CH 47

Chapter 47: Kindness (II)

Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen, who had been emerging from indoors with tea trays, jumped with shock. The tea tray clattered onto the ground, sending shattered ceramic pieces flying, some of the broken pieces even hitting Stone Zhang and Xuanmin's legs –- but the couple was too distracted even to apologise.

"Something's happened?" A chorus of voices rose –– Uncle Chen, Auntie Chen, Xingzi... and the hidden Jiang Shining.

But with all the commotion, no one noticed him.

"What's happened?" Auntie Chen gripped the messenger by his sleeve. "Speak, child! Why are you the only one that's returned?"

"Young Master..." the boy wheezed. He seemed to have run all the way home and barely stopped to breathe, so now he spoke in a spluttered, broken manner. He finally took some deep breaths and slowed down. "We were on our way back and turned down Jifu Street. Suddenly, seven or eight beggars appeared and took Young Master and Young Mistress away. The whole thing happened so quickly, it's as though they were waiting there for us!"

"What?" everyone exclaimed. "Taken away? Where to?"

"I... I don't know––" the boy seemed about to cry, and spoke with a voice full of shame and guilt. "Young Master and Young Mistress pushed me aside, and I fell to the ground. When I got up, they'd disappeared without a trace. I couldn't go after them. I couldn't even find them. I'm so useless..."

He began to sob.

"Did you at least see the direction in which they went?" Xuanmin suddenly asked.

The boy seemed not to have noticed that there were strangers in the courtyard. He faltered, then said between sniffs, "South. But there are too many streets that way, and I immediately lost track of them."

"Find an object that your Young Master and Young Mistress have touched," Xuanmin said again, as his gaze fell upon Twenty-Seven.

"Oh right, we have a human compass," Xue Xian said, petting Twenty-Seven's head maternally. But the boy pushed his hand away.

Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen didn't understand. "Something they've touched recently?" they asked.

But Xingzi clapped and shouted, "A handkerchief! Does that work?"

"Sure," Xue Xian said. "Could you please bring that handkerchief over?"

Still red-faced, Xingzi scurried into a nearby room, then ran out again. "Here –– the handkerchief. But what do you need it for?"

"Where going to find out where your Young Master and Young Mistress went."

Still utterly lost, Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen paced around restlessly, like ants on a hot stove.

Twenty-Seven took out his bundle of sticks and, lightly holding the embroidered handkerchief, began to make marks on the floor.

He looked like some kind of shaman. Uncle Chen, Auntie Chen, and even Xingzi looked on with concern. "This is..."

Then, in a highly serious manner, Twenty-Seven put away his sticks and felt the markings they'd created. Putting on his best oracle voice, he said, "Is there such a mountain path nearby? There are hills built from stacked broken stones on both sides, and on the hills is a forest. In the forest..."

He touched the markings again, and said, "Inside the forest is a grave, and by the grave is a small pond, and by the pond is a black rock, which looks like a crawling turtle..."

When he'd begun his description, Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen's faces had still been furrowed in confusion, but when he got to the turtle-shaped rock, they suddenly lit up: "There really is!"

"Where?"

"Xiaonanshan!"*

Before long, a horse-drawn carriage suddenly appeared at the foot of a hill in Qingping County known as Xiaonanshan. Xue Xian and the others sat inside the carriage, while Uncle Chen drove it.

At first, Xue Xian had only wanted to bring one ordinary person with them who could both drive the carriage and who knew the way –– it was convenient and efficient, and Uncle Chen had a mild personality and seemed able to tolerate a great deal of strange happenings.

And yet...

The group were now looking at Auntie Chen and Xingzi, who sat in the carriage with them.

"So the reason why the two of you came along is..." Xue Xian finally asked.

Indeed, they'd even left Stone Zhang back at the Fang compound.    

Auntie Chen had an excitable nature. She slapped her thigh and shouted, "Last year, when Old Mistress passed away, she'd asked me and Old Chen to take care of Young Master and Young Mistress. Now, it's only been a year and I've already lost them. How am I supposed to explain this to her? Oh, Old Mistress––"

Seeing that she might begin to wail, Xue Xian shot out a finger and waved it in front of her. "Shh... okay, okay, I understand."

