Chapter 10: Chang'e must regret stealing the elixir of life (VI)

“Since the past is the past, then in that case, let’s think of a path of retreat. How are we getting out of here?” A Yin asked, brushing the detritus off her hands.

Once the words spilled past her chin, she looked at Xia Ji calmly despite the chaos. Xia Ji replied sorrowfully, “I was in this painting for several thousand years, and it was only with great difficulty that I came as a person, how could I not stay as a guest?”

A Yin regarded her with extreme disdain at her coyness, and said with a cold laugh, “Just now, you experienced that talisman yourself, and although it might not be able to kill you, there are indeed ways to torment you, and it would be simple to write a few talismans and burn you thrice a day, so this lady here says, let’s see if it’s you who will first die of pain, or we who will first die of hunger.”

Tu Laoyao also was thinking of solutions in bits and pieces, and said, “She loves beauty, so best to tie her up and put up a mirror in front of her, and shame her to death.”

“Wonderful!” A Yin said with spirit, clapping her hands, “this solution really is—” Facing towards Tu Laoyao, her expression slightly pleased, she said smilingly, “Young women wouldn’t be able to come to it.”

But Li Shiyi opened her mouth and said, “By your words, that painting was created during your affair with Wu of Qu.”

Xia Ji didn’t understand, and silently cut her gaze to her. “It was.”

“Then, the version of you on it, why is she crying?” Li Shiyi raised her eyes, pursing her lips as she looked at her. Xia Ji startled, seeing Li Shiyi brushing the hem of her clothes and standing up, walking to her, and asking, “It seems as if you mean to take revenge, and you should be happy. Your sorrow shouldn’t be…so what is it?” The Xia Ji on the painting originally should have been smiling, but the concentration of so many years of resentment unexpectedly changed the contents to grief.

“Sorrow shouldn’t be?” Xia Ji’s eyelids drooped as if twisted by water, as if concealed by many layers.

Li Shiyi raised a hand, fixing the talisman to her forehead, and said, “A Yin, search her bones.”

The South interpreted bones, the North enquired of coffins. The purpose of enquiring of coffins was to was to communicate with the spirit that concentrated in the coffin, to invite the soul to answer. Interpreting bones, on the other hand, was divided into three, one recognising the bodies of people and ghosts, the second knowing the dates of birth and death, and the third, that was precisely feeling when the light was extinguished by death, the last unspoken words. In the eyes of the dying, one could inspect the soul; in the speech of the fatally ill, it was possible for yin and yang to be connected.

A Yin chuckled and stood, reaching her hand out to touch Xia Yi’s little finger, inserting her fingers one at a time, and lifted her fingers slightly upwards, and after that, once her left hand passed through her body, her index finger along with her ring finger passed the guiwei^[1] point, the lung point, moving without stopping to the pillar of heaven point,^[2] and gently striking twice. Simultaneously striking and smiling fawningly without restraint, the relaxation of the tiger as attractive as breathing, she gently caressed both shoulders, then positioned them on the chest on the shanzhong^[3] and tianshu^[4] points and gently massaged them, then finally lifted her fingers and reached out to tilt her chin up, her thumb pressing against her lip, and approached her ear, saying in a tender voice, “If you have any unspoken words, let this lady hear.”

Her tone was almost as if a chant, and her slightly closed eyes also rose and fell along with her breathing, and Tu Laoyao’s eyes were wide, and he saw the Xia Ji’s eyelids quiver violently, as if locking up a ghost, the hollow meat of her cheeks moving up and down rebeliously, and finally, all the quivering converged at the corners of her lips, and she spoke a few words like an incantation.

A Yin, satisfied, released her, handkerchief becoming moist with the sweat on her forehead, and she slumped on the chair and raised a brow at Li Shiyi.

Tu Laoyao’s hands were braced on the table, and he leaned halfway across the table, asking her very strangely, “Your special skill?”

A Yin nodded. “Why?”

