Poetry Chants, Saber Howls – Chapter 7
by Little PandaJianghu Affairs the Heart Yearns For; A Thousand Li to See You Off on First Parting (Part 4)
Su Ying asked in turn, “Where did the two of you hear of her?”
The sun had set and dusk had fallen, the vault of the sky deepening toward blue. Ling Cheng and Xie Miao went inside first, and the maids who followed them in immediately spread brocade cushions over the seats and served Xie Miao a bowl of medicinal soup fresh from the kitchen. She drank it slowly, in small sips, while Ling Cheng recounted everything her father had said.
Su Ying said, “It seems that new jianghu friend of General Ling’s was most likely once a patient of Dharma Master Jiuru’s.”
“He was,” Ling Cheng said. “How did you know?”
“Longevity Valley was originally an unnamed hollow in the wilds south of Hongzhou’s city. Only after Dharma Master Jiuru went into seclusion there did the world grace it with the name ‘Longevity.’ The paths within wind and twist, the vegetation grows thick, and the whole valley is laid with a Five Phases Qimen Array — not just anyone may stroll in and beg for treatment. Without the valley master’s consent beforehand, an intruder loses all sense of direction, unable to advance or retreat, and will never once lay eyes on Dharma Master Jiuru.”
“Then how does one win her consent?”
Surely there wouldn’t be a whole list of bizarre requirements?
“Difficult? Not really,” Su Ying said with a smile. “All it takes is a referral. But the one who refers you must be someone Dharma Master Jiuru knows and trusts — that person stands as your guarantor, and only then may you enter the valley to seek treatment. Now, Dharma Master Jiuru is one who dwells beyond the secular world, hidden away in the mountains and living in deep seclusion, and I have never heard that she keeps any close friends. That is why I guessed General Ling’s new acquaintance must once have been her patient.”
Xie Miao’s mind worked the quicker. “Then if someone wished to seek treatment in Longevity Valley but knew none of the people Dharma Master Jiuru knows, and simply bought a guarantor with silver — would that enrage her into refusing treatment?”
“Of course it would. The moment she learned of it, neither party to that bargain — nor their kin and friends besides — would ever set foot in Longevity Valley again. The jianghu is a place of reeking wind and blood-soaked rain; what martial artist would dare swear they will never be wounded, never stand at death’s door? And so in the martial world, righteous or wicked, chivalrous or demonic, no one dares lightly give offense to a physician of her caliber — one whose miraculous hands can call the dying back to life.”
“So,” Xie Miao said, “you don’t know anyone Dharma Master Jiuru knows either, Aunt Su. Even knowing of her, I could never have sought treatment in Longevity Valley. You didn’t want to see me disappointed — that’s why you never spoke of her to us?”
The moment that guess left her lips, before Su Ying could answer yes or no, realization dawned across Ling Cheng’s face, and she said at once, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh?” Su Ying knew exactly what she meant, yet deliberately kept her face stern. “And what are you sorry to me for?”
“I thought you didn’t care about Shejia’s illness, and that’s why you never told us about Jiuru.” Ling Cheng’s temperament had always been proud and untamed, impatient of correction — but the instant she knew for certain the fault was hers, her apology came without a moment’s hesitation. “I was angry with you just now. I’m sorry.”
Su Ying couldn’t help laughing, and pinched her cheek. Then her gaze moved to Xie Miao, and her heart ached with tenderness. In her two years living at Ling Mansion — begun as repayment of a debt — she had long since come to love these two girls in earnest: one forthright and true-hearted, the other forever thinking of others before herself.
Children of such pure hearts were rare indeed in the households of princes and nobles, and naturally she did not wish to see Xie Miao die young. So over these two years she had asked several friends in the jianghu whether they might somehow find former patients of Dharma Master Jiuru, befriend one, and ask that person to stand as Xie Miao’s guarantor. Who could have known that General Ling, knowing nothing of the matter, had already secured the chance for Xie Miao to enter the valley and seek treatment — one step ahead of her? Truly, heaven shelters the good-hearted.
