CH 2

Chapter 2. No Place Like Home

Jing Qi felt the world tilt on its axis. In the haze, everything was both crystal clear and out of focus as if he was separated from the rest of the world by a veil. His body was so tired that he could very well fall asleep in a blink of an eye.

He remembered Bai Wuchang’s face at that last moment with his indecipherable coldness and stiffness that was not unlike a cover; but the touch of his finger to his forehead was strangely warm.

Legends always had it that the Underworld Road or the Gates of Hell were places full of yinenergy, and people who were about passed away had to prepare a thick cotton blanket to bring with them under. Jing Qi knew it was because Ghost Officials were all as cold as ice, so cold that you could feel it the moment they were around a one-meter perimeter.

He was unsure what Bai Wuchang did, but now that he thought about it, the Reaper’s warmth that he received – coupled with his gentle words – vaguely carried a sense of finality.

In the trance, he thought: Is this really what you needed to do?

His consciousness became hazy again and his eyes were unable to be opened; he only started regaining feelings of his limbs after gods knew how long. According to his calculations, he had not really felt it for around sixty years now, so when he awoke with a start, there was heaviness settling over his body. His head hurt as if he was poked with needles.

Sounds of people walking back and forth reached his ears, the noises distant in one moment and very near in another. Someone opened his mouth and made him drink some medicine; must be a brute, as the way they fed him was like how people would feed a horse. His taste buds came to life and the bitterness rushed to his brain when he was not fully prepared. The stream of liquid down his throat made him struggle for air and he coughed profusely, causing more commotion.

The noisiness brought back some of his strength, and he tried to open his eyes.

It took him blinking forcefully for a few seconds to see everything clearly. He was leaning onto a young boy while being fed medicine by him. Seeing him coughing and opening his eyes, the boy quickly put the bowl down and stroked his back, crying out, “Go send for the physician, Young Master is awake!”

Being slapped like that while just recently recovering from coughing made Jing Qi feel resentful. Was this kid sent by his enemy to torture him?

The boy sniffled loudly and looked down at him. “Young Master, now that His Highness was gone, whatever will we do if anything happen to you?”

The moment the boy’s face came into focus, Jing Qi was taken aback.

He was Ping An…

Ping An, who was bought by his father when the boy was six, who had served him until death. His eyes were currently red-rimmed, and he looked no older than fourteen – still just a kid. Ping An was trying to hold in his tears, eyes blurry. His clothes looked too big on his frame.

“Ping…” Jing Qi opened his mouth, but his painfully dry throat made him unable to finish the sentence. Once he had thought that the hundreds of years he had been through would have made him forget everything, but the moment he saw the boy before him, all the faded memories flooded back.

Eventually he remembered his own name – Jing Beiyuan.

He was Jing Beiyuan, the infamous Prince Nan Ning with thousands of faces, the Prince Nan Ning who used to live only for one person, the Jing Beiyuan whose both body and heart died under that person’s hands at the age of thirty-two.

He suddenly understood what the Reaper meant by “to trade for one lifetime where you can have black hair again”. At this meddlesome behavior, Jing Qi had no idea whether to laugh or cry.

Seeing his dumfounded state, Ping An thought the sickness had made him silly. The boy shook him in fear, “Master, Master, please don’t scare me like this, what happened to you? How come the physician isn’t here yet, call for-”

Jing Qi tried to lift his hands with all his might; his current body seemed to weigh a hundred more times than his wandering soul. He pressed down Ping An’s shaking hands without a word, eyes fluttering shut halfway and head shaking slightly. Ping An seemed to understand, as the boy went to pour him a cup of water and carefully made him drink all of it.

Only then was Jing Qi able to speak, albeit hoarsely. “What time is it?” He was startled by his own voice; the raspiness did not conceal the fact that it belonged to a mere kid who had yet to reach adolescence. He looked down at his small, thin hands that looked sickly green and devoid of blood circulation.

