CH 21

What was going on? 

Xue Xian followed the noise and looked over. Lu Nianqi, who had just been standing on the side of the boat, seemed to have seen something and darted back, landing flat on his backside. His hand slapped the ship deck beside him and he immediately shouted "Ow!" and took it away. But it was too late: there was a massive gash on his right hand, which began to sprout blood.

"What is it?" Jiang Shining took hold of the boy's wrist and applied pressure on the wound with one hand. "How did this happen?"

"A chunk of metal, I think." Lu Nianqi was jolted by the coldness of Jiang Shining's touch, and tried to pull his hand away.

Beside where Lu Nianqi had fallen, there was a metallic object that happened to be jutting out invisibly from between the boat's wooden planks. It was covered in fresh blood –– clearly, the culprit.

Jiang Shining looked around. He found a flask of wine that the boatman had placed in the boat.    

"This is going to sting. Bear with it." He unscrewed the cap and poured a generous stream of wine onto Lu Nianqi's hand.

"Are you trying to kill me?" It was a nasty surprise for Nianqi, who unleashed an ear-splitting scream. "It hurts! It hurts! It hurts! It stings! Haaa––" 

"Stop screaming. Deal with it." Having grown up in a clinic hearing countless patients crying for their mothers, Jiang Shining was perfectly calm.

The weather was freezing, and the snowstorm had not ceased. No sooner did the wine soak Lu Nianqi's hand than it became ice cold, congealing the wound. The blood stopped spewing. Lu Nianqi continued to wheeze as he stared at his limp hand with an agonised expression.

Jiang Shining scooped some water out of the river and used it to thoroughly clean the boy's wound. Finally, he shook the droplets of water off his hands and went away to sit down.

With the bloodstains gone, the lines across Lu Nianqi's palms were now clean and clear. Xuanmin glanced at them and frowned. He walked over and clutched the boy's wrists, bringing them closer so that he could inspect his palms more carefully. 

Lu Nianqi snorted derisively. "Another palm-reader."

"What do you mean, another? Who else likes to read palms?"

Xue Xian's question had been casual. He hadn't been paying attention and had assumed that Xuanmin had been checking the boy's wound. Now, he peeked out more from the edge of the pouch to take a closer look at Nianqi's palm –– the sight of which sent chills down his spine.

"Well, Lu Shijiu," Nianqi replied. Apart from earlier when he'd said Shijiu while sobbing, the boy had the habit of calling his elder brother by his full name.

"Palm... reading?" Jiang Shining couldn't help but look up as well. According to Xue Xian, Lu Shijiu was blind. How could he read palms? Speaking of which, Jiang Shining had been perplexed for some time –– how could a blind boy go to a desert island by himself? What had he been planning to do on the island –– feel his way around? 

Lu Nianqi had heard the emphasis on ‘reading’. He pouted. "Of course, he's technically blind. But he can walk –– he's just slow. Because he can 'see' things that normal people can't. He says he sees qi and forms. It sounds like gibberish... in any case, I don't get it."

Then he asked Xuanmin: "What's wrong with my palm? Every once in a while Shijiu will grab my hand and spend ages 'reading' it while touching it all over and muttering to himself. It's unbearable. When I ask him, he says it's no big deal –– that I'll live a long life but that I'll have a difficult youth. He says he wants to divine exactly just how hard my life will be, so he can mock me."

Jiang Shining: “...” What a brother!

But... a long life?

As Xue Xian studied the boy’s palm, he felt he no longer knew what ‘long life’ meant! 

Lu Nianqi's palm clearly told the story of a tragically short life, one cut short in childhood. Out of the three lines on his palm, the life line was unsettlingly short –– it ended before it even reached the center of the boy's hand. Long life? The boy would be lucky to live past fifteen! Xue Xian looked at Nianqi’s face.

Xue Xian hadn't been paying attention before, but now he noticed that Lu Nianqi had a widow's peak, and his eyes, which were set slightly far apart, darted about restlessly. The upper section of his face, right at the minggong pressure point, [a] was dotted with small freckles. All in all, he had the face of someone destined to die young. 

So how could Lu Shijiu have read it as a long life? 

Although, with this kind of destiny, it was best not to tell the boy to his face.    

Silently, Xue Xian turned to look at Xuanmin. This bald donkey had a bad record so far –– he liked to say terribly inappropriate things. Was he going to say You do not have long to live again, and scare the child out of his own skin?  

But it seemed that the bald donkey had had an epiphany, and suddenly became tactful. First, he asked, "You turn fifteen this year?"

"Yes," Lu Nianqi replied.

Xuanmin nodded. "This is a year of calamity for you. Be careful."

Did the sun rise in the west today? Xue Xian wondered. What's happened to this bald donkey? [b]

Lu Nianqi jerked his hand back. "I know, I know. Lu Shijiu tells me that too."

"Oh, right!" Xue Xian said. "What were you yelling about just now?"

Lu Nianqi's hand injury had sent them all off on a tangent, and they'd forgotten about the real issue.

