walking. Obviously there's going to be a bit of turbulence. It goes without saying."
In reality, it was not 'a bit' of turbulence, it had been excessive turbulence, enough to shake the brains out of his passengers.*
The entire way, Stone Zhang had fervently asked the beast to hook his claws tighter –– he'd wished he'd had eight limbs, so that he could wrap himself tightly around the dragon's claw like a cuttlefish. Each time Xue Xian flipped as he flew, or flew higher, Stone Zhang would feel both ecstatic that he was genuinely flying, and so terrified that he wailed and cried. The experience had probably scared his soul right out of him.
As they glided through the sky, Jiang Shining had felt extremely fortunate, and clairvoyant, to have had the sense back at the inn to fold himself back into a paper man and slide into Twenty-Seven's chest pocket. He was light, and the pocket was a safe place, so he had not feared falling off, and thankfully had not screamed away all of his scholarly dignity like Stone Zhang.
But he'd only enjoyed a brief moment of celebration. Xue Xian flew too fast, and the wind could no longer fully control his landing, especially with that lame tail. Unable to come up with a suitable solution, the dragon had looked around and found a lake that seemed to be wide and deep enough for them to drop into.
Of course, an enormous beast smashing head-first into a lake at full speed would no doubt cause half the lake to splash out and rumble the foundations of the city wall nearby.
The dragon must have thought himself extremely clever. As he saw that braking was impossible, he transformed back into a human mid-way, even having the time to take his robe back from Xuanmin's hands.
Then followed four little plunks as the group fell one by one into the water.
As soon as Xue Xian hit the water, he was scooped up by the waist by Xuanmin.
We could say that the two swam toward shore, but all Xue Xian could do was superficially wiggle his arms –– naturally, Xuanmin carried him to shore.
Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven had only been slapped by the water, but Jiang Shining was almost soaked through –– after all, he was only a piece of paper, not even a piece of metal. He had already been at risk of dissolving to pieces several times.
Now, Xuanmin had laid him out to dry on top of some dry grass, and he looked like a real survivor. He still didn't dare to move, fearing that anything might result in dismemberment.
There was still some lingering panic in Jiang Shining's heart. "Sir, what were you thinking? How could you throw us all down from such a great height?"
Xue Xian stacked his elbow against a nearby rock and said, "I had a flash of inspiration."
All Jiang Shining could do was silently curse him.
Leaning lethargically against a tree, with his black robe in complete disarray hanging loosely and misshapenly off his frame, the dragon looked to be the pinnacle of relaxation.
Xuanmin hated the feeling of being wet, so he drew a talisman on his palm and instantly dried out his robe, turning the white hemp pristine again. He took a few steps across the damp grass and, with his still gashed finger, drew quick lines of blood across Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven's foreheads. He even dotted Jiang Shining's trembling, mushy paper body.
The blood marks quickly disappeared.
"I feel... as though a fire is cooking me," Jiang Shining said.
"Clothes-drying spell," Xuanmin explained. The reason why he'd only written a half-complete talismanic text on them was because the spell came with a flash of heat, and he hadn't wanted them to be distressed.**
Jiang Shining's paper-thin body quickly turned dry, and he finally felt a bit less anxious, settling into the patch of grass with gusto.
Xue Xian tugged at his collar. His soaked robes were clinging to his body and were heavy and uncomfortable.
Just as he'd decided to direct that latent, simmering heat within him to the surface of his skin and warm the clothes from the inside, he saw that Xuanmin was now striding his way.
Although the outfit of white looked far too inauspicious in the eyes of ordinary people, it was indeed beautiful, resembling a smudge of white fog in the dark night.*** The hem of Xuanmin's robe brushed lightly against the stalks of dry grass, yet picked up not a speck of dirt.
Xuanmin walked to Xue Xian and looked down at him. Xue Xian sat there, lifting his face to stare back at Xuanmin neutrally.
