Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 18
by Little PandaTruth and Falsehood in the Chaotic Mortal World; I Walk My Own Path, Bold and Unabashed (Part 3)
After what had just happened, Ling Cheng had concluded that Zhao Yao must be a good person through and through. She no longer held anything back, recounting everything that had happened to her, then asked, “Do you really know Aunt Su?”
“We’ve crossed paths a few times.”
After hearing Ling Cheng’s account, Zhao Yao had more or less pieced together the whole story. She was a wandering traveler of the jianghu who made her home wherever she roamed, and because she loved famous mountains and great rivers by nature, every year or so she would find a place of beautiful scenery to settle, explore the surrounding countryside to her heart’s content, then choose another blessed spot of fine scenery for her new dwelling. Not long ago, she had taken a fancy to the landscapes of Dalin Mountain outside Chang’an. Having also heard that Su Ying was serving as a guard at Ling Bingzhong’s residence in the city, she had sent Su Ying a letter, inviting her to pick a free day and meet at Dalin Mountain.
Only, she had only just arrived at Dalin Mountain then and hadn’t yet chosen where in the mountains to build her lodging, so naturally Su Ying didn’t know her exact location. She had originally planned to settle everything first before contacting her friend — who could have anticipated the sudden upheaval in the capital, the Ling family’s treason case that shocked the world?
In Zhao Yao’s estimation, Su Ying had brought Ling Cheng all the way to Dalin Mountain to seek her help. The wind of blood and rain of slaughter in the imperial court had nothing to do with jianghu folk, and Zhao Yao had no desire to involve herself — but this child…
Her probing gaze studied Ling Cheng for a moment. Then, saber in hand, she suddenly leaped down, and in a flash of blade light had carved five large characters into the great tree trunk:
— The killer is Zhao Yao.
Ling Cheng asked in astonishment, “Why would you…”
Zhao Yao said coolly, “So many Golden Feather Guards have died for no apparent reason — there’s no way the court won’t investigate.”
Ling Cheng, realizing, said, “You’re afraid they’ll wrongly blame innocent people again? But… but won’t that put you in danger?”
“If they come, they’re the ones in danger.” Zhao Yao smiled indifferently, spun the saber’s handle once in her palm, and the long blade slid back into its scabbard. Seeing such confidence, Ling Cheng’s eyes couldn’t help but shine with admiration — there was no need to worry on her account. Only then did her gaze gradually drift toward the twelve corpses on the ground, thoughtful.
Zhao Yao glanced at her. “What? You pity them?”
Ling Cheng shook her head again and again. Those soldiers were guilty of unpardonable evil; death was too good for them. She only regretted that she hadn’t gotten to kill even one of them with her own hands — it wasn’t satisfying enough. So just now she was merely puzzled: “The Golden Feather Guard is the Son of Heaven’s personal army, charged with garrisoning the capital. They ought to protect the common people too. How could they…”
Zhao Yao laughed again.
This time it was as if she’d heard the greatest joke under heaven. Her smile carried a flicker of barely-there mockery. Without a word, she swung around abruptly and set off toward the southeast.
Ling Cheng hurried after her. “Where are you going?”
Zhao Yao said, “Don’t you want to find Su Ying?”
From the day Ling Cheng fell from the cliff to today, more than twenty shichen had in fact passed. If Su Ying had escaped danger, she would certainly go to the base of the cliff to search for Ling Cheng’s whereabouts. And Zhao Yao’s dwelling was in the forest along the river at the foot of the cliff. By all rights, once Su Ying reached the cliff base, the two of them would easily have met — yet for these two days she had vanished without a trace, never once contacting Zhao Yao, and even Zhao Yao now felt a faint, creeping unease. She had come up to the clifftop only to check whether Su Ying had left any mark or signal behind.
The sun was bright, the wind clear, and the boundless sky stretched crystal blue as if washed. This was Wuli Peak on Dalin Mountain — high and precipitous. Gazing out in every direction, ancient pines and emerald cypresses grew dense and luxuriant. Apart from the spots of dried blood that had yet to fade from the ground, however long they searched, they found no clue of any kind connected to Su Ying.
Ling Cheng wiped the sweat from her brow and crouched down in the grass, her heart pounding erratically in her chest.
Seeing her face full of worry, Zhao Yao, by contrast, was utterly calm and unhurried: “She’s not dead.”
At least not dead here.
Ling Cheng looked up. “Why?”
Zhao Yao said, “No matter who died here, the blood on the ground wouldn’t look like that.”
Ling Cheng asked, quite at sea, “What do you mean, ‘like that’?”
Zhao Yao leaned against a tree trunk, musing over where Su Ying might have gone, and didn’t answer her question. Reading the course of a battle from the patterns of its bloodstains was wisdom drawn from experience — she had lived through countless jianghu slaughters — and it was hard to explain clearly in the first place.
