Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 21

A Youth Takes a Master as the Years Deepen; Adrift in Two Places, Each Longs for the Other (Part 2)

Half a month’s journey south out of Longevity Valley, in Xiuzhou, a nunnery sits beside the Wanliu Stream. It took its name from the meaning of the verse “Commit no evil, practice every good, and purify your own mind — this is the teaching of all Buddhas¹” — Jingyi Nunnery.

The carriage drew to a halt before the nunnery gate. Xie Miao followed Jiuru down and looked all around: the place nestled between mountain and water, the scenery exquisite, the nunnery itself quaint and quietly elegant. Inside, ten-odd bhikkhunis, every one of them on intimate terms with Jiuru, exchanged greetings with her. Then Jiuru said only, “I’d like to go back and have a look around,” and no one troubled her after that. Alone, she led Xie Miao toward the rear quarters.

            

Blossoms and foliage grew deep and dense, half concealing a few chan cells. Jiuru knew the way like the back of her hand, and gently pushed open one of the doors. The room within was clean and tidy, without a speck of dust; on the bed, the bedding was folded into perfect squares.

Yet precisely because it was so immaculate, Xie Miao felt that this room didn’t look like a place where anyone still lived.

Questions had already been budding in her heart, and at the sight of this she couldn’t hold them in. “Were you tonsured here at Jingyi Nunnery, back then? This room… is it where you used to live?”

            

From the moment she had stepped into this room, the invisible layer of frost around Jiuru seemed to be melting away bit by bit. Her expression had softened a good deal, and she said quietly, “It is where my junior martial sister used to live.”

Xie Miao was startled. “Qin Jiao?”

[Image: Celadon Lotus Vase (青瓷莲纹花瓶)]

            

Jiuru shook her head. She walked up to a table, took the celadon lotus vase upon it in both hands, and twisted it to the right. With a sharp click, a hidden compartment yawned open in the wall before her, and she reached in and drew out a book. Xie Miao, young and small, could naturally not see over the table — she was just rising on tiptoe to make out what sort of book was hidden so mysteriously when a stern voice sounded from somewhere unseen:

“That’s not yours.”

The voice was faintly familiar — where had she heard it before? As Xie Miao lifted her head in puzzlement, searching for whoever had spoken and from where, Jiuru’s brow creased slightly and she looked straight out the window. “Why are you here?”

            

“Why shouldn’t I be? I grew up in this place too. How is it you’re allowed to come, and I’m not?”

The words had scarcely fallen when the window swung open. Bathed in the golden morning sun, Qin Jiao’s face looked more striking than ever. She leaned aslant against the window, her cold gaze fixed on the book in Jiuru’s hands. Xie Miao knew her in an instant and cried out before she could stop herself.

“This is of course your home.” Jiuru’s feelings at that were exceedingly tangled; though her face stayed placid as ever, she sighed inwardly. “But… after they learned you had killed the innocent, and after they found they could no longer turn you from it, I remember they forbade you ever to set foot inside Jingyi Nunnery again. How did you get in today?”

            

“Rest assured, I’ve no quarrel with them. But to slip in and lodge here a few days without being found out — is that so very hard?”

“You’ve already been staying here for days?” Jiuru caught the meaning hidden in her words, pondered a moment, and all at once it came to her. “You’re hiding from the Dingshan Sect?”

Two months ago, on the day after Shan Lan died, Jiuru had honored her dying request and sent her last letter on to the Dingshan Sect. That sect was the foremost of the entire martial world today, its disciples, elder and younger, bound together in deep affection. Now that news of Shan Lan’s death had reached them, there was no question they would send out hosts of experts to hunt Qin Jiao down and take vengeance for Shan Lan.

            

Qin Jiao sneered. “Hide? You think I fear them? It’s only… only that their people are truly too many and too tiresome. So I mean to leave the Central Plains and go see what else is out there — I doubt I’ll be back for a good while. I only meant to lodge here a few days before going, that’s all. I never expected—” She broke off, her voice turning sharper, edged with anger. “I never expected to find you pawing through the Junior Martial Sister’s things.”

Jiuru lowered her head and gently brushed her fingers over the words written on the book. “I know it is the Junior Martial Sister’s. I never once meant to keep it for myself. But someone now has need of it, and I believe that if her spirit knows in the afterlife, she would consent to my giving it away.”

Someone had need of it? Qin Jiao faltered, then in a flash understood; her gaze went to the little girl listening blankly at the side, and shame rose in her heart. The icy edge around her vanished in an instant, and she said no more.

            

Jiuru went on, “Of course, the Junior Martial Sister is dead, and her effects are yours to oversee as well. If you do not agree…”

Qin Jiao mused, “Even if she practices the heart method written in this book, it will only win her a few more years. A lifespan like any ordinary person’s will still be utterly beyond her. Unless… but that is only a legend. In several hundred years, no one in this world has ever managed it.”

But to one fated to die young, never mind a few more years — even one more day of life would be precious.

            

At this thought, Qin Jiao nodded. “She may practice it. You may not.”

Jiuru smiled faintly. “Do you imagine I have any interest in it?”

“Only reminding you.” Qin Jiao paused, then turned her face toward the distant sky and abruptly changed the subject. “When I came to find you that night, it was to ask you one thing — that matter I once spoke of to you: will you do it with me or not?”

            

“I told you my mind long ago.”

“So you still haven’t changed it? Then there’s nothing left for us to discuss. I must go — if the chance comes, we’ll meet again.”

With that, she turned without the least hesitation. Seeing that she meant to leave, Xie Miao stood dazed for a moment, then suddenly cried out:

            

“You’re not allowed to leave!”

