Chapter 52: Who sent my longing to Du Heng? (I)

Li Shiyi uncrossed her long legs, and hurriedly followed out. The street was incredibly chilly, and the small shop’s single-leaf door was closed tightly; the heavily misted road ahead, in the dead of night, revealed heavy flagstone, and intermittently, there were bicycle bells. Yun Niang, lifting up her skirt, got into a rickshaw, which, with three jolts for each two turns and tosses, drove towards the outside of the city. Li Shiyi, without the slightest hesitation, called a rickshaw along with Song Shijiu, and, gazing forwards, said quietly, “Follow at a distance.”

Her hand casually rested on the handrest at the side, which was ice-cold and gave off a rusty scent, and she paused, then once more used a small amount of effort to grasp it. The darkness was always able to reveal the true, weak nature of adults, and in the past, it was especially the common cart drivers who were revealed by the long, dark night, the strength of their legs depleting and their movements becoming sluggish, as if a wandering ghost had caused them to become fearful; the flash of the snake’s tail just then especially bred a terror that hid beneath the surface, and it caused Song Shijiu to shiver involuntarily.

It was too quiet; quiet enough that she was even afraid of the sound of the wind by her ear, and she leaned her body closer to Li Shiyi, lowering her voice to ask, “Just now, what was that?”

“The Teng serpent,” Li Shiyi said, lips parting and closing. Furthermore, it wasn’t the same as A Yin; it wasn’t a spirit, or even a po soul, but in fact—“The Teng serpent itself.”

Song Shijiu gasped, a chill running down her spine. “It’s under Nüwa, and a spiritual beast of antiquity; why would it be attached to Yun Niang’s body?”

Li Shiyi muttered to herself, and shook her head. Song Shijiu inexplicably became cheerful, and laughed delicately. “There are things that you don’t know?”

Li Shiyi cast her a glance; everyone said she was cool and calm, controlling herself; even if Mount Tai were to collapse, her expression wouldn’t change, but she felt more and more that it was Song Shijiu who was the one whose heart was the strongest, and in her short life, true weak points of her mood rarely appeared; for example, terror, wrath, irritation, envy, and self-pity and self-redress. If they did appear, they were still a brief flash. Usually, a person’s pointlessness came from ignorance, and terror came from half-knowing, but Song Shijiu wasn’t like that; she knew clearly what awaited ahead, and still emotionally tilted her gaze to observe Li Shiyi’s emotions. In her heart, the six characters of “Li Shiyi doesn’t know it” were even more conspicuous than “spiritual beast of antiquity”. Or, perhaps, it wasn’t six characters, but three. When Li Shiyi thought of this, she lowered her eyes and laughed faintly.

Before her smile retreated, she heard Song Shiju as her again, “Although Yun Niang is a ghost, but the Teng serpent is attached to her body; how could your paper talisman easily control her?”

Li Shiyi thought for a moment, and had a faint guess. “Although she’s acting as a spiritual beast, she’s still the little pet of a superior; it turns a blind eye to the petty, everyday ruckus; however, if she were to cause trouble in a place like Xianyuesi, she might be held responsible, so that’s why, for the moment, she would give in.” Her mind still had another suspicion; once the paper talisman was brought out, she couldn’t sense whether it had use or not anymore; that Teng serpent was truly and honestly controlled by her, but she didn’t fully agree with what Song Shijiu had said.

The longer the car drove, the further it strayed; it stopped at the foot of Mount She, which was extremely low; hidden in the curtain of the night, even its rises and falls brought a sense of a Shanghai girl’s shyness; the treetops had grown luxuriant and lush, crowded tightly, and on the mountain, aside from some lamps of farming families who went to sleep late, there wasn’t any other colour. Yun Niang got out of the car, and, paying attention only to her own matters, followed along the mountain to walk upwards; Li Shiyi, leading Song Shijiu along, followed slowly after. The mountain path was hard to walk along, and Yun Niang relied on familiarity with the terrain to walk incredibly quickly, and, within a few moments, disappeared behind a bend; Li Shiyi moved a branch, stepping on soft, dead leaves, and increased her pace.