Ling Cheng, still sitting on the ground, tilted her head back and went on gazing at Zhao Yao beside her. Her bright eyes rolled, and she suddenly said, “Are your martial arts stronger than Aunt Su’s?”
Zhao Yao’s brow lifted faintly. “Did Su Ying tell you about me?”
Ling Cheng said, “Aunt Su never mentioned your name to me. She only said that day that she’d take me to find someone — that if we could find her, even ten times as many pursuers would be nothing to fear. I only just remembered those words. That someone — is it you?”
Zhao Yao had never known what modesty was in the first place; hearing this, she nodded. “Someone with that kind of ability… does indeed seem to be only me.”
Ling Cheng sprang to her feet at once and asked, unable to wait, “Then I want to take you as my master — will you agree?”
Zhao Yao laughed. “You don’t stand on ceremony at all, do you? Just saying it outright like that?”
Ling Cheng said, “Whether you agree or not, I have to say it out loud first, don’t I? If I don’t say it straight, how else am I supposed to say it?”
That suited Zhao Yao’s temperament exactly — a pity she had never had any thought of taking disciples, still less any wish to get entangled with the daughter of a great general of the court. She shook her head and refused without the slightest hesitation.
Ling Cheng had guessed she probably wouldn’t agree immediately, but she hadn’t expected a refusal this clean-cut. She froze for a beat, then stepped forward, bent both knees, and with firm resolve knelt before Zhao Yao: “As long as you’re willing to take me as your disciple and teach me martial arts, I’ll do anything you ask.”
Zhao Yao was not softened in the slightest by the gesture: “I heard Su Ying already taught you some martial arts? Once you find her, can’t you keep learning from her?”
Ling Cheng went on kneeling just the same, her back ramrod-straight the whole while, like a stalk of green bamboo still growing; her still-childish voice carried a jade-hard resolve: “I’ve only learned a little over a year. Aunt Su said I haven’t even touched the gate of the martial arts — I really don’t know anything. Since your martial arts are that high, only by learning from you do I have a chance of becoming a peerless master in the shortest time possible.”
“And what will you do as a peerless master?”
“Get revenge.”
“Against whom?”
“The people who framed my Father, of course.”
“And the emperor?”
Ling Cheng froze, suddenly at a complete loss. Since the disaster had struck, she had in truth never once confronted this question — perhaps she’d had no leisure to think it through, perhaps she hadn’t dared. But now that Zhao Yao had raised it herself, Ling Cheng could avoid it no longer, could not possibly avoid it any longer. She opened her mouth; the word “Grandfather” sat at the edge of her throat, yet no matter what, she could not bring herself to say it again. She murmured, “He… he… he believed my Father was rebelling, that’s why he…”
Zhao Yao gave a scornful little laugh. “The reigning Son of Heaven climbed the throne through coup after coup and has now sat the dragon seat for more than thirty years, not one day loosening his tight grip on the scepter of power. Call him a wise ruler or a muddled one as you please — he will never be some puppet emperor controlled by another’s hand. You—”
Here she paused, just slightly.
Only because she had discovered that with every additional word she spoke, Ling Cheng’s face turned another shade paler. The spine that had stood straight as pine and bamboo seemed drained of every ounce of strength; she bowed forward despite herself, her left hand braced on the ground, trembling faintly.
Zhao Yao’s expression didn’t change; calm as ever, she gave the girl one glance and repeated her question of a moment ago without any mercy: “Once you’ve mastered peerless martial arts, whom will you seek revenge against, and how?”
The words ended, and Zhao Yao heard no answer.
Only weeping.
Ling Cheng was stubborn by nature. Apart from the few tears she shed at the moment she heard of her father’s death, she had never cried again — not even when she watched her mother die before her very eyes.
It wasn’t that she didn’t grieve, wasn’t that she wasn’t in anguish — but the fierce hatred that crushed everything else had spread like a great fire, burning her heart to waste, burning her tears away clean. Until this instant, when she finally lowered her head, left hand still braced against the ground, tears falling bead after bead like a snapped string into the grass, and she could not hold back from sobbing aloud.
“When you’ve thought it over, come talk to me about apprenticeship.” Zhao Yao watched her weep with cold eyes for a while, said this, turned, and walked a few steps — when suddenly a cry rang out:
“I’ve thought it over!”
Zhao Yao stopped and looked back.
The child kneeling on the ground rose at once — but the movement was too fierce, too sudden, and it wrenched her unhealed injuries. A sharp pain stabbed her chest and she stumbled; she hurriedly steadied herself, walked before Zhao Yao once more, and said, voice choking but resolute: “I will uncover the truth. I will uncover the truth of this matter. No matter who it was that killed my parents — I swear, I will not spare a single one.”
With those words, she clenched her teeth, knitted her brows, and couldn’t help lowering her eyes to look at her right arm.
Since waking, her maimed right arm had ached dully without pause. At first she could bear it; now, for some reason, the pain was growing stronger and stronger.
