(*) lit. ancient "se". "Se" is a type of standing string instrument, it is also the same "se" in the novel title "jin se"
There is a saying, "A growing child can eat until his dad becomes broke."
Until now Jianghua can finally say he understands this saying. He is squeezing through a noisy market, reluctantly looking at Shi Wuduan who has eaten until his little belly grew round, and asks: "This time are you full?"
The fatty oil at the corner of his mouth not even wiped clean, upon hearing, Shi Wuduan nods and lowers his head to slurp the other half of the dumpling soup bowl. Only then, he smiles at Jianghua, revealing a little dimple on his right, little, round cheek with two little extruding fangs. He jumps down from the wooden chair, shouldering his luggage bag and says: "Thank you for your hospitality, senior. Senior, my shifu tells me to find you and get something, which is it, quickly give it to me, my wifey is still waiting for me."
Jianghua looks at him pretending to be all grown up and cannot help but laughs, then he crooks his fingers and taps his head: "You monkey, only remembering the lady from someone else's house. Have you ever studied seriously on Jiulu mountain? Come with me."
Shi Wuduan excitedly agrees to follow Jianghua, the trio of two-man one-bird going out of the city. Only then does Jianghua untie the ancient sword on his shoulder, reciting a spell and the sword grows longer within seconds, until it reaches nearly two meters. He turns and talks to Shi Wuduan: "Come up here."
Jiulu mountain is where cultivation geniuses appear frequently, so even though this telekinesis spell is not commonly seen, Shi Wuduan does not feel it is novel. But thinking that he will be riding on clouds soon, he becomes excited and jumps up in one motion. Jianghua makes hand spells and the ancient sword stably rises up to the sky. Barely a few moments later and the plants and animals on the ground have become incorrigible.
The higher they rise the more bone-chilling the wind gets, and even though the ancient sword is extremely broad and bears the weight of two persons, it still swings back and forth with the wind, and looking down feels like staring into an abyss. Jianghua himself naturally is used to this, but fearing that Shi Wuduan would be afraid of heights, he picks up and embraces the teenager that is only as tall as his chest.
Shi Wuduan was about to tell him something, but the moment the words left his mouth it is already blown away by the winds, so he struggles and yanks his head out of Jianghua's chest, looking here and there while vibrating with excitement. Seeing the tassel being whipped violently by the winds, he feels it is something so small but can expand until it is so large that it is impervious to damage by wind, so this little brat has the sudden impulse to crawl on the sword still hanging in mid-air to investigate – but was sternly stopped by Jianghua Sanren.
This little monkey is totally not afraid of falling, but Jianghua suddenly realises he himself is a little afraid.
After riding on the sword for no longer than half a day, they reach a mountain and the ancient sword slows down. Shi Wuduan stares raptly, but can only deduce this is somewhere in Shu Zhong or Xiao Xiang. Mountains fill his vision, the mountain slopes are incredibly gentle and there are no signs of large stones protruding.
Jianghua directly leads him to the middle of a mountain, standing in the middle of a sea of bamboos.
Jianghua Sanren puts away his ancient sword and leads the way forward.
The sea of bamboos does not look like it was naturally formed, even though the traces are faint but there are signs of manmade structures. Shi Wuduan focuses his stare on the layers upon layers of bamboos that stretch until the end seemingly in a random manner, seriously presses his fingers to calculate, then asks: "Senior, I see this is the Zhou Yuan array, right?"
Jianghua is rather surprised, he cannot help but turns and look at him, then smiles: "You monkey know of the Zhou Yuan array?"
Shi Wuduan says: "Yeah, I've learnt a bit of it, shifu says there is not separating calculating stars and arranging arrays."
Jianghua then continues to ask: "Then you say, if I'm not leading the way, what methods do you have to break this array?"
Shi Wuduan glances around with a serious expression, says: "Method to break this array ... I have ah."
