Chapter 67: Dog Tags (II)
Outside, the sky had long turned to a deep blue without their paying attention. For once, the night was not windy, and the entire, vast forest within the mountain hollow stood absolutely still, without even the soft noise of leaves rustling against each other, so that there was an eerie calmness.
The black bird, which really did seem to belong to Xuanmin, had flown out of the room as soon as the sun had set and was now perched somewhere inside the dark forest, every one in a while crying out in an idle, slow manner.
But the bird's cry did not sound like a normal caw –– instead it was far closer to a human sigh. Its echoing sighs made the night seem gloomy, as though haunted, which explained why all those rumors about Dustpan Mountain had proliferated.
The bird's sighs resonated within the mountain hollow, sounding much louder and nearer than they really were.
The poisonous fog that Xue Xian had blown away that day reappeared with the night, gliding deceptively slowly across the hollow. Soon, it had become a dense blanket around the forest again.
This fog was far heavier than normal fog, and white and soupy like a block of congealed fat. In no time, it had swallowed everything, so that anyone trying to walk through it would not even be able to see their own five fingers in front of them. And if someone was standing close to them, they would only be able to hear them, and not see them.
Thankfully Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven left early, for if they'd encountered such a fog on their journey, they would be lucky to survive.
But unlike them, Xue Xian and Xuanmin did not fear the fog, and even when they'd dissipated it earlier it had been more out of consideration for the other two. Xue Xian and Xuanmin had their own ways of avoiding the effects of poisons, so their bodies did not, in reality, feel the effects of the fog at all.
As the fog crept in again, it felt far denser than it had been before Xue Xian had repelled it. Now, even the bamboo building could not escape it: the fog slithered in through the gaps in the windows and filled the entire ground floor with blinding whiteness, as well as a chilling cold air.
Yet, amid the freezing chill, Xue Xian was so hot that he was sweating all over.
He frowned and tugged at his robes. The sleeves that he'd folded up earlier came loose and swayed off his thin frame.
Because he was wearing all black, it was impossible to tell, but he was in fact completely drenched in sweat. The thin cloth, laden with moisture, stuck uncomfortably to his back and arms, but hung off him from the front, so that his collar revealed a long slice of his neck and torso.
Having been half-paralysed for six months, Xue Xian had lost a lot of weight, and shed much of the muscle on his body so that only a thin, lean layer remained. Now, the clammy sweat made his skin glow dimly under the lantern light, giving him a renewed air of sturdiness.
He was still sitting on the table, his two hands gripping its side, his head leaning forward so that the sweat on his forehead was drooling into his eyelids. His eyes were half-closed, and the moisture blurred everything in his vision.
He didn't know how much worse the third dose of dragon spit was compared to Xuanmin's feverish state the previous night. He only knew that, right now, he felt unbearably hot, and that the sweat was washing across his body in ceaseless waves. He was also much more sensitive than usual, and could not move a single inch of his skin or even a single hair on his body. Even the sensation of the sweat seeping out of his pores was enough to startle him and make his entire body tremble.
He needed to find a way to direct the heat and the accompanying anxiety out of his body, but he had no idea how. Besides, he was so deeply submerged in the heat that his whole skeleton felt as though it were swimming in hot sweat, giving him an indescribable bloated sensation. Even to raise his hand from the table had become an almost impossible task.
In his daze, the sigh of the crow outside became an uncanny whisper in his ear that made his ear itch, which in turn sent more shivers down his body.
He had hoped Xuanmin would come up with an idea. After all, their senses were experiencing the same thing. But Xuanmin was still repressing it, whereas Xue Xian saw no end nor limit to the scorching heat inside him. If it kept on like this, he really would...
Xue Xian squinted. He shook his head, forcing himself to stay awake.
But as he moved, beads of sweat ran down his neck, triggering the tingling nerves in his skin. Gently, like a dragonfly skidding across the water, the sweat streamed down to his chest.
Xue Xian tightened his grip on the side of the table and took a deep breath –– another shock.
He couldn't remember if he had spoken to Xuanmin. Perhaps he had called out for him once or twice, or perhaps his voice had become stuck in the bottom of his throat, and had never actually come out.
He did not know how much time had passed. As his eyelids began to flutter shut again, the thick fog inside the room –– whether provoked by him or controlled by someone else –– suddenly grew even denser. It clouded over even the lantern by his side and the bottom half of his own robes.
The white fog before his eyes made him even more disoriented. He frowned and took some more deep, slow breaths, scanning his half-shut eyes aimlessly across the floor of the room. His eyelids, drenched in fine beads of sweat, slowly... slowly... dragged themselves open and shut, yet never fully closing.
