The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 40
by Little PandaSpeaking of the Swaddling Infant in the Widow’s Arms
Cold-faced and difficult to deal with — was it truly not Longming?
Only, that name sounded far too awkward. How had Longming become tinnitus1?
Now one was hard of hearing, the other had tinnitus. Two demons who couldn’t assemble one good ear between them.
Zhuoxue spotted a teapot on the table and wanted to pour Suli some water to soothe her throat, saying as she did, “I want to see her. How can I meet her?”
“If you want to die, then go see her!” Suli refused. “She’s the village chief’s daughter. Meeting her is no different from meeting Yanwang — she’ll only personally send you into the mountain!”
It was definitely different, Zhuoxue thought to herself. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t met Yanwang before.
She persisted, probing from the side: “Where does she usually go? What does she do?”
Suli looked at her as though she’d seen a ghost and pressed her palm to Zhuoxue’s forehead, saying in a panic, “Did you burn your brain out? How can you still be pining after that woman made of ice shards?”
Zhuoxue was merely thinking that if Longming was also trapped here, the two demons meeting might mean they could look out for each other.
“Good Jiejie, just tell me about this Erming.” She finished pouring the water and held it out to Suli.
Suli glared. “Are you trying to send me to my grave? That’s the foul water I use to fake a corpse stench!”
Zhuoxue froze. No wonder she’d caught a whiff of something foul — it was coming from the pot.
She poured the water back and nestled against Suli’s side. “I’ve lost all my memories and only remember her. What if seeing her just once brings everything else back?”
“Since when would such good fortune fall from the sky?” Suli didn’t believe her. “Don’t tell me you’re using amnesia as an excuse just to see her.”
Zhuoxue said, “Am I really that besotted?”
“When you ran away from home, you spied on her through the schoolhouse window for days on end!” Suli’s temper flared. “If I hadn’t gone to find you, you’d have starved to death out there!”
Zhuoxue was so astonished her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. She could actually starve herself to death just to watch Longming?
But this business of running away from home and heading straight for Longming — how did it so resemble her journey out of Qiufeng Ridge?
Zhuoxue continued coaxing gently: “I never lie to anyone. I simply wish to recover my past memories. Surely you can’t expect me to muddle through the rest of my life in confusion.”
Suli’s eyes reddened. She fell silent for a long while before letting out a soft sigh. “At least it’s only amnesia, not madness.”
“Living in such a daze, I fear it truly will drive me mad,” Zhuoxue added with flourish.
“You…” Suli had no other recourse. “If you want to know, I’ll tell you. But don’t go seeing her.”
“I’ll only listen, not see,” Zhuoxue said.
Suli’s expression showed her displeasure. “That Erming is no good person. Her temperament is bizarre — she keeps entirely to herself, never socializing with anyone. She probably knows how to cast hexes2, so she’s the one who truly runs the village. Even the village chief defers to her completely.”
“That formidable?” Zhuoxue marveled. “What else? How did she become a widow?”
Suli eyed her suspiciously and spoke slowly: “She once went away for a time. When she returned, she claimed she had married — only, the one who bowed at the wedding altar with her was short-lived and already turned to white bones in the sand.”
Zhuoxue was rendered speechless. At first glance it sounded nothing like Longming, but on closer reflection, it held a certain resemblance.
Suli seethed: “Don’t you go feeling sorry for her. The tribute list this time was surely drafted by her as well! Every year she casts hexagrams with yarrow stalks3, every year she claims it’s the Fox Immortal’s will — whether it is or isn’t, only she knows!”
“Then what name am I called on the list?” Zhuoxue was genuinely curious.
Suli said, vexed and helpless: “Yuxue. I taught you to read for nothing — you’ve forgotten it all!”
Yuxue?
Half of the 珏 from Jueguang, half of the 雪 from Zhuoxue. What a seamless fusion of two into one.
Zhuoxue committed the name to memory and said kindly, “Thank you for teaching me.”
