Chapter 22: Where can an intimate friend be found (I)

Mount Ma’er wasn’t far; the snowy road was hard to travel, but not a half shichen had passed when they arrived at the foot of the mountain. The mountain was very low, and the snow hadn’t even accumulated, and at the foot of the mountain there were still a few households that had smoke rising from their chimneys, and even a couple of stores. Li Shiyi bought some rations in one of the stores, and then asked the proprietor giving change a few questions; the proprietor was accustomed to people coming to look for the tomb, and without raising his head, pointed in the northeast direction without saying anything. Li Shiyi listened and gave her thanks; waiting for a few people to leave, only then did the older man settle into the rattan chair, eyelids drooping as he watched them.

Following the winding mountain road upwards, after another half a time it would take to prepare a cup of tea, there came a fork in the road before them; that road didn’t have the pale flagstones of the stores, but also didn’t have any barriers set up; the withered grass clustered on either side, swaying, as if travellers stampeding thick and fast as they came. Tu Laoyao jumped over first, and said animatedly, “It’s bound to be this road.”

The curled yellow leaves and dry tree branches crackled as they were stepped on, and the wind still blew loudly, but wasn’t too bone-chilling; occasionally, the midday sunshine trickled down, as if it had a bit of Beiping’s sunny cloudlessness. Following that small path towards the west for a few steps, a small cave appeared before their eyes. Li Shiyi understood with a glance that this was a cave tomb in the Han form. Cave tombs were constructed according to the mountain, a cave being opened up for a tomb, and were usually nothing like subterranean tomb rooms.

On either side of the of the path ramparts were built with alternating yellow and white gravel, forming an incredibly simple and crude, circular entrance, and in the centre, a pillar of a half-dead tree, its trunk askew, not necessarily shaking as the wind blew; behind the tree, a short door half the height of a person stood, iron sealed by the rust mottling it, not entirely unsimilar to the tomb, as if a villager from within the mountain had covered it up. Tu Laoyao received Li Shiyi’s meaningful glance, and rubbed his hands together, stepping forward, wiping the sweat on his hands a few times on the rough cloth of his trousers, both hands grasping the iron doorknob, stood in a wide-legged horse stance, shouting loudly, and pulled it open.

His actions were very dramatic, and the door wasn’t very heavy; with only a bit of applied force, it came loose, falling to the ground with a clanging sound, even its movement not that large. Tu Laoyao was a bit embarrassed, and with a mocking smile drew his hands back, energetically rubbing the rust off his palms, letting Li Shiyi and the others enter. Before them the cave was dark enough to make seeing one’s fingers impossible, and the ceiling of the cave wasn’t much higher than Li Shiyi; Tu Laoyao used the brightness from outside to light a lamp, and saw Li Shiyi slightly bending her neck, seeming as if the not too tall ceiling had the sensation of oppression.

This cave was incredibly strange; it didn’t have the cool breeze of a usual cave, and didn’t give off the sensation of some amount of eeriness, even being a bit warmer than the outside, as if a wood fire had been lit, the warmth wrapping around Tu Laoyao’s radish-like fingers. Although it wasn’t cold, it was incredibly dark, the oil lamp’s light barely enough to extend half the distance of one’s line of sight. The sound of footsteps treaded within, and the echoes that came back truly were a bit frightful; Tu Laoyao’s heart had some nervousness once again, and he looked for a subject to ask Li Shiyi, saying, “Shiyi-jie.”

“En?”

“Have you noticed, every time we enter a tomb, we haven’t had to dig a hole?” In the past, he’d heard stories set to music of households in this business, of using fenjing to find entrances,[1] some crowbar with a yin-finding claw; that was called a technique.

Li Shiyi cast a glance at him, and said, “Of course I noticed it; every time you get nervous, you call out with a formal ‘you’.”

Tu Laoyao resentfully paused for a moment, then said, “There’s this sort of thing?”