“It’s currently the afternoon1, Master. You fainted in the mourning hall and had a really high fever for two days straight, no one could wake you up.” His lips thinned as he lowered his head and secretly wiped away a stray tear. “The late Princess left us too soon, and the late Prince… His Highness was cruel enough to follow her. You are the only one we can depend on at the moment, if anything happened to you then I might as well be as good as dead.”

So… this was when he was ten, just after his father’s death.

His eyes strayed to his hands again. Even though he still felt incredibly exhausted, a sense of novelty washed over him. How unexpected, returning to his starting point after so many reincarnations… it overwhelmed him with a plethora of different emotions.

Then he remembered Bai Wuchang, and the feeling died down.

Reversing time – even if he did not know much about it, this must have cost the Reaper greatly. And all of this to pay him back?

To make him relive this wretched fate taking roots once again?

Ignoring Ping An’s ramblings and the boy’s clumsy attempt to lay him down properly, Jing Qi internally sighed. No wonder why Sir Reaper always looked so cold and did not speak much, turned out his intelligence did have flaws.

Did he think that living this life once more was like dust on a table that could be wiped easily?

The human heart was not made of stone; you could not stain it with dirt then wash it with water and expect it to become as spotless as before.

It did not take long for the physician to arrive. He checked his pulse and examined him from head to toe, showing a seemingly reliable performance of medical knowledge and spouting heaps of nonsense along the line of “Good people will be blessed by the heaven”; generally, what he meant was that there was nothing wrong with him and he just needed to rest well.

After nearly seventy years of sitting next to the Stone of Three Lives, Jing Qi possessed an abundance of patience, so he did not get agitated or angry at people who were just trying to follow a procedure. After all the medicine feeding and fussing around was finally done with, it was already midnight.

Ping An sent all the irrelevant individuals outside and helped him lie down.

Only then did Jing Qi ask him, seemingly without previous thoughts. “You said that I had passed out for two days, so tomorrow must be father’s First Seven2, correct?”

A stunned Ping An thought he was worried, so he replied, “Please rest assured, Master. His Majesty has taken upon himself to arrange His Highness’s funeral, he even came to visit you yesterday and requested that you rest properly without any concerns.”

Jing Qi nodded, looking at the curtain above him dazedly. He suddenly turned his head to Ping An when the boy was about to put out the lights. “Wait.”

Ping An halted his movements, looking back at him quizzically.

Jing Qi tried his best to prop himself up with his toothpick-like arms. He leaned onto one side, eyes spanning the room including Ping An greedily.

Ping An looked around fourteen; he had grown in height but still retained his baby face, plump nose and round eyes. The child was born with a one-track mind, and coupled with his lanky limbs, his entire body never seemed to really co-operate well with each other; he lived his entire life with a severe lack of astuteness.

Nonetheless, Jing Qi thought, this kid was one of the very few people who treated me with sincerity.

Ping An’s voice was quite nasal, and often was he prone to tears back when he was younger – a crybaby with a perpetual sulky expression on his round face. But that year, when he had to shoulder the responsibilities that burdened the Nan Ning Residence, it was like the boy was forced to grow up in just one night. After the late prince’s First Seven, the Emperor took Jing Qi  into the palace; and since the butler was of old age, every single matter in the Residence, no matter big or small, rested in Ping An’s hands.

Looking at the young boy, Jing Qi thought: Ping An had devoted his entire life to this crumbling, already inadequate household, and all he gained was more misery and suffering to himself.

Seeing his master spacing out, Ping An thought he was still weak from the recent sickness. His voice was gentle, “Master, it’s not good for your health to sleep with the lights on. You don’t have to be afraid of the dark; I will be right outside so you can always call me whenever you need something.”

“Do you think I’m that capable to be able to wake a dead pig with my voice?”

Ping An was dumbfounded, then his face turned red after realizing the teasing. He stammered, “I’m not, at least I’m still breathing you know…”

Jing Qi was quiet at the hint of joy on his face. But his brows smoothed out and his eyes curved along with his lips. There was seemingly water glinting in his eyes, but it disappeared when one looked closely.