Suli narrowed her eyes. “Are you still pining for her now?”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Zhuoxue said, her heart and mouth disagreeing.
“Let’s sleep, then.” Suli turned, bent down, and crawled under the bed, reaching awkwardly to spread out the straw mat. “Tomorrow we have to keep playing dead.”
Zhuoxue watched Suli squeeze into the narrow space beneath the bed, dumbfounded. “We’re sleeping like this?”
“That’s right. Even corpses have to be hidden well. They don’t believe we’re already dead — they’re still searching everywhere for our bodies.” Suli pulled a thin blanket over herself, which seemed hardly enough to ward off the cold.
Zhuoxue had no choice. With the soaked rag plastered to her forehead, she too crawled under the bed, staring up at the bedboard mere inches from her face. “It’s like a coffin.”
“Pei pei pei.” Suli turned her head away.
Zhuoxue still didn’t understand. “Why does the Fox Immortal eat people?”
“I don’t know. No one has ever seen it, and no one has ever asked.” Suli’s voice was still hoarse from being strangled by hemp rope earlier.
“Those tributes sent into the mountain in the past — were they truly all eaten?” Zhuoxue pressed.
Suli coughed twice and said irritably, “Not a single one ever came back. They must have been eaten down to the bones.”
Zhuoxue, wide awake, chewed over an implication of a different sort.
Why did that sound so like the way she ate chicken? This illusion had better not have been constructed from her memories.
A moment later, steady breathing reached her ear — Suli had fallen fast asleep.
Zhuoxue inched out carefully, terrified that the slightest rustle beneath her would wake Suli.
The creak of the door swinging open was swallowed by the downpour. Rain pattered under the eaves. Under the moonlight, all was mud — those shallow footprints already washed away.
Mud and water as far as the eye could see. Zhuoxue stood on tiptoe by the door for a good while before deciding to venture out.
She found a straw rain cape4 but couldn’t find a bamboo hat, so she gave up looking and walked alone through the rain.
No one was about. She and Suli lived on the outskirts — already at the village’s outer edge. She would have to walk a li along the muddy road before she could hear dogs barking and see scattered candlelight.
Mud clung to her shoes. Floodwater filled the hollows, deep and shallow, impossible to distinguish. Each step plunged uncertainly — one foot deep, one foot shallow.
Zhuoxue couldn’t help pondering. If this wasn’t a dream, what else could it be? Could it be… a trap laid by nightmare demons?
But how could nightmare demons have seen through her and Longming’s past so thoroughly? And if they knew this much, why not storm Qiufeng Ridge long ago? Why kindly wait for her to leave the mountain?
Impossible. The nightmare demons couldn’t possibly know them that intimately.
If this truly was a Nightmare Dream, then the dream must be constructed from the memories of those trapped inside — requiring no painstaking effort from the nightmare demons to fabricate falsehoods.
Rain hissed down.
Zhuoxue then felt something wasn’t quite right. They said entering a nightmare was like falling into demonic possession — even those of profound power couldn’t distinguish truth from illusion. How had she become lucid so quickly?
She still needed to see Longming to get to the bottom of things.
The rain poured heavier than before. The night was already dim, and the moonlight was veiled by thick clouds. If not for her fox eyes, she might not have been able to see the road ahead.
The torrential rain washed away the feverish heat from her body. Rarely had she been this drenched, yet felt so comfortable.
The cold rain struck her face. She seemed like a flower spirit or tree demon bathing in the downpour — only her hair, weighed down by water, pulled painfully at the roots.
She simply untied her hair ribbon and wooden hairpin, letting her hair hang in soaked strands against her chest and back, looking every bit like a ghost emerging from the deep mountains.
The village was silent. The villagers had all retired.
Zhuoxue walked along the muddy road, not knowing which house belonged to the village chief. She went from door to door, poking holes through the window paper.
This household was asleep — two adults and two children huddled together. Definitely not.
This one — the owner was sleeping clutching a chicken?
This one was still awake — a woman was feeding medicine to her eldest son. One glance ruled out Longming.