Auntie Chen's eyes bulged out as she suddenly felt her mouth be sealed shut by some invisible forced –– she was unable to make any more noise.

"So, little girl, how about you––" Xue Xian asked. There were no seats with armrests inside the carriage, so he leant back against the carriage wall. As he spoke, finding nowhere to put his arms, he went ahead and used Xuanmin's legs as his armrests. Of course he did: it was only to be expected.

In the corner of his eye, Xue Xian saw Xuanmin glare at his arm on his knee. The monk raised his hand, as though about to pry the impossible beast's claws away.

Xue Xian turned, ready to protest and annoy him further –– but Xuanmin's gaze quickly passed by his arm, as though the monk had seen something or remembered something. Then, Xuanmin put his hand back down and let Xue Xian do what he wanted.

Huh?

Xue Xian was taken aback, but before he could process it, Xingzi, sitting across from him, blurted out, "I've been with Young Mistress for over five years. If something happens to her, how can I go on? I'm so stressed that I can't just sit around at home. Please don't make me get off the carriage. I promise not to get in the way."

"You won't get in the way, and I don't mind there being more people. It's just that..." Now Xue Xian slowed down his speech and said casually, "You need to be prepared."

Auntie Chen and Xingzi stared at him quizzically, unsure what he meant.

Before they could say anything, Twenty-Seven suddenly said, "Alright, the location's pretty much fixed. They're not moving anymore. They've stopped somewhere. This is... an abandoned village? Why are all the houses broken down?"

"Abandoned village? Do you mean Wen Village? My heavens –– how could they end up there? No one lives there anymore... and not only that, but it's haunted! If they go, they'll die!"

"A ghost village?"

"Old Chen! Old Chen! It's a matter of life and death! Go faster––" Auntie Chen yelled, knocking at the carriage wall.

The reason why the carriage was thrumming along this path on Xiaonanshan was precisely because the beginner soothsayer Twenty-Seven's sticks only worked some of the time –– and those they were tracking were constantly on the move. If they wanted to be able to confirm Jiang Shining's sister's final location, they needed to get as close as possible.

Now that those they were tracking really had stopped, Xue Xian's group naturally didn't want to wait around anymore. They got ready to charge.

"Hold on tight," Xue Xian said to Auntie Chen and Xingzi.

Just as Auntie Chen turned back from knocking on the wall, the entire carriage began to shake back and forth, 

"Aiyou!" Auntie Chen cried, thinking the horses had gone over a bumpy stretch of road. She shot out her hand to stabilise herself against the wall.

But then, out of nowhere, came a savage wind that began to rattle the carriage from the outside.

Terrified, the horses at the front began to whinny.

"What is going on what is going on––" Auntie Chen's hand scrabbled against the wall as she choked back tears. Xingzi held on tightly to her hand and screamed too.

"Little girl, please be quieter." Xue Xian lifted his hand, and the carriage doors slammed tightly shut. "The doors are shut. You can't fall out."

Auntie Chen and Xingzi stared at him incredulously, as though they'd seen a ghost––

"Did you touch the door just now..." Xingzi asked. "How come the door..."

She was still in a shocked daze when the carriage, which had tipped over diagonally, suddenly became light again. Xingzi's heart settled.

This sudden light feeling... it was as though someone –– or something–– had picked up the carriage in its entirety.

Trembling, the two women pulled open the curtain on the window...

"Ahhh!" they both screamed. 

"We're... we're... we're flying!"

Xue Xian scratched inside his ear. He had begun to regret what he'd done.

He poked Xuanmin in the waist and said, "Bald donkey, could you bring in the one at the front––"

"Ahhh!"

Before he could even finish his sentence, a scream rose from the front of the carriage too.

Xue Xian rolled his eyes. What happened to 'mild personality'?

Xuanmin swept his snow-white sleeve out of the window and, with a ping, Old Chen's head came hurtling in through the window, screaming all along.

As he'd been panicking outside with his eyes tightly shut, Xuanmin had gone ahead and dragged him inside. 

