Chapter 64: Old age must not be met in the mortal world (I)

The ghostly essence dissipated like fog; the hun military soldiers disappeared without a trace; a few shadows of different lengths appeared on the stone wall; venerable deities, ghosts, birds and beasts, and mortals, each portrayed extremely impartially by the light, the lacquer blackness causing everything to be flattened. Everyone gazed at Li Shiyi, holding entirely different thoughts as they analysed her reaction.

But Li Shiyi only blinked, and said a single exclamation: “Wu.” She didn’t have any other words to say. She accepted this unusual identity ordinarily, lacking even a single superfluous interest to offer, only having a bit of a sense of being out of sorts; this sense of being out of sorts truly wasn’t on the two characters of Fujun, but rather had its origin in A Luo’s deferential kneeling motion.

A Luo perceptively rose; Li Shiyi shifted her neck; her shoulders still ached a bit, and waved a practised wave with her hang, beckoning Song Shijiu to her side, squeezing the hand leading her, her thumb rubbing away the soil on her fingers. She lowered her head, watching her motions of tidying up in Song Shijiu’s place, the other hand taking the Shentu command out and offering it to A Luo.

“This was originally yours,” A Luo said.

The Shentu command could only be commanded by the Taishan Fujun’s hand; Ling Heng had never before parted from it, yet when she had reincarnated, she had inadvertently left it behind by the Yellow Springs; the hun military soldiers had presented it to A Luo, and A Luo had carried it until now.

Li Shiyi’s right hand moved, turning the command token in a half circle in her palm, and then curled her index finger and tapped the lotus flower engraved on its surface; her fingernail, tapping against the pattern on the wood, made a du-du sound, and she sighed for no reason. Within her sigh, Song Shijiu inexplicably read the thought in her mind—this command token seemed to truly not be as convenient as the smoking pipe.

Within the startling events of the day, Li Shiyi actually felt a bit seriously aggrieved because of this little matter; Song Shijiu felt it was very interesting, and pressed her lips together, curling the corners of her mouth. Raising her eyes, she saw Li Shiyi watching her, and she faintly raised the end of her brow; Song Shijiu’s index finger rubbed against her palm lightly, and Li Shiyi lowered the end of her brow, and calmly and without batting an eyelid massaged Song Shijiu’s fingers.

It was as if she was rubbing her innermost heart.

Song Shijiu’s chaotic mind became tranquil in an instant, having been consoled to an even level; she touched the faintly relaxed bones of Li Shiyi’s fingers, knowing in her heart that Li Shiyi was the same.

From the side, the quiet sound of talking came; Li Shiyi turned her head to look, and saw that A Luo was crouching by Yun Niang’s side, explaining to her in a few phrases, and then the base of her palm pressed against the space between her brows; Yun Niang let out a faint moan, her body gradually growing transparent, and after a moment, disappeared entirely. The Shentu command in Li Shiyi’s hand trembled lightly.

A Luo rose, and heard Song Shijiu ask, “What about Yun Niang?”

A Luo pointed at the Shentu command. “In here.”

Li Shiyi was puzzled; A Luo saw the red birthmark on her neck, and said warmly, “Although you’ve recovered to your original form now, because you don’t have your memories, you can’t use a lot of magic. If you want to entirely order the Shentu command, you need to use a hun offering.”

“Three hun offerings, and the Shentu will return—this hun isn’t an ordinary hun either, it has to be a hun which has a relationship with you. Before, you assisted me in recovering Mulian, and today Yun Niang entered the command; there’s only one hun, and then you can command the Shentu to return.”

The line of Li Shiyi’s lips moved slightly, and A Luo lowered her eyes, and said, “As for why you reincarnated, you don’t need to ask me; I don’t know either. I only vaguely inferred that it had something to do with her.” A Luo’s gaze fell on Song Shijiu.

Song Shijiu was startled, and A Luo laughed faintly, and said quietly, “This is also the reason why, on that day, I asked you to go look for the Shengsheng.” That day, A Luo had actually not deliberately been making things difficult, and even more than that, she wasn’t pretending to be haughty. The Shengsheng understood all matters that occurred in the heavens and in the underworld; it not only knew Song Shijiu’s identity, but it could also fill in the blank as to why Ling Heng reincarnated.

“What I wanted to ask wasn’t this,” Li Shiyi said.

An astonished expression appeared on A Luo.

