Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 29

Unfathomable Hearts, Each Suspicious of the Other; Hoping to Restore What Was, New Waves Rise Instead (Part 1)

Ling Suihan walked to the window, reached her arm straight through, and set the food box down on the small couch inside. Xie Yuanjue hesitated a moment, then lifted the lid — inside lay a few small dishes, clear congee, and a pair of wooden chopsticks.

This only deepened her bewilderment.

            

She didn’t think her relationship with Ling Suihan was anywhere near close enough that the woman would spend her own money to treat her — to bring her a late-night meal, no less.

Ling Suihan asked point-blank, “Are you ill?”

Anyone with eyes could see it. Xie Yuanjue didn’t deny it; she nodded.

            

“Aren’t you a doctor?” Ling Suihan said. “Can’t you even cure your own illness?”

“Doctors aren’t immortals,” Xie Yuanjue replied. “They too must pass through birth, age, sickness, and death.”

Doctors aren’t immortals. The words struck Ling Suihan as faintly familiar. Years ago, when Shejia lay tormented by her illness — when countless famed physicians and miraculous hands had been summoned to Prince Rui’s Mansion and not one could cure her chronic ailment — a few of them would occasionally sigh and say exactly this. The memory flashed through Ling Suihan’s mind, and a blankness washed over her heart; her tone softened without her noticing. “If you eat late… your body suffers for it?”

            

Xie Yuanjue’s heartstrings stirred at that. She regarded Ling Suihan quietly for a moment before turning the question back. “How did you know?”

“A guess. Looks like I guessed right. So that’s why, last time, you insisted on eating first before treating that Dingshan Sect disciple’s wounds? I’m sorry — I misjudged you there. This supper counts as my apology. Then I won’t owe you anything.”

Listening to the first half, Xie Yuanjue actually felt a thread of warmth stir at the bottom of her heart — and then the final sentence landed in her ears. She froze, caught for an instant between anger and laughter, and in the brief silence that followed she suddenly understood: she shouldn’t feel anything at all, shouldn’t permit herself the slightest emotional stir… She lowered her lashes again and said flatly, “No need to apologize. I misjudged you before, too.”

            

“What misunderstanding?”

Xie Yuanjue didn’t answer. Instead she seemed to turn the subject aside. “Thank you for speaking up for me before the Iron Eagle Guard. For vouching for me.”

“That? You needn’t thank me. I didn’t help you for your sake — I did it for my own.”

            

“For your own?”

“Yes. I hate being wrongfully accused more than anything.”

The words sounded perfectly ordinary, yet Xie Yuanjue was shaken to her core. In a single instant, a guess swept through her mind — one capable of raising landslide and tsunami in her heart — and she stared blankly at Ling Suihan for a long while, turning it over and over, unable to reach any verdict. Seeing her fall silent, Ling Suihan pointed at the food box on the couch and said, puzzled, “Aren’t you going to eat? It’ll go cold. Patients can’t eat cold food, can they?”

            

Xie Yuanjue came back to herself, slowly raised the bowl, and drank the rice congee in small sips.

A déjà vu swept over Ling Suihan in that instant, borne on the sharp chill of the night wind. She watched, unblinking, the motions of the woman eating — and suddenly couldn’t help asking, “You said before that you don’t know Master Jiuru. So who is your master?”

“I… I have no master.” It was true that Xie Yuanjue wanted to make a name — but the name she wanted was her own, not the name of “Master Jiuru’s disciple.” She understood perfectly well: the moment she revealed her true lineage, countless young martial artists of the jianghu would flock to her at once — and in the end they would remember only the disciple of Master Jiuru, never the person Xie Yuanjue. And what use would that be to her?

            

So from the day she left the valley onward, she never once mentioned her tie to Jiuru; whenever anyone asked, she flatly denied it. Ling Suihan grew only more puzzled. The way of medicine was exceedingly intricate — even if Xie Yuanjue were a genius of the field, surely she couldn’t have taught herself? She thought it over for a good while, then hazarded, “Then you come from a family of physicians?”