In his ever-deeper daze, he thought he could hear Xuanmin speak to him –– the monk's voice felt both close by and far away at the same time. He was saying, "Give me your hand."
Xue Xian did not know if he had heard Xuanmin correctly, but he automatically loosed the grip of one of his hands and lethargically pointed outward. Immediately, his hand was being held by another. That hand gripping his was hot to the touch, but strong, and as it held him tightly, he felt as though it were the only thing propping him up.
Slowly, gradually, Xue Xian began to lean into that hand until his entire weight was pressing against it.
He tightened his own grip and opened his mouth to say something, but in the next instant, no words came out. Instead, the breath moving in and out of his nose suddenly became heavier. Because another hand had reached out from the white fog and touched the skin on the curve of his waist.
Xue Xian's eyelids stopped blinking as a shudder passed through them and his breath quickened.
All of that overwhelming heat and anxiety inside him suddenly found an out. He frowned and loosened his other hand's grip on the table, violently grabbing the hand that rested on his waist and pulling it closer toward him. As he grasped that second hand, he unconsciously dragged it beneath his loosely folded robe.
"Don't move," said the person whose hand he'd seized. The fog was too dense, and Xue Xian saw nothing before him except a white oblivion, and could not see Xuanmin's face –– but in his low voice, he could hear a sense of peace, as well as, perhaps because of the fever, a slight huskiness.
But they were already at this stage. Xue Xian had no intention of obeying. He guided that hand beneath his robes, searching, and as the hand rushed hungrily across his body, the thin cloth of his robe shifted too, the hand touched him almost manically now, it couldn't stop...
The anxiety within him was consuming all parts of his body, and Xue Xian's mind was still utterly blank. He was dimly aware, at some point, and somehow, the silent person helping him pulled him closer, so close that he had to pry his knees part slightly in order to let him stand steady. So close that, in his daze, as that hand tugged up and down, he thought he could feel the other person react, too.
Yet he still not could see his face –– he could only hear his breathing, so close that their breaths seemed to be intertwined, entangled.
And, somehow, Xue Xian's other hand, the one leaning into Xuanmin's hand, had become clasped against the table. As the other hand moved, his hand against the table clenched into a fist and let go, over and over. And his forehead was burrowed in the other person's shoulder, his half-closed eyes still shrouded by the mist.
Xuanmin seemed to be telling him again not to move, and then, for some reason, tried to step away, but he held on tightly and would not let him leave.
The discomfort caused by the dragon spit was far worse than normal such states, so that it was a long time before that anxiety within Xue Xian began to near its peak. He thought he might make a noise –– he was so close to relief.
In that moment, he himself couldn't figure out whether it was to ease his discomfort, or to hold on tighter to Xuanmin's hand, but his fingers began to tremble desperately, and his entire spine was rigid with tension.
Then, he suddenly burrowed his head into the crook of Xuanmin's neck and squeezed his eyes shut as the sense of anxiety finally left his body.
He remained there, silent and tense, for a while, and then slowly began to relax, finally beginning to breathe again. Another wave of sweat poured down his body, the moisture seeping through his robe.
Yet dragon spit was too powerful, and not so easily defeated. Soon, that anxiety surged within him once again...
Everything in the night around him had been split into fragmented images by that fog, so that, looking back at when Xuanmin had helped him, Xue Xian did not know how long they had tussled, nor if he had bitten his neck...
But no longer how long it had been, that fog had lingered, and Xue Xian had not at all been able to see Xuanmin's face. It was a strange, indescribable feeling, tinged with a slight, unnerving awkwardness, so that even Xue Xian, who had up til now been open to everything, had felt flustered.
After a long time, Xue Xian finally felt himself become fully calm. The anxiety within him seemed to have gone away, leaving a faint impression, which waxed and waned at the bottom of his heart, and, with the dissipating sense of hotness, was slowly seeping away.
He leant against the table and wound down. Soon, his restless hands were fiddling with the lantern again, and as the weak flame inside the lantern grew brighter, that dense fog suddenly disappeared too, as though it knew.
Xuanmin had summoned the fog on purpose...
Xue Xian thought this, but was too exhausted to say it out loud. When the poisonous fog had finally lifted, he casually scanned the room again, and saw that the bottom half of his robe, which he had lifted away to release heat, had now been gently drawn back in its place, and everything on that once pristine table had become a scattered mess. Under the glow of the lamp, he could even see streaks of sweat left behind by their hands pressed against the table, humid yet too vague to make out.
Not far from him, Xuanmin was kneeling on a praying mat with his eyes closed, silently meditating. By his hands were some of the books he'd extracted from the bookshelf, stacked up neatly. As though he had never even left the mat.
