CH 16

As Xue Xian slumbered in his rage-induced stupor, he thought he heard that strange knocking sound again from the bald donkey's hip. It seemed to come from within the bald donkey’s flesh. Dang–– The noise felt sometimes close, sometimes far, and reverberated throughout Xue Xian’s chest, making it impossible for him to breathe. Thus, the niezhang continued to be unconscious for a long time…

When he finally awoke and slowly stuck his head out of the pouch, he found that he was no longer at the Liu family compound. 

Xue Xian looked around. He seemed to be in a bedroom. The mattress was neat and tidy, and a nearby lantern cast a soft glow. The faint smell of moringa leaves [a] hung in the room, alongside an even fainter, almost imperceptible medicinal stench. Xuanmin was standing by a circular carved table, on top of which he had placed the untroublesome paper man Jiang Shining, as well as the empty millstone from the Liu compound, a thin cloth bundle, a copper bowl full of fresh water, and a light green porcelain tea set on which was painted a name –– Guiyun Hall. [b]

From that, it was obvious they were in an inn, and that this was one of the best rooms there.

Guiyun Hall… Dwelling in the clouds… 

Having been immersed in the human realm these past few months, Xue Xian knew of scholars who liked to stay at Zhuangyuan Pagoda, [c] merchants who liked to stay at Guangyuan Pagoda, [d] as well as stereotypical inn names like Yuelai, Fushun, [e] and other auspicious phrases. Guiyun Hall sounded like an inn for people who wanted to get to heaven as soon as possible. Who in their right mind would want to stay there? 

Clearly, the bald donkey was one of these people. Perhaps he’d had his brains pecked out by a chicken in the past.

Xue Xian watched as Xuanmin carefully washed his hands in the copper bowl. He had to admit that the bald donkey had a lovely set of fingers: slender and pale, with joints as straight as ink brushes. The bald donkey seemed not to know the meaning of ‘rush’ –– all of his actions were neither hasty nor slow, but completely self-assured. He made even hand-washing seem like a solemn action as contemplative as prayer. 

Xue Xian had to give it to him: it was admirable. "You're washing your hands like you're about to deliver a funeral."

Xuanmin looked down at him and said, "I am delivering a funeral."

"Whose?"

Xuanmin replied, "Lady Xu." [f]

"Lady Xu?" Xue Xian echoed.

A melancholy sigh came from the millstone: "Thank you very much, Dashi."

It was Liu-lao-taitai, of course.

Xue Xian stared up at Xuanmin, expressionless. "How–– Ugh, how long was I asleep? You managed to learn the old lady's surname?"

He had wanted to ask How long did I faint for?, but it was certainly not very dignified of him to have fainted from sheer anger. He needed to save his dragon face, so he’d changed it last minute to ‘sleep’. 

Xuanmin shook the droplets of water from his hands, then dried himself with a white cloth. He said, "You fainted for five shichen. [g] It is nighttime."

Xue Xian: “...” You bastard. If you were a piece of wood you’d be a coffin plank that insisted on making people’s feet hurt when they walked on you! Why don't you just throw me into the river while you're at it?

Enraged, Xue Xian shut his mouth and decided not to engage the bald donkey anymore. What a rude bore! [h]

Xuanmin paid no attention to Xue Xian. He put down the cloth towel and unwrapped the bundle on the table, taking out a folded yellow piece of paper and a brush.

There was a well of quality ink by the copper bowl. Xuanmin spread out the yellow paper, dipped his brush into the ink, and wrote some calligraphy onto the paper––

Lady Xu of House Liu

The twenty-third day of the seventh month, Bing Yin year. [i]

Next, Xuanmin took a stick of incense out of the bundle. He folded the sheet of paper with Liu-lao-taitai’s name in it three times, then held it over the candle flame until it caught fire. He placed that onto the millstone. Though the paper was thinly made, it burned extremely slowly. The millstone's facade quickly darkened, as though covered in a layer of ash. 

Steadily, Xuanmin held the incense over the burning yellow paper and let it burn.

"This is transcendence?" Xue Xian had watched all this carefully, and now couldn’t fight back the urge to speak.

He had only ever seen ordinary transcendence rites, commonly known as the Seven Buddhas –– a bunch of bald donkeys sitting in a circle, their heads so shiny that it lit up the whole room. They would split into two shifts and pray by the coffin non-stop for seven days and seven nights. Xue Xian had once ridden on the coattails of the wrong person, and had ended up amidst a mourning family. He'd had no choice but to listen to that group of bald donkeys nattering away for seven days. It had been so irritating that he'd wished he could hang himself from the coffin edge.

