Chapter 94: Yet with the xiansheng's closed jade coffin (V)

"Bullshit!" A Yin couldn't restrain herself, breaking the startled air. Chun Ping, startled, drew her shoulders up; her pupils hadn't shrunk the slightest bit, and her eyelids trembled, looking at her with extreme restraint.

In her eyes, A Yin drew her spirit back, her sternum rapidly sinking, and she lowered her voice, furrowing her brows. "Think carefully; could it possibly be that you're confused? Passing this start of the year is only barely reaching the fifteenth year of Minguo; were these past ten years wasted?" She added, "President Sun passing at the start of the year, do you remember it or not?"

Chun Ping swallowed a mouthful of saliva, her gaze flickering with anxiety, and she gazed at Song Shijiu, with her brows tightly knitted, and only then thinly said, "Sun-xiansheng isn't in my memories at all." It was as if a fog had risen in her clear eyes, doubtfully and indistinctly looking at everything; the great freneticness caused her to become confused and disorientated, causing her to have to tightly grab at the uneven wood beneath the table, only then able to grasp onto a sense of reality.

In her bewildered eyes, there was Li Shiyi, Song Shijiu, and A Luo's peaceful outlines, like fishers on the surface of the sea, gazing at the silent reef in the lonely lantern. But A Yin was a shrill-voiced mermaid, causing the murky enticement to increase a layer.

Her head was suddenly dizzy; she almost fainted in the astonished expressions of them all; Chun Ping let out a deep breath, forcefully restraining her unease, causing A Yin's long-winded, rapid speech to once more seize the chaotic state of her emotions.

A Yin let out a hiss and raised her leg, inclining her body to take measure of her; only on seeing her bloodless expression truly wasn't playing a trick did she press her crooked index finger against her lip, unconsciously biting at it, then taking it away once more, using the body of her finger to rub away the grooves in her lip, and asked A Luo, "Is it Chun Ping who got lost on this passage of time, or, is it us?"

Without waiting for A Luo to speak, she suddenly thought of something, and shook her head, denying it. "The wonton stand at the head of the street, Chen Mazi who butchers pigs, they're all the same as in the past; we must not have moved." She tapped at the thick letter envelope, and rapidly spoke. "In the letter that Tu Laoyao sent, it says that Sishun hasn't yet reached a year old, and asks us to come see his zhuazhou."^[1] She gave her conclusion succinctly, and nodded solemnly to Chun Ping. "You got lost."

Her logic was incredibly simple; compared to a group of people getting lost, the difficulty of a single person getting lost was really much smaller.

"Getting, getting lost on the passage of time, what does that mean?" Chun Ping's chin couldn't help but tremble, yet the clouds in her heart gradually dispelled, the sun shining through. No wonder A Yin was this made-up; no wonder the streets and alleys were happy and flourishing and peaceful; no wonder she'd seen that silver money…it wasn't the usual style.

She hadn't entered the Yellow Springs at all, but had returned to the past.

The wood shavings were caught beneath her fingernails, stuffed full, becoming her only sense from head to toe; she was just about to speak when she felt a silk handkerchief cover her hand beneath the table; that handkerchief lightly flicked, and in a few moments, swept away the fragments in the cracks of her fingers, and then wrapped around her hands, gentle but not without strength as they caught her.

That wasn't a silk handkerchief, but Song Shijiu's smooth, boneless hand.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Song Shijiu's other hand prop up her forehead, the space between her brows loosened, her lips curling, and she said, "So, it's like this." Her words were tranquil yet unnecessary, not at all having put this chaotic, disorderly explanation in her heart, as if it was only worth her furrowing her brows for three moments and nodding twice, and saying "so, it's like this". She suddenly understood why all the lice on Chun Ping's head had been dead; it was because she'd, by chance, coincidentally flown backwards through time, but the other living things hadn't necessarily had this ability.

Yet Chun Ping had this ability; her eyes filled with smiles, and she nodded in praise.

Chun Ping didn't know where her praise had come from, yet it inexplicably caused her to feel much more comfortable; just then, others looking at her eyes would have seemed to have seen a homeless dog who had lost its family, only Song Shijiu's hand gathering her up, forming a small but warm nest. She unconsciously shifted her body towards Song Shijiu.

A Luo looked at Li Shiyi, A Yin looked at Li Shiyi; the atmosphere became subtly heavier; Li Shiyi lowered her head, silent for a while, then raised her eyelids and swept a circle about the table, and asked, "Who's washing dishes tonight?"

"I am." Wu Qian stood up, unhurriedly pulling his sleeves up. Only after waiting for A Luo to lower her neck, not saying anything else, did he begin to pile up the bowls and chopsticks. The sound of bone china knocking against each other was far too domestic, simply causing the monstrous and multicoloured conjectures to fall to the ground; in the end, he'd lived a few hundred years, and he'd seen many strange and fantastic matters; Wu Qian wasn't at all alarmed; matters as great as the heavens weren't necessarily as hard to deal with as the cooled oil stains before him.

At one side, there was the sound of Chun Ping's cloth shoes going up the stairs; for a rare turn, his thoughts had wandered while he was washing and scrubbing, and a dimpled, shy face was drawn onto the window, covered with frost; he remembered when Wuniang had been judged, the registry in the archive had these two phrases—life and death has order; do not throw time into disorder.

He chewed over these words, and then expressionlessly lowered his head, and tucked Wuniang's smiling face into his billowing, unstartled eyes.