Ping An felt like his master’s smiling expression bore some resemblance to their old butler – it seemed both focused and distracted at the same time, seemingly carrying restlessness and reminiscence, with a little bit of reluctance and joy mixed in.

Was this really how a child should smile? Ping An was terrified with the possibility that the sickness had made his master unstable, so he put a hand on Jing Qi’s forehead, “Master, are you feeling unwell? Should I… should I call for the physician again?”

Jing Qi shook his head, eyes downcast, allowing Ping An to help him lie down again.

Ping An tucked him in properly before standing up, but was stopped by a tiny pair of hands.

His little prince was lying on the bed with his face up, eyes closed gently, voice low, “It’s fine, Ping An, I am here.”

The cadence was very soft and tender, and he sounded like a spoiled child with his kid voice. But looking at his face, Ping An could not help but feel a lump in his throat.

Jing Qi smiled and shifted his body, “Go rest.”

The lights went out, plunging the world into isolation.

Maybe it was because he had been unconscious for too long, but at the moment Jing Qi could not sleep. He stared up at the curtain with the faint shard of light coming from the window. After a while, Ping An’s pig-like snoring could be heard from outside, prompting Jing Qi to laugh out loud.

Seven reincarnations made him think about a lot of things, like He Lianyi, like Ping An, like the glorious-but-desolate Nan Ning Residence.

For what reason was he so attached to He Lianyi at that time?

That was a question he had never been able to answer until now, when he finally opened his eyes just then.

The late prince Jing Lianyu – birth name Mingzhi3 – was no less foolish than his son. In fact, they behaved almost the same way: having useless eyes, blinded to truth. What they should see clearly was completely obtuse, and they went out of their way to uncover what should not be seen.

They both only had eyes for one person and stayed ignorant to everything else, leading them down the road of heartbreak.

Everyone said the late prince was so infatuated that when the princess passed away, it was like his soul was sucked out of his body. He was fortunate to have his cousin the Emperor, who took Prince Jing Beiyuan into the palace to raise with his sons.

When he was ten, his constantly-death-seeking father finally got his wish granted, leaving his son behind with an empty household.

The world was wide and vast, but he did not really have a place to call home.

Back then, he felt like He Lianyi was his only wish, his only savior, one that he had to reach out and catch no matter what – except for He Lianyi, he would not mind whether he was alive or death either.

His stubbornness could very well rival his father Jing Lianyu, and his foolishness was on Bai Wuchang’s level.

He only ever cared about that person and no one else, not even his friends, not even Ping An. Hearing the boy’s snores, Jing Qi felt like all the suffering in his past lives must have been karma for him being the most abhorrent person in this world.

After an indefinite amount of time spent turning things over in his mind, he fell asleep once more; awoke, then fell asleep again. He felt uncomfortable, as if his body was put in an oven, his bones all seemingly melting. He knew he was getting feverish again, but also that he would get better after this; so he did not call for Ping An. He curled into the blanket, enduring the sweat-soaked heat.

In the daze he heard a crisp noise, like something was broken. Jing Qi startled out of his stupor, eyes still lazily shut. He was used to Ping An breaking things on a daily basis.

But at that moment, a cold hand pressed down on his forehead, bringing him incredible relief. He then heard an angry voice, “How did you let him get this ill, what kind of servant are you? If you don’t call for the physician right now—”

Jing Qi immediately thought, I’d rather turn into ashes with this sickness…

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Footnotes.

* Chapter title explanation: The phrase can be literally translated as “It’s better to return.” It references a legend where the spirit of King Du Yu of Shu transformed into a cuckoo bird (杜鵑 – dùjuān, also the name of the azalea flower), and people could make out the phrase from his sorrowful cries when he mourned for his hometown.

1 申时 is the time of the monkey according to the Chinese zodiac hours, it lasts from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

2 This concerns the post-mortem rituals in some East Asian countries. Counting from the day of the person’s death, there will be a special ritual each seven days, lasting for seven weeks.

3 明哲 (míngzhì) means “intelligent”.