CH 95

Chapter 95: Some sweetness (II)

Now both Tongdeng and Xuanmin were too shocked to speak.

What was going on?!

In all the years that Tongdeng had spent floating around in this temple, he had never seen anything like this. A measly piece of string was enough to capture Xuanmin?

As soon as the string tied its knot around Xuanmin's wrist, his form began to emerge in front of Xue Xian's eyes. Xue Xian's roving gaze finally stilled and settled on Xuanmin's face, before looking the monk up and down again.

For a moment, something seemed to flush in Xue Xian's eyes, before being forcibly pushed back again.

He continued to smile, but that profound sense of emotion that had previously been on his face had fully dissipated, and he looked as happy and carefree as he'd always had. He tugged lightly at the red string in his fingers and said, "I gave the bookworm Jiang Shining's brother-in-law a piece of this string years ago. I hadn't thought that one day, I'd need it too."

He wound the loose string around his finger absent-mindedly, pulling it taut, as though trying to draw Xuanmin toward him by the wrist –– like an impatient fisherman. As he pulled, he idly added, "Thank god I didn't throw this out."

Originally, Xuanmin could not touch anything in the material world, and even thin needles went through his hand. But Xue Xian's red string was like an arrow shooting through the realm of life and death, and as it pierced Xuanmin's intangible flesh, the yearning that it carried helped bring him back from the brink.

As Xuanmin floated above the prayer mat, a rush of magical energy flowed toward him along the red string –– he knew that in the blink of an eye, he'd have the strength to touch material objects again.

Tongdeng, who had taken hundreds of years to build that same strength, looked away in disgust.

Xue Xian had found the person he'd been looking for, and now the dust had settled, and the all the tragic things that he'd previously experienced no longer mattered. Xue Xian did not step into the hall, but remained standing idly and impishly by the doorway, tugging twice more at the string as if trying to pull Xuanmin up. "Stop sitting there and get over here," he said. "I'm not here to light incense and pray to the Buddha. I'm here to capture you and take you home."

Xuanmin followed the motion of the string on his wrist, and stood up. "Okay."

Tongdeng rolled his eyes. You're okay with getting captured? What a pair.

Maybe it was the magic of the red string, or maybe it was because the connection from the copper coin pendant had never fully disappeared –– as Xue Xian tugged at the string, he suddenly turned and glanced quizzically in Tongdeng's direction. Then he jutted his chin out at Xuanmin and asked, "Why is there a second white shadow next to you?"

Xuanmin was stunned. "White shadow?"

Xue Xian replied, "Before, all I saw of you was a white shadow too. A really unstable one, that would disappear every time I blinked. I thought it was... an eye problem."

He couldn't very well say, I thought it was a hallucination from missing you so much. That was far too embarrassing to say out loud.

Dimly lit by the flickering flame of the temple's candles, Xuanmin's gaze rested on Xue Xian.

Xue Xian smiled again as he stopped pulling at the string and teased, "First, tell me who you've got hidden away over there."

Tongdeng glared at Xuanmin. "That dragon of yours is very rude."

Xuanmin did not reply.

There was no need for Xuanmin to explain –– Xue Xian had already sensed, through Xuanmin, that the white shadow had spoken, and seemed to have heard what Tongdeng had said, though he had not heard it in its entirety –– only the first few words. Bemused, Xue Xian stuck a finger in his ear and deadpanned, "I didn't really hear. Whose dragon did he say I was? Who in the world would dare to try and tame a dragon?"

Xuanmin sighed. 

Both were assholes.

But Tongdeng was astonished. Frowning, he asked, "You can hear me?"

Now that the string was tied neatly around Xuanmin's wrist, Tongdeng's physical form was beginning to reveal itself to Xue Xian too. Xue Xian muttered, "Another bald..."

He'd never had very good manners, and whenever he saw a monk, his first instinct was to say bald donkey. But before he could say donkey, he suddenly stopped himself and instead said, "Monk."

Tongdeng glared. You think I don't know what you were going to say?

If you went by age or experience, Xue Xian was the most mature of the three. A divine dragon had no need to humble himself in the presence of lesser beings, so even though he was extremely rude, there was nothing anyone else could do or say. It was out of consideration of Xuanmin that Xue Xian had changed his greeting halfway through.

Xue Xian could now see that this second monk was dressed exactly the same as Xuanmin, with a similarly lofty aura, as though he'd only just entered the common realm. So it wasn't difficult to guess who this monk really was. Besides, Xue Xian had called Xuanmin bald donkey so often that it was almost a nickname now, and the thought of using it on someone else felt a bit weird.

So Xue Xian paused, then confidently said, "You're Tongdeng."

"Yes," Tongdeng replied. Xue Xian found his voice to be similar to Xuanmin's too –– they really seemed to have been cut from the same cloth. Tongdeng turned back to Xuanmin and calmly said, "He knows quite a lot."

Yes, his tone was like Xuanmin's, always so self-serious and calm, but there was an additional layer of mischievousness to Tongdeng.

Xue Xian found this amusing. After all, this was the first time he was meeting someone from Xuanmin's past, and it was an extremely important character –– Xuanmin's Shifu –– so all this fascinated him. Only, both master and disciple had... ended up in the same shitshow.

"This shifu of yours also used the Wuming Spider?" Xue Xian asked Xuanmin, with a complex expression on his face now.

Xuanmin automatically nodded, then froze, stunned. "How do you know about the Wuming Spider?"

"It's all explained on the wall text in the Cave of a Hundred Insects," Xue Xian replied.

"I though you couldn't read that script?"

"Yeah. So you thought you could keep me in the dark!" Xue Xian scowled. "Who was the one who kept saying he'd never lie to me? I have a terrible memory. Huh... I don't remember who that was. Do you remember?"

