Chapter 82: Dreaming nine times of the lord for ten nights in the pavilion (VII)

A Yin's mouth wilted, and she let out a crying sound. A Luo's expression panicked, and, gathering up her clothes, she was about to embrace her. She'd never before seen A Yin be so unrestrainedly wounded; the beautiful lady who radiated colour and light all around, at this moment, had smeared rouge, the back of her hands wiping at the corners of her eyes, not knowing which course to follow, and then she turned them over and used the heels of her palms to press against the sockets of her eyes, and then she finally stopped struggling, her nostrils fluttering and flaring, and she gazed at A Luo, wailing loudly.

She cried as if she were a bullied child, her features muddled and confused and in a disorder.

The scene before her eyes had actually come to the level of comedy; the rims of A Luo's eyes unconsciously burned, and she blinked moist eyelashes, softly asking her, "What are you crying about?"

A Yin's nose was incredibly congested, and only after blowing it a couple times was she able to clear it; with sleeves rolled up and eyes wide, she gazed out the window and said, "Bastard; this jie's life's truly too hard."

The last three words were spoken through gritted teeth, and also helplessly; she didn't know why; if it was on her own body, bad luck as great as the heavens would just be borne with with a mischievous smile, but on A Luo's body, each whiplash was a critical line that couldn't be crossed, causing her heart to be fried and her lungs to be burnt, causing her to wish she could pick up a qiang and mount a horse, and immediately want to demand an explanation.

But, from whom could she demand an explanation, then?

She gazed at the icy cold sunlight outside, but four characters tossing and turning restlessly in her heart—at a useless state.^[1]

By her ear, breaths like a willow's long branches; she faintly turned her head, and out of the corner of her eye, saw A Luo's lowered face. A Luo's right hand held the crease of the right sleeve of her clothes, smoothing it bit by bit, the emotional choking in her throat unfamiliar yet as it ought to be; her heart beat wildly, yet it was the satisfaction of a long-cherished wish being realised; the ache and swelling pain was an afterthought, only because, just then, in A Yin's speech, she'd noticed an unusualness.

The woman before her had an arrogance unchanged by mountains of daggers and seas of flames; no matter who ground her into the mud, she could smile and spit a couple times; never before had she said to anyone that it was hard, that it was frightening; but just then, seeing A Luo's scars, it'd become "hard" and been turned into "frightening".

This was the first time A Luo had understood concretely that, before, A Yin had truly made the preparations to live and die interdependently with her, that it wasn't merely a "liking", nor only a "we're good".

The red rims of her eyes suppressed this minute yet vast aching, swelling sensation; A Yin's delicate, supple shadow enveloped half her face, causing a misconception of being a young woman who lacked the strength to even truss up a chicken to emerge. Only then did she understand; gods were good, ghosts were fine; there had never been a lack of desire to be protected by someone; this hadn't ever had any relationship with magic ability, only a relationship with the person before her.

A Yin finished crying, more or less drained; only then did she clutch her handkerchief and cautiously and solemnly dab at the corners of her eyes, and became aware that A Luo was standing at the side, not advancing, and, at the same time, felt somewhat unsatisfied. "What are you thinking of, then?"

Others, seeing their beloved cry, would naturally want to embrace and hug them, yet this foolish Yama was stunned; the path of teaching was a heavy load on a long road.

A Luo raised her head, pressing the corners of her mouth into a smile. "I was thinking, what Tu Laoyao said has reason."

"What reason?" A Yin rolled her eyes upwards, two fingers picking out the eyelash which had gotten stuck at the corner of her eye.

Just then, she'd almost entirely exhausted her energy crying, and at this moment, what was most critical was still a beautiful appearance; A Luo leaned against the table, looking at her with a patient and gentle smile. "The Taishan seat isn't like the human world."

A Yin blinked a couple times, and then extended her middle finger to distribute the cosmetic powder on the two sides of her nose. "What's not good about it?"

A Luo replied, "There's no chickens."

There wasn't roasted rooster, stewed chicken soup, white cut chicken, lotus leaf chicken, beggar's chicken, pepper chicken, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, or egg-filled pancakes.

There wasn't this sort of pitiful, cute, absolutely unaware of herself A Yin.