Back at the inn when he'd been waiting for Xuanmin to say what he'd wanted to say, Xue Xian had thought he would die of stress. If he had to wait for Xuanmin to speak again all while feeling that utterly indescribable feeling that came with the wait, he feared that his brain would melt into liquid.
"Don't block my view," Xue Xian said.
Xuanmin was standing and he was sitting –– if he looked straight ahead instead of upwards, all he could see was the monk's hand.
Just as Xue Xian's glance began to move away, that hand dangling by his face suddenly moved.
Xuanmin stood rigidly, looking down at him as he gently lifted Xue Xian's chin with the crook of his finger. He brought Xue Xian's face upward and moved that still bleeding fingertip toward his forehead.
That touch to the chin had stunned Xue Xian. His eyes shot to Xuanmin's finger –– maybe it was just him, but he felt as though the monk's bleeding finger stalled for a moment in front of his face.
In that one short moment, he thought Xuanmin's finger was going to come into contact with his face imminently, yet it stopped and lingered, imperceptibly, for just a heartbeat, before moving up and pressing down onto the center of his forehead, the touch neither heavy nor light, but dragging the blood gently into a line. Xue Xian's eyes flitted up. He saw that reliably cold-as-ice, too-cold-to-melt-snow face of Xuanmin's, resting his own calm gaze on Xue Xian's forehead, as though doing something he wouldn't normally do, something he wasn't used to.
Xue Xian didn't know what the streak of blood on his forehead looked like, but he could feel that the sticky, oppressive robes around his body had begun to dry at an alarming rate.
He tugged at his robes and complained, "Will you die if you bend just a little?"
Xuanmin's hands dropped as he finally looked into Xue Xian's eyes. "You're not turning your back to me anymore?"
Xue Xian wanted to smash the rock under his arm directly into the bald donkey's face. "I do what I want. Just try and stop me. Go away!"
Xuanmin's temperament was always mild, and he had never acquired the habit of trying to guess what those around him were feeling. Whereas Xue Xian could flip through his emotions quicker than the pages of a book, oscillating between clinging to someone and banishing them. It was like if someone who had never walked in his life were suddenly able to walk on water: the difference was just far too large.
As Xue Xian barked at Xuanmin to leave, he saw that the monk remained standing there looking at him for some time, and then really did faithfully go away. Xue Xian felt disdain rise within him like bile that he could spit right onto the bald donkey's face.
Now fully dry, Jiang Shining got up from the grass and puffed back into his humanlike form. As soon as he turned his head, he caught sight of Xue Xian's bleak face.
"What's wrong?" Jiang Shining asked. He thought for a while, then said, "Are you hungry again after the journey?"
"Yes," Xue Xian replied darkly. "My teeth are itchy. I want to eat human meat."
Speechless, Jiang Shining glanced anxiously in Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven's direction.
In fact, Xuanmin hadn't gone far. He had simply gone over to Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven and begun to set up a rudimentary stack of branches between them. He magically dried the wood, struck a match from his pocket, and lit a small bonfire, so that the two weaker ones wouldn't freeze to death while waiting for their clothes to dry.
Having lit the fire, Xuanmin walked back and stood in front of Xue Xian again.
Xue Xian glared at him. "What now?"
Xuanmin unhooked the copper coin pendant from his hip and rubbed it with his thumb. Then he said to Xue Xian, "Reach out your hand."
Suspicious, Xue Xian extended his hand. Xuanmin placed the pendant into his palm. "Some magical items deplete their magical power after a certain amount of time, but can be used for its other effects."
As he said this, Xuanmin glanced at Xue Xian's paralysed legs.
Of course, Xue Xian had heard of this idea before, but "magical items" were instruments used by mortals and of no use to him, so he had never thought about it. The fact that copper coin pendants became covered in a layer of oil after some time was precisely because their magical power was being depleted. These sensitive items were excellent accessories for exorcists, as their functions ranged from calculating feng shui to controlling the five natural elements. As long as you had the skill, you could do anything.