Li Shiyi wetted her lips, her eyelids lifting. “Since you had the command token, why didn’t you toss it to me earlier?”

Wu Qian, who was guarding the mouth of the cave hurried in, just crouching his body to help A Yin onto his back, and hearing this, his body swayed.

A Luo raised her eyes and smiled at Li Shiyi, and said sincerely, “Although I knew your identity, as to whether or not you could control it well, if it were to be a situation of a thousand jun,^[1] I was afraid you would fail.”

Li Shiyi swept a gaze over her, and heard her say, “This was the first.”

“What about the second?” Song Shijiu was inquisitive.

A Luo said quietly and softly, “I had never before seen her beaten to spitting blood. I wanted to see it.”

Li Shiyi scoffed coldly, and, clutching Song Shijiu’s hand, headed out; when she brushed past A Luo, she meaningfully sneered out a phrase, “Ling Heng’s temperament must have been incredibly good.”

The back of Wu Qian’s neck chilled.

Having just arrived at the mouth of the footpath, passing by the great boulder they’d hidden behind before, the bottom of Song Shijiu’s foot suddenly pressed against a ball of something neither hard nor soft; she was startled greatly, and before she had the opportunity to cry out in alarm, she heard a howling sound like a pig being killed, and from the pitch black shadow, a familiar face emerged.

“Tu Laoyao?” Song Shijiu tilted her head, and everyone paused their steps.

Tu Laoyao kneaded the wrist which had been heavily stepped on, the cold sweat on his face having dried by the breeze, black and yellow at turns, and looking at him caused a bit of comedy. “What did you come to do?” Wu Qian asked, putting A Yin down.

“I couldn’t relax, my wife said I was a cow treading tile clay—I was running in circles around the house, and she disliked my annoying presence; I hired a car to come look for you all,” Tu Laoyao said, standing up.

“What time did you arrive?” Song Shijiu asked.

“Did you see anything?” Li Shiyi gazed at him.

Tu Laoyao’s gaze was evasive; he didn’t dare to look at Li Shiyi, and he dropped his head, his gaze staring fixedly at the hiding stone, the tip of his foot tapping and shaking his leg, as if covering up for some trembling, and said, “I saw you…you^[2] became a Bodhisattva.” It was that sort of being consecrated. Finishing speaking, he swallowed a mouthful of saliva. He felt that his own beady eyes suddenly had a bit of understanding, changing into two independent, lowly characters, one trembling with fear in reverence and kneeling, the other rolling its eyes and silently asking the heavens and the earth and his own ancestors whether he’d finally accumulated virtue or become a disastrous son born of a concubine.

Li Shiyi furrowed her brows; Tu Laoyao’s spirit returned with a quiver, and he said loudly, taking credit, “Just now, I was afraid of causing an inconvenience, and didn’t move up to the front, but in the chaos I smashed that old lewd snake a good few times.” He pointed at the spade in a corner of the cave, when it had appeared unclear, his eyes widening in a show of earnestness.

Everyone was silent for a few moments; even Song Shijiu didn’t know what to say, and, head lowered, was embraced and taken out by Li Shiyi, the journey down the mountain taken without talking.

On arriving at the residence, Tu-saozi still hadn’t fallen asleep, and seeing them all covered in dust, hurried to attend to them, boiling a few pots of hot water to make them presentable. A Yin was still fully unconscious; being swayed about she’d unexpectedly not woken. Wu Qian placed her on the bed and went downstairs; Song Shijiu was leaning against the door and watching, entirely unable to relax, and was about to go upstairs, yet Li Shiyi reached a hand out to hold her head, patting it softly, and, looking at A Luo at the side of the bed wringing a handkerchief, led Song Shijiu back to the room.

The cool night was like a great piece of soft cloth, hiding all the heart-stopping, hair-raising matters such that they didn’t appear in the slightest. Li Shiyi had bathed, and saw Song Shijiu, who had changed into sleepwear, sitting by the side of the bed, her two hands propped on the bedside, gazing at the light and shadow of the desk lamp, lost in thought. Li Shiyi lightened her footsteps, and walked over to her side to sit down, not anxious to start speaking, and raised her hands to look at the back of her own hands. At this moment, the back of her hands were untouched, as good as before; the texture was satin-smooth as if having had a layer of sheep’s milk spread across them; at this moment, there wasn’t a single injury from head to toe, yet the earthquake aftershock of pain from heart tearing and lung rending still remained, dragging at her muscles and bones, difficult to bear as ants gnawing on bone.

