Chapter 32: Spring breeze blowing for years (III)

The three indistinct characters dispersed in the tomb chamber; the amorous scent of sweet basil was incredibly improper on the ice-cold yellow loess and stones; Li Shiyi picked the smoking pipe up, and considered it carefully, and then felt the ground faintly vibrate, the sound of uneven horse hoof-like footsteps swiftly hurrying along, coming from a distance and reaching close with the force of a hot knife through butter. Tu Laoyao’s body trembled violently, and the fat on either side shook as if hammered over and over by Lei Gong;^[1] the group gazed at him, bewildered, and saw that he’d fished the hun spirit command strip out from his pocket with some difficulty, pinched between numb fingers, and he said, stammeringly, “F…fuck, it’s shaking!”

Li Shiyi quietly said that wasn’t good, and held the smoking pipe horizontally across her chest, just having fallen into a defensive stance when she heard a burst of spirit breeze, coldly and gradually pressing against the back of her head. She pressed her mouth firmly shut, the veins on her temples throbbing; without turning her head, she struck out with the smoking pipe three cun behind her head.

Where the copper pipe fell was a soft, corporeal body; behind her was a brief, smothered groan, and then the spirit breeze drew back, and in a couple moments, dispersed, and then came to the front of her face, bringing with it the oppressive sense of a sword being unsheathed, chasing after the hun spirit and seizing command. Li Shiyi’s index finger straightened, and, as if performing a sword dance, raised the opium pipe, her head shifting towards the right to endure and dodge the spirit presence attack; immediately after, withdrawing a step, her waist moved her body to lean backwards, going around the spirit presence and leaning behind it, the smoking pipe rapidly writing a “ding” character for fixing in the air, and with a shake of the wrist, with strength exceeding a thousand jin, swatted it over.

Li Shiyi’s fighting skills were incredibly pleasing to look at; using the “rapid flight of a startled goose and the grace of a swimming dragon” in ci ballads and fu poetic essays to describe it was no more than fitting; a strength that was hard to ignore penetrated through the soft, mild mannerisms, like a whipping willow branch, an innate control emerging; as well, a calm and composed, killing resolve also seeped out, causing A Yin to protect Song Shijiu, who for a moment had forgotten to move because of its breathtakingness, behind herself.

That spirit presence settled in a flash; quiet was once again reinstated within the tomb chamber, even a bit more serene and peaceful than it had been before; it was only Li Shiyi grasping the opium pipe, and only she knew that that body-fixing talisman from a moment before had not, in fact, been clapped onto that malicious spirit’s form; this moment’s tranquillity seemed to have a multitude of gazes prying, only waiting for there to be a bit of complacency to scratch out a paw from any direction. This sort of passive sensation made her incredibly displeased; she quietly hummed, and, in a few steps, came before the grave, tapping the coffin with the smoking pipe; a descendent nail made an answering sound as it came out, falling to the ground with a ge-deng.

“Don’t touch my jiejie!” a sinister yet anxious voice called, and a great deal of sand and wind was once again blown up in the tomb chamber.

Hua Mulan. The corners of Li Shiyi’s lips rose, and she stood up, pinching a yellow talisman paper.

Mulan had, in fact, never come in front of her to fight hand-to-hand, as if her heart knew that she couldn’t get the desired outcome. From all around, the hesitant sound of soft yet nimble footsteps sounded, quick as a bamboo torch brought to light, crowding as no sooner than one subsided, the next arose.

Li Shiyi stood in the centre, faintly turning around in a circle, attentively tilting an ear to listen; the Scenery Door, the Tian Ying star; the Injury Door, the Tian Chong star; the Fear Door, the Tian Zhu star;^[2] east, south, west, and north were all lightly trodden by her, and, at the exact centre of the confluence of the four doors, a faint character “zhen” for suppression was written with blood. Tu Laoyao let out a cry of alarm; Li Shiyi said, “A formation for confining people within, restricting people for a short period.”

Just as her words fell, she softly closed her jaw, and she quickly mentally calculated the area, her gaze remaining fixed on the ground, feet pressing down and then rising, the hidden dragon coiling beneath the sand as to determine a location for breaking the formation. Mulan moved along the Earth chart; Li Shiyi went along the Heaven chart;^[3] the Death Door, the Tian Fu star; the Delusion Door, the Tian Xin star; when falling to the lower right corner’s Life Door, her right hand expelled the talisman to control the lampwick, stuck within the smoking pipe and burning to its limit, then dropped her eyes to move to the centre of the formation, once again, as before, scooping out a pipeful of ripe glutinous rice, precisely reaching out a hand to clap it onto the empty space before the space between her brows.