Ever since then, he got a headache whenever he saw a monk.

He wondered whether Xuanmin also planned to drone on for seven days and seven nights. If so, then Xue Xian might as well jump out of the window right now and off himself.

Xuanmin was still holding the stick of incense. From it rose an emerald swell of smoke that coiled its way around the millstone, breathing out the scent of sandalwood. "Libation, inscription, incineration, invocation. These are all a dead soul needs," he said.

He really did intend to pray! 

Xue Xian leapt out of the pouch.

Xuanmin glanced at him. "What are you doing now?"

"I don't want to live anymore. I'm going to jump."

Xuanmin: “...”

However, Xue Xian did not have the ability to jump out of the window. He tumbled away from Xuanmin's hip and landed onto the carved table. Just as he had rolled his way to the edge and planned to dive, Xuanmin pinched him and brought him back to the table. 

This bald donkey was highly eccentric –– he didn't seem at all to be a normal monk. This was obvious in every detail about him, from the way he moved to the luxurious room he'd rented at the inn.

Now, for some reason, Xuanmin had suddenly taken notice of the fold marks on Xue Xian's paper body, and seemed not to like them. Without even asking, he used a fingertip to press the paper man down and then picked up a heavy-looking stone paperweight and dropped it onto Xue Xian.

The paperweight was about half the size of a fist, a long and narrow rectangular block. All that could be seen of Xue Xian now were his head, his legs, and a sliver of each of his claws. 

Xue Xian struggled with all his might, but was only able to twitch his hands ever so slightly. The rest of his body refused to budge.

Xue Xian: “...” Fuck you!

Xuanmin stopped paying attention to Xue Xian and continued with his incense.

When the incense burned away, Xuanmin recited a word of prayer in a low voice, then fell silent. This, it seemed, was what he had meant by ‘invocation’, and not anything like what Xue Xian had feared.  

The flames on the yellow paper and the incense smoke died down together. As the last scarlet embers disappeared, Xuanmin reached out a finger and tapped the millstone that had imprisoned Liu-lao-taitai for three years. 

There were two or three kacha noises, and suddenly the mass of stone that had seemed so solid before shattered into tiny pieces.

The old woman's melancholy voice returned: "This is a relief for this old body of mine. I'll be on my way now. Thank you."

As she spoke, Xue Xian saw a soft shadow pass across the millstone. Together with the layer of ash, it vanished.

In that same moment as the millstone’s breaking and Liu-lao-taitai's passing, there suddenly came another strange noise –– dingding dangdang –– like a horse-drawn carriage — or some other thing with a bell attached to it — passing by on the street below, the sound faint and far away.

Then, something fell out of the broken pieces of the millstone and rolled onto the table.

Dingling –– danglang–– 

Xue Xian could feel that something was rolling across the table, but before he could lift his head to see, it rolled across his forehead. "What the hell is this? Stupid thing. Destroy it!"

Xuanmin stretched out a hand and let the object roll off the edge of the table and into his palm.

He pinched it between his fingers. "A golden marble the size of a sheep's eyeball."

Xue Xian was stunned. "Golden marble? Sheep's eye?"

Yes! It was just as Xue Xian had said –– the golden marble form of a real live dragon... how could any old geomancer just melt that into a millstone? It seemed that all the conman had done was shove the thing into the stone intact. 

Xue Xian was delighted, but Xuanmin said, "Mn. A stupid thing. Let's destroy it."

"No, wait!" Were it not for the paperweight, Xue Xian would have ascended to the heavens right then and there. "If you destroy that, I'll destroy you!"

Xuanmin calmly said, "Not stupid anymore?"

"Not stupid," Xue Xian replied through gritted teeth.

"We won't destroy it?"

"We won't destroy it. It's mine! See if you dare."

"Yours?" Xuanmin asked. "How can you prove it?"

"Okay," Xue Xian wheedled. "Take the paperweight off me and I'll show you."

Xuanmin looked at him, then said curtly, "Speak."

“...”

Xue Xian wanted to hurl his intestines all over Xuanmin’s face.

But this golden marble was far too important. The bald monkey held it in his hands, so no matter how murderous Xue Xian felt, he had to be obedient.

Forcing himself to sound casual, he said, "Look at the marble through the candle flame. You'll see––"

Inside the marble nested the form of a dragon, whose claws and crown were hidden by his curled body. Perhaps it was too difficult to see.

Instead of saying this, Xue Xian gritted his teeth and said, "You'll see a squiggle. Normal marbles don't have squiggles!"