Jianghua happily thinks to himself, even though this child's courage is large enough to irritate people's head, naughty enough to make someone's heart shiver, but this portion of intelligence and natural gifts are really too rarely seen. Then he hears Shi Wuduan says: "This array is made from bamboos, just find a day with the right wind direction and burn it and it will be broken."
Jianghua Sanren: "..."
The jade sparrow once again violently flapped its wings on Shi Wuduan's head.
"You brat, then what if I use stones to make the array?"
Shi Wuduan contemplates for a while, then says: "Ah, then I'll stay outside of the array to call out to you. Senior, you're not going to let me eat air to live right."
Jianghua Sanren really does not know what to say, generally, he has finally understood the bittersweet taste of his old friend these past few years.
The two of them crosses the sea of bamboos, to see a small house surrounded by a bamboo fence, which is wrapped in an unknown yellow species of flowers, which even has a sheen of early dew condensed on top and looks very pretty. Shi Wuduan sees this house is not that small; the rooms inside the bamboo-made tower are well-stocked and is silently surprised. Inwardly, he thinks, even this wandering xian senior stays inside a house.
Jianghua points to a room next to the bamboo-made tower and tells him: "You stay in there for now."
While he was speaking, a young man walks out from that room, respectfully reporting to Jianghua Sanren: "Xian master, you have returned."
Jianghua nods, then he points out the young man to Shi Wuduan: "He's called Hetong (*), his real form is a cultivation crane. The past few years his cultivation has improved quite well, if I am not present, you can come to him with your problems."
(*) lit. crane servant
Hetong turns to the still confused Shi Wuduan, maintaining his respectful stance, but without much emotions, says: "Little dao-xiong please, I have prepared your place of stay."
Shi Wuduan looks at him, then looks at Jianghua, cannot help but frowns and says: "Senior, didn't my shifu say ..."
Jianghua interrupts him: "Do you know what your shifu want you to take?"
Shi Wuduan hesitates for a while before shaking his head. Jianghua smiles and says: "You shifu wants you to gain experience. You star calculation skills are improving too quickly, Xuan sect is originally not an expert in this field. I travel a lot, I know of things like these arrays, even know of some not-very-official methods, so he entrusted you to me to let me teach you some simple calculation methods. You can stay here first, there is no needs to rush back."
After he finishes, seemingly unwilling to say anymore, he pushes Shi Wuduan's shoulder forward then returns to his bamboo tower. Hetong, standing close by, rushes Shi Wuduan to follow him, but Shi Wuduan cannot help but thinks inwardly, did shifu really let me come with senior to learn skills?
Even a child who has never descended from the mountain like him knows clearly to cultivate the xian path and the dao path are two completely different things. Even more, even though the Taoist master and Jianghua Sanren have known each other for many years, there is absolutely no reason for the sect leader of the Xuan sect to entrust his close disciple under Jianghua Sanren's tutelage.
Shi Wuduan, with a lot of suspicions, stores his luggage away in his room, then cannot resist but asks until everything is clear, but though that Hetong has delicate and seemingly bright features he is actually someone who barely even speaks. You would ask him once and he would know nothing thrice. Seeing that Shi Wuduan has finished storing his luggage, Hetong straightaway leaves without saying anything. Shi Wuduan and the jade sparrow stare at each other for a while, then reaching a tacit understanding, both start to look around this room.
Jianghua's treatment for him is obviously not bad, while the room's facilities are not gilded with gold nor silver, but they are clean and aesthetic, and sufficient. Next to the bed is a small bamboo curtain. After passing, you will see it is linked to a small door. Shi Wuduan pushes open the door and sees stairs leading downwards.
He calls out to the jade sparrow: "Stupid bird, come here quick, come here quick, let's headed down and see."