Zhao Yao’s expression gradually turned grave. She watched her for a long moment before saying, “You’ve thought it over. I haven’t yet.”
Strikingly, these words were no longer a flat refusal.
“Come with me first. The medicine on your right arm needs changing.”
Though Zhao Yao was a knight-errant of the jianghu, her martial arts had reached consummate perfection; in this world, people capable of wounding her were hard to find. For that reason she carried very little wound medicine on her person, and none of it was prepared for herself — it was just in case, on the road, she now and then saw injustice and could produce it at once to treat the wounded. But for a good long while to come, this child would likely be staying at her side, and she reckoned the wound medicine she carried would not be enough.
So, before returning to the cabin in the woods, Zhao Yao first took Ling Cheng to nearby Jitian County.
The county, not far from Chang’an, was prosperous and bustling all the same, its streets lined row upon row with shops. Among the crowds coming and going, a few soldiers in Golden Feather Guard garb now and then surfaced. Unwilling to startle the local common folk, Zhao Yao took Ling Cheng’s hand, her figure flickered, and in an instant they had slipped out of the soldiers’ sight and walked into a medicine hall.
Directly opposite the medicine hall, as luck would have it, stood a garment shop. Zhao Yao bought her medicine, then entered the shop with Ling Cheng.
“Pick out a few outfits.”
After the upheavals of these two days, the clothes on Ling Cheng’s back had long since become too filthy for words. Zhao Yao dearly loved beauty and simply could not stand the sight.
Ling Cheng raised her eyes, swept her gaze around, paid no heed to the shopkeeper’s endless chattering introduction, and pointed her left hand at one of the white robes.
Zhao Yao said, “Pick a few more. You’ll have to change later.”
Ling Cheng said, “Then several more just like it.”
“Just like it?” Zhao Yao was genuinely surprised. She looked her over for a moment, then reached out and gave her head a little pat. “So young — why dress so plainly?”
Ling Cheng’s voice went very low. “I’m still in mourning1…”
Zhao Yao started, nodded, took out money, bought several plain white garments, and sent her to the inner hall to change. Roughly one ke later, a snow-white Ling Cheng reappeared before Zhao Yao’s eyes — yet now there was a look of puzzlement on her face. She seemed to hesitate a good while, then raised her head and asked:
“You found me at the base of the cliff?”
“Yes.”
“Then did you happen to see, on my body or on the ground nearby, a dagger, and… and a rabbit carved from white jade?”
“You fell from the clifftop into the river; I was swimming in midstream, and that’s how I spotted you in time. If anything truly went missing, it most likely fell into the water. What — was it something important?”
“That dagger… it was very important.”
After all, it was the keepsake her father had left her.
Seeing her expression strange, lost and bereft, Zhao Yao asked curiously, “And that white-jade rabbit you spoke of?”
Ling Cheng opened her mouth and closed it again; her lashes trembled faintly, and she sank into silence.
In these two days she had lived through an earth-shattering cataclysm, her mind holding nothing but her dead parents; only now could she spare a thought for the owner of that jade rabbit. Did it matter? In the old days, Ling Cheng could have answered without hesitation — no one mattered more than Shejia. But today was not the old days; she had only just sworn her oath in her heart.
She would take revenge.
Whoever the enemy was, she had to take revenge.
And she could harden her heart to it, of course. Though she had often come and gone through the inner palace since childhood, close to the Son of Heaven as to a grandfather, she in truth bore no blood tie to the Xie imperial house. Since Xie Tai had severed their kinship of his own accord, why should she show any mercy? But Shejia was different. Shejia’s surname was Xie beyond any doubt; Shejia was, beyond any doubt, the Son of Heaven’s own true granddaughter by direct line. If one day they met again, and she came to know what Ling Cheng meant to do…
Would she stand in her way? Could she still count her a friend?
All of this, Ling Cheng could not help but weigh.
Zhao Yao, seeing her long silent, guessed at the shape of it. She turned and walked out the shop door, her voice unhurried: “What’s already lost and can’t be recovered — don’t think too much about it. Come, let’s head back first.”
After this day of turmoil, by the time they left Jitian County and stepped once more into the outskirts, the hour was near dusk.
The setting sun hung on the verge of sinking and twilight closed in from all four quarters; travelers gradually made for home. The hills and woods all around were profoundly still. An evening breeze lifted the plain white hems of Ling Cheng’s robes; she did not say one word the whole way — until Zhao Yao, ahead of her, suddenly stopped in her tracks, and only then did she startle back to herself and ask in wonder:
“What is it?”
“Someone’s coming.”
“Someone?” Ling Cheng looked all around. “Soldiers?”
“No. Those soldiers don’t have martial arts this good.”
The author has something to say:
The person who came isn’t Su Ying. Su Ying will still appear later in the story, but not until quite far along in the main plot.
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