Before Duan Ling can decide with Cai Yan what they’re going to do, the Mongolian soldiers have already barged into the village, throwing their torches to light the roofs, killing the villagers with their arrows. It is late at night, and many of the poor villagers are still in deep sleep when they lost their lives without knowing what had even happened to them. Some of them had ran out bathed in flames but they ended up trampled to death by galloping horses instead.
The soldiers roar with laughter as they treat the living as their playthings, kicking in the doors of the houses one by one after firing off round after round of arrows, looking for the apothecaries’ wives and children. But when one of them gets to a house he’s stabbed in the throat by Duan Ling hiding behind the door, and the soldier drops trembling to his knees.
Duan Ling drags the man into the house, and peers out with Cai Yan. Outside their window, they can see that more and more soldiers have shown up. They seem to be treating this place as a base.
“We must run now.” Duan Ling says, “They’re all remnants of the main body of their troops, and there’s only going to be more of them. If we stay here any longer it’ll be too late!”
Cai Yan takes a deep breath, watching Duan Ling. He’s about to say he’s going to cover Duan Ling’s escape when Duan Ling grabs his wrist and shakes his head very slowly.
Cai Yan knows what Duan Ling means: he doesn’t want anyone else to sacrifice themselves for him anymore. Even if he’s going to die they’re going to die together. Without waiting any longer, they jump out of the back window, putting great care in being quiet.
As soon as they leave the village they’re discovered by a newly arriving Mongolian soldier. The soldier fires two arrows at them, and they manage to dodge both. The soldier reins in his horse, staring after them with a puzzled expression, but instead of pursuing them he turns and enters the village.
Duan Ling’s heart is pounding out of his chest. Cai Yan is just thinking that they’ve avoided a catastrophe when there’s shouting behind them. The two of them call out with alarm and run into the woods.
“Hurry!” Cai Yan shouts.
The soldiers are laughing uproariously — they’re clearly treating the local villagers running from this place as prey, and they spur their horses on towards them as fast as they can as though they’re racing to see which of them can catch their prey first. In the pitch black night Duan Ling knows he has arrived at the cusp of life and death; if he doesn’t get away this time, death is the only thing that awaits him.
Duan Ling daren’t make a sound as he drags Cai Yan into the darkness. The terrain around the Xianbei Mountains is exceedingly complex, and neither of them has ever been here before so they have no idea what’s awaiting them. The bushes and shrubs cover them in scratches as they run, but they dare not stop; the intricate topography means they may step off solid ground at any given time and fall into a bottomless abyss. The trees look like ghostly shadows in the dark.
I can’t die … My dad is still waiting for me …
That’s all Duan Ling thinks about as he runs with all his might.
But a lasso flies toward him from behind and suddenly loops around his neck.
“Run!” It’s the last thing Duan Ling manages to say, as loudly as he can.
Cai Yan turns around, wishing to save him, but Duan Ling is being dragged so fast the momentum bounces him into the air, and he lands behind the shrubbery. The soldiers erupt in raucous laughter before they drag Duan Ling down the slope. Duan Ling is knocked against the mountain stones and shrubs, and as he’s jolted ceaselessly his hands clutch tightly at the tightening rope around his neck.
The mounted soldiers drag him all the way back to the apothecary village. Duan Ling is covered all over in cuts and bruises, and he feels as though his neck is about to break. Right after the soldiers get him back, they laugh lewdly several times before they start to talk to each other. A hand pulls him up by the hair and a dagger slips under the tight rope around his neck, cutting it away. Duan Ling falls to his knees, taking huge breaths that turn into dry heaving.
The soldier picks him up and expediently peels his robe away. As soon as he tears Duan Ling’s undershirt open he presses his face towards Duan Ling’s chest. Duan Ling’s jade arc is carelessly pulled off and tossed aside along with his robe where it falls onto the ground.
The Mongolian suddenly seems startled, and laughter erupts around him then — they’d just realised that Duan Ling is male.
Duan Ling gets it now; those soldiers thought he and Cai Yan were a young couple fleeing from the village, therefore they wanted to bring the woman back, and as for the man, they’re not going to worry about him.
The Mongolian soldier gives Duan Ling a ruthless slap on the face and the blow sets his head to ringing. If he has the will to resist and grab the other man’s sword hanging next to his waist, he can end the soldier’s life at any given time, yet he’ll also be shot into a sieve by the angry soldiers.