Xuanmin brought the marble to the flame.

Indeed, the ordinary-looking golden marble turned slightly transparent, revealing a twisted form inside. 

"A snake," said Xuanmin.

Xue Xian: “...” A fucking snake?!

Xue Xian forced this rage down, though his face had turned ashy. "You believe me now, right? Can you take this damn paperweight off me now? Give me my marble back!"

Xuanmin still seemed to have some decency in him. Seeing that the niezhang was telling the truth, he lifted the paperweight.

Xue Xian sat up and rubbed his throbbing head, which felt as though it had been crushed by a mountain. He shook himself awake, then stretched out his hands to Xuanmin, shouting, "Where's my marble! Give it back!"

Xuanmin pointed at the center of the table. "First––"

"Shut up and give it to me," Xue Xian interrupted.

Xuanmin stopped and gazed at him. Finally, he put that small golden marble into the paper man's claws.

Guangdang!

The marble was not light at all. The paper man certainly couldn't carry it.

All Xue Xian felt was a sudden weight in his paper claws and then a flash of darkness in his vision –– the damn marble had dragged him off the table and all the way down onto the floor.

“...”

How was he supposed to live like this?

As Xuanmin leant down to pick up the niezhang, it was still gripping that marble tightly against its chest, like a grumpy miser. 

“I was only going to ask you to move away from the edge of the table." Xuanmin placed the paper man onto the table and gazed at him. "Will you interrupt me again?"

Fuck you! Mind your own business! Xue Xian thought. But the fall had really scrambled him up, [j] and he worried that if he pissed off the bald donkey he’d get the marble confiscated. He bit his words and said, "Fine. I won't interrupt you next time."

Hugging the marble, Xue Xian settled down onto the table, but seemed to bump into something. As he heard that ding–– sound again, he suddenly remembered that more than one item seemed to have fallen out of the millstone.

Leaning on the marble, Xue Xian looked at what he had run into: a small silver disk the size of an apricot, with a gap along its edge. It seemed to be able to emit a noise when struck. 

"What is that?" Xue Xian asked, tumbling away from the object.

From a distance, it still wasn't recognisable.

"That's a medical bell," Jiang Shining said quietly.

Still gripping the marble tightly in his paper-thin arms, Xue Xian looked like a roly-poly toy. [k] He rolled the marble, and himself with it, all the way to Jiang Shining. "You're awake!"

"I've been awake this whole time, but just couldn't speak," Jiang Shining said. "It seems that night has fallen, so I can speak again."

His voice was filled with warmth. He sounded different from before, less deathly, as though… as though he had suddenly resolved something that had been heavy in his heart and now felt more relaxed.

Having spoken, Jiang Shining floated from the table onto the chair, then onto the ground, and transformed back into his scholar’s form.

He reached out to pick up the medical bell and rubbed it. "This is my family's medical bell."

Xue Xian gaped at him. "Your family's?"

"Mn." Jiang Shining nodded and showed Xue Xian the other side of the bell, where a name was caerved –– Jiang Yong. 

"That's my ancestor," he said. "My ancestor was a travelling doctor. He used to walk the streets and treat the people he came across. In order to alert the citizens that he was close by, he would have a bell strung onto his medical case that rang when he walked. They would come out of their homes to meet him. This was the exact bell my ancestor used, but these days travelling doctors have mostly gone extinct –– replaced by proper clinics and pharmacies. This bell has been passed down by the doctors in the family so as not to forget our roots. All the way down to my parents."

"Your parents?" Xuanmin frowned. He beckoned for Jiang Shining to hand the bell back to him and inspected it, striking it again. "Do you have any living relatives?"

"Yes,” Jiang Shining replied. “My sister married into a faraway family in Anqing, so she wasn't at home on the night of the tragedy."

"Your parents' souls are trapped inside this bell. But it is different from Lady Xu in the millstone. We cannot help them transcend right now –– we require three drops of laogong blood from a living relative,” Xuanmin said.   

"Laogong blood?" Jiang Shining said. Being from a medical family, he immediately understood what Xuanmin meant. "You mean, blood from the laogong acupuncture point?" [l]

Xuanmin nodded.

Xuanmin handed the bell back to Jiang Shining, then seemed to glance over at the cloth bundle on the table.

Xue Xian followed his eyeline. He noticed that there was another stick of incense inside the bundle.

Pointing at the incense, Xue Xian said, "Hey, bald donkey. You only used one stick of incense for old lady Liu's transcendence rites. What are you going to do with this one?"

Xuanmin said, "Rites for this scholar."

