CH 57

Chapter 57: Bone Threads (II)

Xuanmin's half-open eyes seemed to merge with the dim light of the lantern, so that it was impossible to tell exactly where his gaze fell –– if it was Xue Xian's own panicked eyes, or the tip of his nose beaded with sweat, or lower...

A massive, invisible screen seemed to come down between them, making all other noises in the world appear faint and faraway, leaving only the entwined sounds of their breathing; inhale, exhale... their breathing filled the room, so that suddenly everything around them seemed to become narrow and cramped, too small for them to make any movement at all.

Suddenly, Xuanmin twitched the wrist that Xue Xian had been pressing –– it grabbed Xue Xian's fingers in return and bluntly twisted them around, so that Xuanmin's hand was now clamped tightly over Xue Xian's. Perhaps it was because the strange heat in his body had caused him not to be able to control his strength, but his grip on Xue Xian's hand was incredibly strong.

Just then, Xue Xian's mind finally cleared a little and he realised that Xuanmin's sweat was not only coming from the crook of his neck, but was all over his body –– his hands were damp with sweat too, and in the instant that he grabbed onto Xue Xian's hand, his fingers slipped between Xue Xian's; and when he tightened his grip, the skin between their fingers could not help but rub up against each other... now the feeling was more than intimate –– it could be called affectionate, or even devoted.

As Xuanmin sleepily closed his eyes then opened them again, a bead of sweat appeared out of somewhere on his face and rolled off his chin, falling onto the tip of Xue Xian's chin below, then streamed down his neck and disappeared into his collar.

Suddenly, Xue Xian's breathing grew heavier, and his mind quickly became alert again.

In the streets outside the compound, a cat yowled, its cry echoing across the night and sounding unusually close, as though it were right there beside the bed.

The cat's yowl was enough to thoroughly awaken Xuanmin. He brusquely took his hand away and shut his eyes.

Xue Xian's eyelid twitched as he, too, automatically retraced his hand and sat up straight as a board. As Xue Xian wheeled his chair to the side, he saw that Xuanmin was sitting in his original position again, his eyes still closed, his face still set, and the hand that had grasped Xue Xian's so tightly now relaxed and resting, again, on his knee.

After some time, Xuanmin opened his eyes again. He looked calmly at Xue Xian and said, "Sit farther away."

His tone was as neutral as ever, but something in his voice was slightly lower than usual, with a slight hoarseness.

Xue Xian had already moved away a little earlier, and now the overwhelming heartbeat that he'd previously successfully repressed seemed to suddenly burst out again. His heart began to thump hysterically as though about to die, the pulse as loud and clear in his ear as the beat of a drum. The ba-dump, ba-dump of his crazy manic heart filled his ear, and he had not at all heard what Xuanmin had just said in that low voice of his.

"Huh?" he asked.

He had not yet recovered from that strange feeling of intimacy –– his response came in a slight nasal tone, so that he sounded both tender and lazy. 

Xuanmin fell silent for a while, then mildly said, "Nothing."

Finally, Xue Xian's pulse slowed to normal, and he breathed a sigh of relief –– but his right hand, which had been gripped so hard that it now ringed with numbness, was a reminder of all that had just occurred. As he flexed the fingers of that hand, he silently wheeled his chair to the table and turned his back to Xuanmin, using his refreshing the lantern as cover to settle that strange, overwhelming feeling inside him.

As he fiddled with the core of the lantern, the tiny flame bloomed and the room suddenly became far brighter. Xue Xian turned his chair back around and used the new light to steal a glimpse of Xuanmin ––

The thin white robe on his body was soaked through with sweat, the cloth sketching a contour of the muscles across his shoulders and arms... after the strangeness from earlier, even though Xue Xian felt that he had calmed down now, this new view of Xuanmin did not make him feel much better.

Seeing him drenched in sweat, and recalling the extreme heat emanating from his body before, Xue Xian summoned a dredge of sympathy for once and said, "Shall I go get you some water, to help you freshen up?"

Knowing that Xuanmin hated to have even a speck of dirt on him, Xue Xian figured the monk must be deeply uncomfortable with all that sweat. That was the only thing that Xue Xian had considered, and he'd forgotten other details –– such as the fact that, to wash, one needed to take off one's clothes, and Xuanmin wasn't the only person in the room...

As soon as he uttered his question, it all suddenly occurred to Xue Xian, and he wished he could take it back.

Xuanmin continued to sit there, and contemplated Xue Xian's question. He opened his eyes, glanced at Xue Xian, then shut them again and said, "No. I only need you to sit a bit farther away."

"What have I done to you now?" Xue Xian retorted. "If I go even farther, I'll be out of the room."

Xuanmin kept his eyes shut. It was only when Xue Xian wheeled back into that 'special healing corner' that he slowly said, "No."

Just No. Who knew what the hell he meant by that.