"I wasn’t..." the child replied, embarrassed. "Just now, when I stood on the side of the boat, I saw a black mass float by, and I thought it was hair. But it was probably just algae. If it really was hair, then the corpse would be floating, not half-submerged in the shallows."

"How do you know?” Xue Xian asked. “You've seen drowned corpses?"

"I have," Lu Nianqi replied. "How could I not? I grew up by the river. There are even professional corpse-divers here. There were more bodies than usual this year –– just this autumn and winter, I saw five."

In the corner, Jiang Shining grimaced. He was beginning to feel seasick.

The snowstorm was even heavier on the river. The sheet of white fog stretched out onto the horizon, so that nothing could be seen.

Slowly, that mantou-shaped Gravestone Island began to rise up from the thick fog, growing ever larger.

Xuanmin stood at the head of the boat, directing it with his reed. Xue Xian leaned out with his chin in his hands, looking out idly at the misty river water. There was something he couldn't put his finger on.

Maybe he was just being paranoid, but Xue Xian couldn't shake the feeling that, once the golden marble had been placed into the bald donkey's pouch, it had become more active. Yet, although he still couldn't feel a connection between himself and the marble, the strange feeling of something being there persisted.

Like when someone wants to tap you on the shoulder... As their hand hovers an inch away from you, some tiny, undetectable sixth sense lets you know it's there. 

In what way was Xuanmin's presence affecting the marble? Xue Xian wasn't ruling anything out just yet.

If this bald donkey was really somehow able to restore Xue Xian’s connection to his original body, he would genuinely be eternally grateful to the bald donkey and all of his ancestors. 

But how to speed up that process?

Xue Xian was frustrated. Before, he had had no clue how to proceed, but now that he had even a smidge of hope, he felt a desperate impatience swell up within him. Indeed, this paper body made him vulnerable –– anyone could just come up to him and rip him in half. It was not at all appropriate for someone of his divine status.

The niezhang thought long and hard, and then suddenly dived back into the pouch. Inside, he knocked about restlessly until he was able to drag himself to the marble at the bottom of the pouch. Next, he unfolded his body and used it to grab onto the marble.

This white hemp robe really was thin. Down at the bottom of the pouch, Xue Xian was extremely close to Xuanmin's skin. Naturally, Xuanmin could feel all of the niezhang’s erratic movements inside his pouch.

Xuanmin prodded the water with his reed, then frowned and asked, "Niezhang, you need to learn to calm down. What are you up to now?" 

In a low voice muffled by the cloth, Xue Xian said, "Row your boat. Why do you care? I'm brooding on my egg. Leave me alone, asshole."

Xuanmin: “...”

Thankfully for Xue Xian –– probably even Xue Xian was embarrassed by his own words –– he had spoken in such a low tone that only Xuanmin had heard. Or else Jiang Shining would've had a few things to say to that.

Distracted by the talk of ‘brooding’, Xuanmin had momentarily taken his eyes off the surface of the river.

In that short moment, another black shape floated past the bottom of the boat... Or to be more precise, the boat floated past the black shape. 

Lu Nianqi, perched on the edge of the boat, had indeed seen it, but because it had passed by so quickly, he did not understand what it meant. It looked at first to be a mass of black hair, but it was not accompanied by a pale face, nor a rigid body. So Lu Nianqi rubbed the goosebumps on his arms and forced himself to calm down.

Soon, there was a ka-dunk as the boat hit the mudbank and slid to a stop.

"We're here." The boat had barely stopped before Lu Nianqi leapt onto shore. He pointed at a shadow in the water not far from them and said, "Look. That's Liu-laotou's boat. He's the one who brought Lu Shijiu here."

Gravestone Island's thick forest was suffocated by the snow, and a never-ending row of pitch-black branches receded into the distance. For strange things to happen in this kind of creepy [c] place was not surprising at all.

As Xuanmin stepped onto the island, a shudder of wind passed through the forest, as though the trees knew they’d arrived.

Dingding dangdang––

The copper coin pendant on Xuanmin’s hip suddenly spasmed, sending a clear metallic sound into the air.

"What is it?" Xue Xian asked as he came up for air. "What were you saying just now? It was all muffled, I couldn't hear."

"I said nothing. What did you hear?" Xuanmin frowned at Xue Xian. This niezhang seemed uniquely attuned, and often seemed to detect strange things a little bit before everyone else.

"Just now, when you came onto shore," Xue Xian replied, perplexed. "I was brooding, and I suddenly heard you say something unintelligible, as though you were reciting a prayer. Are you sure you didn't speak? Then what did I hear? It sounded like you ––"

He suddenly paused, hesitant, then added, "But it sounded so far away..."

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The author has something to say: 

These days my period has made it hard for me to think. This chapter is a bit short, but tomorrow I’ll try my hardest to write a longer one!

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[a] The minggong pressure point is right between the brows. 命 (ming4) means life/fate/destiny.

[b] Musuli phrased this as “Did the bald donkey take the wrong medicine?” which is a common Chinese way of describing unusual behavior. 

[c] Musuli uses the character 鬼 (gui3) here. While its primary meaning is “ghost”, it can also be used more broadly to vaguely describe anything evil.