Extra 4: Bashe (II)

When she spoke, it was like spring waters were overflowing from her eyes, pooling atop cool slabs of rock; living up to her name, she refreshed the mind.^[1]

"Get up and speak," Li Shiyi said.

Qin Niang let out an affirmative sound, rising with her waist bent, as graceful in bearing as a white snake wending its way up a stick.

Women of romance, Song Shijiu had met many times; usually, they were lazy, but Qin Niang wasn't like that; others would be lazy or swing their hips, or the lower their eyelids, while Qin Niang's expression was candid, her figure agile, and she left laziness in her breaths, breathing in a small, gentle breath, and then letting it out softly, an pitiful terror showing from within the indolence. Song Shijiu couldn't help herself, and said, "In a place this desolate and wild, what are you doing?"

"I…" Qin Niang only spoke half a word, somewhat hesitant.

Li Shiyi waited quite patiently for a while, and only then swept her gaze across her brows and lashes. "Needles guiding the hun, thread locking up the po; you've trapped yourself here." Her words were very confident, and they crushed the gleaming reflections of sunlight in Qin Niang's eyes; only then did she ask softly once more, "What for, then?"

Actually, she didn't need to have added that "then"; perhaps it was that the melancholy in Qin Niang's features was too heavy, causing Fujun-daren, sat on high, to be unable to bear it.

It was merely this extra character that caused Qin Niang to raise her head, rapidly flicking a glance across the two of Li and Song, who sat holding hands, and then lower it, kneeling properly, kowtowing to protocol. She said, "Qin Niang died long ago; locking my spirit to the world until now was only in order to accompany someone."

"What person?" Song Shijiu's heart moved.

Qin Niang didn't reply for a while. Li Shiyi sighed, and asked her, "That person is in the nunnery atop the mountain, isn't she?"

A desolate, wild place; even human footprints were rare, and yet the brothel had insisted on opening here, at the foot of Mount Luming, and the reason ought to be halfway up the mountain.

Qin Niang sighed, raising a hand instinctively to cover her chest, and only spoke after a long while. "Yes."

A foolish spirit, waiting for someone; Song Shijiu couldn't bear to listen to the story much, and so she selected another topic to ask her. "The day you died, when was that?"

"Three years ago," Qin Niang replied.

Three years ago? Precisely the same as when the Bashe had died. Song Shijiu set the fan Fu Guang down. "That is to say, the Bashe was actually devoured by you?"

"Bashe?" Qin Niang furrowed her brows, not understanding.

Tu Laoyao suddenly cleared his throat, and explained roughly. "We came to investigate a case; we'd heard that that spiritual beast, the great Bashe, had been devoured, its gall falling onto one's heart; Me and Fu…the two women at the manor received a task, to bring to justice that person who killed it for its gall to justice."

"Not…" It's not to bringing the killer to justice; it's to bring the snake's gall back to the Yellow Springs, Song Shijiu began to speak, and then stopped.

Qin Niang's face paled a few degrees, and she thought it over attentively, and then asked carefully, "If one were to obtain the snake's gall, what changes would they have?"

"The snake's gall hangs atop the heart of the person who devoured the snake, and afterwards, the person would become heartless," Song Shijiu said.

"Heartless…" Qin Niang muttered a few times, and then asked, "if you were to find the person who devoured it, then what?"

Li Shiyi's fingers tapped, habitual, against the table, and she said quietly, "Stripped of the snake's gall, they would suffer the pain of having their heart gouged out and their liver cut apart."

Qin Niang's chest trembled as it rose and fell, and her voice became a bit more urgent. "And if it's a ghost?"

"They would return to the Yellow Springs to face karma, and then be convicted and punished."

Qin Niang's expression grew dull, as if springwater that had been clouded by fog, her eyelashes the luxuriant branches around the springs, shaking and trembling. Only once the rays of light outside had grown even more slanted did her lips part, and she only stammered out four characters—"So, it's like that."

"So, it's like that."

She held back her skirts, kneeling; she knelt precisely, and raised her hand, instinctively covering her chest, and drew a deep breath, bending her head and admitting, "Your Excellency, it was Qin Niang who accidentally devoured the Bashe; I hope daren can be merciful!" Her eyes were brimming with tears, and her words shook greatly; Li Shiyi waited until her breaths had calmed a bit, and only then, with a cool look, waited for her story, which hadn't seen the sunlight in years.

"Originally, I was from Sanping Town's Cusheng Alley; I was sold into the Alley as a child, and in my childhood, I was a cleaning servant; at thirteen, I began to take clients. There was a master in the Cuisheng Alley, surnamed Fang, who had come to prominence in the previous dynasty as a shop-owner, having opened a gambling house and two low-grade brothels in the alley.

