CH 55

Chapter 55: Ancient Drumbeat (II)

Xue Xian finished arranging his robe but saw that Xuanmin was making no move to leave. He turned around and complained, "Why are you just standing there?"

Xuanmin lifted up his wounded hand and asked, "Do you know what humans use dragon spit for?"

Although he seemed quite calm, something in his tone was amiss, as though a series of complicated emotions were running through him. Xue Xian grimaced. This bald donkey really has to find the exact thing I don't want to talk about, and then bring it up! Now that I'm human again, I can't help but feel... so weird about what I did.

Ha. Ha.

Xue Xian rearranged his face and forced himself to come up with something to save his dignity. "It's my own spit. Why would I want to know what humans use it for?" he scoffed. "I know that dragon magic can heal people –– those are the basics. It's not like I'm going to start grinding down all my body parts to sell medicine. Am I crazy?" He glared at Xuanmin spitefully then turned back around and knocked his fist impatiently against the armrest, adding, "I healed your wound, and I don't mind that you haven't even thanked me yet, but please stop it with the questions. Let's go!"

He'd wanted to throw a little tantrum –– it didn't matter what he said, as long as his tone was aggressive enough to make Xuanmin forget about the whole 'licking wound' thing.

It was as he'd thought. Xue Xian subtly peeked back at Xuanmin over his shoulder and saw the monk shake his hand and put down his hand again. Exasperated, Xuanmin said, "Let's go." Clearly, he had no plans to keep the conversation going.

Xue Xian was very happy.

The two returned to Kind Man Xu's compound in no time, but avoided the front doors, instead surreptitiously slipping into the courtyard from a side entrance.

The front hall where Kind Man Xu had greeted his arriving guests was now completely empty, and instead the noise of a crowd rose from some other hall near the back, which, due to the thick fog, they could not clearly see.

When Xue Xian and Xuanmin returned to the eastern room, Jiang Shining breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "You're finally back..." 

Indeed, once the two of them had left, there had been not very many reliable, trustworthy people left in the room. If Kind Man Xu and the other spirits had suddenly gone insane, then there would have been nothing they could have done.

"Why do you look so terrified?" Xue Xian sneered. "If you don't go out looking for trouble, then Kind Man Xu won't come in either. Unless you're really unlucky, and he has to come in here to retrieve something."

Hearing this, the group in the room were curious. Jiang Shining asked, "If we don't go out, they won't come in? True.... come to think of it, earlier I heard him giving instructions to some servants outside, telling them to prepare tea and wine. Then the sound moved away. It seems they really have forgotten that we're in here."

Xue Xian waved his hand dismissively. "Of course they won't remember..."

Souls bound to the land were not alive –– they were only aware of the faces and events that they were used to, and were slow to react to outsiders barging in on them. When Kind Man Xu could see Xue Xian and his group, then he would chat with them amiably as though he knew exactly what was going on, but if he could not see them, then he would not even think about them, and would soon completely forget that they existed.

So when they had spent all that time in the room previously, Kind Man Xu had not come to bother them –– but as soon as Xuanmin had wheeled Xue Xian out, Kind Man Xu had immediately come to greet them again.

"I see," the scarred man said, nodding understandingly.

He was about to continue, but Xue Xian suddenly pointed at his troupe and said, "Don't. This has nothing to do with you. We're the outsiders here. You've been coming over year after year, ever since Kind Man Xu was alive, so to those gathered in the hall, you're a part of them. They've forgotten about you momentarily, but they're going to come looking for you at some point."

As he said this, they suddenly heard some footsteps emerge from the back hall, which seemed to be getting closer...

"Where're Renliang and the others? Look at my terrible memory, I've somehow forgotten to greet my old friends. How terrible of me..." Kind Man Xu was saying to someone as he came right upon the door.

Du du du ––

Everyone in the room jumped in fright.

"Renliang, are you in there?" Kind Man Xu asked, knocking on the door. "The feast has been laid out and we're waiting for you to join us––"

Then came a creak––

Even the slightest touch to that ancient wooden door made it emit an ear-rattling noise.

"We're here, we're here!" the scarred man said as his entire troupe gathered into a dense mass, blocking the rest of the room from Kind Man Xu's view. "We just sat down here to rest. We'll be there soon."

The others gathered in the room could only see the troupe's backs. They heard Kind Man Xu's cheerful voice say, "Come, come, you must be dead hungry after having travelled all this way. Come with me––"

The scarred man bellowed with laughter and agreed. Then, one by one, the members of the troupe streamed out of the door and followed Kind Man Xu into the back hall.

The scarred man held the door open for them and was the last one to leave. Before he did so, he tilted his head toward the room and said, "Leave now, while you still can. Once we start performing, we can't help you, and it'll become harder for you to escape."