Where Xuanmin sat, everything was clean and tidy, in great contrast to the clutter and disarray around Xue Xian –– so that for a brief moment, Xue Xian had a doubt, and wondered whether all that had been another vision.
He looked down at his own hands: thankfully, his wrists were mottled with the marks of another person's tight grasp –– or else he would really have begun to believe that he'd experienced more Heart Demons.
Xue Xian gazed at those bruises for some time, then raised his head to say to Xuanmin, "Courtesy demands reciprocity. Come over here and let me give you a hand. If you want, you can bring back some more mist. No one will be able to see anything. You can pretend it's all a dream."
Xuanmin did not even open his eyes. He paused, then quietly said, "No need. It's been resolved."
Xue Xian was still dazed by the sense of relief that had flooded into him, so his reaction was almost idiotically slow. "Resolved? How is that possible? If meditation could cure it then why did I––"
Suddenly, he stopped himself and shut his mouth, swallowing the second half of his sentence.
Xuanmin was silent again. Finally, he said, "When you were resolved, I stopped feeling the sense of discomfort."
Xue Xian slowly digested the meaning behind those words, then sat there numbly. He wished he could spit on that bald donkey's disrespectful face...
Great. It was as though he had let loose a volley of arrows at his enemy, but the damn things turned in the middle of their journey and come right back into his own eye...
"Lend me your belt," Xue Xian said with a blank expression on his face.
Xuanmin did not understand what he meant. Although he still did not open his eyes, he frowned and said, "What for?"
"I don't really want to live anymore," Xue Xian deadpanned. "Let me hang myself off your doorframe."
Xuanmin looked up at him, but did not reply.
"Will you lend it to me or not?" Xue Xian asked.
Xuanmin retracted his gaze. "No."
Xue Xian let out an annoyed scoff and went back to fiddling with the lantern flame, deciding no longer to speak.
It hadn't been that bad when they'd been talking. Now that the room fell into silence, a faint sense of awkwardness and intimacy rushed to fill the space. Xue Xian looked down for a bit in contemplation, then said, "What time is it? If you've finished here, shall we go back to the Fangs?"
Just as he spoke, before Xuanmin even had the time to respond, Xue Xian felt something in his pocket suddenly move.
Chapter 67: Dog Tags (II)
Outside, the sky had long turned to a deep blue without their paying attention. For once, the night was not windy, and the entire, vast forest within the mountain hollow stood absolutely still, without even the soft noise of leaves rustling against each other, so that there was an eerie calmness.
The black bird, which really did seem to belong to Xuanmin, had flown out of the room as soon as the sun had set and was now perched somewhere inside the dark forest, every one in a while crying out in an idle, slow manner.
But the bird's cry did not sound like a normal caw –– instead it was far closer to a human sigh. Its echoing sighs made the night seem gloomy, as though haunted, which explained why all those rumors about Dustpan Mountain had proliferated.
The bird's sighs resonated within the mountain hollow, sounding much louder and nearer than they really were.
The poisonous fog that Xue Xian had blown away that day reappeared with the night, gliding deceptively slowly across the hollow. Soon, it had become a dense blanket around the forest again.
This fog was far heavier than normal fog, and white and soupy like a block of congealed fat. In no time, it had swallowed everything, so that anyone trying to walk through it would not even be able to see their own five fingers in front of them. And if someone was standing close to them, they would only be able to hear them, and not see them.
Thankfully Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven left early, for if they'd encountered such a fog on their journey, they would be lucky to survive.
But unlike them, Xue Xian and Xuanmin did not fear the fog, and even when they'd dissipated it earlier it had been more out of consideration for the other two. Xue Xian and Xuanmin had their own ways of avoiding the effects of poisons, so their bodies did not, in reality, feel the effects of the fog at all.
As the fog crept in again, it felt far denser than it had been before Xue Xian had repelled it. Now, even the bamboo building could not escape it: the fog slithered in through the gaps in the windows and filled the entire ground floor with blinding whiteness, as well as a chilling cold air.
Yet, amid the freezing chill, Xue Xian was so hot that he was sweating all over.
He frowned and tugged at his robes. The sleeves that he'd folded up earlier came loose and swayed off his thin frame.
Because he was wearing all black, it was impossible to tell, but he was in fact completely drenched in sweat. The thin cloth, laden with moisture, stuck uncomfortably to his back and arms, but hung off him from the front, so that his collar revealed a long slice of his neck and torso.
