Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 33
by Little PandaUnfathomable Hearts, Each Suspicious of the Other; Hoping to Restore What Was, New Waves Rise Instead (Part 5)
The moment Yan Rushun returned to her room, she first put on her mask, then hauled Peng Lie out from where he lay curled beneath the bed.
But this time she neither loosened his ropes nor unsealed his acupoints1. She stood opposite him, arms folded, quietly studying him for a while. Since his body couldn’t so much as shift, Peng Lie could only keep craning and bobbing his head to signal that he wanted to speak. Only after a long moment did she finally extend two fingers and sweep them once before his chest.
Peng Lie drew a deep breath and spoke at once. “Heroine Yan, have you thought it over?”
“I have.” Yan Rushun smiled faintly. “I’m taking you back.”
“B-back? Back where?”
“Where you came from. Which is to say — back to the Iron Eagle Guard, of course.”
Peng Lie stared, half convinced his ears had betrayed him. “You… you don’t want to know Yuan Chenghao’s whereabouts anymore?”
She did want to know.
How could she not?
That was why she’d been willing to stack one more sin upon her record and carry Peng Lie out of the Iron Eagle Guard in the first place. Yet not until she’d heard the words of Yu Kaiji and Yin Teng did she suddenly see the consequences of what she’d done — it wouldn’t merely entangle Xie Yuanjue; it would bring punishment down on the Iron Eagle Guard’s many officers and men as well. She herself was already bound for hell, and she’d never feared that. But whatever else happened, she must not bring harm to the innocent…
As long as Yuan Chenghao still walked this earth, even if she had to dig three feet into the ground, she could always find him by other means in the days ahead.
At that thought, Yan Rushun seized Peng Lie by the collar and made to carry him off — to quietly return him to an Iron Eagle Guard cell. Then, abruptly, faint footsteps seemed to sound outside. At once she resealed his acupoints, kicked him back beneath the bed, removed her mask, walked to the door, and opened it.
“Lady Xie? Why is it you?” Yan Rushun said in surprise. “It’s light out already — you can take to the streets now. Aren’t you going to look for an inn?”
“I…” Xie Yuanjue was doing this sort of thing for the first time, and a certain unease inevitably crept in. She lowered her eyes. “Just now on the road I saw a man lying on the ground — gravely wounded, I believe. But I can’t move him on my own, so I’ve come to ask your help, and to borrow your house besides, so that I can treat his injuries.”
“Don’t you know martial arts?”
“I do. But I’m ill, and I can’t exert myself.”
“And Lady Ling?”
“She and I took different roads. I don’t know where she is now.”
If her words were true, this was a matter of life and death — human life outweighing all, with no time to lose. So although Yan Rushun felt something was off, she had no leisure to puzzle over it, and could only nod at once. “Very well. Lead the way.”
Along the way, Yan Rushun pressed her further: when and where had she parted from Ling Suihan, and when and where had she come upon the injured man?
Xie Yuanjue rarely lied to anyone.
Earlier, when Ling Suihan had asked whether she knew the Dharma Master Jiuru of Longevity Valley, she’d only needed to shake her head and say, “I’ve heard the name, but never met her” — that hadn’t been so difficult. But now she had to invent a lie of her own making, then field Yan Rushun’s string of probing questions, and her confidence faltered. Yan Rushun’s doubts multiplied with every answer, until at last she stopped short.
“By Lady Xie’s account, this man was wounded by someone else, and the culprit is still unknown. If some muddled soul can’t tell right from wrong and pins the deed on you, won’t your troubles only multiply? I’d advise you to find the Golden Feather Guards patrolling the streets and have them take the man to a clinic.”
With that she no longer kept Xie Yuanjue company. She turned on her heel, the toe of her shoe tapping lightly against the ground, her dai-qing2 sleeves lifting in the spring wind, her receding figure shrinking smaller and smaller until, within moments, nothing of her could be seen.
