Chapter 31: Spring breeze blowing for years (II)

It was said that Yan mountains were on a dragon’s vein; rising from west at the Yang River, and at the east linking the Shanhai Pass, facing the Taihang mountains across the waters. To the east of the Yan mountains was, in fact, Mount Wuling; Li Shiyi, because of A Yin, had a bit of a relationship with this place, and somewhat took into consideration her complexion, but in fact saw that her expression was in fact as usual, remaining that spring liveliness in appearance, and, at that, relaxed a bit.

The Chaohe River meandered like a dragon’s spine, and was one of the ones which wound around the Yan mountains; the mountain range wasn’t very high, and at this moment, waking from hibernation, was, in fact, sporadic greenery. Following around the Chaohe River halfway, arriving at Gubeikou, the hun spirit command strip that Tu Laoyao held in his hand in fact began to make faint movements, a bit like a chick which had recently broken out of its shell and was pecking at feed, softly jolting over and over. Li Shiyi and the others got out at the south side of Gubeikou village, and asked for the location from the military outpost at the fore; nowadays it was in fact incredibly desolate, and a branch that not even many crows landed on spread across the front of the village, grey stone alternating with the yellow and white of the dirt wall; within the village, there weren’t many in the prime of their years, only a few old men squinting as they sat at the doorsteps and knocked ashes from their smoking pipes, and old women who scolded trouble-making children as they washed clothes; seeing new people having arrived, only then were the raised wooden clubs for beating clothes put down.

A small stream cut through the village of Gubeikou, and all the people walked in accordance with it from the south to the north; the spirit command strip’s motions became greater and greater, and, arriving at a small farmer’s household at the village’s northwest and stopping before it, Li Shiyi stamped the ground she stood on a few times, having no more leads. Just then, she saw a man carrying a pole over his shoulder pass by, his gaze continuously cast over them; Tu Laoyao called out to him in question, “Xiaoge, good morning; what are you hurrying about for?”

The man swung the shoulder pole easily, not having the intent to put it down, only withdrawing into a back curved like an old tortoise and gazing at them as he said, “Ah, I’m going to deliver rice.” His gaze passed meaningfully over A Yin and Song Shijiu a couple times, a bit unmoving; A Yin didn’t turn bashful nor get angry, even raising a brow with a smile; Song Shijiu, in fact, was rather perceptive, and, out of the corner of Li Shiyi’s eye, recoiled a half step.

Li Shiyi took a step forward, and, rather politely, asked him, “Excuse me, xiaoge, these past few days, have there been outsiders who entered the village?”

Although the plaster was on her cheek, her voice was in fact leisurely and very pleasant to listen to, and caused the man to take a second look; only after a while did he reply, “A young lady, twenty-five or so, with a large, rough face, carrying a pole on her shoulders.”

Tu Laoyao’s eyes lit up, and he exchanged a glance with Li Shiyi; hearing this description, there was a high possibility it was. He cheerfully rubbed his hands together, and asked him, “Where is she now, then?”

The man once again put the pole on his shoulder, his hands tightly grasping the rope, as if accustomed to it and unwilling to put it down, and said, “That young lady was very strange; she carried a copper-bottomed compass, and came here to us, going calling from house to house, and as soon as she entered the courtyard would lay on her stomach and bang at the ground; in the end, she visited the widow Qian’s house from her marriage in the west of the village. The widow Qian’s husband died many years ago, and life was hard; the rough-faced young lady gave her a box of silver coins, not unwilling about it in the slightest, and she joyfully hired a car to go to the city; for two or three months she unexpectedly didn’t return once, not filial to her in-laws. Hei, widows.”

The young man had become a chatterbox; Tu Laoyao, listening, became dazed; at the very end, the two exchanged a knowing glance, and meaningfully halted. A Yin, unable to bear listening, tossed her handkerchief and coughed; the man’s spirit returned, and heard A Yin’s enchanting voice emerge: “I’m asking you, what’s the way to the widow Qian’s residence?”

The words were very blunt, and brought along a degree of overbearingness; fortunately, she was beautiful, so the man didn’t get angry, and quickly pointed out the road. “Follow along the side of the creek to get there; it’s the the third from the end of the head of the village, and on the right side there’s an old pear tree as wide as one or two people; that’s it exactly.”

Li Shiyi nodded in thanks, and gently patted Song Shijiu’s back, indicating to her to regain her spirit and follow along.

Although the empty talk that the man said was plentiful, the path he’d indicated wasn’t wrong; they arrived at the widow Qian’s courtyard after barely two steps; Tu Laoyao fished out the spirit command strip, and, raising it in his hand, moved it left to right in exploration as if the light of a lamp, but it in fact remained entirely unmoving; only the cuckoo astride the courtyard wall tilted its head and looked at him, and didn’t think much of his appearance. Li Shiyi said, “We’ll go in and look.”

Tu Laoyao put the spirit command strip away and let out an “ai”, and reached out a hand to grab the lock of the door to have a look; it was, in fact, locked up firmly; he was in a bit of trouble, and turned to look at Li Shiyi; Li Shiyi hadn’t often done this sort of clandestine business of trespassing on peoples’ homes, and her face had a degree of innocence; he glanced at A Yin as well, and A Yin asked with a laugh, “The skills of the lowest of professions, this lady would know them all, is that it?”

Tu Laoyao bumped against the wall, and hurried to laugh in denial, refuting it, and then saw Song Shijiu advance a half step, and say softly, “I’ll try.” This was wildly unexpected; even Li Shiyi raised a single right brow; Song Shijiu swallowed a mouthful of saliva, and said, terrified, “Before, when I made noise with jokes, you yelled at me to read more books; I…I, every type, I flipped through.”