You could do anything, which implied... it could even help someone grow his body back.
Having seen Xuanmin scan his legs, Xue Xian understood what the monk meant. Only...
To most exorcists, such magical instruments were as precious as life. Even for another person to touch the object would be a great offense, so it was completely unheard of to willingly put it in someone else's hands.
Xue Xian stared at the pendant in his hands and could not think of anything to say, nor even how to feel.
Finally, he couldn't help but say, "Did you eat rat poison?"
Xuanmin sighed. The demon seemed incredulous. He dangled the pendant in front of Xue Xian and swung it, then swung it again... giving Xuanmin the opportunity to take it back.
But as he swung it for the third time, Xuanmin pushed Xue Xian's claw back and said, "There's a seal on the coins that has not yet been undone. But it should still be useful. I don't need it at the moment, so you can have it."
"Seal?" Xue Xian repeated, surprised, but quickly seemed to understand –– so that's why the coins looked so drab and grey, as if they were ordinary coins with no magic in them at all. But... "Who sealed them? You?"
Xuanmin shook his head. "I don't remember. Each coin has its own seal. Recently, two of them seem to have started to come loose. Perhaps we'll be able to undo them soon."
Xue Xian bit the tip of his tongue and pondered this. In the end, he accepted the pendant –– before when he'd been a paper man and a marble, he could take advantage of his small size and let the coins quicken his healing.**** But now that he'd returned to his original body, whether he was in human form or dragon form, he could no longer go ahead and stick to Xuanmin's hip.
What a scene... even thinking about it made Xue Xian shudder, let alone actually making it a reality. So in recent days, Xue Xian's healing process had suddenly slowed down significantly. He could still feel the change, but compared to before it was far slower. He didn't want to constantly drag his two lame legs around, waiting for others to carry him places.
It was downright humiliating.
Xue Xian mulled this all over. Then he clutched the pendant tighter and closed his eyes to focus on healing.
A half-complete talisman not being as effective as a full talisman, it took some time for Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven's clothes, and their shocked faces, to return to some semblance of normal.
Once Twenty-Seven recovered, he immediately felt guilty for burdening the rest of the group. He asked Jiang Shining, "Aren't you in a hurry to see your sister?"
Jiang Shining, sitting on a rock not far from him, looked back at the dim lantern glow of the distant city. "We have to wait for dawn. We're right at the door anyway, so there's no rush."
There was a curfew within the city at night, and its gates were shut tight, with no one allowed to leave or enter unless it was an emergency. Even if they did get in, it wasn't as if they could go knocking on someone's door in the middle of the night. But it seemed that much of the night had already gone by, and the pre-dawn bells would be ringing soon.
"The last time I saw my sister was three years ago. She came back to Ningyang after she heard what happened." Jiang Shining muttered. "I can't remember much of what happened after I died –– it only got better after I became a paper man –– but I do remember how much she cried. I can even hear it now..."
Once the pre-dawn bells rang and the city gates opened, the townspeople would slowly begin to rouse too. He would be able to see his sister again, see if she was doing well, and finally help the trapped souls of their parents transcend.
Throughout his short life, Jiang Shining had never really spent much time away from home, and was not familiar with that strange, nervous feeling that appeared when one was close to returning home.
But now, by the shores of that unknown lake, gazing at the gates of a city he was supposed to consider as a home, realising that he only needed to wait a little bit longer before all of his problems would disappear, leaving him free and at ease forever, he suddenly felt a sense of hesitation...
Dang––
Some hours later, that 3am pre-dawn bell finally rippled forth from the city center.
The group quickly tidied up and made their way to the city wall. And with a creak, the ancient gates were pushed open by the guards, the view of the town within was revealed to them, along with a mysterious smell.
Chapter 44: Plague County (II)
His Honorable Lord Xue was a drama queen at heart. Even when he was running away, he had to run in an extravagant, awe-striking, tempest-whipping manner, as if it was an insult to his dignity to tone down his performance even by a little bit. But, due to his half-paralysis, his tail had a hard time cooperating.
