CH 73

Chapter 73: Passerby (V)

By the time Xue Xian and Xuanmin returned to the Qingping county seat, the sun had fully risen above them. Unlike the chaotic and violent lightning that was currently still striking down upon a specific spot at the foot of Dustpan Mountain, the weather was in fact quite pleasant here, even managing to cast a faint sense of warmth onto the mid-winter chill.

The city seemed to be more alive than it had been a couple of days ago, with far more people milling about on the streets –– it seemed to be slowly emerging from the shadow of the plague and breathing a deep sigh of relief.

As the two stood before the Fang compound, they saw that the whole family was already awake and were extremely busy.

The servants had laid out medicine outside the shop, hoping to take advantage of the rare sunshine to dry some herbs. The beggars were following them around and helping out in a clumsy but focused manner. Uncle Chen was helping Fang Cheng to catalogue the shop: as one read out the names of herbs, the other noted down the numbers onto a sheet of paper.

To the side, Jiang Shijing was reading to a group of children who looked to be seven or eight years old: these were the apprentices from other families, who, despite their young age, were already well-versed in all kinds of medicines and their uses.

Auntie Chen had a cleaver and was busy chopping vegetables in the kitchen, with Xingzi as her assistant who often had to run out to perform small tasks.

The twin brothers were so busy behind the shop counter that they could barely stop for breath. Jiang Shining, who could not stay too long in the sunlight, was inside a room, helping his sister with a medical manuscript that she'd composed.

Stone Zhang had picked a corner and had found some stone. He was hunched over, carving something new. By his feet were already a row of thumb-sized stone bunnies and stone monkeys –– he really seemed to have nothing better to do than that.

Although the Fang courtyard was relatively large, with people of all ages and professions running about inside, it had become rather cramped.

If it had been before, Xue Xian would have turned on his heels and left as soon as he saw the chaos –– it was already annoying enough to have a Stone Zhang buzzing about your ear, let alone all of these different people at the same time. 

Although he was not as particular as Xuanmin and had a rather open personality, he was not one to enjoy commotion. He could make a commotion, but others could not –– that was simply how unreasonable he always was.

But now, as he leant against the doorway, idly scanning the courtyard, he suddenly got the feeling that this was a pretty good life. To ordinary people, this was probably the best life one could wish for.

"Ah––" As Xingzi stepped out of the kitchen, she noticed Xue Xian and Xuanmin standing silently by the door and happily announced to the whole compound, "Young Master Xue is back!"

"Little girl, your crush is far too obvious," said Stone Zhang from his spot behind her. "Master is back too. Did you not even see him?"

Blushing, Xingzi waved her hand and said, "Of course not. I was about to say it."

Stone Zhang appeared to be fully immersed in the joy and satisfaction of his little carvings. Without a thought, he turned to ask Xue Xian, "Did you spend all night tidying up? Are you done now? If we'd known that it would take that long, Twenty-Seven and I would have stayed to help!"

Stone Zhang was almost impressively simple-minded. As he said this, Xue Xian's entire face turned green.

For a moment, Xue Xian thought he could feel Xuanmin glance at him, but when he turned to see, Xuanmin had already averted his gaze and begun to stride into the courtyard. 

Xue Xian shot a glare at Stone Zhang. But the feeling that had poked right at his heart heart two or three times already was quite uncomfortable, and in fact was starting to feel like an extra piece of rib cartilage. And, to be honest, he had been relatively promiscuous in all the years he'd been alive, but nothing had ever made him feel this way before.

He'd had enough of it!

Xue Xian finally forced his face to turn back to its original color and told himself, Yes, okay, so he jerked me off. It's done. It happened.

Under his withering stare, Stone Zhang's legs had turned to jelly –– he was glad that he'd already been sitting down, for if he'd been standing up, he was afraid he would've tried to run away. He slapped himself on the mouth and thought, What a big mouth I have. Look at the way he's staring at you now.

But he just could not figure out how he had managed to piss the dragon off with just one line.