To say no would have invited too many explanations, and until she was certain who this woman was, Xie Yuanjue had no wish to expose her origins. She simply nodded, sparing them both further guessing.

Ling Suihan had noticed her wealthy attire and did suspect some powerful, noble house behind her — but she truly could not conceive of a reason for the woman to lie about such a thing. And besides, whatever the case, she absolutely could not be the daughter of one of Chang’an’s grand families. Otherwise, having already entered the city, why wouldn’t she go home? Why stay at an inn, why go renting a house?

            

A wave of disappointment settled over her. Ling Suihan lowered her head and kept silent for a time — then suddenly found it funny. What was she even hoping for? If Shejia truly appeared before her this very moment, could she still acknowledge her now?

Xie Yuanjue saw the bitter smile cross her face and asked, suspicious, “What are you smiling at?”

“I… it’s nothing…” Ling Suihan tilted her head back toward the cold moon. “Just that worldly affairs are hard to foresee. We looked at so many houses in daylight and none of them suited — and I never imagined that come nightfall we’d end up lodging in a place like this.”

            

Still less had she imagined sharing a compound, however briefly, with someone she’d taken an instant dislike to.

Xie Yuanjue glanced sideways at the spiderweb on the windowsill, then moved her gaze back to Ling Suihan and asked abruptly, “Do you have mysophobia?”

“Me? Anyone would balk at a place like this. And from that you conclude I’m a clean freak?” Ling Suihan found the question rather baffling. It was true she had never lived in such a ramshackle house before — Zhao Yao, after all, loved her comforts. Her rooms needn’t be sumptuous, but they had to be comfortable. Yet if she truly could not endure such surroundings at all, she would never have set foot inside.

            

Ten years ago she had already warned herself: she was no longer the Ling Cheng of before. Whatever harsh and hostile environment awaited, she must endure it, must bear it.

Besides, this place was merely a little run-down and dirty.

Xie Yuanjue shook her head. “From yesterday until now, I’ve watched you dressed in white without pause.”

            

Those white-robed, graceful wandering knights of legend mostly existed inside storybook pages. To truly roam the martial world — sleeping in the wind and the dew — going about in plain white was hopelessly impractical. Xie Yuanjue had turned it over and over in her mind, which was why she’d suddenly posed that probing question. To her surprise, Ling Suihan went still at the words, her expression turning unmistakably grave. After a pause, her voice was solemn:

“I am still in mourning¹.”

The ancients of the former dynasty, to avenge a feud they could not share heaven with, wore plain mourning all their lives and never listened to music². From the moment Ling Suihan first read that story in the histories, she had silently sworn:

            

— Until the day her parents’ great vengeance was avenged, she would never once shed her mourning dress.

Had anyone else heard her answer thus, they would surely have felt guilty and ill at ease, certain they had misspoken. Xie Yuanjue remained perfectly calm, reasoning silently to herself: So her father or mother died less than three years ago. Then she… truly could not be Fuli…

Disappointment stole over Xie Yuanjue a second time. She hesitated on the edge of speech — and in the end couldn’t hold it in. “Your mourning term isn’t yet over. What have you come to Chang’an to do?”

            

Ling Suihan fell into thought at the question. She tilted her head and studied the other woman for a while, then said abruptly, “You seem like a real person now.”

Xie Yuanjue didn’t follow. “If I’m not a real person, am I a fake one?”

“Yesterday, when I first laid eyes on you, you truly did seem like a fake person — as though nothing that happened in this world could stir the faintest ripple in your heart. But today, at least, some things make you curious.” Ling Suihan said, “So — are you curious about Yin Teng and Chongming?”

            

“Why would I be curious about them?”