Before Jiang Shining could even react, Xue Xian swivelled around. "What?! You––"

He was interrupted by Xuanmin suddenly grabbing the edge of the table. Xuanmin’s face twisted and his eyes fluttered shut. He seemed to suddenly feel unwell.

Xue Xian was shocked. Softly, he said, "Bald donkey?"

He called out twice more, but Xuanmin did not respond. Xuanmin collapsed onto the chair with his eyes tightly shut, as though meditating. That small mole on the side of his neck had changed: some thin red blood vessels crept out of it, like a spider poised against his skin.

But Xue Xian did not notice such a detail. He studied Xuanmin for a moment, and once he realised Xuanmin’s life wasn't in danger, he quietly waved Jiang Shining over.

A short while later, [m] anyone in Ningyang Xian Cheng [n] looking out onto the street on which stood Guiyun Hall would be able to see a grim, starved-looking scholar hurrying away from the inn. On his shoulder sat a little paper man who held a golden marble in his lap. 

Jiang Shining and Xue Xian had made their escape.

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The author has something to say: 

Finally off the train and have arrived at school Orz Tomorrow the updates will go back to normal =3=

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[a] Musuli writes here that the smell is that of 木叶 (mu4 ye4), literally “wood leaf”. I looked this up and I think she’s most likely referring to 辣木叶 (la4 mu4 ye4), “moringa leaves”. The drumstick tree (molinga olefeira, aka horseradish tree) is native to the Indian subcontinent and its parts can be used for medicinal purposes, so it wouldn’t be wrong to associate it with Xuanmin, a Buddhist ascetic. Apparently, moringa smells nutty/earthy.

[b] 归云 (gui1 yun2): 归 means “to belong” or “to return to” and 云 means “cloud”. In my original translation I translated the name of this inn as “Cloud Dwelling”.

[c] Zhuangyuan is the title given to the person ranked first in the Imperial Examination. (Wikipedia)

[d] 广源 (guang3 yuan2): 广 means “vast” and 源 means “source”. The name of this inn points to a prosperous, fertile font or river source, from which good things flow, such as luck, good business, and money. In my original translation I translated the name of this inn as “Prosperous Pagoda”. 

[e] 悦来 (yue4 lai2), literally “joy comes”. 福顺 (fu2 shun4), literally “prosperity follows”.

[f] In Chinese, the phrasing is 许氏 (xu3 shi4), meaning “the person surnamed Xu” or “Xu name/family”. Although historical Chinese women retained their maiden names upon marriage, their titles would change to reflect their new status as a member of their husband’s family, thus why Liu-lao-taitai is referred to by everyone around her as such, instead of as Xu-lao-taitai. Sometimes, a maiden might not have a formal given name at all, whether this is because she was only called by nicknames growing up, or because it is felt that she no longer needs one after she is married (e.g. if she is a concubine with lower status than an ordinary wife). This is why a woman might sometimes simply be called “__ shi”, meaning “person with the surname __” or “person from the __ family”. It is less polite because it is not a formal address, but it might be more accurate, as it is in this case with Liu-lao-taitai. 

[g] 5 shichen = 10 hours.

[h] Musuli phrased this as, “a thing that does not know how to chat/make conversation”.

[i] The year name comes from the ganzhi cycle of sixty year terms, based on the ten heavenly stems (gan) and the twelve earthly branches (zhi). 

[j] Here, Musuli uses the chengyu 七荤八素 (qi1 hun1 ba1 su4), literally “seven 荤, eight vegetables”, where 荤 describes the category of foods forbidden to strict Buddhists, including meat, fish, and pungent vegetables. The chengyu indicates a big mix of foods, and means “confused” or “distracted”.

[k] The Chinese name for a roly-poly toy is 不倒翁 (bu4 dao3 weng1), literally “guy who can’t fall”. Translations of TGCF have translated 不倒翁 as “Daruma doll”, and while it’s most likely that the 不倒翁 invoked in historical fantasy danmei bear the most resemblance to Japanese Daruma dolls, I have chosen not to use romanised Japanese in the text. 

[l] The laogong pressure point is in the center of the palm.

[m] Musuli likes to use the expression “in the time it takes to drink X cups of tea” to mark the passage of time, but it’s always rather difficult to convey this succinctly in English. For instance, I know that “in the time it takes to light a stick of incense” is an expression that has appeared in this genre before that can be shortened to simply “an incense time”, but “a teacup time” just doesn’t work. So very often I have to take it out since it just doesn’t flow as well for us. 

[n] Xian Cheng: see glossary.