A Yin was dumbstruck; her mind, as well, accepted the knowledge that she’d been beaten; she saw Song Shijiu draw a hairpin from her head; between her hands, it became a fine, thin thing, and she bowed her body halfway, moving close to the front of the keyhole, and gazed with narrow eyes, not daring to take a great breath, and pressed her lips together, pressing her ear against it, fingertips pushing and prying, and a crisp ge-da sound, the lock sprang open.

Tu Laoyao let out a small cry of alarm, hurriedly pushing the door open and jumping inside; Li Shiyi crossed over the doorstep, gazing at Song Shijiu with a complicated expression in her eyes; A Yin followed last, gathering her earrings, secretly raising a thumb at Song Shijiu. Receiving praise, Song Shijiu, abashed, twisted her hairpin back into shape, and then stuck it back in her hair.

Within, the courtyard was dilapidated; cracked casts covered in hoarfrost were piled in a disorder at the side of the door, and on a framework, several weathered loofas hung, swaying back and forth like dried pulp. The group, unable to change things, thoroughly took measure of other things, just because at the southwest corner of the courtyard, an offensively conspicuous hole had been opened, its circular form as wide as a person, both dark and deep, seeming extremely like a robber’s hole. Li Shiyi immediately understood the function of the compass in the words of the man from just before; the fenjing method of finding entrances; Mulan was looking for a tomb.

Li Shiyi was awe-inspiring in mind; she indicated to Tu Laoyao to ready the tools of trade, and put the unnecessary items outside in a simple arrangement, and, soon after lit a lamp and entered the robber’s hole.

The robber’s hole did, in fact, connect to a tomb passage; the piles of dry loess came to an end, and there was some grit that fell down; the road ahead was half-collapsed, and when the group jumped down, they wound up with a mouthful of dust, and spat a couple times and felt about to carefully proceed.

This robber’s hole was definitely not opened professionally, and wasn’t very firm and solid in its appearance; Li Shiyi lowered her voice, urging them to not make their movements too excessive, so as to avoid the loess and sand from falling and burying the road once more. Luckily, the tomb passage was extremely short, and after about ten metres they came to the end, and after that was a section of polished stone-constructed front path; Li Shiyi raised the lamp in her hand, and rapped on the firm stone wall; this tomb was even a bit smaller than Master Wu’s concubine’s had been, so it could be assumed that its owner was by no means of personage; but, although a sparrow was small, its five organs were complete;^[1] the path leading to the tomb, like the stone chamber, were both very presentable, as if intentionally having had a sense of ritual preserved that no one wanted to pry into. The coffin chamber’s front also had two stone doors, half-opened; in the middle, there were a few slender fingerprints, depressed into the dust; it was exactly what was always left when Mulan opened the stone doors; Li Shiyi was by no means eager to go in, only attentively taking measure of the doors, crouching down, lifting the lamp above her body to illuminate it, then reaching out a hand to brush over the dust, and indistinctly saw the stone door’s bottom portion was engraved with two blossoming water lilies.

Her heart jumped with a ge-deng, dropping downwards for no reason; she didn’t know, either, whether it was the lack of oxygen underground, or if she’d stood up too suddenly, and when she stood up, she was unexpectedly a bit too dizzy.

A Yin wanted to rush to move forward and support her, but saw Li Shiyi raise a hand, placing her hand on the arm of Song Shijiu, who was the first to take a step to meet her.

Li Shiyi raised a hand and rubbed the space between her brows; from the time she’d entered the tomb, there had been a not too good twisting feeling; this sort of twisting feeling’s origin, she couldn’t say, only that, all over, there was a flood of a sort of a feeling of something unexpected beyond belief, making her unable to be at ease. She drew a quiet breath, calming her mind, and walked towards the coffin chamber; the coffin chamber was even smaller than she’d imagined, and when the group stood up, would be crowding it to the brim; the cramped, narrowness assaulted the senses with a feeling of oppression, causing Tu Laoyao to hold his breath, striving to draw his stomach in a bit.

The middle of the stone chamber had, indeed, a grave; A Yin drew in a hissing breath, biting her fingers and walked to the side, frowning. “This grave…”

Tu Laoyao cast a glance around; in the past, when he’d went into tombs, the coffins had all been placed on a coffin bed, but this one was, in fact, not the same; right in the centre was a long, square depression, the ancient coffin set into the depression, all sides surrounded by stacked slabs of stone, and then pressed down with a circle of crushed rock of varying sizes.

“What sort of custom is this?” He crouched down and attentively gazed at those stones.

Li Shiyi treaded two steps forward, and said, “Northern Wei design.”

A Yin tilted her head. “The Northern Wei tombs we’ve been in before had a bit of prestige; most of them were in the Pyongsong and Luoyang region; how would one be here in the Yan mountains?”

Li Shiyi shook her head, and fished out her tobacco pipe. “Let’s ask.”

The thin, lustrous opium pipe, set next to the coffin, issued dense smoke; a strange scent gathered and pervaded, whipping up a not easily forgotten past.

Knock on the coffin, ask three questions. One asking for origin, one asking for destination, the third asking for the reason for leaving the hometown and being buried in the Yan mountains, looking across the water to the south of it.

“From whence did you come?”

“The fourth year of Yongxing,^[2] Yucheng.”

“Where is your destination?”

“The twenty-fifth yin department under the Wojiao stone.”

“Who are you?”

“Hua Mulan.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: 麻雀虽小，五脏俱全; indicating that though something is small, it’s fully equipped.

[2]: During the reign of Emperor Mingyuan; 413 CE.