"It was all thanks to the wind I'd summoned that we were able to control our direction," Xue Xian said lazily, patting his knee. He was reclining against a tree by the lake, his entire body dripping with water. "It's like walking. Obviously there's going to be a bit of turbulence. It goes without saying."
In reality, it was not 'a bit' of turbulence, it had been excessive turbulence, enough to shake the brains out of his passengers.*
The entire way, Stone Zhang had fervently asked the beast to hook his claws tighter –– he'd wished he'd had eight limbs, so that he could wrap himself tightly around the dragon's claw like a cuttlefish. Each time Xue Xian flipped as he flew, or flew higher, Stone Zhang would feel both ecstatic that he was genuinely flying, and so terrified that he wailed and cried. The experience had probably scared his soul right out of him.
As they glided through the sky, Jiang Shining had felt extremely fortunate, and clairvoyant, to have had the sense back at the inn to fold himself back into a paper man and slide into Twenty-Seven's chest pocket. He was light, and the pocket was a safe place, so he had not feared falling off, and thankfully had not screamed away all of his scholarly dignity like Stone Zhang.
But he'd only enjoyed a brief moment of celebration. Xue Xian flew too fast, and the wind could no longer fully control his landing, especially with that lame tail. Unable to come up with a suitable solution, the dragon had looked around and found a lake that seemed to be wide and deep enough for them to drop into.
Of course, an enormous beast smashing head-first into a lake at full speed would no doubt cause half the lake to splash out and rumble the foundations of the city wall nearby.
The dragon must have thought himself extremely clever. As he saw that braking was impossible, he transformed back into a human mid-way, even having the time to take his robe back from Xuanmin's hands.
Then followed four little plunks as the group fell one by one into the water.
As soon as Xue Xian hit the water, he was scooped up by the waist by Xuanmin.
We could say that the two swam toward shore, but all Xue Xian could do was superficially wiggle his arms –– naturally, Xuanmin carried him to shore.
Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven had only been slapped by the water, but Jiang Shining was almost soaked through –– after all, he was only a piece of paper, not even a piece of metal. He had already been at risk of dissolving to pieces several times.
Now, Xuanmin had laid him out to dry on top of some dry grass, and he looked like a real survivor. He still didn't dare to move, fearing that anything might result in dismemberment.
There was still some lingering panic in Jiang Shining's heart. "Sir, what were you thinking? How could you throw us all down from such a great height?"
Xue Xian stacked his elbow against a nearby rock and said, "I had a flash of inspiration."
All Jiang Shining could do was silently curse him.
Leaning lethargically against a tree, with his black robe in complete disarray hanging loosely and misshapenly off his frame, the dragon looked to be the pinnacle of relaxation.
Xuanmin hated the feeling of being wet, so he drew a talisman on his palm and instantly dried out his robe, turning the white hemp pristine again. He took a few steps across the damp grass and, with his still gashed finger, drew quick lines of blood across Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven's foreheads. He even dotted Jiang Shining's trembling, mushy paper body.
The blood marks quickly disappeared.
"I feel... as though a fire is cooking me," Jiang Shining said.
"Clothes-drying spell," Xuanmin explained. The reason why he'd only written a half-complete talismanic text on them was because the spell came with a flash of heat, and he hadn't wanted them to be distressed.**
Jiang Shining's paper-thin body quickly turned dry, and he finally felt a bit less anxious, settling into the patch of grass with gusto.
Xue Xian tugged at his collar. His soaked robes were clinging to his body and were heavy and uncomfortable.
Just as he'd decided to direct that latent, simmering heat within him to the surface of his skin and warm the clothes from the inside, he saw that Xuanmin was now striding his way.
Although the outfit of white looked far too inauspicious in the eyes of ordinary people, it was indeed beautiful, resembling a smudge of white fog in the dark night.*** The hem of Xuanmin's robe brushed lightly against the stalks of dry grass, yet picked up not a speck of dirt.