The screaming only stopped when he was sitting inside the carriage.

Now that everyone was in the carriage, Xue Xian reached a hand out of the window and did a wave.

Xingzi looked on, confused...

The carriage lurched to the side again –– this time, Auntie Chen hadn't managed to get a grip, so she fell with gravity and tumbled into Xingzi, who fell, too, onto Twenty-Seven.

The poor Twenty-Seven, still clutching his sticks, was slammed into the carriage wall.

Carried by the wind that Xue Xian had summoned, the carriage flew up into the skies, headed straight for the clouds.

But as soon as it penetrated the clouds, it immediately fell down toward the earth again.

As the carriage lurched again, Auntie Chen and Xingzi tumbled along too, knocking into Twenty-Seven again. The boy gritted his teeth.

Auntie Chen and Xingzi took another breath –– and when they exhaled, the carriage had already landed again.

"We're here," Xue Xian said. He hooked his finger and the doors of the carriage burst open, revealing the scene outside ––

Just as Auntie Chen had described, they were indeed in an abandoned village. The homes had long collapsed, allowing the forest's trees and weeds to take over. There was no sign of life at all. Although the sky was brightening, a patch of white light creeping in from the east during this freshest part of the morning, the village seemed to repel visitors rather than invite them.

"Caw –– caw––" A crow flew out from somewhere in the thicket, frightening the Fang family servants, who began to tremble and tried to shrink further into the carriage.

In the oppressive silence, of course any noise was going to seem so much louder. Just as Xuanmin took a step out of the carriage door, a woman's piercing scream rose out in the distance.

"Young Mistress!" Xingzi shouted. "That's Young Mistress' voice! She really is in there!"

Xuanmin turned to Xue Xian and said, "Wait here."

He planned to follow the voice into the abandoned village.

There was nothing to worry about when it came to Xuanmin, so Xue Xian leant back further into the carriage and crossed his arms lethargically. He nodded and said, "Okay, that'll save me some effort. Be back soon."

Frowning, Xuanmin surveyed the feng shui design of the abandoned village. There really was a problem with the village: it was a shell, with a strong exterior but a totally hollow heart, and it lacked something critical –– the perfect position had been emptied out and was now barren and dead.

As to what the village lacked...

Pondering this, Xuanmin began to stride forward in those sweeping steps. His hand absent-mindedly shot to the copper coin pendant by his hip, but there was nothing there.

Xuanmin paused.

Xue Xian, who had shuffled forward to the carriage door and had been watching Xuanmin walked away suddenly squinted––

Xuanmin was coming back again.

Xue Xian lifted his face and watched as the monk came to the door and lightly knocked against the carriage wall with his knuckle, then stretched out that slender, beautiful hand in front of Xue Xian. 

"What are you doing?" Xue Xian asked, confused.

Xuanmin said, "Copper coins."

Inside the carriage, Xingzi looked at Xuanmin's face and thought, How handsome...

Then she looked at Xue Xian, and found him handsome too.

And yet...

Most of Xingzi's thoughts were something like, If the Master wanted money, why was he asking for it from Xue Xian?

And now, Xuanmin, with his pendant in hand, was walking back into the abandoned village again. 

As he walked, the copper coins lightly struck against each other, making light ringing noises that were brought back to them by the eddies of the village's strange wind.

Xue Xian absent-mindedly drummed his fingers against his knee to the rhythm of the coins' echoes, waiting for Xuanmin to return.

But, after some time had passed, his fingers froze as he realised ––

Hold on. It had been so long, and Xuanmin's silhouette had completely disappeared into the village. How could the sound of the coins still ring so close?

But at that moment, that clear, rhythmic echo suddenly stopped. A low thrumming noise seemed to rise from within the earth –– it was so familiar...

As that weng–– noise appeared, Xue Xian felt his mind be wiped clean, and a scene that he had long forgotten surged forth.

---

* Literally 'small mountain in the south'. I would normally prefer to simply translate it as that phrase, but I'm not sure if this is going to keep coming back and don't want such a big mouthful all the time.