The one-man one-bird duo excitedly heads down the stone pavements. Inside, they hear something like the sound of water trickling down. Further under, they see another cave, which looks like where the spring water passes through and somehow left a small pond, its water clear enough to see through to the bottom. Shi Wuduan uses his hand to test and cup the water. Feeling the water is incredibly cool, he brings up to his mouth and drinks two mouthfuls. He feels his water is unusually sweet, even more delicious than the Ganlu spring water that the little spirits in Cangyun Valley rush to drink.
The jade sparrow jumps on a rock, flaps its wings and calls out twice. Shi Wuduan follows the direction it was pointing and sees there is still a stone door next to the pond. Pushing open this stone door, inside there is a book storage room that is structured like a reading room.
Shi Wuduan climbs on the small table, takes a book from the shelf and randomly opens it up. It is a travel journal by an unknown author, written about strange and novel occurrences Shi Wuduan has never heard of. Surprised, Shi Wuduan opens another book, this time it is a book on the theory behind calculating stars. From the few pages he sees, written in the book is only the simplistic "three joints four sides five chaos" calculation but it does not teach how to calculate but narrate what the design of each step is and the reasoning behind them.
Shi Wuduan sits cross-legged on the table, starting to flip through the book. He is not even half-way through before he realises a lot of questions he was not clear about previously has been enlightened. Afterwards, he cannot sit still, putting down the current one he draws out a few more different books. Whether the author is well-known or unknown, or even someone he has never heard of before, the content written inside is something he has never known.
Jiulu mountain does not lack preserved books, even though he is stubborn, these past few years under the supervision of the Taoist master he has never slacked off on studying. Not to mention, his natural talents are much more than that of a normal child; having a photographic memory, he himself thinks he has gotten skills. Only until now does he reconsider.
Right at this moment, the jaded sparrow crashes into something that causes a small echo that sounds like the sound of a three-string instrument. Immersed in reading, Shi Wuduan is startled by it. He jumps smoothly down the table and sees in the corner of the room there exhibits a qin ... no, it should be a se.
(*) qin and se are both Chinese string instrument. Google 琴 (qin) and 瑟 (se) for photos
There are intricate carvings on the instrument. Upon closer inspection, Shi Wuduan discovers the extraordinary trait of this thing. Normally, a typical ya se has twenty-three strings, even a song se has twenty-five strings, but according to his counting, this thing has fifty strings.
He cannot resist reaching out and plucking on the strings. The normal sounds of a guse are like the flow of water, a temperate sound that touches people's hearts, but with one pluck from him, he feels in the sounds on this se there is an unspeakable, lingering sorrow. He cannot stop himself from pausing, and the lingering sound takes a while to slowly disperse away, like a small drop of water falling into a pool. Shi Wuduan suddenly feels empty inside, like he is a little sad.
The moment he lost his concentration, the tip of his finger somehow gets a tiny cut, a single drop of blood rolls down the fifty-stringed guse, but like it is sucked into the instrument, disappearing in a blink of an eye.
Shi Wuduan gets startled, only to hear a voice from behind: "Seems like it has some destiny with you."
Shi Wuduan turns his head and sees that Jianghua Sanren has been standing there since time unknown, his expression unclear, only his eyes showing some complicated feelings.
"Senior."
Jianghua steps in and places the guse on the table, says: "This is an ancient artefact. I've heard that the songs performed by the fifty-stringed guse have a great sorrowful sound that evokes unending feelings, so the descendants have modified it to a twenty-five-string instrument. Now, a guse like that has long been lost and is almost never seen any more, I also have to go through a lot of difficulties to find this one."
His hand sweeps through the guse and the touching sound materialises yet again. Jianghua sees that the dazed look has appeared on Shi Wuduan's face yet again and cannot stop himself from letting out a sigh. Inwardly, he thinks what a small child, who plays around all day and in his most carefree age, yet he already exhibits a little sorrowful atmosphere, he only fears that in the future ...
He thinks back again on what the Taoist master said, about how everyone has their own fate, and sighs.
(*) lit. ancient "se". "Se" is a type of standing string instrument, it is also the same "se" in the novel title "jin se"
There is a saying, "A growing child can eat until his dad becomes broke."
Until now Jianghua can finally say he understands this saying. He is squeezing through a noisy market, reluctantly looking at Shi Wuduan who has eaten until his little belly grew round, and asks: "This time are you full?"
The fatty oil at the corner of his mouth not even wiped clean, upon hearing, Shi Wuduan nods and lowers his head to slurp the other half of the dumpling soup bowl. Only then, he smiles at Jianghua, revealing a little dimple on his right, little, round cheek with two little extruding fangs. He jumps down from the wooden chair, shouldering his luggage bag and says: "Thank you for your hospitality, senior. Senior, my shifu tells me to find you and get something, which is it, quickly give it to me, my wifey is still waiting for me."
Jianghua looks at him pretending to be all grown up and cannot help but laughs, then he crooks his fingers and taps his head: "You monkey, only remembering the lady from someone else's house. Have you ever studied seriously on Jiulu mountain? Come with me."
Shi Wuduan excitedly agrees to follow Jianghua, the trio of two-man one-bird going out of the city. Only then does Jianghua untie the ancient sword on his shoulder, reciting a spell and the sword grows longer within seconds, until it reaches nearly two meters. He turns and talks to Shi Wuduan: "Come up here."
Jiulu mountain is where cultivation geniuses appear frequently, so even though this telekinesis spell is not commonly seen, Shi Wuduan does not feel it is novel. But thinking that he will be riding on clouds soon, he becomes excited and jumps up in one motion. Jianghua makes hand spells and the ancient sword stably rises up to the sky. Barely a few moments later and the plants and animals on the ground have become incorrigible.
The higher they rise the more bone-chilling the wind gets, and even though the ancient sword is extremely broad and bears the weight of two persons, it still swings back and forth with the wind, and looking down feels like staring into an abyss. Jianghua himself naturally is used to this, but fearing that Shi Wuduan would be afraid of heights, he picks up and embraces the teenager that is only as tall as his chest.
Shi Wuduan was about to tell him something, but the moment the words left his mouth it is already blown away by the winds, so he struggles and yanks his head out of Jianghua's chest, looking here and there while vibrating with excitement. Seeing the tassel being whipped violently by the winds, he feels it is something so small but can expand until it is so large that it is impervious to damage by wind, so this little brat has the sudden impulse to crawl on the sword still hanging in mid-air to investigate – but was sternly stopped by Jianghua Sanren.
This little monkey is totally not afraid of falling, but Jianghua suddenly realises he himself is a little afraid.
After riding on the sword for no longer than half a day, they reach a mountain and the ancient sword slows down. Shi Wuduan stares raptly, but can only deduce this is somewhere in Shu Zhong or Xiao Xiang. Mountains fill his vision, the mountain slopes are incredibly gentle and there are no signs of large stones protruding.
Jianghua directly leads him to the middle of a mountain, standing in the middle of a sea of bamboos.
Jianghua Sanren puts away his ancient sword and leads the way forward.
The sea of bamboos does not look like it was naturally formed, even though the traces are faint but there are signs of manmade structures. Shi Wuduan focuses his stare on the layers upon layers of bamboos that stretch until the end seemingly in a random manner, seriously presses his fingers to calculate, then asks: "Senior, I see this is the Zhou Yuan array, right?"
Jianghua is rather surprised, he cannot help but turns and look at him, then smiles: "You monkey know of the Zhou Yuan array?"
Shi Wuduan says: "Yeah, I've learnt a bit of it, shifu says there is not separating calculating stars and arranging arrays."
Jianghua then continues to ask: "Then you say, if I'm not leading the way, what methods do you have to break this array?"
Shi Wuduan glances around with a serious expression, says: "Method to break this array ... I have ah."