It was fantastic and bizarre; A Yin puffed out her cheeks, long and delicate neck's muscles and tendons twitching. She'd cried for a long while, and her head was dizzy and muddled as if she'd had a fever, and her throat was also stinging; she sat down on the scroll-end chair, propping up her temple, falling silent; she still felt as if something were missing, and she grasped A Luo's hand, wanting to place it in her embrace, yet seeing A Luo incline her body and move towards her, standing not very convenient, she simply tugged her to sit on her own legs, her hands encircling her waist, head leaning against her shoulder, and, speaking in a muffled voice, said, "Don't move, I'm relaxing a bit."

"En," A Luo replied, indeed not moving a muscle.

A Yin drew in the fragrance at her neck, clear and strange, the scent absurdly nice, unlike any sort of face powder, as if it were something from the Taishan seat; that rose myrtle girl's figure also had a smiliar, faint fragrance.

Remembering A Tao, she once more thought of A Luo's naked back just then, and A Yin once more became jealous, and raised her head, drawing away to a somewhat larger distance, and asked A Luo, "The medicine A Tao applies, it's on this back?"

A Luo nodded, extending her hand to smooth the messy lengths of hair hanging from A Yin's temples. A Yin's brows furrowed more deeply, yet she still was somewhat unwilling to give up the topic. "How is it applied? Do you take off your clothes?"

A Luo paused, and once more nodded.

A Yin embraced her, so furious she couldn't breath; before, when A Luo had pursued her, she'd clearly been very familiar with the matters of romance; yet now, she had wide, clear, bright eyes, as if she didn't understand what she was taking offense at.

Pretending. A Yin bit gitted her teeth, wanting inwardly to throttle her a round.

She twisted her clothes, and in the end, didn't have the heart to do it, so she could only contain her aching teeth in her mouth, and let go of her slim, lean waist, and lean backwards, dropping her voice to laugh crooningly. "Unexpectedly, it also has some charm."

Eccentric, yet A Luo was intelligent, and easily seized the key point; but she looked at A Yin with a gaze that wasn't too certain, and only said after considering for a while, "This injury of mine, I can't always have Wu Qian apply it, so I sought for a medicine girl."

A Yin crossed her arms, just about to speak, when she heard A Luo earnestly say, "I was afraid you'd be suspicious, so only in order to avoid arousing suspicion did I ask a ghost messenger to recruit a grotesque one for me."

A Yin's breath caught in her chest, and she narrowly coughed, gazing at her dazedly, and only wheezed a tiny breath. She looked at her with a weak disbelief. "You'd call that rose myrtle girl—grotesque?" Her expression unconsciously drifted to the copper mirror at the side; whether or not it could be seen, she actually wanted to urgently seek out her own features.

A Luo furrowed her brows. "Is she not?"

"She's so pretty she could lay eggs!" A Yin rapidly retorted, unconsciously raising her tone a few degrees. She didn't know what sort of absurd expression this was, but it could only use this sort of absurd metaphor to appropriately reply to this absurd train of thought of hers. That A Tao had a rosy face and almond eyes, an elegant appearance, and although A Yin really didn't want to admit it, this sort of woman, no matter whether she were placed in the heavens or on the earth, always ought to be in the first grade of beauty.

She heard A Luo pensively fall into silence for a while, and then say, without an alternative, "I've told you, I can't distinguish between beauty and ugliness."

A Yin gasped, and struck against A Luo's sincere gaze, confusedly digesting this fact. She was somewhat disappointed and frustrated, and also felt somewhat intemperate; what she herself paid most attention to was the skin-level, but in A Luo's eyes, there probably wasn't any difference with ten streets of ugly, pockmarked neighbouring Chen Mazis.^[2]

As the proverb said, women make them selves up for the one who are pleased by them; the circumstances of now, even if in the future there were a thousand types of customs, who would they let look, then? In an instant, she wilted, and for a good while, couldn't draw her spirit back up. Yet A Luo had never had the inclination to admire her face, red and white in turns, only kept her expression under control, gazing at the dust on her face.

Only after a long while did she hear A Yin ask, "Since the Taishan seat's ghosts can't distinguish between beauty and ugliness, then if a person were to become a ghost messenger, could they still not? That's to say, that actually, as soon as they set foot in the underworld, they become blind?"

