CH 75

Chapter 75: Finger, Knuckle, Mole (II)

The Taipu frowned. "Perhaps you didn't catch sight of his ring finger? The mole is rather small, and most people would not notice."

"No way," the Taizhu said, shaking his head. "I remember inspecting each and every finger. There was nothing on any of them. I had to see his whole hand in order to practice divination from hand shape. And I remember being terrified. After I looked at his hand, my heart was beating out of my chest. There's no way I could misremember. And you? Are you sure? After all, your first meeting was many years ago now. Perhaps the memory is blurred."

"I'm also completely sure." The Taipu looked down at the mask in her hand and added, "Besides, even if I'm wrong, how come the exact same mole showed up on the Great Priest's hand at Dustpan Mountain?" 

Indeed, such a coincidence was impossible.

The two exchanged glances, both with brows deeply furrowed and profound expressions on their faces. If the moonlight had been a bit brighter, bright enough to illuminate their eyes, they would both detect a complete sense of bewilderment in each other's gazes.

They seemed to have stumbled upon an earth-shattering secret: both Great Priests, both observed with their own eyes, yet with an irreconcilable difference. And both were sure of what they had seen. Then there was only one explanation––

The Great Priest was not one man, but two.

In that moment, the two forgot even to breathe, and could not find their voices anywhere. 

After some time, as though strangled, the Taizhu finally croaked, "Could it be... could there be the tiny possibility that someone is pretending to be the Great Priest?" As he spoke, he gulped, and his voice became as thin as gossamer.

Because even the thought of it was unspeakable.

"Do you think so? But it's the Great Priest..." In the Taipu's eyes, the Great Priest was as holy and untouchable as a tall mountain peak. Her immediate instinct was to reject the Taizhu's idea. "How could it be? Would the Great Priest allow anyone to become his imposter? Who in the world would dare to pretend to be the Great Priest of all people?"

The Taizhu held his breath as he pondered this, then breathed a deep sigh. "Indeed. The Great Priest... would never have an imposter. After all, whether it's the Ministry or the secret courtyard, it's not like anyone can just walk in. But if it's someone on the inside..."

"That would definitely be impossible. You have quite a high position within the Ministry, but would you dare to pretend to be the Great Priest?" the Taipu asked.

The Taizhu quickly waved his hands, as though someone had their sword to his neck. "No, no, no, not in a million years."

"So obviously not." The Taipu frowned. "So it's basically impossible for anyone to become his imposter."

The Taizhu thought for some time, then suddenly looked up with a ghastly face of shock. "Could it be that the Great Priest has allowed it? Or..."

Or he was the one behind it.

But why would the Great Priest do that?

Naturally, they had no idea.

The Great Priest never explained why or even how he did things. In reality, he spoke extremely little. Looking back, in the more than ten years that the Taipu and Taizhu had spent at the Ministry, they could count the amount of times they heard the Great Priest speak on the fingers of their hands.

Apart from once in a blue moon when he came into the Ministry, and the annual ritual parade to Taishan, most of the time, the Great Priest did not even leave the secret courtyard. He was like an eccentric hermit, except that he resided in the imperial court.

If he had any orders, he usually transmitted them via intermediaries.

And the Ministry belonged entirely to him. If anything occurred across the land or at court, and the Ministry's help was required, it was the Great Priest who gave out orders and arranged everything. But the Taipu and Taizhu knew that, actually, the Great Priest's reach was far beyond that of the Ministry's walls.

Sometimes, when they reported to the Great Priest, they would see him burn a letter –– but then no one in the Ministry would actually receive anything. It was clear that, aside from his officials, he also had others working for him in the shadows.

But all this was none of the Taipu and Taizhu's business. After all, aside from the priests and magicians within the Ministry, there were many holy people who refused to step foot at the imperial court –– and some of them even refused to enter human society –– so, to the Taipu and Taizhu, the Great Priest's actions made sense, and they had never considered asking him about it.

Everyone in the Ministry, and everyone across the imperial court, including the one who sat on the dragon throne, all knew that the Great Priest was highly eccentric, whose mood was always difficult to estimate and ordinary people never could understand him. But holy people are always a bit strange, and besides, the Great Priest had served several generations of emperors already and was technically senior even to the man on the dragon throne. And power-wise, there was no one who dared to challenge his magic.