At that same moment, Ling Suihan had already entered the dilapidated room of the dilapidated estate. She glanced all around — not so much as a ghost’s shadow in sight. She was just wondering whether she’d been overly suspicious when the bed against the wall caught her attention. A moment’s thought, and she walked toward it — and then came a “creak.”
The door swung open. Ling Suihan turned her head instinctively; in the space of an instant Yan Rushun had swept to her side, planting herself before the bed, a smile playing across her features. “I thought a thief had gotten into my room just now. I never imagined it would be you, Lady Ling. Did you come back looking for me about something?”
Ling Suihan showed not the slightest alarm, utterly composed. “I’d meant to leave, but on the road it struck me that I hadn’t yet thanked you for the night’s lodging, so I came to say farewell — only to find you weren’t here.”
“This house is such a ruin. Beyond letting you stay a night, I’ve done nothing else worth mentioning — hardly a matter of debts and gratitude. The jianghu is vast; fates meet and part. One chance encounter needn’t weigh on your heart. Let us part here — mind how you go, I won’t see you out.”
Ling Suihan nodded, as if in full agreement with that last remark, yet her feet didn’t move. She lowered her gaze to the floor. “Something of mine seems to have dropped just now.”
“What thing?”
“A jade pendant. It probably rolled under the bed by accident. Would you mind if I looked for it?”
Yan Rushun considered, then crouched and bent to peer beneath the bed — inevitably meeting Peng Lie’s eyes. In that instant, her utterly plain, unremarkable face lay fully and completely exposed to his gaze. Peng Lie’s eyes flew wide; his mouth gaped open. Had his acupoints not been sealed and his voice stopped, the look on him said he would have cried out on the spot.
After a moment Yan Rushun rose and shook her head. “I see no jade pendant. Is it something valuable? I wonder which shop sells them. Since it was lost under my roof, I ought to bear the responsibility — shall I buy you an identical one tomorrow to make amends, Lady Ling?”
Her words, her manner — it was plain as day that something strange hid beneath that bed.
Matters had reached this point. Ling Suihan no longer wished to keep probing with words; she would simply stride past the woman and drag out whoever was hiding under the bed. But then she reflected: were she truly to do so, the two of them would very likely have to come to blows.
How deep the other’s martial skill ran was, for now, unknown — but the odds of it being shallow were slim. To beat her might well require the Avici blade to leave its sheath.
Ling Suihan’s left hand had in fact already closed around the hilt of the long saber at her waist — and then her heart went cold as she realized just how furious she had grown at Chongming.
The day before, facing Peng Lie, she had felt nothing of the kind.
After all, the world had no shortage of villains. So long as they hadn’t committed atrocities before her very eyes — Peng Lie had wanted to, and failed — her temper wasn’t so easily stirred by them. But Yan Rushun was different. Yesterday, newly arrived in Chang’an, she had heard tell of the Golden Phoenix’s story at the inn, and had rather admired this legendary thief who robbed only the wicked. Who knew the tales were false — that this so-called righteous thief was actually in league with a villain like Peng Lie? Disappointment had naturally followed.
And when that disappointment curdled into fury, once her blade came out, it would be a killing stroke.
Even she would be unable to control that, when the moment came.
But for now, she couldn’t be entirely certain the woman before her and Yan Rushun were one and the same. And even if they were — until she understood why the woman had carried Peng Lie off, until the truth stood fully in the light — she had no wish to kill her.
After a long, long silence, Ling Suihan’s left hand finally left the hilt, frost already settled over her brows. Coldly, she asked, “Where is Xie Yuanjue?”
Sensing the flash of killing intent in the other’s eyes, Yan Rushun’s smile stayed bright. “She should be back by now as well. Just now I thought I heard footsteps in the courtyard.”
Ling Suihan turned to the doorway — and indeed, there stood the colorfully clad woman in the courtyard ahead.