A Yin scoffed without speaking. Song Shijiu wasn’t accustomed to dim environments, and walked very carefully, two fingers pressed against the inside of the rock wall, immersing herself in watching the path attentively with wide eyes, chin almost pressed against her chest. Li Shiyi felt a bit strange; with her usual way of doing things, if the path was hard to walk, she would be bound to make noise about holding hands, but now she let out a small breath and walked pressed against the side, and didn’t utter a pleading word. Thinking over this matter, Li Shiyi pursed her lips; thinking on it, they’d been together less than a month, and this “usual”, it was from when she was ten. Without reason, her heart felt some disappointment. When she’d been on her own, she hadn’t paid any attention to the trifle of “time”; the four seasons were merely adding on and removing clothes, but on the contrary, by Song Shijiu’s odd and exaggerated manner, as if her human form was like a pocket watch placed before her, made her unable to avoid examining the meaning of time. From the fair, plump infant embracing her neck to today’s graceful young lady slinking along the side, she felt, caught off guard, a sort of change in the facts of life, the sense of loss brought by time passing; this loss felt like being compressed, and even a sluggish person wouldn’t have any way to overlook it. She paused, and held her hand out, tender palm facing upwards, slender fingers curling slightly, a complete invitation.

Tu Laoyao paused, the shadow of the lamp swaying; A Yin also cast a startled glance at Li Shiyi’s hand; Li Shiyi looked at Song Shijiu, and Song Shijiu pressed her lips together, attentively looking at her fingertips. Luckily, Song Shijiu’s thundering heart and everyone’s halting were only an instant, and she didn’t think too deeply, and, eyes and brows bending, reached her hand out, gripping Li Shiyi’s ice-cold, dry hand, holding it, skin smooth and joints distinct; clearly it had only been a few days without linking hands, but the meeting felt like meeting after having been separated for a long time. The touch remained like that of childhood, only that her hand was a good bit larger, and Li Shiyi couldn’t loosely let her grab on, but rather turned her hand over to grip her soft fingers. It was in the adult manner.

Song Shijiu, on the other hand, shrank back a bit, and tugged hand back with a heart thundering like a fleeing rabbit; Li Shiyi, not understanding, turned her head back to look at her, unconsciously gripping her fingers. The sound of her heartbeat was incredibly disobedient, rushing out of her ears, as if wanting to jump in the spacious and empty cave; Song Shijiu used her left hand to cover her ears, then, thinking a moment, pinched her feverish ears, then struggled to free the hand that Li Shiyi was holding, grabbing her wrist as if to escape.

Much better. She bit her lip and lowered her head, letting out a breath.

Tu Laoyao, leading the way ahead, naturally had no way to become aware of Song Shijiu’s twists and turns, only saying, minding his own business, “Shiyi-jie, say, if we get the gold, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.” Li Shiyi’s voice was incredibly pleasant to listen to. Her wrist was grasped by Song Shijiui, and in her intonation, lacking waves or swells, hid the lively pulse of her artery beneath her skin. This sensation was incredibly wonderful, as if holding what was beneath her cold, indifferent outer appearance, a connection that pulsed somewhere not known to anyone else

Tu Laoyao asked A Yin, “Yin-da-nainai?”

A Yin held her hands level, and said, “Designer clothes from Jinmen, this lady’ll contract for them.”

Tu Laoyao cast her a mocking glance, then turned his head towards Shijiu: “What about you? Miss Shijiu?”

Song Shijiu, startled, cast a glance at Li Shiyi, then immediately lowered her head, saying abashedly, “I’ll be honest with you. I still haven’t seen the gold.”

Tu Laoyao let out a free, donkey-like laugh, scaring Song Shijiu and making her grasp Li Shiyi’s wrist, raising her head just in time to see the faint rise of the corners of her lips in the dusky lamp light. Song Shijiu pressed her lips together in a smile, and asked Tu Laoyao, “Then, how would you spend it?”

Tu Laoyao turned around to face her, waving his hand with a smile of delight, and said, “Have you heard of Lactogen milk substitute powder? In the past, I heard a couple of guys from Guangzhou talk about it; it’s a Western trademark, no different from breast milk. I heard when the auntie nextdoor gave birth to an infant and had clogged ducts, the pain was enough to make her cry, so I thought when your sister-in-law gives birth to a son, if there’s money, I’ll buy milk replacement powder for him to eat. You don’t know, when your sister-in-law cries out, the legs of cows within ten kilometres tremble!”