Tu Laoyao laughed, embarrassed, and A Yin’s brows knitted in question, only to hear Tu Laoyao say with delight, “This interpreting bones is really this revolting, and you still follow your ideals, heihei, doesn’t that show your innate qualities a bit?”

A Yin tossed her handkerchief at him, and saw Li Shiyi looking at her, who wasn’t making a fuss like Tu Laoyao, merely extended two fingers and said, “The two characters, ‘shu’ and ‘xin’.”

Li Shiyi raised her hand and removed the talisman and asked Xia Ji, “Shu xin?”

Xia Ji, freed from being trapped after so long, loosened her muscles and bones, her face somewhat fixed where it had fallen towards the ground, and Li Shiyi reached a hand out and supported her back slightly, and she stood supporting herself with the wall, her back, which had been straight for so long, bent like an old tortoise, returned to the original shape as the unfitting young woman was dispelled from inside her body. “Shu Xin, Shu Xin…” Head over heels, look upon the three stars in the sky, and see a good man this evening.^[5] “When I died, I was actually thinking of him.” Xia Ji’s voice was hoarse and she coughed, her chest making a hissing sound.

“Who was he?” Tu Laoyao, seeing her this way, unexpectedly felt a little bit like he couldn’t bear it.

Xia Ji, her head covered with grey hair, leaned against the wall, slowly moving with a rustling sound, gathering her hair as if she was in the prime of her life, and said, “My childhood was rather unremarkable, my brothers and sisters spurned me, and the servants didn’t even try to curry favour with me, only Shu Xin. He was the fire-tending slave, and even his name was a bundle of firewood.^[6] He would recite songs along with me, imitate my painting, comb my hair for me, and even gave me a peach branch as a present.” She didn’t say anything more, but the others could tell a lot from her expression, and that peach branch, it was precisely the “love which had never emerged”.

“What an unreasonable matter,” A Yin said, “originally there was someone who didn’t care about superficial appearances, but unfortunately that was cast aside and the appearance was changed, and yet when it was changed, the sincerity was still longed for.”

Tu Laoyao said in agreement, “Unreasonable.”

Song Shijiu gazed covetiously at the peanuts in A Yin’s hand that hadn’t been fully shelled, and seeing this, Li Shiyi took them, silently shelling them in her place. Xia Ji cut her slightly red-eyed gaze across towards A Yin, just about to burst out, when A Yin said with a laugh, “Don’t get angry, listen carefully to what I have to say. If I were you, so attached to this scroll, naturally I would want to join the underworld and reincarnated; your fate with that Shu Xin isn’t over yet, since it ought to be a marriage predestined by fate, yet you’re obsessed in this way, human and ghost separated for several thousand years, isn’t that stupid?”

Xia Ji’s eyes were moved, and eyed Tu Laoyao, hearing it, was distracted, and the corner of Li Shiyi’s lips faintly raised, feeding Song Shijiu fruit with single-minded devotion. A Yin added, “Look at this state of you, before you died in any case you always had the face of a proper princess, while nowadays you’ve put that aside, and possess bodies of bystanders day and night, mixing with the men by their sides, where’s the difference between that and the prostitute that I am?”

Song Shijiu opened her mouth and bit a peanut, chewing with a ge-beng, ge-beng.

“That beloved of yours—what was he called, Shu Xin? How many times he’s been reincarnated is unsure, and he may have met a good match. You’re suffering in that painting, and him? He has a wife and children at a bedstove.”

“A wife and children at a bedstove,” Song Shijiu said, while at the same time staring at Li Shiyi’s hand, shelling peanuts. A Yin let out a huff of laughter, raising her brows towards Song Shijiu in praise.

Li Shiyi raise her eyes and swept her gaze across the two, one large and one small, and then set down the peanuts, brushing off the detritus on her hands, and raised her head and said to Xia Ji, “Go reincarnate, then.” Her tone was utterly gentle, but a faint and unquestionable pressure shone through, and unexpectedly, Xia Ji listened closely, staring, as if the soul in the body had been extracted, held at the front, pressing against the crown of her head, an erect stick, just waiting for a heavy strike.