He doesn’t fight back. He lets them beat him until blood is seeping out of the corner of his mouth, but his patience rewards him with a most opportune time to resist. Alone, the soldier drags him into a house and begins to roughly undress.
There’s a corpse lying on the bed. The soldier strips himself down to nothing right next to the corpse and starts tearing Duan Ling’s underwear off. Duan Ling lets him do as he pleases until the soldier is making sucking noises with his teeth and saying something he can’t understand, when Duan Ling reaches for the bone knife he’s hidden in his boot.
The soldier grabs him by the hair and scrutinises his face for a beat before coming closer to kiss Duan Ling as though he’s a girl, when Duan Ling stabs him with the knife.
This move is precise to the extreme; the blade goes into the flesh at the side of the soldier’s neck, burying itself deep into his larynx. The soldier’s throat lets out a gurgling noise and puts his hand to his neck, but he has no way to call out for help. Duan Ling gives it a ferocious twist then, and blood sprays out of the wound. He lays the soldier carefully down on the bed right after. Outside, there are people drinking and laughing and an endless racket of merrymaking fills the air. No one else is going to pay more attention to him.
He jumps quietly out of the window at the back of the room and takes another path out of the village. Before him is a fathomless abyss, and he can fall down with a single misstep. He takes small steps with his back against the cliffside until he’s at a point where the two cliffsides are the closest; at the bottom of the abyss one can look up to see a single line of sky. However, the clouds have hidden the moon and he can’t tell whether that patch of darkness before him is a thicket or the cliff extending out from the other side.
I can’t die … I can’t die.
Dad is still looking for me.
Duan Ling recalls the words Li Jianhong has taught him, and all his fears evaporate at once, then he leaps across that line of sky. And he nearly makes it. His foot slips, he takes hold of a vine across the way, and as he pulls down with all his strength hoping to climb back up, the vine breaks with a quiet snap.
The uneven, rocky cliffside leaves countless marks on his body, and gripping the ripped vine tightly, Duan Ling falls into the dark.
Flames illuminate most of the night sky. Lost, Cai Yan is groping down the mountain path when he suddenly hears hoofbeats. He immediately retreats back into the forest.
One man and one horse trot down the winding mountain path together. The man reins in his horse, draws his sword, gets off the horse and goes searching in the bushes.
Cai Yan tries his best to be quiet.
The man suddenly attacks. Cai Yan isn’t able to block it in time and a palm hits him in the chest. All at once, his organs feel like they’ve exchanged places and the sword is sitting across his neck.
“Duan Ling?” It’s Lang Junxia’s voice.
Cai Yan immediately says, “It’s me!”
Wanlibenxiao winds through the circuitous mountain paths, carrying the two of them. Cai Yan finishes telling Lang Junxia everything that happened. Lang Junxia says nothing.
“You came down from another mountain top.” Lang Junxia says, “I know about the apothecary village. Gup!”
It takes a full two hours for Lang Junxia and Cai Yan to reach that village, but the entire place has been put to the torch and the flames are crackling. The Mongolian soldiers are already gone. The skies above glow faintly with first light. Lang Junxia shouts, “Duan Ling —!”
“Duan Ling!” Cai Yan yells at the top of his lungs.
“Duan Ling!” Lang Junxia’s voice echos through the valley. Soon he begins throwing himself at the fire. Surrounded by the stink of scorched things, everywhere they look are charred black corpses.
The fire is getting stronger. Cai Yan cries out, “Don’t go in there!”
Lang Junxia covers his nose and mouth and charges into the burning village only to stumble back out soon after. Cai Yan hurriedly drags him aside.
They lean against a tree at the edge of the village. Cai Yan bursts into tears.
Lang Junxia roars, “You swear it! Swear it! It really was here!”
Overcome with grief, Cai Yan doesn’t say anything.
Lang Junxia breathes heavily for a little while before rising to his feet. He stares at the sea of flames as everything within the fire turns to cinders.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?!” Cai Yan howls angrily, and walks up to shove Lang Junxia.
The fire grows bigger and bigger until it actually extends to the entire mountain top. They retreat again and again. Before long, a torrential rainstorm comes down, gradually putting out all of the flames; a mudslide pours down towards them.
Lang Junxia enters the village that has been burned black.
He finds the jade arc glinting among the ruins in the centre of the village. The rain has washed it clean; it looks brand new.
Then he kneels down on the ground, checking over each body, touching each hand bone that’s already charred by the fire, to verify whether it belongs to Duan Ling.