Plus, although the Great Priest was moody, he was not a tyrant, and did not meddle in others' affairs. Sometimes, if his orders were ambiguous, the others in the imperial court would lend a hand and would also not ask unnecessary questions.

"Hey," the Taizhu suddenly said, recalling something. "Do you remember that time the Great Priest ordered all county offices to disseminate those arrest documents?"

"Yes. The likeness on the poster seemed to resemble the Great Priest himself –– it was also a monk. When I read the documents, I was quite surprised, and asked about it," the Taipu said. "The Deputy Minister said he didn't know what the Great Priest intended either. But he had heard, a few years ago, before he'd become a Deputy Minister, there had also been a flurry of similar arrest documents, and at the time there were rumors that the Great Priest..."

Aware of the scandalous nature of what she was about to say, the Taipu paused. She lowered her voice and said, "That he was about to pass into nirvana. As people across the land saw the posters being disseminated, they came up with all sorts of theories, including guessing that he might be dying. In truth, at the time, the Great Priest really wasn't doing well. He wasn't even in the secret courtyard. They say that he did not appear for a month, but when he finally did, he had recovered. So... at the time, I thought perhaps these new documents were also because he was ill. After all, he was sealed away. At the time, the Deputy Minister told me not to inquire further. And then the Great Priest ordered everyone in the Ministry not to get involved. So I did not think further."

The Taizhu contemplated this for a moment, then whispered, "What if... there was the tiny possibility that, out of the two Great Priests we each saw, one of them left the court? And that was not according to the other's wishes. So..."

"So the one who remained at court used the arrest posters to try and locate the one who left?" the Taipu said, going along with his thought. "But––"

The Taizhu felt that they were getting on the right track. Interrupting the Taipu, he said, "Or else, if he just wanted to confuse the common people's rumors or fabricate some other simple distraction, why would the Great Priest avoid the Ministry? Seeing that the posters were going out across the land, why did he order us not to interfere? Of course no one has ever dared to disobey him, and after all this time we've learned to obey him intuitively, without another thought. But think about it... these were merely posters. Although they were not under our jurisdiction, they still came directly from the Great Priest and we could have lent a hand. Unless... he did not want us to encounter something via the posters, or someone..."

"You mean..."

"If the man he's looking for is indeed the other Great Priest, all of the people involved in the search would never have met the Great Priest, so even if they came face to face with that monk, they would only think of him as the man from the poster. They would just report it to their superiors as with any ordinary criminal. But if we met the monk..."

All they needed to do was recall what had occurred on Dustpan Mountain. That was what would happen if Ministry officials met the monk from the poster.

The two suddenly felt silent and looked back out at that faint, flickering light in the river god's temple.

If everything they'd guessed turned out even to be roughly correct... then the Great Priest they were currently following was the one who had left the court. And the Great Priest who remained inside the court had bypassed the Ministry and sent out orders to find him.

"Yuebai, what do we do..." the Taizhu suddenly said.

The Taipu was stunned by his calling of her name. 

When they had both first entered the Ministry as children of seven or eight –– some of the other children had been even younger –– most of them had all come from poor families. Folk tradition was to give children ugly names because they believed it would ensure that the children survived into adulthood, since demons would be less likely to find them. Whether these names were Cat and Dog, or Liuliang and Qijin*, or the date of their birth, they were all nonsense and not proper names at all, with frequent overlaps. 

Thus, when the children had arrived at the Ministry, in order to tell them apart, they had all been given more elegant names that came from the colors used in painting. The Taipu had been given the name Yuebai, which meant "white of moon", and the Taizhu had been named Yuanqing, "pure black".

But they'd grown up, and these names hadn't been used for many years now. When the Taizhu, out of nowhere, called the Taipu Yuebai, she knew that he felt truly, utterly lost.

The Taipu thought back to when they'd first come across that Great Priest at the foot of the mountain –– that pointed chin, that deep and gentle voice. She said, "Let's keep following and investigate further. After all, we can't spend the rest of our lives only moving when given an order. I want to figure out whether the one I'm following is the one I want to be following..."

After some thought, the Taizhu nodded. He sighed deeply and looked back at the young Chengzi milling about behind them. Then he dusted himself off and said, "Then let's follow. We're not totally weak. It's not like we'll completely lose––"

Before he could finish his sentence and say them, he froze. 

A mighty roar had risen out from the river god's temple, fresh and clear as a spring breeze. It went straight into their souls, as though a sound from the heavens. Before they could register what they had heard, a long shadow flew up from the temple and into the skies.

