CH 54

Chapter 54: Ancient Drumbeat (I)

With all his scales standing on end, the dragon's entire body seized up in embarrassment and he froze. When he saw that the wound on the monk's hand was quickly beginning to heal, he finally came back to his senses and said, "Look, you're not bleeding anymore. Shouldn't you thank me now?"

As he said this, he debated his words to himself and concluded that his actions had been entirely logical and reasonable. Reassured that he had not completely, irreversibly humiliated himself, his spirits lifted again.

But then realised that, ever since Xuanmin had opened his eyes, he had continued to stand there unmoving, without even putting down his hand, which was still held up in a Buddhist greeting –– nor did he put away the coins, some of whose seals he'd now successfully broken, and he definitely didn't even glance at the wound that Xue Xian had licked...

Now this was weird.

Xue Xian's head rested at too awkward an angle to be able to see Xuanmin properly. It seemed that, when he'd transformed back into a dragon, in order to avoid burying Xuanmin alive, he'd adjusted his size –– but this was still his original form, and, despite the adjustment, he was still massive. He pondered this, then tilted his head ever so slightly and lowered his neck so that he could observe Xuanmin while half-propped against the floor.

Now that he'd changed his point of view, the monk's strange behavior became clearer. His brows were slightly furrowed and his lips were pursed, and, although his eyes were open, his gaze was shrouded in a black mist that let through not a hint of light. He seemed not to be staring at anything at all, but instead submerged in some kind of dream state.

The most startling part was that the mole on the side of Xuanmin's neck was unusually prominent –– it now looked like a blueish spider's web that crept from his neck all the way into his collar, looking particularly ominous against the monk's pale, smooth skin and pristine white robe.

Even Xue Xian, who barely considered his own flesh dripping off his body as a serious wound, was stunned by the sight of the spider's web. He reached out a claw and shifted part of the monk's robe aside so as to see the mole better.

He hissed with surprise. The blood vessels had spread across his entire shoulder, and even some of the muscles across his back seemed to brim with the hints of more zigzagging veins.

"What the hell is this?" Xue Xian murmured as he pushed Xuanmin's collar back to its place. At this rate of infection, half of Xuanmin's body would soon be completely covered in such markings, turning him from a high priest into a demon monk. 

No matter which way you looked at it, there was something deeply wrong with Xuanmin now. But if Xue Xian suddenly woke him up now, would that harm him?

Contemplating this, Xue Xian waved a claw in front of Xuanmin's face. The monk had no reaction –– he did not even blink, and that thick blackness continued to cloud his eyes ominously. 

How had he gotten the bald donkey to open his eyes again?

Right, he had licked his wound.

But had it been because he'd disturbed the wound itself, or had it been the dragon spit...

Xue Xian thought for a while, then used the tip of his tongue to lick Xuanmin's half-healed wound again –– and in response, the monk's fingers twitched.

Xue Xian was aghast. Do I have to fucking lick him back to life? What is this?

What kind of nonsense was this? If Xue Xian didn't know Xuanmin well enough to know that the monk had absolutely no sense of humor, he would think that he was being played. And it was good that it was Xuanmin, for if it was anyone else....

Xue Xian tried to imagine himself licking someone and thought he might vomit with disgust.

He gathered himself together and squinted at Xuanmin. If you don't wake up now, I'm going to give you a shower...

Just as Xue Xian opened his jaw and tried to estimate the best angle from which to approach the wound again, the web of blood vessels across Xuanmin's shoulders suddenly receded. Like the sea pulling back a great tide, the web quickly vanished back into that small mole on the side of the monk's neck.

And in that precise moment, the murkiness in Xuanmin's eyes disappeared too, and, as though suddenly wiped clean, his black eyes regained pools of light.

Then, he frowned, and the hand holding the copper coin pendant dropped. He was awake.

As he came to, he saw something move against his head in the corner of his eye and glanced over, coming face to face with the dragon, who had been about to head in for another lick.

For a long time, neither of them said anything. Finally, Xuanmin asked, "What are you doing?"

Xue Xian stared back at him silently.

He wasn't going to tell Xuanmin that he had been calculating the best angle to lick him from! 

Could he say, I was using your shiny head as a mirror to admire my own teeth?

No, he couldn't be such an asshole. Although Xue Xian didn't mind mocking people and in fact relished it, when it came to Xuanmin, he did have to think before he acted, as after all... technically, the bald donkey had been born to vanquish the likes of him.

The beast quickly ran through all of his options in his panicked mind, then awkwardly said, "Are my yawns your business too?"

If it was before, Xuanmin would glare at him coolly with a face that said Do whatever nonsense you like. But now, there was something profound in his expression, as though he had not fully returned from whatever vision he'd just experienced.

"Why the tragic face?" Xue Xian asked. "What happened just now? You weren't responding to anything."

Xuanmin's gaze fell upon the pendant in his hand, and he absent-mindedly rubbed those two shiny coins with his thumb. After some contemplation, he hooked the pendant back onto his hip and said mildly, "I remembered some things."

"What things?" Xue Xian asked automatically, then casually added, "Of course, it's the usual rules. If you don't want to tell me something, you can just say that it's not part of what you remembered."