Xuanmin walked to Xue Xian and looked down at him. Xue Xian sat there, lifting his face to stare back at Xuanmin neutrally.
Back at the inn when he'd been waiting for Xuanmin to say what he'd wanted to say, Xue Xian had thought he would die of stress. If he had to wait for Xuanmin to speak again all while feeling that utterly indescribable feeling that came with the wait, he feared that his brain would melt into liquid.
"Don't block my view," Xue Xian said.
Xuanmin was standing and he was sitting –– if he looked straight ahead instead of upwards, all he could see was the monk's hand.
Just as Xue Xian's glance began to move away, that hand dangling by his face suddenly moved.
Xuanmin stood rigidly, looking down at him as he gently lifted Xue Xian's chin with the crook of his finger. He brought Xue Xian's face upward and moved that still bleeding fingertip toward his forehead.
That touch to the chin had stunned Xue Xian. His eyes shot to Xuanmin's finger –– maybe it was just him, but he felt as though the monk's bleeding finger stalled for a moment in front of his face.
In that one short moment, he thought Xuanmin's finger was going to come into contact with his face imminently, yet it stopped and lingered, imperceptibly, for just a heartbeat, before moving up and pressing down onto the center of his forehead, the touch neither heavy nor light, but dragging the blood gently into a line. Xue Xian's eyes flitted up. He saw that reliably cold-as-ice, too-cold-to-melt-snow face of Xuanmin's, resting his own calm gaze on Xue Xian's forehead, as though doing something he wouldn't normally do, something he wasn't used to.
Xue Xian didn't know what the streak of blood on his forehead looked like, but he could feel that the sticky, oppressive robes around his body had begun to dry at an alarming rate.
He tugged at his robes and complained, "Will you die if you bend just a little?"
Xuanmin's hands dropped as he finally looked into Xue Xian's eyes. "You're not turning your back to me anymore?"
Xue Xian wanted to smash the rock under his arm directly into the bald donkey's face. "I do what I want. Just try and stop me. Go away!"
Xuanmin's temperament was always mild, and he had never acquired the habit of trying to guess what those around him were feeling. Whereas Xue Xian could flip through his emotions quicker than the pages of a book, oscillating between clinging to someone and banishing them. It was like if someone who had never walked in his life were suddenly able to walk on water: the difference was just far too large.
As Xue Xian barked at Xuanmin to leave, he saw that the monk remained standing there looking at him for some time, and then really did faithfully go away. Xue Xian felt disdain rise within him like bile that he could spit right onto the bald donkey's face.
Now fully dry, Jiang Shining got up from the grass and puffed back into his humanlike form. As soon as he turned his head, he caught sight of Xue Xian's bleak face.
"What's wrong?" Jiang Shining asked. He thought for a while, then said, "Are you hungry again after the journey?"
"Yes," Xue Xian replied darkly. "My teeth are itchy. I want to eat human meat."
Speechless, Jiang Shining glanced anxiously in Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven's direction.
In fact, Xuanmin hadn't gone far. He had simply gone over to Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven and begun to set up a rudimentary stack of branches between them. He magically dried the wood, struck a match from his pocket, and lit a small bonfire, so that the two weaker ones wouldn't freeze to death while waiting for their clothes to dry.
Having lit the fire, Xuanmin walked back and stood in front of Xue Xian again.
Xue Xian glared at him. "What now?"
Xuanmin unhooked the copper coin pendant from his hip and rubbed it with his thumb. Then he said to Xue Xian, "Reach out your hand."
Suspicious, Xue Xian extended his hand. Xuanmin placed the pendant into his palm. "Some magical items deplete their magical power after a certain amount of time, but can be used for its other effects."
As he said this, Xuanmin glanced at Xue Xian's paralysed legs.