Song Shijiu listened with amusement, chest shaking, and was just about to begin talking, when she heard a loud “ah” by her ear, the sound of an ox entering the water, splashing, splashing her entire face. She paused, seeing in the situation before her in the swaying lamp light; unexpectedly, before her, there was a small brook, intersecting the path ahead horizontally, the stagnant water usually not moving; Tu Laoyao turned around, face wrinkling as he spat out a few mouthfuls of water, hands held up high, rescuing the kerosene lamp he’d been entrusted with. Only once he’d stood up did he realise that that water wasn’t higher than his thigh, winding around his knee, flowing in a slow movement; Li Shiyi reached out the hand that had originally been in her sleeve, bending over to give it to Tu Laoyao, and A Yin also advanced forward, saying, “Hurry and get out; careful of freezing.”

Tu Laoyao doubtfully gazed at his own leg, saying in puzzlemet, “This water’s warm, not freezing at all.” The water that had just entered his mouth had also been a bit salty, as if this river course was connected with the sea.

Li Shiyi rose back up, drawing back her hand; Tu Laoyao, lamp raised, looked all over, and pointed ahead, saying, “Ahead, there’s a flight of steps; it’s probably the tomb room; there isn’t a side path here; it seems like the only way to go is to pass through the water.”

Li Shiyi thought a moment, then got into the water, testing its depth. Her wrist was extracted from Song Shijiu’s hand, and Song Shijiu dropped her hand to the side of her leg, twisting her empty fingers in the raw edge of her clothes. Li Shiyi said, “The water seems clean, and it’s not freezing either.” When she finished speaking, she hesitantly glanced at A Yin, gazing at her elegant qipao, and asked, “Are you coming down or not?”

A Yin snorted, and said, “You don’t ask Shijiu, but instead as me? When I was entering tombs to investigate coffins, you were still being chased by a female ghost.” As she spoke, she took off her heels, and with a splash, jumped down into the water. Song Shijiu, without an objection, also squatted down, stretching her legs out to enter the river. Tu Laoyao, still taking the lead, swarmed by the whirling water, waded forward one foot into one depression at a time, Li Shiyi leading Song Shijiu and advacing slowly, A Yin following by the side, covering her nose due to the scent of decomposed shrimp in the water.

The waterway was hard to cross, and Tu Laoyao didn’t bluster, not daring to let out a loud breath, paying full attention to the route, occasionally taking a rod to sweep through the water, striking out a couple times to investigate and get a sense of the situation. Li Shiyi’s hand was suddenly constricted, and she looked behind her, where Song Shijiu’s face was white, stuck rigid in place; meeting her gaze, she licked her lips, and shifted her gaze downwards, saying, “It…it seems like there’s something there.”

There was the sensation of something smooth against her calf, like a wooden stick bumping against her calf, and the rumbling sound of of movement bubbled out of the water, each moment longer than a moment, and she kept quiet out of fear, the terror of the unknown dispelling her backbone, easily spreading through her entire body. Li Shiyi felt the tremble of her fingertips, and firmly grasped her hand, saying mildly, “Don’t move.”

Song Shijiu nodded, rapidly drawing in a couple of breaths, and Li Shiyi slowly approached her, one hand holding hers and not letting go, the other following her bent waist and searching downwards, briefly using her strength to grab the thing that was bumping against her and pull it out.

When she saw it clearly, Li Shiyi’s breath trembled slightly with a laugh, and she turned her head, returning her eyes back to clearly penetrate Song Shijiu, and raised her brows.

“Hai! A fish!” Tu Laoyao came close, looking attentively at the tail of the small fish in Li Shiyi’s hand. Without waiting for Li Shiyi to relinquish her grasp, he leaned closer, blinking a couple times under the lamp light, and said strangely, “What sort of fish is this—it seems to not have eyes?”

Li Shiyi turned over her hand and looked attentively; its body was flat, its abdomen round and its head short. “It seems like a red-scaled fish.”

“Red-scaled fish don’t come down mountains; usually they thrive in the waters of Mount Tai, so what’s it doing here? Moreover, this one doesn’t even have eyes, as if it’s degenerated,” A Yin said, coming over.

Li Shiyi let go of the fish, and said, “In a cave, there’s no light, so after a long time, its original means of sight are no use, so there’s cases of the area of its eyes degenerating; it’s just that this fish indeed swam here, and this river also connects to the sea, so naturally it could swim out as well; it hasn’t been in this cave for long enough to reproduce, or have a reason for its eyes to go so far as to degenerate.”

A Yin nodded, agreeing, and heard Li Shiyi mutter to herself, “Only…only here, there’s something that attracts them to congregate here.”

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Translator's notes: 

[1]: 分金定穴 (fenjin dingxue), a fengshui technique.