That was exactly what Xue Xian was thinking of too. Now that the scarred man and his troupe had led Kind Man Xu away, it was the perfect time.

Everyone in the room got up and dusted themselves off –– only the no-handed beggar seemed to hesitate.

"You need the two of us to save your friends, right?" Jiang Shijing said, gesturing at the old man and two children on the bed. "Take them back to the pharmacy with us. Be careful –– use your clothes to protect yourself from their rashes."

The beggars exchanged glances and eagerly agreed. Without any more hesitation now, they hurriedly wrapped the three ill people in blankets and carried them in their arms, ready to leave.

As Xuanmin began to push Xue Xian's wheelchair out of the door, the scarred man quickly returned and said, "I can tell that the two of you are highly powerful wizards. Just now, I felt something change within Wen Village..."

The scarred man glanced back at the back hall and seemed to travel back in time, remembering the laughter and joy of his long-dead old friends. He paused in contemplation, then said to Xuanmin, "If I may ask... are they about to depart?"

"Yes," Xuanmin replied. "The spell that was interfering with the feng shui design has been broken. The souls bound to this land are able to leave now."

"They can probably last the rest of the day," Xue Xian added, looking at the sky outside. "But by nightfall, they'll be gone."

To Jiang Shining and the other outsiders, those souls were terrifying things that they wanted to stay well away from, and, although they appeared cordial when interacting with the souls, they were unable to truly feel warmth –– all they could do was say a perfunctory word of thanks or of apology. But to the scarred man and his troupe, these were neighbors and extended family members that they had known since childhood, and each and every face, mannerism, and smile brought back vivid memories from the past...

With a complex expression on his face, the scarred man nodded and said in a low voice, "It's for the best."

On the way back from Wen Village, Xue Xian was unusually calm, and did not attempt to summon a tempest, nor did he turn into a dragon, nor did he seem even to consider sending the carriage into the sky again. The only thing he did was magically expand the room within the carriage, and then bring a light breeze behind the horse to speed up their journey.

Jiang Shining was suspicious of how quiet Xue Xian was being, and his eyes kept darting at him throughout the journey. Finally, Jiang Shining said, "What are you thinking about, all serious like that?"

Xue Xian glanced at him, then glanced at him a second time. Suddenly, he said, "Oh right. You basically count as half a doctor..."

Jiang Shining rolled his eyes and turned away, irritated.

Seeing that Jiang Shining was edging away from him, Xue Xian nudged himself closer instead and said conspiratorially, "Let me ask you something. What does dragon spit do?"

Jiang Shining gave him an odd look, as though he were a madman.

"Hey –– what's that look for? I'm asking you a question," Xue Xian said impatiently.

"I just think it's funny that a dragon genuinely needs to ask what dragon spit does," Jiang Shining replied. "It's... hard to explain. Do you really not know?"

It was Xue Xian's turn to roll his eyes now. "Would you randomly explore whether your own eyes can be made into medicine, and if so, what effect it can have? I've never been that interested."

"True," Jiang Shining mumbled, nodding.

"Besides, I can usually just test stuff out on people. But how am I supposed to test out dragon spit?"

Jiang Shining looked at him and said uneasily, "It's best if you don't..."

"Why not?"

"Although I've never been witness to it personally, I have heard some rumors. You see, dragon spit..." Initially, at the start of the conversation, Jiang Shining had been careful to keep his voice down, but he had soon forgotten and his voice had inadvertently gone back to normal. So as soon as he began to explain, a hand suddenly shot out to stop him.

Confused, Jiang Shining watched as Xuanmin slammed his copper coin pendant into Xue Xian's hand, then stuck a talisman on his forehead and turned his wheelchair around so that he now had his back to Jiang Shining. Then, Xuanmin glared silently at Jiang Shining.

I don't know what I said wrong, but that look from Master tells me that I was definitely wrong somehow, Jiang Shining thought. He laughed awkwardly at Xuanmin, agreeing to shut up, then turned to gaze out of the window.

Xue Xian grumbled, "Bald donkey, just you wait. When I get this talisman off I'm going to beat you to death." Don't you know how torturous it is to only hear half of someone's sentence?

But the talisman was not going to come off anytime soon.

Even as they finally arrived at the Fang compound and settled into the living room, Xue Xian still could not move. 

Xuanmin wheeled him into a corner of the room where he claimed the feng shui was uniquely suited for healing, but thankfully the bald donkey was kind enough not to make him face the wall again...

But facing the doorway was equally embarrassing! 

Xue Xian felt faint from sheer anger.

When Xue Xian and Xuanmin had gone off to find the dragon bone, Jiang Shining had already explained the details of their journey so far to his sister, so that Jiang Shijing now knew that they required drops of her blood to perform the final funeral rites for their parents. But daytime was not an appropriate time to summon spirits, so they needed to wait until sundown.