As the Fang family hurried across the compound to greet Xue Xian and Xuanmin, Xingzi, who had been staring at Xue Xian for some time, suddenly cried out and pointed at Xue Xian's legs, exclaiming, "You-–"

"Hey, your legs have healed?" the ever-oblivious Stone Zhang commented. "What magic pill did you take? How did your legs heal in just one night?"

Xue Xian squinted at him and said blankly, "It's safer for you if you just didn't speak."

Stone Zhang obediently shut his mouth, but thought, What did I do this time?

Yet Stone Zhang was not the only one wondering how Xue Xian's legs had healed overnight. Soon, the entire Fang household was admiring his newly healed legs and chittering in surprise at how quickly it had all happened.

One night this and one night that. As they muttered away, Xue Xian got the feeling that all those mouths around him were provoking him on purpose...

Thankfully, before it could get too overwhelming, Xue Xian felt someone grab hold of his wrist.

"His legs have only just recovered. He needs to continue to heal so that they can strengthen," Xuanmin suddenly said.

The group paused, then immediately nodded and said, "Master is right. He needs to rest."

Without another word, Xuanmin led Xue Xian by the wrist, pushed open the door to the bedroom they'd occupied the previous night, guided him inside, then shut the door again.

As the door closed, it sealed the voices of the others outside –– what a remarkable door: despite its thinness, once it sealed shut, the outside world seemed to become a whole other world. As Xue Xian looked into the room, his eyes fell on the hand that grasped his wrist.

The door had already been shut, yet that hand lingered for some time before finally letting go.

Xue Xian looked up and watched as Xuanmin walked to the table and pulled out a chair. Xuanmin said, "On the way back, your steps were not steady. Your pulse is sluggish, too. Perhaps you were too hasty in repairing your legs. You should heal some more."

So he reason why he hadn't wanted to let go of Xue Xian's wrist was because he'd been feeling his pulse...

Xue Xian raised his eyebrows, then looked away from Xuanmin. He brought out the copper coin pendant that he'd been holding onto the whole night and swerved to avoid Xuanmin as he made his way to the bed and sat down.

What Xuanmin had said hadn't been wrong –– Xue Xian himself was well aware that his real vertebrae had not yet all been found, and all of his current mobility was thanks to those threads pushed out by the copper coin pendant. 

But a prosthesis was still a prosthesis, and could not last long. If he was already faltering now, then he needed to continue pouring magic into his injuries, or else the threads would soon wear out and he would become paralysed again.

So he did not delay –– holding Xuanmin's pendant, he began to meditate.

At first, that new magical energy from the pendant poured into his veins yet again and flooded into the threads that connected his bones, seeming immediately to begin urging the bones themselves to grow by another inch.

But soon, the pendant sent another, different warm rush of magic came into his body, which seemed to intermix with the previous gust of magic and even meld into one, slowly soothing those threads and his injured bones.

Xue Xian half-opened his eyes and glanced around. He saw that, at some point, Xuanmin had closed his eyes too, and had his hand in a silent prayer. He seemed also to be meditating.

Now he understood where that second rush of magic had come from. Xue Xian shut his eyes again, and as he worked at healing his body, he did not forget to bring the combined folds of his and Xuanmin's magic energy over the copper coins as well.

A very long time later, the pendant in Xue Xian's hand suddenly trembled. Although it did not actually make a noise, the sound of metal traversed through his arm and jolted him directly in his mind –– it sounded like something suddenly unlocking with a click.

At first he was stunned, but then he realised what had happened –– it seemed that, out of the five coins on Xuanmin's pendant, another had had its seal broken.

In that moment, Xue Xian could suddenly feel that, as the seal broke, the connection between the pendant and his body seemed to become slightly stronger. And as the coin shuddered, so too did his mind, so that, uncontrollably, he felt himself slide into a dream.