Naturally, ghost messengers could, otherwise, why would she have given an order to pick one? A Luo shifted her gaze to the desk. "Perhaps, it was negligence." She was being somewhat evasive, yet A Yin stroked her own face, falling into the disheartenment of before, intentionally or otherwise ignoring this bit of evasion.

When the sun began to set, a hazy rain fell; in every part of the city, from the tops of the streets to the bottoms of the alleys, the small peddlers put up tarpaulins to dispel it cleanly; A Tao, returning from buying groceries outside, was soaked fully from the mist; she wrapped her cloth bag in her embrace, using her outer garments to cover it, and, trotting the entire way, entered the alley, either side lined with tiles and bricks; in a few steps, she ran beneath the tile eaves, one hand still clutching the cloth bag, the other twisting her dripping braids. She raised her head to gaze at the water droplets falling from the eaves, like pearl curtains, intermittent, one dripping, and then another taking a long while to collect before the next one dripped; she watched for a while, what she was thinking unknown, and then suddenly smiled and laughed extremely quietly.

Her smiling expression was very short, like her person, shy, as if, if it were to pause for a while, it would just be stolen away by someone, so she lowered her head, hiding away her smile, and then stared one more at the puddles that had been formed by the smashing drops.

A few moments later, she extended her drenched cloth shoe, the tip of her shoe lightly tapping the puddle of water.

The coolness seeped to the heart; she couldn't help but draw her shoulders up; it was even chillier than the Yellow Springs' waters. The water in the Yellow Springs was a hundredfold cleaner than what was in the mud depression; entering the mouth, it had a sweet aftertaste; day after day, it'd watered her to maturity, but it wasn't like the water collected in the middle of this mud depression; it could reflect the rich and beautiful, multicoloured sunrise. She liked it a bit, and wanted to reach out and step in it a second time; suddenly she felt a burst of cool, yin ghost qi at her right side, and she turned her face, and saw Futi-daren, holding up an umbrella, standing before the door.

Futi-daren wore a black cheongsam and held a black umbrella; her hair was crow-black and her face was jade, and she stood like a silent, distant ink and wash painting.

She drew her foot back, lowering her head and walking forward, her hands still holding that cloth bag, and she put herself at service, paying her respects. "Daren."

She didn't like to speak much; after reaching adulthood, the most she spoke seemed to be these two characters.

A Luo passed a piece of cloth handkerchief to her.

A Tao was startled, and within A Luo's actions, she was silent for a long while, only after a good deal of time reaching out a shaking hand to take it, saying with a quiet voice, "Thanking daren." She still stood beneath the eaves, and she hid her own uneasiness in the wet shadows.

A Luo drew her hand back, taking measure of her from top to bottom, the consideration within her eyes not at all revealing her talent, yet it was enough for A Tao to sense an oppression of power without anger; she gripped the handkerchief in her hand, not wiping, only calmly and quietly waiting for A Luo's question.

As expected, A Luo spoke, her voice delicate and faintly hoarse, carrying along a few degrees of coolness. "What I want to ask, you know."

A Tao scuffed the toe of her cloth shoes, yet her forearms only tightly hugged the cloth bag; after a long while, her pretty face turned pale, and, tremblingly, she looked directly at A Luo, and said, "A Tao has committed a capital ofence."

Her ofence was in her looking into Yama-daren's eyes without the slightest propriety, and the ofence was also in something else. She knew A Luo wasn't very patient, and also feared delaying her even a thread or hair, so she drew a long, thin couple of breaths, and said, "I'm a blossom of a rose myrtle girl from the banks of the Yellow Springs, and I opened beneath the Naihe bridge."

A Luo's lashes fell tenderly, yet her expression was parted by the rainfall, and didn't have half a degree of warmth. She used the posture she'd used to reply to a multitude of memorials to listen to the speech of the woman before her; but this was the first time that the woman before her spoke these words.

She lowered her head, gazing at the mud puddle in the pothole, and said, "When daren was passing by, the ends of your skirts would often brush by me a couple times."