With a soft clattering sound, it fell to the ground, like falling dust. The oil lamp on the ground was nearly burnt down, and in the darkness, the faint figure of a young lady appeared, as if drawn out with gold thread, changing from transparent to corporeal, strange enough to make one’s guts shiver. The space between Mulan’s brows were fixed by the glutinous rice that Li Shiyi had bestowed, and at that moment, she gazed with unrelenting anger at her, her red eyes and rising and falling chest both expressing her discontent; Tu Laoyao courage, seeing she was unable to move, strengthened, and he raised the oil lamp and moved forward to look at her, attentively glancing at her a couple times, and said, “It really is the rough-faced, shoulder-pole carrier, hei.”

Only then did A Yin understand that man’s meaning; her stature was very tall, and her face also didn’t have the usual beauty or grace of a woman, and the sharp angles made her lower jaw distinct, her shoulders level and thin, a bit wider than the average young woman’s, a bit of outstanding erectness and clear talent penetrating through; at this moment, she wore a fashionable shirt, the cuffs drawn up, the waist shoved into the pants, and she wore a pair of knee-length leather boots, a head of long hair gathered higher than a ponytail, some ends of hair scattered and brushing against her face.

Li Shiyi, glancing at Mulan’s fingers, tilted her face. “A Yin.”

A Yin’s lips twitch, and from her bundle, picked out a bag of copper coins, and then pulled out a fine red string, and, along with the copper coins and ripe glutinous rice, presented it; the red string had also been put in black dog’s blood to steep for a full Sunday, and, as she strung up the copper coins, she chanted an incantation at the same time, and, from Mulan’s left pinky finger, she wound it around the fiver fingers one by one, then wound it around the tumb and upwards, following her shoulder and back to her neck and hooking it around in three loops, and then concluded at her right hand’s pinky finger. “What’s that doing?” Tu Laoyao once again was experiencing new knowledge.

“Although she did enter the Taishan archive registry, and is therefore a ghost, this method is a variation on the Xiangxi art of driving capturing corpses, and can lock her in place,” A Yin said with a bit of hard-found patience.

“Locking her in place, but then what about after?” Tu Laoyao asked.

Li Shiyi tilted her head and gazed at him, calm and unruffled in the midst of the chaos. Tu Laoyao loudly swallowed his saliva, crouching down in front of Mulan, and with a faint smacking of his lips, said to A Yin, “Help out; have her go up.”

When Shiyi-jie called someone over, who would dare to not come? If worst came to worst, one could go back and use pomelo skins to wash a few times; if you didn’t believe in it, it wouldn’t drive away bad luck.

The group emerged from the tomb; only after a good deal of time did they move Mulan to the front of the vehicle; the hired coachman, seeing they’d brought along a living person when they came out, and it was also this sort of strange manner, was for a short time startled and unable to speak; luckily, he’d seen a lot, and he also wasn’t someone who talked a lot, and with his eyes observing his nose and his nose observing his heart, he concentrated and entered the vehicle, and, with a shake of his hands, started the car.

The back of the vehicle would sit four people, so of course it was inevitably a bit cramped; A Yin hurried Tu Laoyao to the passenger seat, and the four ladies crowded into a row in the back. Li Shiyi was a bit weary, and, on getting into the car, closed her eyes and relaxed; after not too long, the sound of Tu Laoyao’s snoring arose from the frog. Song Shijiu sat at Mulan’s side, and drew back the knee of her right leg which was near her.

It wasn’t clear if it was that Mulan had been beaten heavily, or if she wasn’t accustomed to foreign cars, but before long she became a bit faint, and Song Shijiu said to her, “If your head hurts, then sleep for a bit.”

Mulan cast a gaze at her, her neck rigid and unmoving; Song Shijiu thought a moment, and reached her hand out, pushing her head to rest against the window; with a light thump, Mulan firmly knocked against it, and gazed at her with incredible resentment; Song Shijiu, a bit embarrassed, compensated for the fault by straightening her body so she faced forwards.

The car’s wheels swayed; Mulan’s eyelids sank down, and after not too long, she really did fall asleep. Song Shijiu tilted her face to glance at her, and saw that her mouth was in fact opening and closing, as if she was repeating something in her sleep; she leaned her ear in, and, blinking, committed each character to memory without missing one.

Only on entering the night did the group return to A Luo’s residence; at the residence, only Wu Qian, in fact, remained, alone, and said that A Luo had gone on business. Li Shiyi gave Mulan over to Wu Qian, and had him spread out a closed formation, and only tomorrow would come again to receive the payment from A Luo.