It was not really a dream –– it was more a series of images that flickered by so vaguely that he could barely make out any silhouettes, as brief and difficult to catch as a fish peeking its head out of a pond –– 

In some of the visions, he could see someone walking towards him, but his point of view was strange, and he could not even see up to the person's waist, only their long robe sweeping by him as softly as a cloud. He opened his mouth and seemed to say something, two characters –– perhaps a name...

Other times, he was sitting somewhere, seemingly in front of a desk, but he could not see what was laid out on the desk. A black shadow fell by his hand and his fingers seemed to twitch, reaching out toward the shadow...

And other times, he was holding something in his hand, which appeared at first glance to be the face of a demon, red and black patches all over it, so that he could not see its eyes...

As Xue Xian struggled to understand where these undreamlike dreams were coming from, he saw one last image. In that image, there was a child standing across from him whose face was too blurry to make out. He bent down and reached out toward the child.

He was astonished to discover that the child wore white –– a pristine, spotless white robe.

"Who are you?" the child asked innocently, looking up at him. 

Just as he wanted to reply, he suddenly noticed his own hand stretched out toward the child: on the side of the knuckle of his ring finger was a tiny mole. Although everything in the dream was blurred and shifting, that one mole on that slender and pale finger was crystal clear.

The shock of that moment was enough to jolt him awake, and he quickly slid back out of the strange dreamscape.

Xue Xian suddenly opened his eyes and looked over at the table.

The room was pitch black. Somehow, it was nightfall already. Light seeped in through the windows from lanterns hung outside and lightly outlined Xuanmin's silhouette as he sat at the table.

Xue Xian frowned and said, "Bald donkey."

Xuanmin hummed in response, though there was a faint air of fatigue in his voice, as though he had just come out of an exhausting hallucination. From where Xue Xian was sitting, he could see Xuanmin raise his hand and touch the side of his neck.

Although the room was completely dark and he was unable to see the details on Xuanmin's fingers, Xue Xian could remember that, on the knuckle of his ring finger, he also had a small mole –– exactly the same as the hand in the vision.

Xue Xian had wanted to tell Xuanmin about his dream, but, seeing the monk touch his neck, he changed his mind.

Because another thought suddenly came into Xue Xian's mind: if that had been a random dream, then there was no harm in talking about it, but... what if it hadn't been a dream?

He currently had some mysterious spiritual connection to Xuanmin's pendant. The pendant had transferred some of the dragon spit's effects from Xuanmin onto Xue Xian, so could it also transfer other things? Such as... memories?

If he wasn't mistaken, every time one of the seals was broken on the coins, Xuanmin would regain some of his memories. And, earlier, when Xue Xian had been healing, he had broken a third seal, so the things he had seen... were those the memories that had flashed through Xuanmin's mind at the same time?

And because the connection had been limited, Xue Xian had seen those visions as though from across the bank of a river –– blurry and indistinct.

If these had been memories, then he could not just ask Xuanmin about it directly. There was a difference between Xuanmin willingly telling him, and him seeing things himself without Xuanmin's knowledge.

He decided to wait until Xuanmin had recovered, and then sit him down for a talk. But in the meantime, he also needed to stop using that copper coin pendant, so that the connection wouldn't deepen.

After he had called out for Xuanmin, the monk had remained silent. Now, he turned and asked, "What is it?"

This time he sounded much better than before –– he seemed to be recovering.

"Let me return the pendant to you. I can't use it at the moment." Xue Xian stood up and stretched, then casually put the pendant back in Xuanmin's hand.

He was used to hooking the pendant's cord around his finger, and, when he dropped it into Xuanmin's hand, he didn't immediately unhook the finger.

Xuanmin held the coins, he held the cord, and in the darkness, it was as though they were bound together by a piece of string.

For a moment, as though a demon had shut down his capacity for clear thought, Xue Xian did not let go, and Xuanmin didn't either.

After a very long time, Xue Xian twitched that finger entangled in the cord, not to let go, but to bring it toward him. He looked down at Xuanmin sitting in front of him and, in a low voice, said, "You..."