What to do next could be discussed with Xie Yuanjue. Ling Suihan hesitated a moment, glanced back at Yan Rushun, and finally walked out of the room.
Yan Rushun leaned lazily against the doorframe, watching Ling Suihan make her way to Xie Yuanjue’s side. The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, whispering — seemingly resolved to keep watch over this place — and she couldn’t help feeling the situation had turned thorny. For her part, leaving here with Peng Lie would be easy; whether Ling and Xie’s martial arts ran deep or shallow, nothing they had could bar her steps. But once they discovered that Peng Lie had indeed been taken by her — once her identity was exposed, wanted portraits pasted across every wall of Chang’an — she feared she could no longer move freely through the city.
And it was only months ago that she had traveled a thousand li3 from a small town in Jiangbei4 to this Great Chong capital, precisely because she’d heard word that Yuan Chenghao might be hiding here.
With the man still unfound, how could she lightly abandon this city?
Yan Rushun frowned in thought for a while. A spring breeze touched with a faint chill drifted past, filling her sleeves — and suddenly her eyes brightened, everything clearing at once: hadn’t she already resolved to send Peng Lie back to the Iron Eagle Guard? Why, then, should she fear the two of them finding him? Even if they saw Peng Lie in this room with their own eyes, couldn’t he simply have fled here of his own accord, seeking refuge in this abandoned estate?
With this plan in hand, Yan Rushun shut the door at once. Her right hand had just touched the mask hidden within her outer robe when she remembered that Peng Lie had already seen her face — whether she wore it or not no longer mattered. She walked straight to the bed, dragged Peng Lie out from beneath it, undid his bindings and some of his sealed acupoints, and as she gathered up the rope, asked, “Want to live?”
Peng Lie stared blankly at her face, and answered her question with one of his own. “You… you’re… Yuan—”
Before the sentence could finish, a violent pain exploded in Peng Lie’s chest — Yan Rushun, in that same instant, had kicked him squarely and sent him sprawling to the floor. Before he could so much as cry out, she clamped a hand over his mouth, her gaze turned to a blade’s edge, pinning him cold. Word by word she pronounced, each syllable steeped in venomous fire: “I—am—not—surnamed—Yuan!”
Peng Lie’s chest hurt like hell; his innards seemed to be boiling over. Furious, he cursed her inwardly: Is she taking me for an idiot? That face of yours is six or seven parts like Old Yuan’s at the very least — who else could you be but that little girl of the Yuan family from back then? But with his voice stopped, and Yan Rushun’s eyes promising murder, a layer of cold sweat broke out across his back, and he could only nod with the utmost care.
Yan Rushun studied him a while longer. Then faint footsteps approached from outside — she guessed the commotion in the room had drawn Ling and Xie’s attention. She released Peng Lie’s mouth, swept two fingers of her right hand before his chest to unseal every last acupoint, and said in a low voice, “If you want to live, fight me right now. Beat me, and you can walk out of here.”
Peng Lie was utterly bewildered. “You… what exactly is this about?”
Yan Rushun said nothing more. A short blade flashed into her right palm, and she attacked.
Footnotes
- 穴道 | Xuedao | Acupoints mapped along the body's meridians in traditional Chinese medicine; in wuxia fiction a master's touch can 'seal' these points, paralyzing a captive or robbing him of speech.
- 黛青 | Daiqing | A classical Chinese color name blending dai, the blue-black pigment women once ground to paint their eyebrows, with indigo; it evokes distant mountains at dusk and is used here for garment sleeves.
- 千里迢迢 | Qianli Tiaotiao | Literally 'a thousand li, far and away' — the li being the classical Chinese mile of roughly half a kilometer; a set phrase for a journey across immense distances.
- 江北 | Jiangbei | Literally 'north of the river' — the lands along the Yangtze's north bank; a common way of naming a traveler's home region, set against Jiangnan, the south.
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