Chapter 74: Old age must not be met in the mortal world (XI)

This matter of A Luo leaving, A Yin discovered on opening her eyes.

Some people, when leaving one's life, had a sense of ceremony; the rustling sound of sand would sweep across the bottom of the heart, like a rough cleaning rag erasing the traces. What was irritating was that, when she'd appeared, there wasn't necessarily an equal reminder, such that even her existence was quiet and noiseless, like some sort of indifferent person.

As usual, A Yin shuffled about in her shoes as she got up, the knotted buttons from bottom to top gathering up her figure; seeing that the hour was still early, she washed her hair, and then, towelling her dripping hair, she sat before the mirror and applied her makeup.

These brows, ah, and these eyes, ah, they were truly, truly exquisite; the brows were like the curve of laugh lines when one smiled, and the lips were like the cinnabar between one's fingers as they read, and the fluid glance was like the ripples that spread when one made tea, and even the the fine wrinkles at the corners of the eyes were all like the roaming fish which turned beneath one's hand.

What sort of plaything was "one person"? A Yin thought it over, and then clicked her tongue, and threw the black shell eyebrow paint back into the enamel box. Wringing out her half-dried hair as she went downstairs, she unexpectedly encountered Wu Qian, who had gone to walk his bird; her heart lit with crackling flames, and yet her mouth said, "How are you here?"

The words in her heart were—you didn't leave along with her?

Wu Qian replied, "Daren didn't command me."

A Yin twitched her lips; so, that was to say, she might really come back?

The inquiry turned a few rounds in her mouth, and in the end, didn't receive the license to be published; A Yin only carelessly shifted her neck, and passed him by, going into the kitchen. When she arrived in the kitchen, she peeled an egg; before peeling it, she customarily rolled it on the table; she stopped; it seemed that this action, she'd learnt from Li Shiyi, but it also seemed as if it weren't; she thought chaotically for a while, and when she bit into the first bite, her thoughts diverged from the path. She lowered her thick lashes, and suddenly discovered that, if she hadn't taken Wu Qian along, perhaps there was a solution; it was that she truly didn't plan on returning.

The sharp sensation rose upwards chokingly; she patted her cheeks and exhaled a small breath, yet forgot that there was still that small half of an incredibly dry egg yolk, and, not taking care, choked as a result, and gasped and panted for breath as she coughed; she hurriedly unscrewed the tap and grabbed a cup, filling it with water, not even paying attention to the fact that it was unboiled, and, raising her head, poured it down.

The cup of water was as if endless; each gulp was larger than the next, and her throat, near her ears, made a rumbling sound, one after the other, like some sort of restless thing was being shoved down.

Only when she finished drinking it all did she put the cup down, letting out a very unaloof hiccough, and wiped the wet spots by the side of her mouth, her rouge smudging on the back of her hand; she glanced at a couple times, and smiled. "Of course, I smeared it in vain again."

Eating in the afternoon, Li Shiyi explained the experiences on the mountain to A Yin, and added that she feared that Song Shijiu's state of mind wasn't too stable; they would enter the mountain again after a few days had passed. A Yin gazed at Li Shiyi's thin pale, thin lips, and felt that the state of mind she spoke of, which caused one's heart to be unable to relax, seemingly wasn't A Jiu.

To speak of it, others probably wouldn't believe that this chilled green plum face of hers had the most considerateness of being able to understand others well in the human world. Just like that, she only looked over A Yin's eyes, swollen like peaches, and then didn't ask any more about where A Luo had gone.

The day passed like usual; the group either listened to a play, or played clattering mahjong, leisurely as fools. Wu Qian also pondered it a few days; Yama hadn't taken him along, and Fujun didn't drive him away; he was unsure about the manner of doing things here, and was determined to bide his time, holding back his troops without moving, and live steadily.

But as A Yin looked at him, the more she looked, the more of an eyesore he was; after playing mahjong for a while, she was too lazy to sit at the table, and sat by herself in the courtyard, lost in thought. She missed Tu Laoyao a bit. In the past, when he was there, she always gathered together with him, the two mortals, and he was even more stupid than she herself was; but even if he was pig-brained, in the end, he was always part of the same team as she was; life's daily necessities, understanding each other with few words, mortality, worries and recitations, listening to them was still steadfast.

The sound of agile footsteps sounded from behind; the light breeze blew, and by her side sat a young woman.