“Still, this Dharma Master Jiuru really is an odd one,” Ling Cheng went on. “A doctor’s calling is to treat the sick and save lives. As long as someone isn’t a villain who’s done real evil, shouldn’t she treat them? It’s not as if anyone means to shortchange her fees. Why should going to her for treatment absolutely require someone to vouch for you?”
“From antiquity to the present, it’s no strange thing for great talent to come with strange habits,” Su Ying said. “And her art is so superb that even though she permits only the patient to enter the valley alone — kin and friends must wait outside — however anxious those people are, none would dare breathe a word of complaint, for fear of displeasing her.”
Ling Cheng let out an “Ah” on the spot, taken aback. “And what kind of baffling rule is that?”
Xie Miao’s brow furrowed faintly as well. “Then if I truly enter Longevity Valley, Mother and Fuli won’t be able to come see me?”
“Exactly,” Ling Cheng said. “Can’t I go along with Shejia?”
Su Ying was silent a moment, her gaze settling on Xie Miao, her tone growing grave. “If your father agrees to send you to Hongzhou, then afterward you will have to leave us and dwell in Longevity Valley alone for a time. Are you afraid?”
Far from being afraid, Xie Miao felt a faint, secret thrill of excitement.
At last she would not have to spend year upon year, one day exactly like the next, inside these four enclosing walls; she could go out into a far wider world to roam and to see. She thought of the jianghu stories Su Ying had once told her, and though nothing of it showed on her face, inwardly she was already fairly itching to be off. As for the dangers of the jianghu? What in this world could frighten a person more than death? A child who had lived beneath the shadow of an early grave since infancy — what would she care for the so-called reeking wind and rain of blood, things she had only ever heard tell of and never once seen with her own eyes?
Her only regret was that through all those days she would not see her mother, nor Fuli, nor her father and brothers.
Ling Cheng’s mood just then was far worse.
The two of them had been born in the same year, the same month, the same day — Xie Miao had only come into the world half a shichen behind her — and so from the moment they left the womb the two had never known a single parting, having spent more time together than many sisters of the same blood. Ling Cheng could not imagine what a day without Shejia would even look like, and the more she imagined it, the gloomier she grew.
But reluctant was one thing; deep in her heart she understood perfectly well that for Shejia to be free of illness and free of calamity, to live a long, long life, this brief separation was something they had no choice but to endure.
And so, after a moment’s silence, what worried her more was whether Dharma Master Jiuru’s medical art was truly as miraculous as the legends claimed.
“Aunt Su, I refuse to believe she’s the only one in the jianghu with any skill in medicine. Isn’t there any other divine physician?”
Su Ying thought in earnest for a long while. “There is one other, as it happens, by the name of Qin Jiao1—”
“Ehh—” Ling Cheng cut in. “Is that the jiao with the grass radical on top and nine underneath?”
Su Ying looked at her in surprise. “You know of this person?”
Ling Cheng nodded. “I saw it in a storybook once. I always thought the tale was made up — so she actually exists? Strange, though. I’ve read so many jianghu storybooks; how is it not one of them ever mentioned Jiuru?”
“Jiuru is a recluse of the Buddhist faith, far too mysterious a figure — writing her story would be no easy thing,” Su Ying mused. “Qin Jiao is another matter altogether. These past few years she has stood at the very center of the jianghu’s storms.”
“Right, right — the story said Qin Jiao is styled the ‘Poison King,’ that she’s no doctor at all, that her heart is cruel and her hands ruthless, that she kills without blinking and has provoked the outrage of the entire martial world—” Ling Cheng was all set to go on: of all the jianghu storybooks she had ever read, it was this World’s Foremost Poison King Qin Jiao and the World’s Foremost Enchantress Zhao Yao who did the most evil and behaved the most hatefully — how could such a person possibly treat Shejia? But before she could finish, she saw Su Ying’s expression growing graver and graver, and she broke off, startled.
“Medicine and poison share one house; whoever masters poison must also master medicine. As for her character…” Su Ying paused, her gaze drifting somewhere far away. “Jianghu rumor is not necessarily truth. What the ears hear is unreliable, and even what the eyes see may not be real. To know a person, you must watch them with your heart.”
Xie Miao had listened to their talk in silence for a long while. Hearing this, she tilted her head and studied Su Ying’s expression, then couldn’t help asking, “Aunt Su, do you know Qin Jiao?”