All sounds were silent, only the intermittent cicada’s song and the sound of birds’ wings flapping, and the occasional howling of the dogs in the farming families’ courtyards sounding, whimpering and then falling asleep. Li Shiyi patiently followed along the winding mountain road several rounds, carefully observing the footprints on the ground, and, finally, halfway up the mountain, found a spacious cave.

The two sides of the cave dripped with beads of water, which smashed onto the ground to form an aged water hole, and the entrance, as tall as a person and twice as wide, was crowded with several thickets of low shrubs, the runners in the middle having been pressed aside to two sides, more than half of them withered and yellow, as if done deliberately by someone to exit and enter. Li Shiyi entered without haste, releasing a small paper figure to find a path, and saw it walking quietly on tiptoe to enter into a small crack; soon, it came out just as quietly, wearing grass clothes like those of an ambush soldier. It nodded to Li Shiyi, its arms forming a circle around its head to indicate that it was safe, and then conscientiously entered her pocket once more.

Li Shiyi held her breath, and the two, bowed, pressed against the wall and entered.

Originally, the mountain was dark, and the inside was even more pitch-black; closing their eyes, they adapted to the light, and feeling about, they passed through a narrow pathway, ahead of which was a large boulder forming a barrier; behind the barrier was a vague brightness, accompanying a quite bizarre sound. Li Shiyi took a testing step, but heard a loud burst of sound, a large group of bats flapping their wings and taking flight, causing rock debris to fall down in response with a rustling; she instinctively drew her body back to protect Song Shijiu, crouching with her behind the boulder. She took out a talisman, pinching it, and touched Song Shijiu’s wrist to indicate that she should make preparations, afraid that they had aroused the Teng serpent’s attention; she pressed her lips together, her bottom lip turning white, and tilted an ear to quietly wait for a while; that direction in fact had no detectable movement; she restrained a sigh, and shifted to stick her head out, covertly peering.

What came to her ears before the scene was the sound of Yun Niang’s moaning; she was laying on her back on the dirt, her qipao half shed, her long legs twisted in difficulty to endure, sweat moistening her thick hair, stuck in a mess against her face, half of it following along her shoulder and over her full chest. The bracelet of her luminous wrist was on the ground in shattered pieces, and she was grasping a cluster of withered grass, her neck arched, gasping and out of breath as she moaned. Her white clothes were the lantern candle that drew one’s attention the most in the night, and at this moment, it was unexpectedly faintly glimmering, rising and falling like a firefly as it wrapped around her; she flipped over in her twisting motion, and only then did what caused her unbearable pain appear.

That was a serpent’s tail as thick as a person, blue-black in colour, covered in hard scales, which stretched out from within Yun Niang’s body, twisting and sweeping back and forth like an earthworm, the length of the tail whipping against the stone wall, its whipping leaving traces of sparks, then swinging against the ground; from the withered grass, it dragged out sticky traces, specks of flame falling all about.

The Teng serpent, master of fear, master of fire.

Li Shiyi let loose the talisman she had been holding, and finally understood why the Teng serpent hadn’t paid attention to their alarm; where that flame disappeared were piles of dark things, like silkworm pupae—it was shedding its skin. When a snake shed its skin, it was at its weakest; its spiritual influence was largely reduced, and therefore it needed to adhere to a ghost’s body, and it was therefore too busy to pay attention to anything else.

Tiny flames leapt within Li Shiyi’s gleaming, billowing wave pupils, as if unconsciously developing into a wish; if the Teng serpent chose this moment to shed its skin, then this cave had to be the place which it resided in at this time. She let out a long exhalation, turning her head to see Song Shijiu’s sparkling eyes gazing at her, inquiring whether or not to go forward; Li Shiyi shook her head, lifting her hand to gesture outwards, indicating she should retreat.