A Luo, taking a midday rest, in a rare turn, didn't close her eyes; also in a rare turn, A Yin, wanting to speak but hesitating, flipped through a book; A Luo laid on her side and watched her; her appearance while looking through the book was both peaceful and adorable, like someone of culture; it was only that she habitually bit her fingernails, not caring that her nail polish was fresh from a few days before.

A Yin flipped through a good number of pages, yet still wasn't able to get the essential meaning; she tossed the book aside, and, barefoot, retreated into A Luo's embrace. The weather was wintery-cold, and her entire body was as if covered in a layer of icy shards, the chill causing gooseflesh to rise on A Luo; yet A Luo didn't push her away, and extended an arm to wrap around her, soft soles pressing and rubbing against her as if stroking.

A Yin placed her cheek against her neck; the breath she let out was chilly, and she asked quietly, "Chun Ping's cause, you know, don't you?"

A Luo lowered her gaze to look at her, her fingers passing through her hair, playing with a strand of the ends, and replied, "You can probably guess it."

A Yin gazed at her doubtfully, and blinked, her eyelashes fluttering against the bottom of A Luo's chin ticklishly. A Luo drew her chin back, seeming to gently have swallowed, and said in a soft voice, guiding patiently, "Among us, the only one who can affect time is Shijiu. That day that Shijiu returned, all the lights were extinguished, and it was continuously lightless; time respectfully welcomed its master, and of course fluctuated."

The Henggongyu could sense fluctuations; others couldn't necessarily be unable to.

"By chance, having disturbed the passage of time, Chun Ping was brought back by accident; and, moreover, she was brought to the side of Mount Zhongshan's god." So, Chun Ping would naturally always stick close to Song Shijiu; so, when she saw strangers, she'd become dizzy and develop a fever; she wasn't originally from here, and, more than that, she'd been forecfully kept; only Song Shijiu could maintain her spirit, and naturally, she also had to avoid interacting with others.

"Then…" A Yin bit her lower lip.

A Luo asked quietly, "Autumn chrysanthemums in the spring, winter lotuses in the summer; flowers not suited to the season, how long can they blossom for?"

A Yin's heart trembled.

What also trembled was the hand of Li Shiyi, standing before the desk and writing; the outside of her ear tensed faintly, bringing the words separated by a wall clearly into her awareness; A Luo was saying it for A Yin to hear, and, at the same time, saying it for Li Shiyi to hear. Her hand twisted the corner of the fine xuanzhi paper's corner, and she pressed her lips together, gazing at the character written on it.

The four characters of "strangers coming together by chance" in the middle were not unfamiliar in the slightest; what was unfamiliar was, beneath it, a line of crooked, earthworm-like strokes, tracing over these four characters beneath them. The brushstrokes varied in weight, and the starting point and the pauses didn't have any particular attention; there were even careless inkspots at the side, declaring the unaccustomedness of the writer; Li Shiyi gazed at those four shaky characters, faintly seeing a young girl sneaking into the study while she wasn't there, so earnest that she didn't dare to breathe deeply, copying each stroke and line as if drawing a dipper with a gourd as a model.

Li Shiyi raised the brush, then, thinking about it, set it down once more. In actuality, that day, she hadn't finished speaking.

"Strangers coming together by chance, all are visitors from foreign lands." A not too complete smiling expression revealed on Li Shiyi's face, and she sighed; it truly was—visitors from foreign lands.

The door was pushed open, and Song Shijiu walked in, her fur shirt collar sweeping against her winter lotus-like face; she took off her sheepskin gloves, shaking off the chill on them. Seeing Li Shiyi, her lips curved into a smile, and she placed the envelope in her hand onto the table, lowering her head to pull out a card-sized paper; the paper was covered in an adhesive, holding a familiar figure, like taking a photo of a hun spirit. She spread the images out on the surface of the table for Li Shiyi to look at. "Last time, I took Chun Ping to go to the photo studio to take some photos; today, they were developed; take a look, aren't they nice?"

Li Shiyi swept a gaze across; in the photos, Chun Ping sat, ill at ease, and her eyes showed a faint panic, yet the corners of her lips were raised high, making her cheeks look incredibly jubilant; one hand grasped at her red coak, and one hand grasped Song Shijiu. Song Shijiu sat, relaxed, on the armrest of the wooden chair, smiling like a light spring breeze, the expression touching.

Li Shiyi's gaze slowly opened and closed, and her index finger stroked down the shoulders of the Song Shijiu in the photo, stopping at where her and Chun Ping's hands were together. Her expression wasn't like in the past, and Song Shijiu keenly restrained her smile a degree, dropping her gaze to the tip of Li Shiyi's finger, and then raised it again, the corners of her eyes still curved, and said, "I've been thinking, why does she treat me more intimately than others, and I also feel familiarity at first sight towards her? Only today did I realise there was this sort of predestined affinity." Her lamenting tone wasn't too clear, and, hearing it, it was as if she were testing it out.

Li Shiyi straightened her shoulders and covered her hand, grasping it in her palm, and only after a while, replied, "Shijiu."

Song Shijiu's gaze hardened, and she looked at her steadily. The Western-style clock ticked ge-da, ge-da, advancing like a rowboat, causing the great waves on the surface of the water to become larger and larger. Li Shiyi, hearing the neat and tidy second hand, entwined her fingers with Song Shijiu's; the heels of both their palms were pressed together, and her gaze also had no room for advance or retreat, rising up. She said to Song Shijiu, steadily and gently, "Send her back."

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Translator's notes:

[1]: 抓周, the custom of putting various items around a child at their first birthday to see which ones the child will reach for, which is said to predict aspects of their future such as careers.