But no matter what, when it came to her parents, Jiang Shijing took things very seriously. So as soon as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, she and Jiang Shining went to find Xuanmin.

As the sky darkened and the night crept toward them, the servants had already lit the lantern inside Xuanmin's room.

Xue Xian sat in a corner with his eyes shut, lightly tapping the copper coin pendant and focusing on his healing. The lantern cast a warm glow onto him, giving his normally pale face a slightly flushed, healthy radiance.

As soon as Jiang Shining and his sister stepped inside, they immediately relaxed –– Xuanmin was a straightforward person who did not like to waste words, and had already placed the silver medical bell onto the table.

He reached into his pouch and took out that smaller pouch, from which he selected just the right length of silver needle. Giving it to Jiang Shijing, he said, "Three drops of blood from the Laogong pressure point."

Jiang Shijing held the needle over the flame to clean it, and then prodded herself in the middle of her palm, then returned the needle to Xuanmin.

"Drip the blood here," Xuanmin said, pointing out three locations on the bell. "From west to east."

Breathing deeply, Jiang Shijing calmly brought her hand over and dripped her blood onto the bell.

As soon as the drops of blood fell onto the bell, they began to move by themselves. Each time they rolled over a certain part of the bell, it would suddenly begin to tremble, as though struck by something invisible. Each gentle tremor made Jiang Shining and his sister's faces contort with sadness.

When the three drops of blood had each travelled a full circle around the bell, they finally rolled off the bell and onto the table.

With washed hands, Xuanmin retracted a brush and wrote the Jiang parents' names onto a sheet of yellow paper, which he folded into three and placed on top of the bell, then lit on fire.

Then he brought out a stick of incense that he lit using the flame from the burning paper, and a delicate, fragrant wisp of blue smoke emerged into the room. Those watching felt themselves suddenly relax and feel profoundly peaceful.*

As the incense burned, no one in the room said a word, allowing Xuanmin to mumble his brief prayer.

Ding––

The bell suddenly rang out, and the tail end of sound lingered tenderly, stunning the Jiang siblings.

Ding––

And another...

"Is... is that mother and father?" Jiang Shijing asked as her tears began to flow onto the table.

Xuanmin calmly replied, "They have been trapped in the bell for too long. They are no longer able to show themselves to you, but they can use the sound of the bell to bid you farewell."

Libation, inscription, incineration, invocation. These are all a dead soul needs.

In a trance, the Jiang siblings stared at the bell. Although they could not see their parents' faces, they nonetheless dared not even to blink...

In the corner, Xue Xian silently opened his eyes and gazed at the table. Because he could not nod, he instead closed his eyes gently, and, remembering the kindness with which they had treated him over ten years ago, he, too, bade farewell and thank you to the couple ––

The medicine you gave me worked very well, and the heater was very warm. Thank you. May your journey be peaceful.

In the Xu family compound at Wen Village, the high-pitched song of a huadan role rang out among the accompanying beat of a copper gong and leather drum. "Do not let the bright moon fall behind the mountain curve / from now on..."**

That same play was performed year after year, from the beginning all those winters ago to the end, today –– and yet, no one tired of it. The guests gathered in the Xu compound never stopped loving hearing those words, and watching those characters.

Old friends, old home, old stage... it was as though these ten or so years had never passed, and they had never become separated by life and death.

Kind Man Xu sat by a table and sipped his tea, watching the tragic drama on the stage. His finger drummed lightly against the table as he hummed along to the tunes. Before the show could come to an end, he suddenly said, "Renliang, that was amazing..."

As the troupe leader, the scarred man himself did not perform –– he sat next to Kind Man Xu by the table. Hearing Kind Man Xu's words, he was stunned, and watched as the old man smiled warmly at him. There was something behind the smile, as though... he had long known that the village had ceased to be, and that his old friends were all also gone.

The scarred man collected his thoughts, then raised his untouched cup of tea and saluted Kind Man Xu, then took a sip. "Next year, perhaps... we won't be able to come."

His expression was as forlorn as Kind Man Xu's. They looked at each other tenderly.

As they each finished their cups of tea, the two smiled at each other, as though they had finally met against all odds and were now forced to part again.

You need to go, and so do I...

As the sky darkened, the thick fog that surrounded the village dissipated too, and along with it, the melancholy sound of singing faded away as well, becoming ever dimmer and receding into the distance.

Do not let the bright moon fall behind the mountain curve / from now on the moon will never set / and we won't turn old / we'll live every day of the next hundred years just as we'd lived this night...

As long as you're here to listen, we'll be here to sing for you. Our promise holds true, whether we are living or dead.

----

* Here, the author uses the adjective 'ningjing' 宁静 which means peaceful/calm but is also literally made up of the given names of the Jiang siblings - Ning and Jing. 

** Apparently this is a poem from the Korean folk novel Chunhyangjeon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunhyangjeon