Chapter 104: Yet with the xiansheng's closed jade coffin (XV)

Translator's note: My apologies for the delayed chapter; I had a hectic weekend. The next chapter is over 6k in the raws, so that might be delayed slightly as well, but I'll do my best to post it in a timely manner.

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The crisscrossing roads were like a qi board,^[1] the uneven houses the blanks where pieces couldn't be placed, and the sun and moon and stars the hands moving the pieces, seizing the passersby with shadow. The village's other end was clattering with the sound of the "firecracker", rising and stopping along with Xiao Douding's footsteps, the child's clear, tinkling voice drifting further away, along with the thick, unbeaten gasps.

"It's the New Year! The coming year will be well!" He went from house to house, patting the doors. The bamboo pipes clattered against the stairs, and he lifted them, knocking on them, making the sound of the beast-chasing weapon even louder.

Exhaustion struck once more; in the end, his body had still gotten sick, and having only run half of the way, he became incredibly tired. His eyelids seemed to be weighed with lead, and his shoulders had also fallen. He ran two steps, then stopped, and then ran two more. His gaze lit up with vigour, and he shook is head, raising his shoulders. "And from birth, virtue is nature…"

The two phrases, a repetition of the Sanzijing, echoed back, mixing in with the sound of the bamboo pipes behind him. Xiao Douding's footsteps slowed, and his head drooped, his head large and his frame weak, even more like a potato that had fallen onto chopsticks; his body was weary, his strength exhausted, and he mumbled the classic to himself; suddenly, with some thought, he looked behind him, and blinked a couple times.

Behind him was utterly empty; there wasn't even the vitality of a streetlamp on the road, cutting the ground into pieces like tofu, one piece bright, the next dark.

In the middle of the village, two slender figures walked; Li Shiyi, head lowered, counted the flagstones, and, on slightly lighter slab, stopped, closing her fingers and folding up the simple luopan^[2] in her palm, shoving it back into her boot.

Hejia Village had been established along the mountain; the east was a dragon's bones, and at the west, it had been cut level; as the Hanlongjing fengshui canon said: the levelled dragon emerges from a summit as high as the stars, and fall into the cave. Li Shiyi followed along from the Tanlang star to the Pojun star,^[3] searching for the place where the dragon's gold converged; this place, for the proper feng and proper shui, would be surrounded on four sides; the trees surrounding the village were connected, each of their roots together.

Li Shiyi nodded to Song Shijiu, and then bent over, pasting a kan trigram talisman inside the well, facing north, and lit a lamp towards the south; under the lamp, she wrote a li trigram talisman, stuck a zhen trigram in the firewood facing the east, and then, finally, drew out a gold pocket watch, placing it towards the west, placing a dui trigram on it.^[4] Metal, wood, water, and fire, each placed in the four directions, and in the middle, a handful of loess, an eight-trigram battle array.

With the suite of actions over, it was precisely the right time. Li Shiyi straightened up, and drew out a handful of scraps of paper; when it fell to the ground, they became figures, and she said softly, "Listen."

The paper figures dispersed, climbing towards the eaves, or pressing into the nooks, sitting cross-legged and reporting to the protector.

Song Shijiu stood in the middle of the array, waiting until all the surroundings had returned to silence, and only then did she gaze at Li Shiyi with a misty eyes, and then she closed them, her wrist turning, tossing the dark metal Fu Guang fan upwards. The metal fan slowly opened, capturing a myriad moonlight, light and shadow penetrating through the fretwork of the fan's surface, crushing time into fragments of clay. On the surface of the fan were towering, majestic mountains, beautiful, graceful streams, delicate, trailing willows, and brightly-coloured spring flowers.

The petals, as thin as diaphanous cicada's wings, trembled lightly, the willow branches, as supple as a silk sash, shook faintly, the mountains and rivers shaking, the sun and moon sinking into the waters. The talismans, rustled by the wind, stilled, the faint candlelight on the south side stopping, the distant, dim sound of the bamboo pipes going silent. The village seemed to have veins, pulled out by a pair of massive hands from beneath the ground, the veins severed, vitality lost.