The place where Xue Xian now sat was to the side of the bed. From his point of view, he could only see Xuanmin's profile, and most of his vision was blocked by the bed itself. But this actually helped to dissipate some of the awkwardness from before, so that Xue Xian finally felt himself relax a little.

And the reason why it was awkward was because... just then, in that moment, Xue Xian had felt his body react in a totally unfamiliar way. Of course, at the time, he'd chalked it up to restlessness, but...

He wondered whether Xuanmin had felt the same thing.

Xue Xian settled comfortably into his chair, leaning his arm against the armrest and placing his head upon it. His other hand fiddled absent-mindedly with the copper coin pendant, his thumbs unconsciously drawing contours around one of the coins, his idle gaze sometimes landing on the quivering flame in the lantern, sometimes on Xuanmin.

Based on all that sweat on Xuanmin's body at the moment, if Xuanmin had had some kind of reaction too, then surely it would be visible? But Xuanmin was so reserved and detached that it was impossible to think of him having anything to do with the common realm and all the vulgar, bodily things there. Besides, he was still sitting cross-legged, with his monk's robes draped across his knees, so there was nothing to see.

What in the world was going on? How had it come to this?

The night was uncannily peaceful, and time seemed to creep by abnormally slowly. With nothing else to do, Xue Xian sat deep in thought for a while, then suddenly remembered the wound on Xuanmin's hand that he'd licked, and what Jiang Shining had tried to tell him before Xuanmin had stopped him.

Xue Xian felt that he finally understood why Jiang Shining had told him not to mess with dragon spit. But the warning had come too late.

He laughed bitterly to himself and straightened up again, so that he looked more serious, and less an instigator. He stopped staring at Xuanmin, too, instead guiltily closing his eyes and focusing on healing once more.    

This night of healing was definitely different from all the other times he'd healed before –– perhaps it was the extra bone that Xue Xian had absorbed, or perhaps it was because two of the seals on the coin pendant had now been broken. 

Before, he could only feel a sense of swelling heat in the places where his muscles were mending themselves, or the turgidity of his growing bones, as though they were trying to push themselves out of his body. But now, he could clearly feel the location of the swelling, as well as exactly where the bone he'd absorbed was growing –– everything was gathered in the parts of him that had been broken and extended outwards as though a ghost of his past skeleton, thin filaments spreading across his body.

The threads seemed almost alive: as Xue Xian's magical power strengthened and deepened, the threads seemed to slowly grow longer too –– but the process took a lot of effort. Even after healing all night, Xue Xian was only able to grow half of the threads in his body, and now he was as exhausted as if he'd been working at it for a month.

As the sky lightened and the members of the Fang household began to step out of their rooms, Xue Xian had already roused the constantly awake Jiang Shining and was planning to go find something to eat.

"Ah Ning, Xue... Young Master Xue, what are you two doing?" Jiang Shijing asked. She had already washed her face and was about to bring some medicine to the three plague-ridden beggars when she came across the pair headed for the back door and waved them down.

"We're going to Huicui Hall." Jiang Shining was familiar with the famous restaurants around Qingping and could at least show Xue Xian the way.

"Huicui Hall?" Jiang Shining repeated, confused. "Why would you go there in the morning? Auntie Chen has already prepared breakfast."

Jiang Shining wrung his hands. "Sir is very picky. He doesn't distinguish between meals. He only eats meat, and there has to be a lot of it."

"Even if you go to Huicui Hall now and order meat dishes, you still have to wait a while for them to prepare it." If it wasn't for Xue Xian and Xuanmin, Jiang Shijing and her husband would probably still be sitting around in Wen Village, or even dead by now. So the entire Fang family held a sense of reverence and gratitude toward the two –– even calling Xue Xian by the basic honorific Young Master felt awfully impolite, let alone letting him go hungry.

As Jiang Shijing spoke, Auntie Chen happened to come out of the kitchen and the two exchanged glances. Auntie Chen clapped and said, "Auntie Chen knows how to make all the specialty dishes at Huicui Hall. Young Master Xue, tell me which dishes you'd like to try, and I should be able to lay out a whole table for you in no time."

Jiang Shining began to nod too. "We can get Xingzi to help Auntie Chen. You missed dinner last night, so you must be ravenous now."

As a guest in someone's home, naturally Xue Xian was not about to order an entire banquet as he'd done before. He let himself be persuaded. "Well then, thank you very much. It doesn't matter what you make, just do whatever you'd like. I don't mind as long as there's meat." I'm not going to eat grass.

But...

Xue Xian looked around, then said to Jiang Shijing and Auntie Chen, "Could I bother you for some hot water? The bald... Xuanmin was feverish last night and sweated through his clothes. He needs to wash."

"Feverish?" As soon as Jiang Shijing and Auntie Chen heard this, their doctor modes kicked in. In unison, they demanded, "Are there other symptoms? Headache? Nausea?"