Jianghua happily thinks to himself, even though this child's courage is large enough to irritate people's head, naughty enough to make someone's heart shiver, but this portion of intelligence and natural gifts are really too rarely seen. Then he hears Shi Wuduan says: "This array is made from bamboos, just find a day with the right wind direction and burn it and it will be broken."
Jianghua Sanren: "..."
The jade sparrow once again violently flapped its wings on Shi Wuduan's head.
"You brat, then what if I use stones to make the array?"
Shi Wuduan contemplates for a while, then says: "Ah, then I'll stay outside of the array to call out to you. Senior, you're not going to let me eat air to live right."
Jianghua Sanren really does not know what to say, generally, he has finally understood the bittersweet taste of his old friend these past few years.
The two of them crosses the sea of bamboos, to see a small house surrounded by a bamboo fence, which is wrapped in an unknown yellow species of flowers, which even has a sheen of early dew condensed on top and looks very pretty. Shi Wuduan sees this house is not that small; the rooms inside the bamboo-made tower are well-stocked and is silently surprised. Inwardly, he thinks, even this wandering xian senior stays inside a house.
Jianghua points to a room next to the bamboo-made tower and tells him: "You stay in there for now."
While he was speaking, a young man walks out from that room, respectfully reporting to Jianghua Sanren: "Xian master, you have returned."
Jianghua nods, then he points out the young man to Shi Wuduan: "He's called Hetong (*), his real form is a cultivation crane. The past few years his cultivation has improved quite well, if I am not present, you can come to him with your problems."
(*) lit. crane servant
Hetong turns to the still confused Shi Wuduan, maintaining his respectful stance, but without much emotions, says: "Little dao-xiong please, I have prepared your place of stay."
Shi Wuduan looks at him, then looks at Jianghua, cannot help but frowns and says: "Senior, didn't my shifu say ..."
Jianghua interrupts him: "Do you know what your shifu want you to take?"
Shi Wuduan hesitates for a while before shaking his head. Jianghua smiles and says: "You shifu wants you to gain experience. You star calculation skills are improving too quickly, Xuan sect is originally not an expert in this field. I travel a lot, I know of things like these arrays, even know of some not-very-official methods, so he entrusted you to me to let me teach you some simple calculation methods. You can stay here first, there is no needs to rush back."
After he finishes, seemingly unwilling to say anymore, he pushes Shi Wuduan's shoulder forward then returns to his bamboo tower. Hetong, standing close by, rushes Shi Wuduan to follow him, but Shi Wuduan cannot help but thinks inwardly, did shifu really let me come with senior to learn skills?
Even a child who has never descended from the mountain like him knows clearly to cultivate the xian path and the dao path are two completely different things. Even more, even though the Taoist master and Jianghua Sanren have known each other for many years, there is absolutely no reason for the sect leader of the Xuan sect to entrust his close disciple under Jianghua Sanren's tutelage.
Shi Wuduan, with a lot of suspicions, stores his luggage away in his room, then cannot resist but asks until everything is clear, but though that Hetong has delicate and seemingly bright features he is actually someone who barely even speaks. You would ask him once and he would know nothing thrice. Seeing that Shi Wuduan has finished storing his luggage, Hetong straightaway leaves without saying anything. Shi Wuduan and the jade sparrow stare at each other for a while, then reaching a tacit understanding, both start to look around this room.
Jianghua's treatment for him is obviously not bad, while the room's facilities are not gilded with gold nor silver, but they are clean and aesthetic, and sufficient. Next to the bed is a small bamboo curtain. After passing, you will see it is linked to a small door. Shi Wuduan pushes open the door and sees stairs leading downwards.
He calls out to the jade sparrow: "Stupid bird, come here quick, come here quick, let's headed down and see."