“What’s your name” Cai Yan has regained his composure.
Lang Junxia doesn’t reply.
“Why didn’t you come to protect him sooner?!”
Lang Junxia feels around in the ruins and finds another severed, charred hand, and he struggles to figure out whether the bones are Duan Ling’s.
Cai Yan is about to say something more when Lang Junxia turns around and kicks him mercilessly on the chest. Cai Yan crashes into a tree and falls unconscious.
He has no idea how much time has passed by the time he wakes again. When he opens his eyes Lang Junxia is still feeling around in the village.
“He’s already dead.” Cai Yan says, “No matter how regretful you feel, it’s pointless.”
On his knees in the centre of the village, beyond exhaustion, Lang Junxia falls head first into the muddy water.
Water rushes down through the ravine, crashing against the shore. Duan Ling wakes.
Every part of his body is bleeding. Several hyenas are eyeing him from a distance, and the mountain streams are flowing rapidly nearby. Duan Ling struggles to his feet. Evading the hyenas’ gaze, he runs off stumbling.
“If you died …”
“I know. If I died you’re not going to live either.”
Duan Ling doesn’t know where he finds the strength, but perhaps it’s because of those words echoing over and over by his ears that he escapes from the ravine with the last of his energy. In the dark, he manages to find a cave. He crawls inside, lies down, and gasps for breath.
He’s started to run a fever again. The fever stays with him for the whole day, but he miraculously pulls through. In his dreams it is always those words if you died, dad’s not going to live either repeating themselves in his head as though Li Jianhong’s gentle lips are right by his ear, quietly encouraging him: you must go on living.
I can’t … I can’t die here.
By the time Duan Ling opens his eyes again, the only idea in his head is to go on living.
Out by the mountain stream he searches out some medicinal herbs and swallows them whole, then he strips some bark and moss and eats those too. He keeps walking south, but never runs into any ferocious beasts such as bears and tigers, and he thinks the heavens are on his side after all.
After days of walking Duan Ling’s feet are already covered in cuts. When they’re bloody and blistered, he wraps them in tree bark. His childhood experiences have made him more resilient than anyone; when he didn’t have food he’d find dig in birds’ nests for eggs, pick fruits, eat flowers, catch live fish and eat those — eat anything that can be eaten.
As he leaves the eastern section of the Xianbei Mountains behind, Duan Ling knows that he’s survived.
In the far distance, there is a tiny little village. Duan Ling hides behind a farmhouse and waits until it’s nighttime before heading inside to steal a set of clothes. He puts those on, and steals a pair of boots to wear too. Then he scoops out two hens’ eggs from the henhouse, breaks them open, and swallows them, and grabs a couple of hot dough from the hearth. He holds them close to his belly, and keeps going.
When he’s changing, his hand brushes across his chest. Only then does he remember that he’s lost the jade arc.
Nevermind. Compared to my being alive, dad definitely won’t yell at me for losing the jade arc.
Where is this place? Duan Ling walks south instinctively by the direction the Big Dipper points out to him, hiding whenever he hears people, fearful as a frightened bird alarmed by the twange of a string. He walks on the desire paths2 made by frequent use, knowing that there are bound to be villages along a well-trodden path. Just as he expected, he passes through quite a few villages along the way, and judging by the clothing hanging to dry outside the houses, they must be Xianbei.
Every time he reaches a village he steals a little something. He thinks about when he’ll be safe to step onto the road that takes him back south. In the night with a vast sky full of stars above him, he lies under a tree turning these thoughts over and over in his head: wondering if Li Jianhong nearly drew his sword and killed himself when he wasn’t about to find him, and how his subordinates must have stopped him from doing so.
And he thinks about how Li Jianhong will cry tears of joy when he sees him come back alive, how they’ll weep on each other’s shoulders …
As Duan Ling lets his mind dwell on these things he can’t help finding it all quite funny, and begins to laugh, then as he’s laughing he feels a sob catch in his throat, and he breaks into tears curled up beneath the tree.
This time, as long as he can go back in one piece, they’ll never be apart again.
There are tears drying on Duan Ling’s cheeks, and in his slumber something pounces on top of him. He cries out immediately — a dog has thrown itself onto him!
In a panic Duan Ling goes for his knife to fight it off, but then he hears a voice and makes a decision to stop fighting. That person is speaking Xianbei, and holding up a lantern, he shines the light on Duan Ling’s face.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
A desire path is a path made by erosion through frequent human or animal traffic. ↩︎
Before Duan Ling can decide with Cai Yan what they’re going to do, the Mongolian soldiers have already barged into the village, throwing their torches to light the roofs, killing the villagers with their arrows. It is late at night, and many of the poor villagers are still in deep sleep when they lost their lives without knowing what had even happened to them. Some of them had ran out bathed in flames but they ended up trampled to death by galloping horses instead.
The soldiers roar with laughter as they treat the living as their playthings, kicking in the doors of the houses one by one after firing off round after round of arrows, looking for the apothecaries’ wives and children. But when one of them gets to a house he’s stabbed in the throat by Duan Ling hiding behind the door, and the soldier drops trembling to his knees.
Duan Ling drags the man into the house, and peers out with Cai Yan. Outside their window, they can see that more and more soldiers have shown up. They seem to be treating this place as a base.
“We must run now.” Duan Ling says, “They’re all remnants of the main body of their troops, and there’s only going to be more of them. If we stay here any longer it’ll be too late!”
Cai Yan takes a deep breath, watching Duan Ling. He’s about to say he’s going to cover Duan Ling’s escape when Duan Ling grabs his wrist and shakes his head very slowly.
Cai Yan knows what Duan Ling means: he doesn’t want anyone else to sacrifice themselves for him anymore. Even if he’s going to die they’re going to die together. Without waiting any longer, they jump out of the back window, putting great care in being quiet.
As soon as they leave the village they’re discovered by a newly arriving Mongolian soldier. The soldier fires two arrows at them, and they manage to dodge both. The soldier reins in his horse, staring after them with a puzzled expression, but instead of pursuing them he turns and enters the village.
Duan Ling’s heart is pounding out of his chest. Cai Yan is just thinking that they’ve avoided a catastrophe when there’s shouting behind them. The two of them call out with alarm and run into the woods.
“Hurry!” Cai Yan shouts.
The soldiers are laughing uproariously — they’re clearly treating the local villagers running from this place as prey, and they spur their horses on towards them as fast as they can as though they’re racing to see which of them can catch their prey first. In the pitch black night Duan Ling knows he has arrived at the cusp of life and death; if he doesn’t get away this time, death is the only thing that awaits him.
Duan Ling daren’t make a sound as he drags Cai Yan into the darkness. The terrain around the Xianbei Mountains is exceedingly complex, and neither of them has ever been here before so they have no idea what’s awaiting them. The bushes and shrubs cover them in scratches as they run, but they dare not stop; the intricate topography means they may step off solid ground at any given time and fall into a bottomless abyss. The trees look like ghostly shadows in the dark.
I can’t die … My dad is still waiting for me …
That’s all Duan Ling thinks about as he runs with all his might.
But a lasso flies toward him from behind and suddenly loops around his neck.
“Run!” It’s the last thing Duan Ling manages to say, as loudly as he can.
Cai Yan turns around, wishing to save him, but Duan Ling is being dragged so fast the momentum bounces him into the air, and he lands behind the shrubbery. The soldiers erupt in raucous laughter before they drag Duan Ling down the slope. Duan Ling is knocked against the mountain stones and shrubs, and as he’s jolted ceaselessly his hands clutch tightly at the tightening rope around his neck.
The mounted soldiers drag him all the way back to the apothecary village. Duan Ling is covered all over in cuts and bruises, and he feels as though his neck is about to break. Right after the soldiers get him back, they laugh lewdly several times before they start to talk to each other. A hand pulls him up by the hair and a dagger slips under the tight rope around his neck, cutting it away. Duan Ling falls to his knees, taking huge breaths that turn into dry heaving.
The soldier picks him up and expediently peels his robe away. As soon as he tears Duan Ling’s undershirt open he presses his face towards Duan Ling’s chest. Duan Ling’s jade arc is carelessly pulled off and tossed aside along with his robe where it falls onto the ground.
The Mongolian suddenly seems startled, and laughter erupts around him then — they’d just realised that Duan Ling is male.
Duan Ling gets it now; those soldiers thought he and Cai Yan were a young couple fleeing from the village, therefore they wanted to bring the woman back, and as for the man, they’re not going to worry about him.
The Mongolian soldier gives Duan Ling a ruthless slap on the face and the blow sets his head to ringing. If he has the will to resist and grab the other man’s sword hanging next to his waist, he can end the soldier’s life at any given time, yet he’ll also be shot into a sieve by the angry soldiers.