Of course, Xue Xian had heard of this idea before, but "magical items" were instruments used by mortals and of no use to him, so he had never thought about it. The fact that copper coin pendants became covered in a layer of oil after some time was precisely because their magical power was being depleted. These sensitive items were excellent accessories for exorcists, as their functions ranged from calculating feng shui to controlling the five natural elements. As long as you had the skill, you could do anything.
You could do anything, which implied... it could even help someone grow his body back.
Having seen Xuanmin scan his legs, Xue Xian understood what the monk meant. Only...
To most exorcists, such magical instruments were as precious as life. Even for another person to touch the object would be a great offense, so it was completely unheard of to willingly put it in someone else's hands.
Xue Xian stared at the pendant in his hands and could not think of anything to say, nor even how to feel.
Finally, he couldn't help but say, "Did you eat rat poison?"
Xuanmin sighed. The demon seemed incredulous. He dangled the pendant in front of Xue Xian and swung it, then swung it again... giving Xuanmin the opportunity to take it back.
But as he swung it for the third time, Xuanmin pushed Xue Xian's claw back and said, "There's a seal on the coins that has not yet been undone. But it should still be useful. I don't need it at the moment, so you can have it."
"Seal?" Xue Xian repeated, surprised, but quickly seemed to understand –– so that's why the coins looked so drab and grey, as if they were ordinary coins with no magic in them at all. But... "Who sealed them? You?"
Xuanmin shook his head. "I don't remember. Each coin has its own seal. Recently, two of them seem to have started to come loose. Perhaps we'll be able to undo them soon."
Xue Xian bit the tip of his tongue and pondered this. In the end, he accepted the pendant –– before when he'd been a paper man and a marble, he could take advantage of his small size and let the coins quicken his healing.**** But now that he'd returned to his original body, whether he was in human form or dragon form, he could no longer go ahead and stick to Xuanmin's hip.
What a scene... even thinking about it made Xue Xian shudder, let alone actually making it a reality. So in recent days, Xue Xian's healing process had suddenly slowed down significantly. He could still feel the change, but compared to before it was far slower. He didn't want to constantly drag his two lame legs around, waiting for others to carry him places.
It was downright humiliating.
Xue Xian mulled this all over. Then he clutched the pendant tighter and closed his eyes to focus on healing.
A half-complete talisman not being as effective as a full talisman, it took some time for Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven's clothes, and their shocked faces, to return to some semblance of normal.
Once Twenty-Seven recovered, he immediately felt guilty for burdening the rest of the group. He asked Jiang Shining, "Aren't you in a hurry to see your sister?"
Jiang Shining, sitting on a rock not far from him, looked back at the dim lantern glow of the distant city. "We have to wait for dawn. We're right at the door anyway, so there's no rush."
There was a curfew within the city at night, and its gates were shut tight, with no one allowed to leave or enter unless it was an emergency. Even if they did get in, it wasn't as if they could go knocking on someone's door in the middle of the night. But it seemed that much of the night had already gone by, and the pre-dawn bells would be ringing soon.
"The last time I saw my sister was three years ago. She came back to Ningyang after she heard what happened." Jiang Shining muttered. "I can't remember much of what happened after I died –– it only got better after I became a paper man –– but I do remember how much she cried. I can even hear it now..."
Once the pre-dawn bells rang and the city gates opened, the townspeople would slowly begin to rouse too. He would be able to see his sister again, see if she was doing well, and finally help the trapped souls of their parents transcend.
Throughout his short life, Jiang Shining had never really spent much time away from home, and was not familiar with that strange, nervous feeling that appeared when one was close to returning home.
But now, by the shores of that unknown lake, gazing at the gates of a city he was supposed to consider as a home, realising that he only needed to wait a little bit longer before all of his problems would disappear, leaving him free and at ease forever, he suddenly felt a sense of hesitation...
Dang––
Some hours later, that 3am pre-dawn bell finally rippled forth from the city center.
The group quickly tidied up and made their way to the city wall. And with a creak, the ancient gates were pushed open by the guards, the view of the town within was revealed to them, along with a mysterious smell.