Qin Jiao looked back at her, suspicious. “What more do you want?”

Xie Miao said, “You killed Shan Lan. And Shan Lan was my friend.”

            

Qin Jiao laughed in spite of herself. “That night was the first time you’d ever laid eyes on me, and the first you’d ever laid eyes on Shan Lan — how does that make her your friend? So what do you intend? To avenge your friend and kill me? Have you the skill?”

At this, Xie Miao faltered into bewilderment again. Never mind that she had no skill at all — even if she were truly a supreme master of the martial arts, she could never bring herself to kill with her own hands, no matter how vile the evildoer. She wavered a long while, then said with a knitted brow, “You’ve done wrong, but wrong can be mended. Go to the Dingshan Sect and own your crime!”

Such innocence only made Qin Jiao laugh all the harder. She laughed aloud for a good while before drawling, “I’ll teach you a method. The only person in this world with any hope of killing me is her—” She pointed at the nun standing nearby. “If you want to avenge Shan Lan, you’d do better to ask her for help.”

            

“Aren’t you and Master Jiuru martial sisters? How could I ever ask her to kill you?”

“And what if we are? She’s a great doer of good; I’m a great doer of evil. She’s despised the sight of me for years — of course she may uphold justice above kinship and cut me down.”

“But the two of you clearly love each other dearly. Whatever wrong you’ve done, even if she blames you for it, she’d never have the heart to raise her hand against you. If I begged her to put justice above kinship, wouldn’t that only grieve her more deeply? How could I do such a thing?”

            

These words Xie Miao spoke without thinking, blurting them out by pure instinct — and they struck Jiuru and Qin Jiao at the same instant.

Surprise showed in Jiuru’s eyes. She remembered at once how, twenty days earlier, several Dingshan disciples had come to Longevity Valley to take Shan Lan’s body away, and had asked her about Qin Jiao’s whereabouts. Though she had known where Qin Jiao might be found, she had committed the sin of false speech², shaking her head and saying only that she did not know. Xie Miao had been at her side then, her expression strange, and Jiuru had assumed the girl privately resented her for letting a villain go. Who could have known…

This child thought of others far too much, and Jiuru’s heart — which no worldly wind had ever stirred — now found the feeling strangely hard to bear. She exchanged a glance with Qin Jiao; a moment later, by tacit accord, both looked away.

            

By now, the bewilderment in Xie Miao’s eyes was slowly hardening into resolve. “It’s true that right now I have no means to deal with you,” she said with decision. “But one day I’ll learn them — and when I meet you again, I will not let you go.”

Qin Jiao smiled. “And then you’ll kill me?”

Xie Miao shook her head. “It’s not my place to take your life. But I will hand you over to the authorities — or… to the Dingshan Sect.”

            

The words were, if anything, more naive still — yet this time Qin Jiao did not laugh. She studied the girl for a long while, then heaved a soft sigh. “If that day ever truly comes for you, I’ll be waiting.”

With that she turned and departed. Neither Jiuru nor Xie Miao tried to stop her again, and in a short while her figure was gone from sight.

After all that had just passed, Xie Miao’s heart was in turmoil, and for some reason her body had begun to feel wretched again. She walked slowly to the bed and sat down, pressing a hand to her chest and resting a while; only then did she lift her eyes to Jiuru — hesitating to speak, holding the words back.

            

Jiuru said, “What is it you want to say?”

Xie Miao said, “Is Qin Jiao truly your martial sister? Do the two of you… have a Junior Martial Sister as well?” She put it with the utmost delicacy, but the true meaning within the question, what she truly wished to ask, was this:

— You two are one good and one evil, so unlike in nature. How can you be martial sisters?

            

And she wondered further:

— Your junior sister must be younger than you both. For what reason did she die so young?

“We martial sisters were three in all. Qin Jiao is my Second Martial Sister.” When she reached this point, Jiuru’s gaze settled squarely on Xie Miao; she looked at her a moment longer, then slowly gave forth the second half: “The Junior Martial Sister who belonged to us both was named Qu Lian.”

            

At the final two characters, Xie Miao sank into thought. Something about it felt strange, and all at once a spark of understanding flashed. “May I ask which two characters write Qu Lian?”

Jiuru said, “The qu of ‘melody,’ and the lian of ‘lotus.'”

It dawned on her utterly. “The night I first met Qin Jiao, she seemed to mention a name — ‘Duheng’… Was that you, Master?”

            

Jiuru nodded. “Duheng is my secular name.”

“What a strange coincidence.”

“A coincidence?”

            

Xie Miao said, “I’ve read in medical books that Duheng, Qin Jiao, and Qu Lian are all names of medicines. That all three of you bear such names, and are martial sisters besides — is that not a coincidence?”

Jiuru smiled. “The three of us were all orphans our master picked up in the woods outside Jingyi Nunnery; we had neither names nor surnames to begin with. Because our master was a virtuoso of the apricot grove³, deeply versed in medicine, and because she hoped we would know no sickness or calamity and grow up safe to adulthood, she took medicines for our names, and named each of us thus.”

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The author has something to say:

            

Two more chapters and the childhood arc ends — one for Shejia, one for Fuli — and then I’ll break out the mighty time-skip technique and continue with the grown-up story (picking up from the plot of the first three chapters). That’s probably when the story will go VIP, too.

A few chapters after the adult arc begins, the other two members of the protagonist squad will show up soon enough. The original plan was actually to take the story VIP only after those two had made their entrances — I just didn’t expect the childhood arc to run a little long; I failed to keep the word count down… But the experiences these two go through in these chapters matter enormously to both of them, and neither could be cut, so I’ve kept to this pace all the same.

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