The only exception was Li Shiyi, standing in the middle of the array, frowning faintly, casting her gaze towards the black metal fan.

The moonlight passed through the fan, falling like flakes of snow, settling onto Song Shijiu's figure, as if picking up her frame; she rose unhurriedly on tiptoe, breaking away from the ground. The scales on the backs of her hands were faintly discernible, and a curving, pale blue dragon mark appeared between her brows; Song Shijiu lowered her pretty neck, her face still and clear, and only once the fragmentary light from the fan blurred her cheeks entirely did she raise her right arm, her palm vertical, softly pushing outwards as if opening a door, making an Abhayamudra seal.^[5]

Just like her expression, without fear; her mind was calm and certain.

Fine cracks appeared on the ground, as if it had been parched for decades, splitting outwards from the middle of the array; those cracks seemed to have consciousness, and mostly avoided the buildings and residences, attacking the trees in the village like thunder.

Around midnight, Li Shiyi tossed the Shentu command in her hand up into the air, and sat, cross-legged, in the middle of the rotating token; the thumb and middle finger of her left hand turned, making a seal over her chest, the fingertips of her right hand lowered, becoming a Varada seal.^[6]

The two seals were complementary, the first appearance of godly grace.

Under the curtain of night, only the intertwined sound of breaths remained, and the sound of countless trees being shaken and drawn out of the ground. Li Shiyi pressed her lips together lightly, hearing the low, graceful chanting of Song Shijiu behind her.

"The day turning, the night turning; yin and yang have a predestined relationship; the primal chaos has yet to begin; time waits for no one."

The red birthmark on the side of Li Shiyi's neck , tender and beautiful and alluring, seemed to have been enticed by the winding sound of Song Shijiu's voice. Her thin lips parted, and she continued to incant. "All are reborn, born and die once more; all ghosts travelling about, listen to my command."

The winds couldn't rise, the clouds couldn't rush forth, the moon couldn't calm, and the stars couldn't glint. Between the heavens and earth, it had become a great burial mound, and what controlled it all was the disorderly course of time and overturned life and death. On entering a meditative state, a living person would become a dead thing, and all ghosts would become impassioned and rush into the mortal realm.

Each of the great, tall trees had been pulled up by the roots, a broken and disorderly thing, the living buried alive with the dead; the tree roots were smeared with the glimmer of gold, as lively as a stream of fire.

The river of fire departed from its host, frenetic as it fled into the air, and a blade's light, flashing like lightning, cut it in half; smashing on the ground, it let out a pus-like liquid.

Mulan lowered her blade, standing in the midst of the dark rubble, her ponytail sweeping against her cheek, like a thick, cold knife scar.Behind her, a sudden clap of thunder surged; dust rose in the air, the hun army's countless horses riding in formation.

Li Shiyi's ears twitched; she heard the sound of the army's banners flapping in the wind, the hoofbeats trammeling, the clank and clamour of armour, arrows streaking through the air, the deathly silence being replaced by noise, and the distant and sealed-off village becoming a battlefield with bugles blowing, welcoming a scene of not the least concerned massacre.

Yet this scene of massacre was so beautiful it caused one's heart to race; the plague worms fled from the tree roots, the cracks in the tiles, the broken bodies, crying out in fear as they charged into the sky. The golden, lustrous lines floated on the blue dome of the sky, carrying a faint squealing, like fireworks igniting loudly before the eyes, or a distant night lantern, swaying as it rose.

The zenith of the arrows brought a light blue, underworld flame, as if stars were streaking and falling into the mortal realm, untold numbers of plague worms unable to struggle before they were burnt to ashes by the underworld flame, not even leaving behind smoke.