Du du du––

Someone was knocking on the door. A thin, wispy shadow appeared in the window and Lu Twenty-Seven's voice drifted through: "Wake up. Our host is celebrating a birthday. How could you still be asleep?"

Xue Xian's finger loosened and he dropped the pendant. "I almost forgot what day it was," he said. "Today Jiang Shining's sister is laying out a banquet for us. Let's go."

He and Xuanmin were distinguished guests at the Fang household. Twenty-Seven was only the first messenger: as soon as Xue Xian opened the door, the entire Fang family from the old servants to the small children all gathered around and bundled he and Xuanmin to the dining hall.

Seeing the dining table jammed full of delicacies from wine halls and restaurants, Xue Xian finally understood what Auntie Chen had been working on all morning with her cleaver.

It was indeed Jiang Shijing's birthday, but it a hugely significant year –– she and Fang Cheng had only used this as an excuse to get people together for an enormous family feast.

With no strangers or outsiders to impress, the banquet quickly became a chaotic, disordered affair, with family members knocking wine glasses about and piling empty dishes high. At the beginning, they had tried to maintain some form of etiquette, but the Chen twins soon went crazy, and it all went downhill from there.

Led by the Chen brothers, a whole group of people shamelessly went to persuade Fang Cheng and Jiang Shijing to drink wine with them, then went to harass Uncle Chen and Auntie Chen.

"Are you not ashamed? Go eat your dinner. If you don't stop now, you'll be having pig food for breakfast!" Auntie Chen snapped as she herded the roaming brothers back to their seats, lightly slapping them in the face.

Fang Cheng did accept to drink a small cup of wine. Fighting back the young members of the family, who were rowdily egging him on, he held back his long sleeve with one hand and raised the glass in Jiang Shijing's direction, smiling.

Jiang Shijing raised her index finger and insisted, "Just one cup." Then she, too, smiled and raised a small blue cup.

"That works," Fang Cheng said in a serious manner. "If we drink one cup a year, we can still have eighty more cups."

"Then you'd be a goblin!" Jiang Shining giggled.

The bookworm Jiang Shining sat there, unable to ingest human food, yet grinning from ear to ear.

Xue Xian fidgeted with his wine cup and had been idly watching the scene unfold, but as his gaze glided past Fang Cheng and Jiang Shining's bare wrists, he suddenly froze––

He noticed that Fang Cheng had a faint circular mark all around his wrist, as though a mark made by a tight rope –– it looked awfully familiar. And Jiang Shijing's wrist had a similar mark...

"What are you looking at?" At some point, Jiang Shining had turned back and happened to notice Xue Xian's intense gaze, so had shuffled over to ask.

Xue Xian pointed with his chin.

"Oh," Jiang Shining replied. "My brother-in-law has a birthmark on his wrist –– he's had it since he was born. And my sister got hers accidentally. Actually, she got that scar as a child, the day that she first met my brother-in-law, and the mark never truly went away. It makes them look like they were fated to be together."

"Yes," Xue Xian said, cocking an eyebrow as he took another sip of wine. Then he added, "Perhaps it means they spent their previous life together too...."

The lost soul who had lingered alone among that corpse-ridden wasteland had ultimately gotten his wish. He'd found who he'd wanted to find and was leading an ordinary life, full to burst.

"Eighty isn't actually that many. Perhaps we can keep on going in the next life," Fang Cheng was saying now. With a sincere look, he gently brought his cup to Jiang Shijing's and knocked them together. "So that's a promise. No take-backs for a hundred years."

Then, he tipped back his head and drained the cup.

In this world, some connections between people are difficult to explain –– where do they come from, and why, and is there an end to them? Yet such feelings are strong, and as deep as tenderhooks; they seep into your skin and go right into your marrow –– from burgeoning romance at youth to growing old and tired together, such connections don't shatter even after a hundred years, and live on in the next life and the next.

Xue Xian swallowed a mouthful of wine and smiled. He couldn't help but steal a glance at Xuanmin, and saw that Xuanmin just happened to be moving his gaze away from him and was lifting his teacup to his lips...