Next, a great wind suddenly appeared. Though the crescent moon remained, it was now surrounded by black storm clouds, into which that long shadow flew. It pirouetted and zigzagged through the clouds, and then disappeared.

It was––

"A real live dragon..." The Taipu and Taizhu, as well as all the minor officials around them, suddenly stood up in shock and looked up from their spot on the mountain peak, like a nest of dumbfounded quails.

Anyone would be shocked speechless when seeing a real dragon soar past them and into the heavens.

The Ministry group's minds were blank, and they stood there dumbly for some time before peering back down at the river god's temple and saw that the light that had once floated there had vanished –– there was no one there anymore.

The group stared with their mouths open for a long time, then suddenly realised what had happened.

As though in a trance, the Taizhu muttered, "D-did the Great Priest ride the dragon into the sky..."

The Taipu was completely stupefied too. In a similarly faraway voice, she said, "I think so..."

The Taizhu thought, How the fuck are we supposed to follow them now?

Stone Zhang and Twenty-Seven, clinging onto the dragon's claws for dear life, felt just as overwhelmed as the Ministry officials.

When he'd been at the Fangs, Stone Zhang had not spent all of his time carving little animals –– he'd also done some real work. He'd figured that the Fang pharmacy servants who travelled far and wide to pick herbs would be familiar with the landscape around Qingping, so, while Xue Xian and Xuanmin had still been out, he had gone to speak with the servants.

He could remember what the mountain he'd been taken to while blindfolded had looked like, so he described it in detail to the servants, and they had actually been able to match it to some real places.

They'd said: There are two places in the mountains where you can have a view of the river such as the one he'd had. One was Mt. Yunxi, and the other was Mt. Lianjiang.

The two mountains sat between Anqing Prefecture and Wuchang Prefecture, and not that far from Qingping County... of course, "not that far" according to Xue Xian.

The dragon figured that, if Stone Zhang had been able to dig up a dragon bone there, it was likely that more bones remained buried in that spot. In any case, it was on the way to Langzhou, so they might as well head in that direction and search the mountains. 

Xue Xian prioritised actions over words. As soon as he'd made his decision, before Twenty-Seven and Stone Zhang had been able to mentally prepare themselves, he'd taken one up in each claw and gone directly into the skies. Only the likes of Xuanmin could tolerate such a dramatic turn; anyone else would have half their lifespan shaved off by the fright.

The group landed at Mt. Yunxi first.

As soon as Stone Zhang's two feet touched the ground, he began to spin around dizzily. Collapsing onto the ground and patting down his own robe, he blubbered, "Thank god, thank god I didn't piss myself."

Annoyed, Xue Xian glared at him, then looked around at their mountainous surroundings.

After some time lying on the ground, Stone Zhang finally got back up. As he struggled to remain upright, he looked over jealously at the perfectly steady Xuanmin and said to Xue Xian, "Sir, can we make a deal? Next time, can I also go on your back, and not in your claws? The turbulence is too much. I want to throw up..."

Xue Xian glared at him again. "Do you think a dragon lets just anyone onto his back?"

Xuanmin had been holding a twig and a talismanic paper, hoping to find a particular spot in the mountain where there might be a strong cluster of magical energy. But when he heard Xue Xian, his hands stopped moving.

As soon as Xue Xian had spoken, he'd realised that something he'd said had sounded a bit odd, and then had seen Xuanmin look over at him. He immediately turned on his heels so that his back was to Xuanmin and snapped at Stone Zhang, "Go away."

Stone Zhang said nothing.

Since the deal did not go through, all Stone Zhang could do was obey. He walked over to various spots around the mountain and stood atop some boulders, looking all around him, and finally shook his head. "Not this one," he said. "We need to go––"

Before he could say somewhere else, he and Twenty-Seven were in Xue Xian's enormous clutches once again.

Stone Zhang did not even have the time to pull a tragic expression. The wind was already whipping his face as they rose to the skies: Holy mother of god –– help me––

When they landed once more, it was in an even more extravagant manner.

Because as soon as Xue Xian's claws touched the ground of Mt. Lianjiang, the entire mountain began to trembled, and that extremely familiar feeling began to call out to him again.

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* Liuliang (6 liang) and Qijin (7 jin) would be names given on the basis of the baby's weight at birth.