He doesn’t fight back. He lets them beat him until blood is seeping out of the corner of his mouth, but his patience rewards him with a most opportune time to resist. Alone, the soldier drags him into a house and begins to roughly undress.
There’s a corpse lying on the bed. The soldier strips himself down to nothing right next to the corpse and starts tearing Duan Ling’s underwear off. Duan Ling lets him do as he pleases until the soldier is making sucking noises with his teeth and saying something he can’t understand, when Duan Ling reaches for the bone knife he’s hidden in his boot.
The soldier grabs him by the hair and scrutinises his face for a beat before coming closer to kiss Duan Ling as though he’s a girl, when Duan Ling stabs him with the knife.
This move is precise to the extreme; the blade goes into the flesh at the side of the soldier’s neck, burying itself deep into his larynx. The soldier’s throat lets out a gurgling noise and puts his hand to his neck, but he has no way to call out for help. Duan Ling gives it a ferocious twist then, and blood sprays out of the wound. He lays the soldier carefully down on the bed right after. Outside, there are people drinking and laughing and an endless racket of merrymaking fills the air. No one else is going to pay more attention to him.
He jumps quietly out of the window at the back of the room and takes another path out of the village. Before him is a fathomless abyss, and he can fall down with a single misstep. He takes small steps with his back against the cliffside until he’s at a point where the two cliffsides are the closest; at the bottom of the abyss one can look up to see a single line of sky. However, the clouds have hidden the moon and he can’t tell whether that patch of darkness before him is a thicket or the cliff extending out from the other side.
I can’t die … I can’t die.
Dad is still looking for me.
Duan Ling recalls the words Li Jianhong has taught him, and all his fears evaporate at once, then he leaps across that line of sky. And he nearly makes it. His foot slips, he takes hold of a vine across the way, and as he pulls down with all his strength hoping to climb back up, the vine breaks with a quiet snap.
The uneven, rocky cliffside leaves countless marks on his body, and gripping the ripped vine tightly, Duan Ling falls into the dark.
Flames illuminate most of the night sky. Lost, Cai Yan is groping down the mountain path when he suddenly hears hoofbeats. He immediately retreats back into the forest.
One man and one horse trot down the winding mountain path together. The man reins in his horse, draws his sword, gets off the horse and goes searching in the bushes.
Cai Yan tries his best to be quiet.
The man suddenly attacks. Cai Yan isn’t able to block it in time and a palm hits him in the chest. All at once, his organs feel like they’ve exchanged places and the sword is sitting across his neck.
“Duan Ling?” It’s Lang Junxia’s voice.
Cai Yan immediately says, “It’s me!”
Wanlibenxiao winds through the circuitous mountain paths, carrying the two of them. Cai Yan finishes telling Lang Junxia everything that happened. Lang Junxia says nothing.
“You came down from another mountain top.” Lang Junxia says, “I know about the apothecary village. Gup!”
It takes a full two hours for Lang Junxia and Cai Yan to reach that village, but the entire place has been put to the torch and the flames are crackling. The Mongolian soldiers are already gone. The skies above glow faintly with first light. Lang Junxia shouts, “Duan Ling —!”
“Duan Ling!” Cai Yan yells at the top of his lungs.
“Duan Ling!” Lang Junxia’s voice echos through the valley. Soon he begins throwing himself at the fire. Surrounded by the stink of scorched things, everywhere they look are charred black corpses.
The fire is getting stronger. Cai Yan cries out, “Don’t go in there!”
Lang Junxia covers his nose and mouth and charges into the burning village only to stumble back out soon after. Cai Yan hurriedly drags him aside.
They lean against a tree at the edge of the village. Cai Yan bursts into tears.
Lang Junxia roars, “You swear it! Swear it! It really was here!”
Overcome with grief, Cai Yan doesn’t say anything.
Lang Junxia breathes heavily for a little while before rising to his feet. He stares at the sea of flames as everything within the fire turns to cinders.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?!” Cai Yan howls angrily, and walks up to shove Lang Junxia.
The fire grows bigger and bigger until it actually extends to the entire mountain top. They retreat again and again. Before long, a torrential rainstorm comes down, gradually putting out all of the flames; a mudslide pours down towards them.
Lang Junxia enters the village that has been burned black.
He finds the jade arc glinting among the ruins in the centre of the village. The rain has washed it clean; it looks brand new.
Then he kneels down on the ground, checking over each body, touching each hand bone that’s already charred by the fire, to verify whether it belongs to Duan Ling.