"The one who's in the nunnery now is the master's second daughter, Fang-er-guniang. I grew up together with Er-guniang; we were very close, and though she was the daughter of the master, she was nothing alike; she had a good heart and Buddhist affinities; if you were to meet her, you'd know."

The edges of Qin Niang's lips held a smile, and her tone grew slower. "Five years ago, a military master entered the town, searching and seizing in Cuisheng Alley, and the Fang family went bankrupt, its people dying. As Er-guniang had worshiped her adoptive mother in the nunnery from early on, her shifu brought her to Mount Luming, to shun the world and devote herself to cultivation. I wandered about for a long while, and four years ago, I found her."

At the time, she'd already put on green attire, her bare hands counting Buddhist prayer beads, and called the person before her—benefactor.

"Benefactor." The corners of Qin Niang's mouth tucked in carefully, as if she'd grown accustomed to smiling, and feared that, were she not to laugh, she might look ugly. She gazed at the scattered dust before her, and said quietly, "She'd called me jiejie before, and called me A Qin, yet she'd never before called me the two characters of 'benefactor'."

At the time, she'd gazed at the prayer beads in Er-guniang's hand, and had recalled the days in childhood she'd accompanied Er-guniang to learn to use the abacus. Her own mind was biased; she could memorise poetry, but couldn't count, and always left the beads in a complete and utter mess; Er-guniang wouldn't grow angry, though, setting the beads to rights one by one, and saying, "Five minus four, six minus four plus one…"

She'd looked at the Buddhist hat atop Er-guniang's head. At the time, she'd just been listed, and had been driven to a helpless state by clients; after Er-guniang had left classes, she'd directly placed her own fox-fur hat atop her head, covering her up such that she broke out into a fine sweat, and only then allowed her to take it off, laughing at her, saying that once she'd been heated to muddleheadedness, she didn't call for father, nor mother, and only called for Er-guniang.

Er-guniang had said, "Aren't I your Bodhisattva?"

The day they'd met again, Er-guniang had really stood beneath a Bodhisattva, her brows kind and eyes pleasant, far away from her.

"Er-guniang said, her shifu had already passed away, and now, in the nunnery, only herself and two other, junior disciples remained; when her shifu had left, she hadn't been able to be at ease, and so she'd vowed to be the abbess of the nunnery, concentrating fully on cultivation and raising her juniors. She was a woman, and this nunnery was remote; how could they have incense burning in front of the temple? I…"

"You, you returned to your previous profession." Tu Laoyao wanted to extended a hand to tug at her, but thinking it over, he withdrew it, gritting his teeth and sighing.

"Yes," Qin Niang said, lowering her gaze. "I had been in the brothel since I was a child; besides this business, I couldn't do anything at all. I earned silver money, and exchanged it for cash, and asked a few prominent women from the nearby town to occasionally go light incense."

"She didn't know?" Song Shijiu interrupted.

"She didn't know."

"Then, how did you die? What does it have to do with the Bashe?"

Qin Niang, as was her habit, drew a few breaths, her jaw, in a rare moment, sticking out, as abrupt as a stone sticking out of a spring. She swallowed a couple mouthfuls of saliva, and drew her shoulders back, her voice growing a bit more hoarse. "Three years ago, a group of bandits came to the mountain, and in the dark of night, followed after me. I depended on my familiarity with the mountain terrain, and only with great difficulty got rid of them, but I saw them…I saw them head for the middle of the mountain."

Having been separated by many years, she still began to tremble, but even the trembling was incredibly gentle, as if the wind which couldn't bear to cry in the night. "I thought it over a few times, and then turned back, and led them on another path." She stopped here, having no intention to speak more on what she'd thought over.

Song Shijiu raised her hand, biting at the bent joint of her index finger. Li Shiyi's fingers slipped across the tabletop, and, without exerting herself, she curled the, and then, futily, spread them.

Fuck! Tu Laoyao's anger was repressed such that he couldn't speak, only able to pound the wall with a fist.

"That day, I lost my life in the mountains, and became a ghost, yet I couldn't let go of her. If there were bandits again, then what would happen?" she asked quietly, raising her gaze.

So, she'd trapped herself here; so, she'd been unwilling to end this withered and miserable life of hers.

"But I still tossed and turned about, my heart in unbearable pain, an old illness becoming a disease. I heard a client mention, there was a spiritual soup that, when eaten, could cure the ailment of the heart. I bought this soup for a large sum, and took it as a medicine, drinking it; it truly did mitigate it, but I truly didn't know it was that spiritual beast's flesh; please, daren, understand!"