Within the gaze which had become empty, a delicate hand appeared, caressing the back of her hand, the thumb pressing a circle and slowly kneading, the sense of aching swelling retreating a small amount, the limp and numb warmth attacking in a small step. Li Shiyi turned her hand over to hold Song Shijiu’s hand, entwining the ten fingers and putting them on her knee; after a while, she drew it out, and pinched the velvety stretch of skin between her thumb and forefinger. She didn’t know why she herself wanted to drag her unbearably weary body into doing these senseless motions; it was as if she were pacifying Song Shijiu, and it was also as if she was using Song Shijiu to pacify herself.

She actually was someone who didn’t live with much purpose, and who didn’t live with any sort of sense of belonging; in her short yet uninhibited life, she was always abandoning, always forgetting; like forgetting her parents, forgetting the scent of her shifu’s wine, and forgetting whether when A Yin had first seen her, she’d called her jiejie or meimei. Even her own age, she couldn’t say.

So, when A Luo had said Ling Heng to her, said the Yellow Springs, said the Taishan registry, to her, it was only a past which had been abandoned in the depths of her memories, just like if her parents were to appear suddenly at this moment, and say to her, Shiyi, this year, you’re twenty-eight, she could only say a “wu”, and think in her mind, so it’s twenty-eight, not twenty-seven, nor twenty-nine.

So, she was Ling Heng, not Ling Shu, nor Ling Pie, nor Ling Na.^[3]

She blinked and smiled, turning over Song Shijiu’s hand; in the gap in the motion, she sighed a tiny sigh. Luckly, this person that she was grasping was the same as her, and didn’t know of any origin, nor remember the slightest degree of the past; she had grown up in her hand, and her lifeline could be distinctly and completely seen by Li Shiyi; aside from Li Shiyi, she didn’t have anything, and she didn’t have any place she could go. Her attachment let Li Shiyi have an unprecedented sense of security; she had something she could control, something tangible, a sense of belonging.

She raised her gaze, wanting to fully look over the woman in front of her, yet she saw Song Shijiu gazing at the right of her face in bafflement. She restrainedly opened her pretty eyes; within them flashed a faint starburst.

Because of Li Shiyi’s motion, Song Shijiu shifted her line of sight, meeting Li Shiyi’s eyes, and then lowered her head, eyelashes falling, obscuring the faintly red rims of her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Li Shiyi asked anxiously, extending her neck and raising her head to look at her.

Song Shijiu’s fluid, sparkling and translucent gaze trembled, and she pressed her lips together and shook her head. Without waiting for Li Shiyi to speak, Song Shijiu’s slender arms embraced her neck, and rubbed her cheek against Li Shiyi’s lightly, and then leaned against her shoulder, and said quietly, “I have a lingering fear.” She truly didn’t want to cry, but as her eyes closed, scalding beads of tears filled up, thinking of the terrifying scratches on Li Shiyi’s face in the cave just then, and the gurgling flow of blood from her wrist, and the muffled sound of shaking of her bones and muscles when she’d smashed against the stone rampart. She used her own warm scent to wrap up Li Shiyi, and in a quiet voice entreated her, “Take me to look for the Shengsheng, alright?”

She rarely demanded things of Li Shiyi, even such that this time it wasn’t with much confidence. “I’m Jiu-daren, I also have matters that have been forgotten.”

She didn’t fully finish speaking; the final syllable was slightly choked with emotion, yet Li Shiyi understood her meaning; if she placed herself in peril once more, she wanted to be shoulder to shoulder with her.

Song Shijiu had always had this sort of ability; in a couple words, Li Shiyi’s well-built outer shell was broken open, and the inside was stabbed softly; the degree was just right, not causing one to feel in the slightest bit offended.

Li Shiyi stroked the back of her head, embracing her soft lower back, and agreed. “Alright.”

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Translator's notes:

[1]: From the phrase 千钧一发 (qian jun yi fa), literally “a thousand jun hanging by a strand of hair”, used to refer to imminent peril.

[2]: He switches to the formal pronoun here.

[3]: The “heng” (蘅) in Ling Heng is pronounced the same as the “heng” (衡) that’s a horizontal stroke. “Shu” (竖) is a vertical stroke, and “pie” (撇) and “na” (捺) are left-slanting downward strokes and right-slanting downward strokes respectively.