In reality, even such a perfunctory question was highly unusual coming from Xue Xian. He was normally far to self-absorbed to pay attention to other people's issues, especially their private issues –– good, bad, sad, happy, he could never get himself to care. If people wanted to tell him about it, he would listen, and, depending on his mood that day, he might actually become interested and let them speak, or become irritated by their rambling. And if people didn't want to talk about it, he would never consider asking.

But Xuanmin was different –– when it came to the monk's past, Xue Xian constantly harbored a desire to investigate. The conversation they'd had back at the inn had been instigated deliberately, since at the time, Xuanmin's past had a direct connection to their situation with the poster. But this time...

This time, there had been no real reason to ask Xuanmin anything –– Xue Xian had only asked because he genuinely wanted to know about the things that Xuanmin had remembered from his previous life. It was only when he'd already asked the question that he realised, based on Xuanmin's personality, the monk probably did not want to talk about it at all, and so had added on that second part, to honorably provide a way out of the conversation for Xuanmin. 

But Xuanmin did not take the way out: he seemed not to want to maintain that aloof, intimidating, and cautious aura around Xue Xian. Xuanmin gazed into the distant fog for a while, gathering his thoughts. After some time, he calmly said, "Not much. And it's all fragmented. Much of it was of copying sutras at a desk as a youth. But..."

"But what?" Xue Xian asked. Xuanmin had paused and begun to frown, as though remembering something unhappy. 

A faint sense of loathing crossed Xuanmin's face. "Two images flashed by, in which I was holding something in my hand."

"What were you holding?"

Xuanmin paused again, then said, "It looked like human skin."

"... What?"

Xuanmin glanced at him and repeated, "Human skin –– pieces of it. Smaller than my palm, but bigger than an elm seed. Two of the pieces were thicker, and the others were all paper-thin."

Xue Xian tried to think of the things Xuanmin would possible hold in his hand –– such as a mokugyo, a talisman, a book, an inkwell, or maybe even an alms bowl –– but human skin? Now that was unbelievable.

"Human skin?" Xue Xian asked. "You're sure of it?"

Xuanmin nodded.

"And... do you remember why, or what you did with it? Maybe you found it somewhere," Xue Xian suggested.

But that was really unlikely. Could you just come across several pieces of human skin on the street somewhere?! What a sight that would be! But to think of Xuanmin somehow obtaining human skin... there was no way he'd gotten it in an innocent manner.

Although Xuanmin's attitude was indeed different from that of ordinary monks, it was also hard to believe that he would ever do something so evil to a person...

But no... Xue Xian recalled what Xuanmin looked like with his shoulder covered in those blood markings, and then recalled that, a very long time ago, before he'd become so close with the monk, he himself had told Jiang Shining: There's something indescribable about Xuanmin. He's like a sharp cutting edge of a sword wrapped up inside a white hemp robe. Beneath the cool demeanor is something incisive, as though, if it came down to it, he'd be capable of murder...

But that was also different from being inherently evil.

Xue Xian had zoned out pondering all this, and when he came back, he found that Xuanmin was staring at him, with something strange in his gaze, as though the monk were waiting for him to say something. Xue Xian faltered, then changed the tone in his voice and asked, "When is the memory from? Also your youth?"

"Yes."

Now Xue Xian was really confused. "Are you sure? If you don't know what had happened before and after you were holding the skin, how could you know you'd been young?"

Xue Xian spread his hands. "Young hands look different. Besides, I was sitting in front of a desk, which had sutras that I'd been copying."

Xue Xian thought, Clutching human skin while copying sutras? Do you want blasphemise your Grandpa Buddha to death?

In all seriousness, now that Xuanmin had asserted that the memory was from his youth, Xue Xian found it completely impossible to relate the memory back to some demon slaying-related incident.

But there had to be some way to explain it, right?

Finally, in a melodious tone, Xue Xian said, "Well, there's no point randomly guessing. We'll have to wait until you remember some more of it. You've managed to remember something just from breaking the seal on two coins, so maybe when you break the next one, you'll remember more. Perhaps when you break the seals on all five coins, you'll be able to get all your memories back."

That sounded rather reasonable. Both of them were straightforward people who naturally didn't want to waste too much time trying to make sense of something that could not make sense just yet.

Xuanmin reached out his hand and patted Xue Xian's divine dragon chin, then said, "Let's go."

Xue Xian was stunned for a second, then suddenly remembered that he was still coiled around Xuanmin's body. If he didn't transform back into a human, then Xuanmin couldn't move either. He cleared his throat and summoned a gust of wind to put his wheelchair upright, and then a white light surged forth and covered him as he put his clothes back on and sat back into the chair.

As he arranged his robe, Xue Xian saw Xuanmin walk over to where the dragon bone had been buried and extract a handful of copper nails and talismans. He tore off another piece of white cloth and wrapped the items inside, then put them away. It was only then that he came over to the wheelchair.

Having learned his lesson, Xuanmin knew not to let Xue Xian go off on his own again, so gripped the wheelchair's handles tightly as he got ready to push the dragon back to the Xu compound. But as his gaze passed across the wound on his hand, he paused.

The skin between his forefinger and thumb, which had been angrily torn apart earlier, was almost healed and was already beginning to form into a scab. It seemed that, within half a day, it would go back to normal, with no hint of having been damaged at all.

Xuanmin only needed to think back a bit to realise how Xue Xian had managed to treat his wound.

But... dragon saliva... that was not a substance to be used so casually...