Li Shiyi closed her eyes, a degree of mercy she wasn't willing to think about closely showing on her face. By her side, Song Shijiu's throat was choked with emotion, the rims of her eyes a dark red, also the colour of hard to bear anguish.

As for Qin Niang, her features were still indifferent as she covered her chest, not even a single tear falling. Come to think of reason, it was precisely this.

Li Shiyi sighed heavily, pausing for a brief moment, and thought it over clearly from start to finish, only then saying with a rough voice, "Although you struggle to speak with suffering, and there is a reason for it, you still did devour a spiritual beast, which is an offence. Locking a spirit without leave, forcefully retaining a ghost's body, mixing with mortals, throwing the Book of Fate into disorder, those are all wrongs. Mulan," she said, tilting her face and striking the Shentu token.

With a swift, ghostly gale, Mulan appeared, and heard Li Shiyi say, "Take her back to the Taishan Prefecture, to return to the past."

"Understood." Mulan, following her order, drew Qin Niang to her feet, and led her away.

In the lonesome courtyard, it was once more silent, only quiet remaining, and the faint buzz, like that of insects, as if the countless hardships and pains that Qin Niang had left behind just then with a soft muttering.

Li Shiyi took Song Shijiu in her embrace, lightly patting her shoulder, and headed outside.

"Shiyi," Song Shijiu called out to her.

"What is it?" Li Shiyi replied gently.

"Qin Niang's reincarnation, will it be into a good family?"

Li Shiyi blinked, not knowing whether or not it was a comfort. "Yes."

Song Shijiu sniffled, the chokedness still hard to conceal. "When you entered the brothel, you knew it was her, didn't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"The Bashe died in the mountains, but the mountain only had the brothel and the nunnery, and the nunnery has nuns, who are vegetarians and don't take the life of living creatures; so, that's to say, only Qin Niang was left."

Li Shiyi's lashes fluttered, and her gaze fell on Song Shijiu like a feather; she didn't reply, only raising another subject. "If a nun were to have killed and devoured the Bashe, what would the reason be?"

Song Shijiu pondered a moment, and replied, "That would probably be that they hadn't cultivated properly, and their heart had some deep-seated issue."

Li Shiyi smiled faintly, not speaking further.

Song Shijiu didn't question further, either, only nestling her head onto her, leaning against her shoulder, like a cub looking for some sort of support, relaxing for a while, and only then did she say, "I understand."

"Understand what?"

"In this world, there are many hardships, incredibly painful; that's why the bitter snake's gall is hung atop the heart; the pain of the snake's gall and the pain of the heart will clash, and nothing will be left."

The wings of Li Shiyi's nose fluttered, and she said gently, "Yes."

All living things experienced pain; when the pain of the heart met the pain of the snake's gall, the two would counteract each other, and only then would it become numb.

"If I truly came to a day of hadrship," Song Shijiu said quietly, "I'd want to have a Bashe's gall as well, to ease the pain of my heart."

"You don't need to," Li Shiyi said, shaking her head. Without waiting for Song Shijiu to reply, she added, "There's already…someone who has hung her heart atop yours."

Song Shijiu's heart hammered, and she silently raised her gaze to look at the person before her.

Life was full of harships; going forward alone, only loving and being loved could defend one's place within the rivers of time, and strengthen the heart, which had been riddled with holes, placing it on a soft, cotton-padded mattress.

Having thought of this, Song Shijiu's words grew a bit softer. "Does it function the same as the snake's gall?"

"No. When the heart is in pain, then it's the snake's gall; when the heart is overjoyed, it's the snake's tongue."

Countless affections, I'll try them for you first.

Song Shiju's heart grew full, as if having been entrusted with something; the line of her lips relaxed, as if she was about to speak, but then she heard the chaos of a strong wind by her ear; the Shentu token in Li Shiyi's sleeve was trembling faintly, shaking a dozen or so times before stopping.

"What is it?" Song Shijiu asked quietly, taking a small step forward.

Li Shiyi took the Shentu token in her hand, her voice as calm as if it had been drawn out from a deep well. "Mulan says, Qin Niang has entered the Taishan Prefecture, yet the snake's gall has yet to enter the Yellow Springs." She pursed her lips, and and cast her gaze towards the middle of the mountain.

Indistinct in the fog, the sound of a bell rose from the nunnery.

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Translator's notes:

[1]: The "Qin" in "Qin Niang" (沁娘) is the same "qin" as in "refreshing the mind" (沁人心脾).