Having been half-paralysed for six months, Xue Xian had lost a lot of weight, and shed much of the muscle on his body so that only a thin, lean layer remained. Now, the clammy sweat made his skin glow dimly under the lantern light, giving him a renewed air of sturdiness.
He was still sitting on the table, his two hands gripping its side, his head leaning forward so that the sweat on his forehead was drooling into his eyelids. His eyes were half-closed, and the moisture blurred everything in his vision.
He didn't know how much worse the third dose of dragon spit was compared to Xuanmin's feverish state the previous night. He only knew that, right now, he felt unbearably hot, and that the sweat was washing across his body in ceaseless waves. He was also much more sensitive than usual, and could not move a single inch of his skin or even a single hair on his body. Even the sensation of the sweat seeping out of his pores was enough to startle him and make his entire body tremble.
He needed to find a way to direct the heat and the accompanying anxiety out of his body, but he had no idea how. Besides, he was so deeply submerged in the heat that his whole skeleton felt as though it were swimming in hot sweat, giving him an indescribable bloated sensation. Even to raise his hand from the table had become an almost impossible task.
In his daze, the sigh of the crow outside became an uncanny whisper in his ear that made his ear itch, which in turn sent more shivers down his body.
He had hoped Xuanmin would come up with an idea. After all, their senses were experiencing the same thing. But Xuanmin was still repressing it, whereas Xue Xian saw no end nor limit to the scorching heat inside him. If it kept on like this, he really would...
Xue Xian squinted. He shook his head, forcing himself to stay awake.
But as he moved, beads of sweat ran down his neck, triggering the tingling nerves in his skin. Gently, like a dragonfly skidding across the water, the sweat streamed down to his chest.
Xue Xian tightened his grip on the side of the table and took a deep breath –– another shock.
He couldn't remember if he had spoken to Xuanmin. Perhaps he had called out for him once or twice, or perhaps his voice had become stuck in the bottom of his throat, and had never actually come out.
He did not know how much time had passed. As his eyelids began to flutter shut again, the thick fog inside the room –– whether provoked by him or controlled by someone else –– suddenly grew even denser. It clouded over even the lantern by his side and the bottom half of his own robes.
The white fog before his eyes made him even more disoriented. He frowned and took some more deep, slow breaths, scanning his half-shut eyes aimlessly across the floor of the room. His eyelids, drenched in fine beads of sweat, slowly... slowly... dragged themselves open and shut, yet never fully closing.
In his ever-deeper daze, he thought he could hear Xuanmin speak to him –– the monk's voice felt both close by and far away at the same time. He was saying, "Give me your hand."
Xue Xian did not know if he had heard Xuanmin correctly, but he automatically loosed the grip of one of his hands and lethargically pointed outward. Immediately, his hand was being held by another. That hand gripping his was hot to the touch, but strong, and as it held him tightly, he felt as though it were the only thing propping him up.
Slowly, gradually, Xue Xian began to lean into that hand until his entire weight was pressing against it.
He tightened his own grip and opened his mouth to say something, but in the next instant, no words came out. Instead, the breath moving in and out of his nose suddenly became heavier. Because another hand had reached out from the white fog and touched the skin on the curve of his waist.
Xue Xian's eyelids stopped blinking as a shudder passed through them and his breath quickened.
All of that overwhelming heat and anxiety inside him suddenly found an out. He frowned and loosened his other hand's grip on the table, violently grabbing the hand that rested on his waist and pulling it closer toward him. As he grasped that second hand, he unconsciously dragged it beneath his loosely folded robe.
"Don't move," said the person whose hand he'd seized. The fog was too dense, and Xue Xian saw nothing before him except a white oblivion, and could not see Xuanmin's face –– but in his low voice, he could hear a sense of peace, as well as, perhaps because of the fever, a slight huskiness.
But they were already at this stage. Xue Xian had no intention of obeying. He guided that hand beneath his robes, searching, and as the hand rushed hungrily across his body, the thin cloth of his robe shifted too, the hand touched him almost manically now, it couldn't stop...
The anxiety within him was consuming all parts of his body, and Xue Xian's mind was still utterly blank. He was dimly aware, at some point, and somehow, the silent person helping him pulled him closer, so close that he had to pry his knees part slightly in order to let him stand steady. So close that, in his daze, as that hand tugged up and down, he thought he could feel the other person react, too.
Yet he still not could see his face –– he could only hear his breathing, so close that their breaths seemed to be intertwined, entangled.
And, somehow, Xue Xian's other hand, the one leaning into Xuanmin's hand, had become clasped against the table. As the other hand moved, his hand against the table clenched into a fist and let go, over and over. And his forehead was burrowed in the other person's shoulder, his half-closed eyes still shrouded by the mist.