Li Shiyi opened her eyes; in the turmoil and chaos of the battleground, she gazed at Song Shijiu before her; Song Shijiu's brows and lashes trembled, and she opened her glistening eyes to look at her in return.

Standing in the middle of the fighting, they gazed at each other; gazed at each other in the smoke and fire, in the sky lanterns, in the stars.

It wasn't clear whether it was the human body struggling to endure, but Li Shiyi's eyes suddenly ached a bit, causing her to close her phoenix eyes slightly; her wet eyes caused Song Shijiu's figure to become muddled, outlined in silver.

Song Shijiu saw Li Shiyi tucking in the corners of her mouth, her gaze as calm as if it had been frozen by magic. But it seemed as if she could hear Li Shiyi softly asking her—

This power, vast and cleansing, could it bring life and hope as she'd desired?

In the array, the candle flame was close to burning out; the battlefield had also come to its end, and the hun army kowtowed, the vast majority returning to Mount Taishan afterwards, only Mulan and a few dozen soldiers patrolling and inspecting, ensuring that they hadn't overlooked a single one. Li Shiyi fell to the ground, grasping onto a bamboo crate by the side to support herself, a fine sweat causing her clothes to cling muzzily to her figure; she huffed and puffed, looking around; the ground was like an egg whose shell had been shattered, disorderly and ruined trees blocking the path; luckily, none had had smashed onto farming houses; it was probably Song Shijiu's efforts at control, come to think of it.

But even if this was the case, there was still detritus all about, and tiles and bricks that had gone flying, as if they'd encountered a great, violent storm.

The hands on the golden pocket watch began to turn once more; the villagers, cleansed of plague worms, would be sinking into a full day's heavy, deep sleep.

The fan Fu Guang closed up steadily; Song Shijiu alighted behind Li Shiyi. Li Shiyi turned her head to look at her; the dragon scales on her hands hadn't retreated, her lips pale and utterly bloodless, pupils a great deal lighter than before, as if pure, limpid amber.

Li Shiyi was just about to go over and pull at her, when she heard the rumble of wheels rise on the street, a great deal lighter than other wheels, the rolling wood no different from the ordinary, but at this moment, appearing in this sort of village, it caused Li Shiyi and Song Shijiu's hearts to thunder, involuntarily raising their heads to look over.

That wasn't any vehicle, but a red sandalwood coloured wheelchair, rolling from the end of the pale flagstones, backed by the hazy rays of light. In the wheelchair was a frail, slim, white-clad woman, one hand covering her abdomen, the other on the wheelchair's arm, fingertips trembling slightly as the wheelchair approached. Only once it came closer were the two able to see her features clearly; if it could be said A Yin had a seductive physique, her beauty in her features, then this woman was dignified and magnificent in her entire body; smoky brows, deep, dark eyes, not needing to be seen clearly, only needing a single strand of dark hair and thin shoulders, and she'd be as beautiful as banished immortal's graceful depiction.

This woman was incredibly thin; she stopped at a short distance from Song Shijiu, and raised a hand to cover her lips and cough, her waist trembling, as if shaking out the splendour of the stars and the moon draped on her figure. She coughed until she couldn't breath, as if she was about to pass out, only stopping after a long while and raising her head to gaze at Song Shijiu. She spoke with a voice as penetratingly clear as spring water: "Zhu Long, hasn't Ling Heng disciplined you before?"

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Translator's notes:

[1]: Also known as Go.

[2]: A type of compass used in fengshui practices.

[3]: 贪狼 and 破军, used in Flying Star fengshui practices. Their names literally mean "Greedy Wolf" and "Broken Soldier".

[4]: The trigrams mentioned being from the Eight Trigrams (八卦), 坎 (kan), 离 (li), 震 (zhen), and 兑 (dui).#

[5]: 无畏印 (wuwei yin), literally "Fearless Seal"; a hand gesture found in Buddhist imagery, meant to dispel fear and give divine protection.

[6]: 与愿印 (yuyuan yin), a seal meant to signify generosity and compassion.