A Luo furrowed her brows; A Tao's heart drew in on itself; what was even more disgraceful, she didn't dare to say, nor did she want to say. Just like she'd often clung to the tenderness of the skirts' ends, she'd often listened to her footsteps, often gazed at her retreating figure. She'd always walked indifferently and hurriedly, and sometimes urged Wu Qian in a low voice a couple of phrases, and when meeting an embarrassing situation, would unconsciously order her cuffs; when meeting noisy, raucous new ghosts, she would cover her lips and cough softly.

What was even more occasional was that she would tell jokes to Wu Qian; A Tao, within the trembling waists of her sisters, would strive to stretch her neck, wanting to get a good look.

Once, Futi-daren's servant girl's happiness had been stolen by the Xu Hao, and daren had been utterly furious, dragging the Xu Hao into the oil pot and frying it for a hundred years. Only at that time had she known that daren actually had a servant girl, following after her day after day; a servant girl who ground ink and replenished the incense.

But she was only a blossom of a medicine girl; she hoped for what she wanted, yet also feared what she wanted.

Finally, one day, she'd waited until a ghost messenger from Yama's hall, saying that they needed to select a medicine girl for daren; at that time, she'd just transformed into a human form, and along with a few sisters, planted medicinal plants together; that day, she'd planted a wild mountain ginseng askew, and, lifting up her skirts, was about to return to the house to look for a vermilion hairpin, yet she was informed that daren needed a grotesque one.

"My heart knew that daren couldn't distinguish beauty and ugliness, and bribed the ghost messenger before daren's hall to substitute me." A Tao only spoke this phrase.

Yet A Luo tigthtened the hand holding the umbrella aloft, and shook her head. "Such a little medicine girl, how could you bribe a ghost messenger in my hall?"

A Tao stopped; within the rain, she was like a drooping flower. She finally once more raised her gaze, her pale lips curved, exposing a daring smiling expression, and she said, "It was heart's blood."

A Luo tightened the left hand behind her back, and seriously and conscientiously gazed at her.

A rose myrtle girl could only form a body in a thousand years, and create a drip of heart's blood; it was invaluable, and could treat countless illnesses.

But if they were to lose their heart's blood, then what they'd cultivated would be lost, and they would only have a human figure for three months.

A Luo minutely shook her head, and then silently gazed at her. A Tao lowered her head, and said, "It was A Tao who offended; I ask daren to punish me."

Yet she heard A Luo ask her, "How many months?"

A Tao's fluid glance shook, and she clutched the handkerchief A Luo had given her tightly, yet her trembling lips smiled faintly. "Two months and eight days."

With a pa-da, a drop of water finally collected fully, and fell from the eaves, falling into the shallow accumulated puddle. She had used her heart's blood to exchange for two months and eight days, and she remembered every day.

She heard A Luo's prolonged yet soft breaths, as if they were hitting against the outside of her ear; she lowered her head and silently counted; one, two, three, four. Between her and daren, there could only be counted to have been a few breaths stood while facing each other.

On the ninth, A Luo turned around, sighing lowly to her. "Return to the Taishan seat."

A warm mist rose in A Tao's eyes, and she respectfully bowed. "Yes."

The cloth bag in her embrace had been bound too tightly; what was within seemed to have broken, supporting beams pressing against her lower abdomen. She stroked it, thinking of what A Yin had said that day—this one, she likes eating thin ones. In the end, she hadn't been able to leave behind these noodles she'd bought for her; originally, it was only thinking that, one day, when A Luo once more wanted to eat noodles, she could have this little bit of unknown responsibility.

A Tao raised her eyes, and saw A Luo's remaining black umbrella, solitarily leaning against the side fo the door. She smiled silently, and opened the umbrella, turning around to walk deep into the downpour.

It seemed there was only one phrase she forgot to say: that day, when A Luo had run into the bawling Fu Wuyin at the Naihe bridge, A Tao had been by the side of the bridge. And that year, when A Luo had turned her head, the tips of her ears flushed with pink, A Tao had truly seen her for the first time.

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Translator's notes:

[1]: What A Yin says is 完犊子了 (wan duzi le), which means that things or people haven't come to where one was expecting them to, but I wanted to try and make it four English words as well, to match the four characters.

[2]: The "Mazi" in Chen Mazi (麻子) refers to a person whose face is pockmarked, historically by leprosy.