The two left the cave carefully, and only after having gone half a li did they dare to let their steps make sound; Song Shijiu, seeing faint sweat had risen on Li Shiyi’s forehead, hurriedly pulled out her handkerchief to have her wipe it away, and herself clutched her sleeve to wipe it away, and asked her, “Didn’t you want to find the Teng serpent? How come you suddenly walked away?”

Li Shiyi shook her head, and explained to her, “What I wanted to find was the hardest to find among the ghosts and gods of the world, the Bai Shai’s idol. The Bai Shai is engendered to the Teng serpent, and can subdue it; the Teng serpent usually hides itself in the surroundings of the Bai Shai’s idol, so its whereabouts can only be found through it.”

“O,” Song Shijiu nodded cleverly, wanting to say something and hesitating, and added a phrase, “I had assumed that you wanted to kill it.”

Li Shiyi had just been about to take a step; hearing it, she paused, looking at her in disbelief. “Me, kill the Teng serpent?” Nüwa, spiritual beast. She let out a meaningful scoff, and shook her head, crossing past her. “You really think highly of me.”

“What association does this have with thinking highly of you or not?” Song Shijiu jumped up in a few steps, her voice as lighthearted as her steps. “If you want to kill, I’ll just move my hand and it will be.”

Li Shiyi tilted her head to gaze at he earnest profile, involuntarily raising the corners of her mouth. “Your capability has matured, is that it?” She turned her head to gaze at her feet; originally she’d thought of opening her mouth again; by curious coincidence, the work of ghosts and gods, she was joking.

“It’s not entirely matured,” Song Shijiu said modestly. She was just about to make a display of her own skill to Li Shiyi, when her eyes suddenly turned. “What’s this?”

All she could see was a ruined courtyard, the likeness of a former temple faintly recognisable, and in the two low walls of the courtyard laid a severed gold head of a Buddha, the surface layer of gold leaf having been scraped off by the people nearby; the stone block within had bumpy holes left on it, and the weeds passed through the hand of the smiling Buddha, the appearance having a bit of a feeling of the withered and fallen mundane world’s bleakness.

Li Shiyi’s mood shifted, and she exchanged a look with Song Shijiu, and stepped forward.

The temple was incredibly small; from start to finish, it was barely two rooms; in the front room, only a glowering guardian deity remained, long since lacking incense, and the offering table lacked arms and legs, even the prayer matt having been taken away by someone. Song Shijiu looked them over attentively one by one, crouching to look and not even letting small cracks slip by; only after looking for a while did she ask Li Shiyi, “The Bai Shai’s idol, what does it look like?”

Li Shiyi withdrew her hands from the offering table, brushing off the dust and ask on her fingertips, and said, “The Bai Shai’s appearance is barely noted; usually, it wouldn’t be met either; but, like the Teng serpent, it has a snake’s body.”

Song Shijiu let out a sound to indicate understanding, and, holding her skirt, went running to the back. Li Shiyi gazed after her deft movements, her mind having some worries, and she went forward a few steps after her, and was almost tripped by the doorstep. She held onto the door frame to stand up, raising her eyes to see Song Shijiu’s back.

Her head was tilted, and she stood in the middle of the second room, one hand still holding her skirt, not having let it go, one hand stretched out, with the slight tremor of having found fruit. Her curly hair bounced joyfully on her, swinging rapidly; the young mistress’ smile was like a flower blossoming in the midnight, and she said excitedly, “Shiyi! Is it this?”