“That tree is thick with branches and leaves. Someone sitting up in it would be hard to spot, ordinarily. But that man wanted to shoot birds — he had to look up into the tree — and still he couldn’t see a living, breathing person sitting in it. Either he’s blind, or… Yin Teng’s lightness skill is very good too.”

She raised Yin Teng’s suspicious points for two reasons. First, to divert the conversation — she absolutely could not answer what had truly brought her back to Chang’an, so she had to set Xie Yuanjue’s mind working on something else. Second, whatever else was true, she had known Xie Yuanjue a little longer — one day earlier still counted as “earlier” — and even if they’d taken a dislike to each other at first, and their relationship remained far from warm, set Xie Yuanjue beside Yin Teng and Chongming, and it was the latter two who felt like strangers to her. Her doubts brimmed over, and at this moment there was no one to air them with but Xie Yuanjue.

            

“You just examined Yin Teng’s wounds. Could you tell whether she knows martial arts?”

“Her injuries were external, not internal. I examined only the wound sites; I never took her pulse. I can’t tell whether she cultivates internal energy.”

“If you took her pulse, she’s your patient — she couldn’t refuse. Aren’t you curious at all?”

            

Xie Yuanjue shook her head.

Curious. Which was precisely why she had to force herself not to be.

Ling Suihan was stopped short by the reaction, feeling her earlier words had come too soon — so the woman was still as distant as before, seemingly indifferent to everything under heaven. That being so, Ling Suihan no longer cared to discuss Chongming’s oddities with her. She had just turned to leave when she remembered something, drew two medicine packets from her bosom, and held one out to Xie Yuanjue.

            

“That insect-and-rodent-repelling powder of yours — I gave some to Chongming and Yin Teng. This packet — will you sell it to me?”

Had it been any other object, she would never have asked Xie Yuanjue for so much as a straw. But tonight’s circumstances were special; she had no wish to share a room with insects and rodents.

Xie Yuanjue said, “Didn’t you already pay for it yourself?”

            

“But the prescription was yours.”

“My prescription, your money,” Xie Yuanjue said. “We’re square.”

“Good. Square.” Ling Suihan said, “I’ll take my leave.”

            

The night was dim, shadows swaying. Before long, Ling Suihan’s silhouette had vanished into the boundless ink of the dark. Xie Yuanjue’s gaze still passed through the broken window, resting on the tree branches swaying in the wind across the courtyard — and unbidden, she recalled the words her master had spoken to her a month ago, when she left Longevity Valley.

She admitted more and more that her master had been right.

“Your heart is sensitive and full of feeling. Once you leave the valley, the mundane affairs of this world may well undo in a single stroke the ten years of stillness you’ve cultivated. Have you truly thought it through? Is your decision made?” And sure enough — on her very first day in Chang’an, she had not only missed the hour of her meal, but her heart had stirred with ripples again and again, and she had grown curious about so many people, so many things.

            

But Xie Yuanjue did not regret it.

Though her master had opposed this walk into the mortal world with all her strength, to this day she still did not regret it. To stay in Longevity Valley, watching alone as the clouds rolled and unfurled, as the flowers bloomed and fell — perhaps that truly would add two or three years to her life. She might live to twenty-five or twenty-six, and then her life would wither into the dust, known to no one. And what meaning would there be in that?

She still feared death. She still did not want to die. But since Heaven had decreed she would never see a hundred years, then better to gamble — to stake these few remaining years of life on one throw, and win a name that would endure a thousand autumns.

            

She wanted not only the whole world to know her. She wanted the whole world a thousand years, a hundred generations hence, still to know her.

Then Xie Yuanjue would not truly have vanished from this world.

To accomplish that, the time left to her was brief. She could not halt her steps for people and matters that meant nothing to her purpose.

            

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The author has something to say:

Because her family was murdered, she wore plain mourning dress until her great vengeance was avenged, and never once listened to music — this genuinely happened in history. But since this story is set in an alternate era, the text avoids naming the real historical figures, substituting “ancients of a former dynasty” in their place.

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