Finally, she said, “Everyone, close your eyes; this grandma should rest.”

With a pattering sound, condensation against the bricks and tiles, the unbearable sense of the coolness of the ground beneath the soles of the feet penetrating the heart and biting and the bones, and beside the ear, the drawn out song of a theatrical troupe lingered like an echo, sweeping away one moment after the next, but the surroundings replied with deathly still tranquility, and the painting on the scroll in that instant no longer looked like the human world.

Her thigh encircled by a warm and soft grasp, Li Shiyi opened her eyes, the world pitch black as far as the eye could see, the candles that had previously been lit suddenly burnt down, and she bent over to hold Song Shijiu’s hand, hearing Tu Laoyao shout loudly, “Ah!”

“You arrogant show-off! What are you howling about?!” A Yin was startled by the roar, clapping her chest a few times, standing as if to follow the sound and go pinch him.

Tu Laoyao no longer made any sound, fumbling as he kept to the side, and only once he was close to Li Shiyi’s sleeve, said, “I was thinking, can I hear the voice and distinguish the blame.”

Li Shiyi rummaged in Tu Laoyao’s pocket for a few moments, plucking out a bamboo torch, and lit it with a rustling sound, and only then looked clearly at everyone’s appearance. It was the same tomb as before, with the silk scroll at her feet, but an unknown number of days had passed, and Tu Laoyao had lost weight, while A Yin’s hair, rolled into a bun, was in disorder, the rouge having faded clean, face lean and hungry, wreaked havoc upon. When she turned her gaze to Song Shijiu, Li Shiyi saw clearly that she was distracted. Her appearance had grown to that of four or five years old, her half-length hair past her shoulders, her nails pointed and scratching her palms, no difference between her and the zombie children who would crawl out from underground, but the small jacket from before was small, as if having shrunk in the wash, and it exposed a small bit of a pale, plump waist. Li Shiyi laughed quietly, passing the bamboo torch to Tu Laoyao, shedding her own outer coat to wrap Song Shijiu in, covering up her protruding belly. She had just stood when she heard A Yin raising her voice scoldingly, “Bastard! We’ve actually been put in the tomb!”

That housekeeper, seeing that they hadn’t come out for a while, and that there was no movement, thought with fright that there really was something extraordinary about the tomb, and simply closed the matter.

She pushed against the newly sealed dirt wall, nose irritated by the dust, and turned her head to spit, and said to Tu Laoyao, “Fortunately, it’s a dirt mount, grab the shovel and dig at it!”

Li Shiyi turned her face, picking up the silk painting, rolling it up and grasping it in her hand. Once they’d emerged from the tomb, being high noon, the sun suspended in the heavens, Li Shiyi covered Song Shijiu’s eyes, her own going blind, and only once they had adapted for a few moments did she resume her inspecting.

The party followed the mountain road down, A Yin casting a glance at the scroll in Li Shiyi’s hand, and suddenly said with a laugh, “Since it already buried us, we can only count as dead people, it would be better that the painting was taken away, sold for a good price.”

Tu Laoyao replied, “Don’t you fear he’ll come calling in the future?”

“That Master Wu’s appearance, it seems as if he doesn’t have many days left.” A Yin laughed, and asked Li Shiyi, “Shiyi, what do you say, is it a good idea or not?”

Li Shiyi indicated to Tu Laoyao to put the scroll in the suitcase and nodded. “Yes.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: 龟尾 (guiwei) is an accupoint on the coccyx.

[2]: 天柱 (tianzhu), literally “pillar of heaven”, is an accupoint on the neck, with the neck being the pillar and the head being the heavens.

[3]: The 膻中 (shanzhong) accupoint is in the centre of the chest.

[4]: 天枢 (tianshu) is an accupoint on the abdomen.

[5]: From a poem in the Guofeng section of the Shijing, discussing a marriage.

[6]: The name 束薪 (Shu Xin) translates literally as “a bundle of firewood”.