Other symptoms...

Drily, Xue Xian replied, "No, based on his physicality I don't think he's the type to catch cold. He probably messed up while meditating and is now being turned evil by demonic hallucinations."

The Jiang siblings gasped. Demonic hallucinations sound far more serious than a cold, sir!

But remembering that wizards were always eccentric, and not feeling comfortable asking for more information, the Jiang siblings simply nodded and went off to fetch hot water.

Whenever Xue Xian thought about last night, he felt awkward. He was trying to spend as little time as possible inside the room. So he followed Jiang Shining around aimlessly, then followed Auntie Chen around until she finally asked him politely to leave the kitchen, at which point he sullenly wheeled himself back to the living room to wait for breakfast.

Jiang Shining had gotten excited as soon as he'd seen those familiar rows of medicinal herbs, so had gone off to help his sister prepare medication. The only ones left in the room were Fang Cheng, checking over the accounts, and Xue Xian himself.

Xue Xian thought for a while, then decided to speak. "May I ask you a question?" he said to Fang Cheng.

Fang Cheng's hand stopped writing and he said, "Of course, of course. Ask away, and I'll tell you everything I might possibly know."

"Have you heard of dragon spit?" Unlike Jiang Shining, Fang Cheng did not know that Xue Xian was a dragon, so Xue Xian did not feel as embarrassed to ask him. "What effects does it have? Could it harm a human?"

"Um..." Fang Cheng gave him a confused look. "I have indeed heard of it, but I've never seen it. So in terms of effects... I only know the rumors."

"What do the rumors say?"

"Just that... if a girl comes across dragon spit... then she will become pregnant." Fang Cheng was clearly not a natural storyteller –– with that awkward line, he seemed to have finished his explanation.

Xue Xian frowned. What?

Fang Cheng spoke again. "These days the rumors say that in whatever place, whoever was fortunate enough to obtain some, and they either sold it for an insane price or gave it to someone to take. They say that apart from being able to heal wounds and illnesses very quickly, and to serve as an antidote for hundreds of poisons, dragon spit has other uses as well. They say that it can increase yin and strengthen yang... well, it's an aphrodisiac. And they say that its effect is quite long-term. But that's all just rumor, of course. If you could encounter a medicine that could heal everything and repel all poison just once in a lifetime, then you could die happy."

Fang Cheng had spent all his life as a pharmacist, so when it came to talking about medicine, he did so very seriously and did not come across as inappropriate at all. But...

Although Xue Xian had roughly guessed the meaning of dragon spit last night, it was vastly different from hearing someone say it out loud.

To the point where he immediately went into the courtyard to find Jiang Shining and said, "Can we talk? Can we switch rooms tonight?"

Jiang Shining gasped. "No. Just one night in the same room as Master will send me straight to the afterlife. Didn't you agree to let me stay a few more days and spend my sister's birthday with her?"

Xue Xian said, "Alright, then we won't switch. But let me into your room. I won't take up space on the bed."

Jiang Shining laughed drily. "Stone Zhang will be so afraid that he'll wet the bed. And do you think Twenty-Seven'll stay sane?"

Xue Xian fell silent.

"Did you piss off Master again?" Jiang Shining got the feeling that he had become everyone's mother, and wasn't even getting paid for it –– all this fretting was taking years off his life. Oh wait, he no longer had any years in his life.

With a blank expression, Xue Xian pinched his fingers together, leaving a small space between them. "Just a little bit," he said. 

Jiang Shining thought, He must've gotten into huge trouble. It's definitely not 'a little bit.'

As the two spoke, the back door to the compound was pushed open and two youths dressed in pharmacist uniforms carried baskets of herbs into the courtyard. Seeing Jiang Shining, they froze, then greeted Auntie Chen as she emerged from the kitchen with a steaming plate. "Good morning, Auntie Chen. What you're making smells delicious, you're making us both hungry. Where're Young Master and Young Mistress?"

"They're both busy. Put the baskets away and wash your hands, we'll be eating soon," Auntie Chen replied.

"Ai, we were supposed to be able to get back last evening, but we came across a carriage train on the way, and they made us clear the road. That's why we were delayed by a night," the youths –– servants to the Fang family –– said to Auntie Chen as they arranged the herbs they'd collected.

"Carriage train? What carriage train?"

"The authorities." Now that the youths had begun to talk about it in more detail, their tones became mysterious. "You know how we reported the plague in the county? The imperial court sent a team to exorcise the plague. They must be in the city by now. Guess who they sent?"

"Exorcists?" Auntie Chen repeated. "Then it must be..."

The servant waved his hand. "They say that the officials the emperor sent report directly to the Great Priest. There are so many types of officials that I can't remember what they're all called, but these are the ones that follow the Great Priest around every day –– they definitely know what he looks like."