This one even less so — an entire family wailing to the heavens. Longming would never carry on like that.
Zhuoxue worked with efficient hands, nearly poking through every window paper in the village. Better to wrongly pierce a thousand than let one slip by.
House after house, her fingers grew numb — and still no sign of Longming.
Each time she punctured the thin paper, she leaned close and scanned the interior.
This time, however, was rain on the plum season’s head5 — terrible luck. The moment she pressed close, she came face-to-face with a terror-stricken countenance.
This person was awake in the dead of night — and had even pressed right up to her freshly poked hole — crying out in alarm, “A ghost! There’s a ghost—”
Through the finger-width hole, bloodshot eyes retreated slightly, revealing half a face as pale as mourning white.
Zhuoxue burned with embarrassment, her eyes near to blazing. She hastily retreated into the rain, turning to see several households light up simultaneously — surely all roused by that scream.
She scanned her surroundings quickly, ducking her head and pressing along the wall. Pity she couldn’t revert to her fox form — she would have bounded away in an instant.
A bold villager braved the rain and emerged, brandishing a lamp with righteous fury. “Where? Who’s playing tricks!”
From afar, someone answered in a tearful voice: “It’s a ghost! My window paper was poked with a hole — I saw her! She has a pair of blood-red eyes!”
The village blazed with lamplight. Villagers emerged wrapped in their robes, corroborating in terror: “Ours too! Who knows when she came!”
“Ours… too!”
“I heard a noise and didn’t think anything of it. Just now I checked — the newly pasted window paper has been punctured!”
“I saw half her face. She looks a bit like Yuxue,” the first person to be frightened said in panic. “Could it be… she really hanged herself?”
“I saw it — there’s a ghost drifting through the thatched hut. It must be her come back!”
“That’s right — I smelled corpse stench too, only I couldn’t find the body.”
Zhuoxue thought to herself: excellent. Not a wasted trip. By happy accident, she had actually become a ghost.
Without warning, a door slammed open.
A woman stood beneath the eaves cradling a swaddling infant, her expression as cold as frontier snow. The sheer look in her eyes proclaimed her indifferent and unfeeling.
Her gaze swept coolly, her posture insufferably haughty, as she said flatly, “What’s all this noise? What is there to fear from a vengeful ghost?”
Zhuoxue, hidden in the shadows, thought: isn’t that Longming’s voice?
But whether it truly was or not, she had to see with her own eyes to know.
Half alarmed, half delighted, she craned her neck and strained every faculty to see from afar — that striking beauty and cold, unfeeling heart. It really was Longming.
Longming still wore the black-haired, dark-eyed appearance of her transformed state. Only she seemed deeply immersed in the role, as though entranced.
Zhuoxue pressed against the wall and shifted a few steps. She refused to believe that she, whose cultivation was not higher than Longming’s, could be more clear-headed than Longming.
She dared not show herself. She could only move to the back of the house and call out to Longming in a hushed voice. But the heavy rain drowned out her words before they could reach Longming’s ears.
The moment Longming appeared, the villagers seemed to have swallowed a calming pill. No one screamed in fright anymore.
She surveyed the crowd and said in a low voice: “Who saw her just now? Step forward.”
The villager who had cried out first raised a trembling hand and said through chattering teeth: “Her eyes were red as blood — she must have come back for revenge!”
Longming said evenly: “Do not fear. It is because she refused to enter the mountain that she met such an end. Let us all pray sincerely to the Fox Immortal for protection. The Fox Immortal will surely capture the evil ghost and keep Qiufeng Village safe.”
Zhuoxue’s eyes nearly popped from her head. Unheard of — could such words really come from Longming’s mouth?
She scrutinized again, but the angle was poor. She could see at most half of Longming’s face and couldn’t make out what was wrapped in the swaddling cloth.
Let us just treat Longming as this Erming, then. Erming had been widowed for years — where did the swaddling infant come from?