Xuanmin seemed to be telling him again not to move, and then, for some reason, tried to step away, but he held on tightly and would not let him leave.
The discomfort caused by the dragon spit was far worse than normal such states, so that it was a long time before that anxiety within Xue Xian began to near its peak. He thought he might make a noise –– he was so close to relief.
In that moment, he himself couldn't figure out whether it was to ease his discomfort, or to hold on tighter to Xuanmin's hand, but his fingers began to tremble desperately, and his entire spine was rigid with tension.
Then, he suddenly burrowed his head into the crook of Xuanmin's neck and squeezed his eyes shut as the sense of anxiety finally left his body.
He remained there, silent and tense, for a while, and then slowly began to relax, finally beginning to breathe again. Another wave of sweat poured down his body, the moisture seeping through his robe.
Yet dragon spit was too powerful, and not so easily defeated. Soon, that anxiety surged within him once again...
Everything in the night around him had been split into fragmented images by that fog, so that, looking back at when Xuanmin had helped him, Xue Xian did not know how long they had tussled, nor if he had bitten his neck...
But no longer how long it had been, that fog had lingered, and Xue Xian had not at all been able to see Xuanmin's face. It was a strange, indescribable feeling, tinged with a slight, unnerving awkwardness, so that even Xue Xian, who had up til now been open to everything, had felt flustered.
After a long time, Xue Xian finally felt himself become fully calm. The anxiety within him seemed to have gone away, leaving a faint impression, which waxed and waned at the bottom of his heart, and, with the dissipating sense of hotness, was slowly seeping away.
He leant against the table and wound down. Soon, his restless hands were fiddling with the lantern again, and as the weak flame inside the lantern grew brighter, that dense fog suddenly disappeared too, as though it knew.
Xuanmin had summoned the fog on purpose...
Xue Xian thought this, but was too exhausted to say it out loud. When the poisonous fog had finally lifted, he casually scanned the room again, and saw that the bottom half of his robe, which he had lifted away to release heat, had now been gently drawn back in its place, and everything on that once pristine table had become a scattered mess. Under the glow of the lamp, he could even see streaks of sweat left behind by their hands pressed against the table, humid yet too vague to make out.
Not far from him, Xuanmin was kneeling on a praying mat with his eyes closed, silently meditating. By his hands were some of the books he'd extracted from the bookshelf, stacked up neatly. As though he had never even left the mat.
Where Xuanmin sat, everything was clean and tidy, in great contrast to the clutter and disarray around Xue Xian –– so that for a brief moment, Xue Xian had a doubt, and wondered whether all that had been another vision.
He looked down at his own hands: thankfully, his wrists were mottled with the marks of another person's tight grasp –– or else he would really have begun to believe that he'd experienced more Heart Demons.
Xue Xian gazed at those bruises for some time, then raised his head to say to Xuanmin, "Courtesy demands reciprocity. Come over here and let me give you a hand. If you want, you can bring back some more mist. No one will be able to see anything. You can pretend it's all a dream."
Xuanmin did not even open his eyes. He paused, then quietly said, "No need. It's been resolved."
Xue Xian was still dazed by the sense of relief that had flooded into him, so his reaction was almost idiotically slow. "Resolved? How is that possible? If meditation could cure it then why did I––"
Suddenly, he stopped himself and shut his mouth, swallowing the second half of his sentence.
Xuanmin was silent again. Finally, he said, "When you were resolved, I stopped feeling the sense of discomfort."
Xue Xian slowly digested the meaning behind those words, then sat there numbly. He wished he could spit on that bald donkey's disrespectful face...
Great. It was as though he had let loose a volley of arrows at his enemy, but the damn things turned in the middle of their journey and come right back into his own eye...
"Lend me your belt," Xue Xian said with a blank expression on his face.
Xuanmin did not understand what he meant. Although he still did not open his eyes, he frowned and said, "What for?"
"I don't really want to live anymore," Xue Xian deadpanned. "Let me hang myself off your doorframe."
Xuanmin looked up at him, but did not reply.
"Will you lend it to me or not?" Xue Xian asked.
Xuanmin retracted his gaze. "No."
Xue Xian let out an annoyed scoff and went back to fiddling with the lantern flame, deciding no longer to speak.
It hadn't been that bad when they'd been talking. Now that the room fell into silence, a faint sense of awkwardness and intimacy rushed to fill the space. Xue Xian looked down for a bit in contemplation, then said, "What time is it? If you've finished here, shall we go back to the Fangs?"
Just as he spoke, before Xuanmin even had the time to respond, Xue Xian felt something in his pocket suddenly move.