The one-man one-bird duo excitedly heads down the stone pavements. Inside, they hear something like the sound of water trickling down. Further under, they see another cave, which looks like where the spring water passes through and somehow left a small pond, its water clear enough to see through to the bottom. Shi Wuduan uses his hand to test and cup the water. Feeling the water is incredibly cool, he brings up to his mouth and drinks two mouthfuls. He feels his water is unusually sweet, even more delicious than the Ganlu spring water that the little spirits in Cangyun Valley rush to drink.
The jade sparrow jumps on a rock, flaps its wings and calls out twice. Shi Wuduan follows the direction it was pointing and sees there is still a stone door next to the pond. Pushing open this stone door, inside there is a book storage room that is structured like a reading room.
Shi Wuduan climbs on the small table, takes a book from the shelf and randomly opens it up. It is a travel journal by an unknown author, written about strange and novel occurrences Shi Wuduan has never heard of. Surprised, Shi Wuduan opens another book, this time it is a book on the theory behind calculating stars. From the few pages he sees, written in the book is only the simplistic "three joints four sides five chaos" calculation but it does not teach how to calculate but narrate what the design of each step is and the reasoning behind them.
Shi Wuduan sits cross-legged on the table, starting to flip through the book. He is not even half-way through before he realises a lot of questions he was not clear about previously has been enlightened. Afterwards, he cannot sit still, putting down the current one he draws out a few more different books. Whether the author is well-known or unknown, or even someone he has never heard of before, the content written inside is something he has never known.
Jiulu mountain does not lack preserved books, even though he is stubborn, these past few years under the supervision of the Taoist master he has never slacked off on studying. Not to mention, his natural talents are much more than that of a normal child; having a photographic memory, he himself thinks he has gotten skills. Only until now does he reconsider.
Right at this moment, the jaded sparrow crashes into something that causes a small echo that sounds like the sound of a three-string instrument. Immersed in reading, Shi Wuduan is startled by it. He jumps smoothly down the table and sees in the corner of the room there exhibits a qin ... no, it should be a se.
(*) qin and se are both Chinese string instrument. Google 琴 (qin) and 瑟 (se) for photos
There are intricate carvings on the instrument. Upon closer inspection, Shi Wuduan discovers the extraordinary trait of this thing. Normally, a typical ya se has twenty-three strings, even a song se has twenty-five strings, but according to his counting, this thing has fifty strings.
He cannot resist reaching out and plucking on the strings. The normal sounds of a guse are like the flow of water, a temperate sound that touches people's hearts, but with one pluck from him, he feels in the sounds on this se there is an unspeakable, lingering sorrow. He cannot stop himself from pausing, and the lingering sound takes a while to slowly disperse away, like a small drop of water falling into a pool. Shi Wuduan suddenly feels empty inside, like he is a little sad.
The moment he lost his concentration, the tip of his finger somehow gets a tiny cut, a single drop of blood rolls down the fifty-stringed guse, but like it is sucked into the instrument, disappearing in a blink of an eye.
Shi Wuduan gets startled, only to hear a voice from behind: "Seems like it has some destiny with you."
Shi Wuduan turns his head and sees that Jianghua Sanren has been standing there since time unknown, his expression unclear, only his eyes showing some complicated feelings.
"Senior."
Jianghua steps in and places the guse on the table, says: "This is an ancient artefact. I've heard that the songs performed by the fifty-stringed guse have a great sorrowful sound that evokes unending feelings, so the descendants have modified it to a twenty-five-string instrument. Now, a guse like that has long been lost and is almost never seen any more, I also have to go through a lot of difficulties to find this one."
His hand sweeps through the guse and the touching sound materialises yet again. Jianghua sees that the dazed look has appeared on Shi Wuduan's face yet again and cannot stop himself from letting out a sigh. Inwardly, he thinks what a small child, who plays around all day and in his most carefree age, yet he already exhibits a little sorrowful atmosphere, he only fears that in the future ...
He thinks back again on what the Taoist master said, about how everyone has their own fate, and sighs.