The villagers actually obeyed, kneeling in the mud facing the distant mountains, chanting: “We beseech the Fox Immortal to protect Qiufeng… We beseech the Fox Immortal to protect Qiufeng…”
“Enough. The vengeful ghost will not return tonight,” Longming said.
One person spoke up, voice quavering: “Lord, the Ma family strangled their child at dusk. The tribute list will need a new name, but the village… has no other infants left.”
At those words, every household with children pulled their little ones behind them, regardless of age.
Longming fell silent for a long moment, then looked down at the bundle in her arms. “If none of you are willing, I may offer my own child to the Fox Immortal.”
The crowd was overjoyed — yet none dared show their delight.
“It is late. Go home and rest,” Longming said, turning back inside. The moment the door closed, she extinguished the lamp.
The villagers dispersed. Only those few households whose names had been called remained, weeping in place.
Zhuoxue refused to believe Longming was truly ensnared by the nightmare to such a degree. She stationed herself outside Longming’s window for a good quarter-hour, waiting until everyone had returned home and extinguished their lamps, before calling out in a hushed voice.
“Are you awake? If you’re awake, answer me.”
The window flew open with a thud. The cold-faced woman holding the infant glared down at the wall’s base, her gaze as though regarding a dead thing.
Zhuoxue froze for an instant, then turned and ran.
The woman looked like Longming, but in this moment she could not be called Longming. Longming would never look at her like that.
Through the tempest, the woman gathered the infant and strode out in swift pursuit, chasing without a word.
Zhuoxue heard footsteps and didn’t dare look back. She ran as she spoke: “Why are you chasing me? At least say something!”
Longming said nothing. Suddenly, she produced a bone whistle from her sleeve and blew a single shrill note — clearly intent on rousing the villagers who had just gone back inside.
Zhuoxue’s feet slipped. She careened sideways and tumbled down a muddy slope, where dense foliage and tall grass conveniently concealed her form.
She ran back to the thatched hut, dove under the bed, and shook Suli awake, gasping: “We have to go. We can’t stay here.”
Suli startled like a bird flushed from its roost, eyes snapping open to see the drenched Zhuoxue. “Where did you go?”
“Let’s go first.” Zhuoxue cracked the door open, fearing the villagers had already arrived.
Suli said, “There is one place we can hide — only with all this heavy rain these past few days, it might not be pleasant.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Zhuoxue was beyond caring.
Suli gritted her teeth and quickly led her running toward the place.
When they came upon a towering ancient tree, Zhuoxue couldn’t help but startle. This tree looked so familiar — like the one on Lingkong Mountain that had been split in two.
The tree hollow opened high up; they had to climb a stretch to get inside. Water had seeped in, but it was just barely enough to hide two people.
Zhuoxue let out a breath of relief and asked softly: “Where did Erming’s child come from?”
“You went to see her — I knew you were pining for her!” Suli knew immediately.
“She’s supposed to be alone. How is she carrying a swaddling infant?” Zhuoxue pressed.
Suli sighed. “It was left to her by an old friend. The child suffers from a chronic illness — it never grows.”
Zhuoxue thought to herself: this scene surely wasn’t constructed from her memories. She might not be pining for Longming, but Longming was surely pining for Jueguang.
Footnotes
- 耳鸣 | erming | Tinnitus; a near-homophone of 珥鸣 (Erming), the dream persona's name, creating an untranslatable pun.
- 下降头 | xia jiangtou | To cast a hex or curse, derived from Southeast Asian black magic traditions; used colloquially in Chinese to mean placing a sinister spell on someone.
- 揲蓍布卦 | she shi bu gua | An ancient Chinese divination method of casting hexagrams using yarrow stalks, the traditional ritual preceding I Ching readings.
- 蓑衣 | suoyi | A traditional Chinese rain cape woven from straw or coir, worn by farmers and travelers to shed rain.
- 雨打黄梅头 | yu da huangmei tou | A Chinese pun: 'rain strikes the plum season's start,' homophonous with 倒了大霉 (terrible luck), here describing Zhuoxue's rotten timing.
0 Comments