"... It was me." Xuanmin looked down, silent, then looked back up and added, "I did not––"

It hadn't technically been lying. The Wuming Spider had only been about trading fortunes, and had had nothing to do with the linking of three lives. Back at the Cave, Xuanmin hadn't wanted Xue Xian to become suspicious, so he'd just explained it as vaguely as possible.

But Xue Xian was only teasing him. Before Xuanmin could finish, he cut in and said, "So you're telling me that every single thing you said to me back at the Cave was true? You didn't lie to me once?"

Xuanmin said nothing.

He had indeed lied –– when he'd said, I die of old age.

Tongdeng couldn't help but look over at his disciple and mutter, "Idiot."

Xue Xian hadn't meant to make Xuanmin feel bad –– there was nothing to blame in anything Xuanmin had done. He just... hadn't spoken to Xuanmin in so long. Felt the urge to annoy him again.

Seeing that Xuanmin remained standing by the prayer mat, unmoving, Xue Xian tugged at the string again, making Xuanmin's wrist bounce up and down. But now Xue Xian wasn't waiting by the doorway anymore; he began to walk into the hall and strode over to the Buddha statue by Xuanmin, sitting down on its pedestal.

Tongdeng looked away.

Xue Xian patted Xuanmin's shoulder and grumbled, "Could you please ask your honorable Shifu on my behalf not to use heavenly script next time he wants to leave a message? We're lucky I found that old book of translations in the bamboo building, or else you'd've been stuck here for at least a century before I got to you."

Tongdeng said, "Ask on your behalf? I can hear everything you say."

"Oh," Xue Xian replied, leaning against Xuanmin with an arm propped up on the monk's shoulder. "You and your disciple really hate each other, don't you?"*

Neither Xuanmin nor Tongdeng had anything to say to that.

None of them could win an argument against Xue Xian. After all, this was a divine dragon. 

Tongdeng glowered at Xuanmin. "Where did you get this dragon?"

Xue Xian scoffed and said, "He shovelled me up from the ground using a scrap piece of metal."

Tongdeng shot back, "Ill-fated relationship."

Xuanmin said nothing.

Okay, so now Tongdeng hated Xue Xian, too.

Tongdeng had been alone for hundreds of years –– coming across someone who could actually hear him was ultimately still quite exciting. As the two bickered back and forth, poor Xuanmin thought he was going to explode.

Thankfully, Xuanmin did not betray a hint of fear in the face of mortal danger. He artfully changed the subject, asking Xue Xian, "How did you find me here?"

Tongdeng was very curious about this, too. He temporarily stopped glaring daggers at his disciple and waited for Xue Xian to respond.

Xue Xian said, "So you had the audacity to plant a Wuming Spider on me. I spent days poring over that tattered book of yours to discover the true nature of that damned spider. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Wuming Spider gives you all of my misfortunes."

As he spoke, he looked pointedly at Xuanmin.

But Xuanmin had anticipated this, and was avoiding his eyes.

It occurred to Xue Xian that the next point of order was to figure out how to undo this spell. He paused, then continued, "So I came up with a way. I'd done this a couple of times before, so I had some experience –– I brought the date of my next catastrophe period forward. This Wuming Spider came in handy, actually. I can tell where you are based on where the lightning chooses to strike. And just as the lightning's about to hit you, I force the catastrophe period back to when it was supposed to be, so you don't get hit."

Xuanmin said nothing.

Neither did Tongdeng.

The divine lightning of the heavens –– especially the kind that struck during a catastrophe period –– was not something that a mortal could deal with. But this dragon lord was talking about pushing his catastrophe period's date forward and backward at will, causing all this pandemonium, all to locate one person...

His ability to make light of divine laws was terrifying.

Xue Xian had thought it all through. In the past, he'd been among humanity when his catastrophe period had struck and it would have been a disaster, so he'd forced the date back –– that counted as precedence. But as he prepared himself this time, he couldn't be sure that nothing would go wrong. If something really went wrong, he'd decided that he would simply turn into a dragon and wind his body around Xuanmin's, covering him entirely. He doubted the divine lightning would be able to go past him and hit Xuanmin. 

But these had just been his own thoughts. There was no need to admit any of it to Xuanmin, knowing that the monk would probably scold him about it.

Before Xue Xian had landed at Daze Temple, he'd told himself that, as soon as he found Xuanmin, he would take him home without delay! But now, he saw that Xuanmin wasn't the only itinerant soul at the temple –– there was Tongdeng too, and based on what Xue Xian had seen, it seemed like master and disciple had a fairly good relationship.

It was New Year's Eve, a time for families and loved ones to gather together. To take Tongdeng's disciple away at this time and leave him all alone didn't feel right.

So Xue Xian had decided to walk into the hall after all and help Xuanmin express piety to his master.

But before he could do anything, Tongdeng seemed suddenly to think of something, and said, "Before you tied him with the string, it seemed you could already see him? But normally, nobody should be able to see us..."

Xue Xian suspected it really had been because he'd missed Xuanmin too much, or perhaps they were fated to be together –– but there was no way he'd put down his pride and actually admit that. Instead, he patted Xuanmin's shoulder and wagged his chin at Tongdeng, saying, "Maybe he really wanted to see me, or really wanted to be seen by me."

Tongdeng rolled his eyes.

The worst part was, his normally ice-cold, boring disciple had heard these saccharine words and yet said had said nothing –– he wasn't denying it!

It was New Year's, and suddenly Tongdeng didn't want to have to see these two acting all sweet together. He pointed at the doorway, then turned his back to them and calmly said, "Safe travels."

He remained polite, but he might as well have said, Fuck off.

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* ?? I'm not gonna lie, I have no idea what this means in this context, like clearly it's a witty comeback but... in what way?