A Yin crossed her arms, somewhat cold, and turned her head to looka t Song Shijiu. "Having come outside without putting on another layer, aren't you cold?" As soon as she finished speaking, she lowered her head once more, her heart letting out a faint "o". Aside from the two times of borrowing a nose and the Xu Hao, Song Shijiu had never before had a headache or a fever; once, when she was underground, she'd feared that Shijiu would freeze, and had gathered her into her embrace and rubbed her arms for half a day, and the young girl had leaped and frisked about, while she herself had had a cough for a good few days. That was the matter of the previous winter; come to think of it, it had actually been almost a year.

Song Shijiu didn't say anything either, only sitting dociliy by her side, her shoulder near hers, warm and cosy. A Yin gazed at the ugly old elm in the courtyard, and pointed at it, asking Song Shijiu, "Say, the other courtyards are all nicer than this one; only this one has a stoop-necked tree, incredibly unsightly."

Song Shijiu cast a glance at it. A Yin asked once more, "Yet, if you were to cut it down, and it were bare, perhaps that would also be unfamiliar."

It wasn't perhaps, it was a certainty. She felt that she was, in fact, standing in a baren courtyard; in the past, each time coming out the door, her skirts would always be flicked upwards by that tree's branches, or her forehead would strike against those hard, solid limbs, and she couldn't help but fume with rage, looking for an axe to cut it down in a few strikes, but now, sitting on that stump, neither the left nor the right were right, and she always felt that something was missing.

"As for people, they're unreasonable." She covered up the the forehead of the small person in her heart that had been knocked apart, and aloofly delivered the verdict. She didn't pay attention to whether or not Song Shijiu could understand; in short, she felt that she had become extremely accustomed to this plaything, such that she had to say it aloud, and, treading on the ground, she once more resolutely spat out a mouthful.

Yet Song Shijiu brushed aside the strands of hair on her face, and, gazing at the crooked old elm, said, "Did you know, that in the past, I probably did many, many bad things? There's the matter of Qin-jiangjun, but I'm afraid that was just one. I told Shiyi I was afraid, and she told me, what was planted yesterday dies yesterday; what is planted today lives today."

The significance of time could allow everything to become the past.

"A Yin," Song Shijiu looked at her, and pressed her lips together, only parting them after a while. "Tell me, what is a long life?"

A Yin furrowed her brows.

Song Shijiu said, "I'd say, a long life is a punishment. Shiyi told me, what defines a person isn't something else, but precisely all of her conducts and deeds of the past. So then, someone who lives eternally, therefore only has a single chance to make that definition. They carry all the good and bad memories, and can only wait until they themselves forget them; and if they can't forget them, they can only bear them, bear them forever. But mortals aren't the same," Song Shijiu paused, and continued, "they have a multitude of chances to start again; they are eterally brand new, and can be infants infinitely."

Song Shijiu rarely spoke this many words, and was also very unfamiliar with explaining reasonings to others, but her words had a pure, unadulteratedness of a natural lack of affectation, and they just perfectly brushed against A Yin's old heartstrings. She heard a clanging soundlike small animal cries, and she finally had the bravery to begin thinking of A Luo. She understood Song Shijiu's words. A Yin was her, and Fu Wuyin was also her, and all the many incarnations of the past were also her; it was only that she had the right to experience and forget the different lifetimes.

The hun spirit couldn't be extinguished; the corporeal body could be changed; so, wasn't that a different type of immortality?

Song Shijiu pillowed her head on her knees; these words, she'd thought over for many days; she was easing A Yin's anxieties, and also explaining to herself that she needed to confront a long life, and establish the bravery of bearing and withstanding.

The sound of the peddlers on the street corners also couldn't be extingusihed; from ancient times until now, they were a hubbub that could be traced to the same stock. A Yin absorbed Song Shijiu's words, and had just lifted her gaze, when she unexpectedly bumped into A Ping. He was still wearing that suit, which had wrinkled a bit more; seeing A Yin, a guileless smile arose on his face.

A Yin retreated a small step back, a reverberation like tinitus in her ear of the four characters of "don't meet him anymore", yet she gazed at A Ping, and stilled her avoiding steps, and stuck her hands into the pockets of her wool overcoat, and advanced to welcome his gaze, saying, "How lucky, running into each other over and over." Over and over, on this street.

"I waited for you intentionally," A Ping said, looking at her.