Su Ying shook her head. “I have never once met her face. Whatever put that idea in your head?”
Xie Miao looked at her wonderingly. “Then why do you speak fair of her?”
Su Ying was quiet for a moment. Then a faint smile crossed her face, and she said with great seriousness, “Precisely because I do not know her, I cannot lightly pass judgment on her character. Even if she cares nothing for such empty names, we must never carelessly wrong a good person.”
The reasoning was sound; both Xie Miao and Ling Cheng nodded.
They had talked a long while, and seeing how late it had grown — and knowing Xie Miao could not abide lost sleep — Su Ying urged the two of them to rest early.
Ling Cheng was a restless sleeper. However deep the bond between her and Xie Miao, they could not share a bed, or her tossing and turning in the night would surely disturb the other girl. For that reason Ling Mansion kept a guest room, right beside Ling Cheng’s own bedchamber, set aside for Xie Miao: swept by servants every day, its bedding changed for fresh at frequent intervals, so that whenever Xie Miao spent the night at the mansion she could go straight to rest.
The calming incense burning in the room was the kind she always used, yet lying in bed, turning over everything she had heard that day, her heart still fluttered with it all. She tossed and turned and could not sleep, and at last simply opened her eyes and watched the shadow of the moon on the gauze window, thinking in earnest: Would there be many jianghu folk in Longevity Valley? Once she arrived there, she would no longer be a County Princess — how was she supposed to get along with those people? And if her illness truly could be cured, then on the day she returned to the capital and came home, when she saw Fuli again — would it at last be her turn to tell Fuli stories of the outside world?
The thoughts crowded in thicker and thicker. She barely slept the whole night through, enduring until dawn.
The consequence of all this:
—Early the next morning, her head had begun to grow dizzy and achy, her chest heaved without pause, and her breathing came shorter and shorter.
The maid attending her was frightened nearly out of her wits at the sight of such symptoms, and hurried to report it to Lady Ling, née Cui. Lady Ling urgently summoned a physician to treat her and sent a runner with word to Consort Pei, the Princess Consort of Rui. The whole household, high and low, was thrown into alarm and bustle. Ling Cheng watched the figures hurrying to and fro, sitting alone at the foot of the porch steps with her arms around her knees, her heart twisting with pain at every beat, her face utterly blank and at a loss.
At times like this, all her everyday confidence and fight deserted her, and she felt profoundly useless.
She didn’t know what she was supposed to do for Shejia.
There was nothing she could do for Shejia.
Fortunately the physician applied acupuncture in good time, and Xie Miao’s breathing gradually quieted. A little later she drank down a bowl of medicine and at last sank into deep sleep. Consort Pei had already rushed to Ling Mansion; she stood at the bedside, gazed for a long while at her daughter’s sleeping face, then took out a handkerchief and dabbed the wet corners of her eyes. She turned her head and spoke with the physician at length, deliberated a while, and then turned and left the room.
“Aunt.” Ling Cheng rose from the steps and bowed to Consort Pei, tears brimming in her own eyes, meaning to apologize. She didn’t know why Shejia’s illness had flared so suddenly; turning it over and over in her mind, nine times out of ten the blame was her own — if Shejia hadn’t gone out yesterday to find her…
But Pei Huirong laid a hand on her shoulder, cutting her off, and asked softly, “Fuli, last night your uncle spoke with me. Your father has learned of a famed physician in Hongzhou who may be able to cure Shejia’s illness?”
Ling Cheng nodded and relayed to her everything Su Ying had said about Jiuru — while privately wondering whether Shejia’s body, in the state it was in now, could truly hold up for the journey to Hongzhou.
Pei Huirong harbored the very same worry and understood her mind. “I have just asked the physician. Once Shejia has recovered, so long as they take care on the road and the carriage travels slowly, a long journey is not impossible.”
As for Prince Rui’s misgivings — under circumstances such as these, she no longer heeded them.
Nothing in this world mattered more than her daughter’s life. Come what may, today she would talk her husband around and have Shejia escorted to Longevity Valley in Hongzhou to seek treatment as soon as possible.
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