Everyone returned to the courtyard residence covered in dust and travelworn, and took baths then headed towards Tu-saozi’s courtyard to eat a few bowls of easily-digested lean meat porridge, and only then relaxed and tiredly returned to their own rooms.

The moonlight and the stars were sparse, and the tired birds had also returned to their nests; the surroundings were calm and peaceful, only the sound of the wind rustling against the new leaves. Song Shijiu kept thinking of the words she’d heard in the car; she was about to exit the door and go looking for Li Shiyi, and had just taken one step out when she heard, from within the west courtyard, the faint sound of human speech, accompanying the permeating fragrant scent of sugar-roasted chestnuts. Song Shijiu followed the sound, and saw it was A Yin and Tu Laoyao sitting across from each other shelling and eating chestnuts; seeing her come, the expression of getting the taste of her own medicine seemed to be arranged into a Hongmen feast.^[4] A Yin had just shelled one, and passed it to her, saying, “Sit.”

Song Shijiu complied with the speech and sat, shoving one into her mouth; the intertwined sweet and salty aroma had been brought out cosily by the roasting, and also brough the raspy sense of sugar granules, delicious enough to make her want to swallow her tongue. As she swallowed, she reached out to shell another.

A Yin asked her, “You were going to go look for Shiyi?”

“En.” Song Shijiu chewed the chestnut, and, blinking, said, “There’s words I want to tell her.”

A Yin and Tu Laoyao exchanged a glance, and Tu Laoyao said, “This is you being determined to be good to Shiyi?”

Song Shijiu nodded. “I’m determined.”

A Yin raised her handkerchief and dabbed the corners of her mouth. “If you really are determined, then being ordinary and unremarkable towards her, that won’t do.”

Song Shijiu’s ears pricked, and she no longer attended to eating chestnuts, and doubtfully asked, “What does that mean?”

A Yin sighed, and said with a smile, “Oh, you; you beat me at mahjong, and you beat me at companionship as well. But, Li Shiyi is willing to help you, so what choice do I have, then?” Her cheerful talk was profoundly meaningful; what she said seemed to be talking about Li Shiyi mentioning matters of winning at mahjong, while also seeming to be something else. A Yin, too, understood Li Shiyi; in that moment of Li Shiyi placing her hand on Song Shijiu’s arm, she’d understood; in the past, Li Shiyi had always been unaccustomed to leaning on anyone else; in the past, often she had offered a hand, and Li Shiyi had always supported herself on the stone wall. But Song Shijiu’s young, inexperienced body and beauty had, for the first time, broken the defenses in Li Shiyi’s heart, making her and her touch as natural and involuntary as chatting or eating food.

Song Shijiu supported her face, not understanding too clearly.

A Yin’s disappointment was only a flash; in a few moments, she regained her spirit, and said, thinking it over, “Since you have this innate ability, it would be best to strike while the iron’s hot. You don’t know where your shortcomings are now, and this older sister can’t understand it better; getting closer with her, if she regards you as an infant, then what can you do?”

Enlightened with perfect wisdom. Song Shijiu gasped in shock, a chill running down her spine, and stuttered, “That, that.”

A Yin raised a brow at Tu Laoyao; although she disdained talking over this matter with Tu Laoyao greatly, in all things it seemed there was an alliance, regardless of if it was in spirit or in foolishness, even if it was the head of a pig, with it there would be laughter, and the mood could be raised a good degree.

Just as expected, Tu Laoyao was laughing animatedly. A Yin once again raised the subject to Song Shijiu. “If you want her to take you as a young woman to like, you’ll invariably need to be somewhat seductive and tempting.”

“Seductive and tempting?” Under A Yin’s meaningful stare, Song Shijiu drew her neck back.

“Seductive and tempting,” A Yin nodded, thrusting her chest out.

-

< LAST | HOME | NEXT >

- 

Translator's notes:

[1]: The god of thunder.

[2]: From the astrological Fengshui method Qimen Dunjia; she’s probably calculating location via degrees, but because Qimen Dunjia charts can vary wildly based on time, it’s hard to say what exactly these calculations come out to.

[3]: From the divination method Ziwei Doushu; the Earth chart determines one’s decade’s luck, and the Heaven chart is determined at birth, and determines one’s overall fate and luck

[4]: The Hongmen feast, indicating a banquet set out with the intent of murdering the guest, and refers to when the eventual Han emperor, Liu Bang, escaped an attempted murder by his rival, Xiang Yu, in 206 BCE.