A Yin replied, "That day, when you saw me back; if there was anything, you ought to have gone into the alley to look for me."

A Ping was somewhat frustrated. "I forgot." He scratched his head, and said, incredibly embarrassed, "My memory these past two years hasn't been very good; I'd only travelled that alley once before, and so I forgot."

A Yin laughed, and followed along with him along the street, a commotion faintly at the end; A Yin narrowed her eyes and looked at it, and A Ping also looked along with her, and said, "It's a student movement; these past few days, a good number have come, calling out some sort of slogan."

"En," A Yin said, lowering her head, and heard the clamour of that tide of people become closer and closer.

A Ping turned his head to say to her, "If you're free, how about you take me along once more; this time, I'll definitely remember it."

A Yin's tongue pressed against the top of her mouth, and she thought for a moment, then spoke. "No thanks. In a couple days, I'm going to return to the North," she lied.

A Ping was startled, and, standing somewhat unsteadily, asked her, "Going, going where? I…" He gazed at A Yin's expression, and still didn't have the bravery to say the characters of "I'll go with you". From childhood, his courage had been small, and A Yin was fierce and dauntless; his trepidation of A Yin had become a habit, and she only had to raise her brow slightly or express a bit of an oppositional appearance, and he couldn't put forth a single character. A Yin had spoken of the North, but not which city, so she was sasying—don't you come with me.

The students with lifted banners and unrolled signs lined up into a phalanx, walking in full swing, the tide of people beginning to bubble forth, the momentum which shook the heavens causing the people on either side to begin to run. A Yin placed her gaze on the female students' plaits, their blue cotton clothes and black skirts, the white breath that burst forth from their mouths, the hands which held the banners flushed with the cold. She smiled; these righteous people were always hot-blooded; they were so hot that they didn't even know the cold of the chilly day.

She was just about to tell A Ping, but she saw A Ping was customarily drawing out a handkerchief, attentively wiping away the sweat at his temples. A Yin narrowed her eyes at him, and attentively and carefully took measure of A Ping, the bottom of her heart sinsiterly leaping, and she blankly extended her hand, indicating to A Ping to grasp it, and asked him quietly, "This day is getting colder and colder—aren't you cold?"

A Ping took her hand, and smiled as he squeezed the warmth of her hand, saying with a laugh, "Actually, I'm…"

The remainder of the words he hadn't said, when he suspiciously fixed on A Yin's expression. A Yin's fingertips shook faintly, and then she withdrew them, once more placing them in her pocket, pinching them within, her fingernails squeezing traces of blood out. Her peach blossom eyes at that moment opened darkly and indifferently, and there was something live being crushed to pieces within them, flickering with hard to bear translucence. Throat choaking, she slowly and quietly asked A Ping, "I never asked you, that day, why was it that you went up and into the tomb on Mount Jinyun?" She understood it all; A Ping's wrinkled suit, the handkerchief which endlessly wiped away sweat, and the muddleheadness, having trouble remembering the road.

—He had long since lost his life while climbing the mountain, and after that, his ghostly body had entered the old tomb, and been affected by the array's magic, and, like Qin Liangyu, had lost the memories of his death, and moreover, time had stopped infinitely on that summer on his body.

A Ping lowered his head, and mumbled, "I, I was constantly looking for you. I knew you were a grave-robber, and heard that there was a tomb, and as usual, I went to take a look. Perhaps…"

Perhaps, I could meet you?

These words, he didn't know whether they came out of his mouth, or if they had been submerged in a high-pitched clamour; A Yin, not taking care, was bumped into by someone in the midst of the student protesters, and sprained her ankle, keeping to the side of the street; she raised her head, and saw that A Ping, muddleheaded, had been pressed into the middle of the group of people, and staggered forward along with the tide of people.

He was glancing to the left and the right, anxiously looking for A Yin, his head occasionally popping up, and occasionally obstructed; A Yin reluctantly trotted a couple steps, and called out for him. "A Ping!"

Her voice was too small, and couldn't reach his ears, yet A Yin unheedingly continued to call out, "Go to the Taishan seat! A Ping, go to the Taishan seat!"

A Ping could barely hear A Yin's voice; she was saying—the Taishan seat?

He was wild with jou, and hurried to stretch his neck out in that direction of the sound, not caring whether she could or couldn't see him, and nodded his head twice. "Ai!" he agreed with a smile.

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