“What’s your name” Cai Yan has regained his composure.
Lang Junxia doesn’t reply.
“Why didn’t you come to protect him sooner?!”
Lang Junxia feels around in the ruins and finds another severed, charred hand, and he struggles to figure out whether the bones are Duan Ling’s.
Cai Yan is about to say something more when Lang Junxia turns around and kicks him mercilessly on the chest. Cai Yan crashes into a tree and falls unconscious.
He has no idea how much time has passed by the time he wakes again. When he opens his eyes Lang Junxia is still feeling around in the village.
“He’s already dead.” Cai Yan says, “No matter how regretful you feel, it’s pointless.”
On his knees in the centre of the village, beyond exhaustion, Lang Junxia falls head first into the muddy water.
Water rushes down through the ravine, crashing against the shore. Duan Ling wakes.
Every part of his body is bleeding. Several hyenas are eyeing him from a distance, and the mountain streams are flowing rapidly nearby. Duan Ling struggles to his feet. Evading the hyenas’ gaze, he runs off stumbling.
“If you died …”
“I know. If I died you’re not going to live either.”
Duan Ling doesn’t know where he finds the strength, but perhaps it’s because of those words echoing over and over by his ears that he escapes from the ravine with the last of his energy. In the dark, he manages to find a cave. He crawls inside, lies down, and gasps for breath.
He’s started to run a fever again. The fever stays with him for the whole day, but he miraculously pulls through. In his dreams it is always those words if you died, dad’s not going to live either repeating themselves in his head as though Li Jianhong’s gentle lips are right by his ear, quietly encouraging him: you must go on living.
I can’t … I can’t die here.
By the time Duan Ling opens his eyes again, the only idea in his head is to go on living.
Out by the mountain stream he searches out some medicinal herbs and swallows them whole, then he strips some bark and moss and eats those too. He keeps walking south, but never runs into any ferocious beasts such as bears and tigers, and he thinks the heavens are on his side after all.
After days of walking Duan Ling’s feet are already covered in cuts. When they’re bloody and blistered, he wraps them in tree bark. His childhood experiences have made him more resilient than anyone; when he didn’t have food he’d find dig in birds’ nests for eggs, pick fruits, eat flowers, catch live fish and eat those — eat anything that can be eaten.
As he leaves the eastern section of the Xianbei Mountains behind, Duan Ling knows that he’s survived.
In the far distance, there is a tiny little village. Duan Ling hides behind a farmhouse and waits until it’s nighttime before heading inside to steal a set of clothes. He puts those on, and steals a pair of boots to wear too. Then he scoops out two hens’ eggs from the henhouse, breaks them open, and swallows them, and grabs a couple of hot dough from the hearth. He holds them close to his belly, and keeps going.
When he’s changing, his hand brushes across his chest. Only then does he remember that he’s lost the jade arc.
Nevermind. Compared to my being alive, dad definitely won’t yell at me for losing the jade arc.
Where is this place? Duan Ling walks south instinctively by the direction the Big Dipper points out to him, hiding whenever he hears people, fearful as a frightened bird alarmed by the twange of a string. He walks on the desire paths2 made by frequent use, knowing that there are bound to be villages along a well-trodden path. Just as he expected, he passes through quite a few villages along the way, and judging by the clothing hanging to dry outside the houses, they must be Xianbei.
Every time he reaches a village he steals a little something. He thinks about when he’ll be safe to step onto the road that takes him back south. In the night with a vast sky full of stars above him, he lies under a tree turning these thoughts over and over in his head: wondering if Li Jianhong nearly drew his sword and killed himself when he wasn’t about to find him, and how his subordinates must have stopped him from doing so.
And he thinks about how Li Jianhong will cry tears of joy when he sees him come back alive, how they’ll weep on each other’s shoulders …
As Duan Ling lets his mind dwell on these things he can’t help finding it all quite funny, and begins to laugh, then as he’s laughing he feels a sob catch in his throat, and he breaks into tears curled up beneath the tree.
This time, as long as he can go back in one piece, they’ll never be apart again.
There are tears drying on Duan Ling’s cheeks, and in his slumber something pounces on top of him. He cries out immediately — a dog has thrown itself onto him!
In a panic Duan Ling goes for his knife to fight it off, but then he hears a voice and makes a decision to stop fighting. That person is speaking Xianbei, and holding up a lantern, he shines the light on Duan Ling’s face.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
A desire path is a path made by erosion through frequent human or animal traffic. ↩︎