Li Shiyi’s pupils expanded rapidly, and her breaths stopped in a split second, a loud sound in her mind, as if having been hit vertically atop the head with a hammer. She gazed at the snake-bodied idol that Song Shijiu had picked up and struck a few times, gazed at the simple and crude, creaking offering table, gazed at the dust hurriedly rising from the floor; in the whistling wind, the spiderwebs at all sides had been torn through the middle, and the spiders anxiously squeezed into the cracks, avoiding the abruptly arising heavy rain and powerful wind. The door was blown open with a clatter by the wind, the wooden building unable to withstand the ravage, swaying and on the verge of collapse. Song Shijiu accidentally dropped the idol; Li Shiyi reached out to grab her, but she saw the idol roll about a few times on the ground, the broken snake’s tail jumping up and collapsing with a loud sound.

The flying black prayer flags, the withered and rotten house beams that shook and broke, Song Shijiu’s deathly pale, bewildered complexion, and the enraged spirit that emerged from the idol in bluish black whisps. That spirit congealed into the shape of a snake’s tail, and whipped ferociously at the space between Song Shijiu’s brows, roaring in a way that made one nauseous, but afterwards, it rapidly disappeared from view. Everything happened incredibly quickly, quickly enough that Li Shiyi didn’t have the time to utter the words in her mouth—that isn’t the Bai Shai’s idol, that’s the Teng serpent’s offering table.

The space between her brows was painfully hot; Song Shijiu dazedly pressed against it with her palm, her mind a mess of overturning seas and rivers, even the whites of her eyes not turning nimbly; she strove to settle the state of her mind, wanting to turn her head and look for Li Shiyi, yet she felt her wrist suddenly being squeezed; in the spinning sky and turning earth, she knocked into a strange yet familiar embrace.

Li Shiyi pushed her to the ground, one hand protecting the back of her head, one hand supporting her shoulder, not giving Song Shijiu the opportunity to raise her eyes, covering Song Shijiu’s mouth with her cool lips. She started kissing her, kissing her eagerly and hurriedly, so much that she couldn’t taste the sweetness of the rouge on the young mistress’ lips, only sucking on her bottom lip, in the chaotic breaths warmly and softly pressing her tongue in, powerfully and probingly seducing her.

Song Shijiu’s eyes widened; she had no ability to bear the weight of her eyelids, her heart as if being trampled by a magnificent army with thousands of men and horses, the rumbling sound in her ears extremely painful; it was as if she had once more returned to when she was young, everything being controlled by this woman before her, firmly pressing her palm against her own neck, the fingers holding her own shoulder, and even bringing along her cool, faint fragrance, causing one to be lost in a myriad fanciful and wild thoughts, although the lips had never been involved with anyone before.

Her lips were at times cool and indifferent, and at others rising faintly; and only very rarely was she willing to expose her pretty teeth, and even her smile had a bit of withdrawal to it. But the kiss of hers of this moment was demanding and investing, was giving, and also comprehensively acquiescing. Song Shijiu raised her hands to embrace her; when the flowerbed in her heart was drenched to dripping wetness, this kiss ended; her face was shockingly red, so much that she thought of pressing her hands to cut off the heat; her eyelashes were slightly moist, as if carrying clear and sweet dewdrops.

Her line of sight trembled for a few moments, and only then did she raise her eyes to look at Li Shiyi; she gazed at her; her lips were beautifully bright and glossy, and the wings of her nose also opened and closed delicately, but within her eyes were suppressed a terror and franticness that caused one to tremble; she gazed at the fresh flower-like Song Shijiu, her throat swallowing gently, and she bent her hand to pinch her trembling fingers. She said to Song Shijiu seriously and desperately, “Remember, if you have any needs, come find me.”

This was the first time Li Shiyi had made a promise that she had no ability to accomplish; if she had really fallen into the trap, what she needed was the primal essence of the opposite sex, and she was entirely impotent. But even if it was like this, she still wanted to try, wanted to inhibit the possibility of the appetite and degradation of the person before her; she would give every bit of herself to her, and would use every method to meet her needs, just for the smallest chance to not follow the tracks of an overturned cart and repeat a mistake. She embraced Song Shijiu, her eyes falling, isolating the suspicious wetness within.

-

< LAST | HOME | NEXT >