Half a month later.
Liang Yun reined in his horse and raised his whip to point at a dark speck in the distance. “That’s Zhongzhou. We should reach it in another five or six days. It’s getting late, so let’s camp here and eat.”
Xiao Chunhe jumped down from his horse and worked the soreness from his body. “Sleeping rough again? It’s not as if we’re short on money. Can’t we find a decent inn and rest there?”
Liang Yun laughed. “The Myriad Demons Scroll keeps pointing us along shortcuts through the mountains and forests, avoiding cities and villages. Otherwise we could never have come this far so quickly. Hang in there a little longer, Brother Xiao. Look, even Shijiu isn’t complaining.”
Xiao Chunhe threw his head back with a long sigh. “Of course he isn’t. That kid is practically a little monster.”
Ever since the boy had gotten enough to eat and drink and had adults looking after him, his lively, restless side had gradually emerged. Although he could neither hear nor speak, he was intensely curious about the world around him. He rode horses, chased dogs, caught snakes, climbed trees, had energy to spare, and could eat an astonishing amount. He was a little terror incarnate.
Even someone as patient as Yue Jingming had eventually been forced to give him water made from a Yingshi Talisman, just so the boy would not manage to lose himself somewhere.
“Shijiu, don’t run off.” Yue Jingming tied his horse to a tree and looked up at the boy who was nearly disappearing into the branches.
Ye Shijiu’s Daoist robe flashed between the leaves. Before long, he leapt down from another tree.
“Good heavens, you scared me!” Liang Yun was starting the fire and nearly jumped himself.
Ye Shijiu beamed at him and lifted the hem of his robe, which he had been using as a pouch. More than a dozen wild fruits the size of fists lay inside. He gestured for Liang Yun to eat.
“They’re not poisonous, are they?” Liang Yun picked one up and sniffed it.
“They’re fine. The kid ate one up in the tree just now.” Xiao Chunhe came over and took two. “We can mash these for juice and use it on roast pheasant later. Should taste pretty good.”
Ye Shijiu watched his lips, and his eyes lit up.
“You’re the greediest eater of the lot.” Xiao Chunhe tossed a fruit to Yue Jingming. “Try the fruit your son picked.”
Yue Jingming caught it and said to Liang Yun, “I’ll go find water. Brother Liang, keep an eye on them.”
Liang Yun waved a hand. “Don’t worry, Brother Yue. Go on, and come back soon.”
The moment Yue Jingming moved, Ye Shijiu put down his fruit and tried to follow, only for Xiao Chunhe to stop him with a finger against his forehead. “Stay here and help with the fire. Otherwise you get no dinner tonight.”
Ye Shijiu blinked. In the end, his love of food won over his desire to explore the wilderness, and he obediently ran over to Liang Yun to help pass him firewood.
Xiao Chunhe snorted with amusement and caught up to Yue Jingming in a few strides. “Brother Jingming, I’ll go with you.”
Yue Jingming glanced at his leg. “How is your injury?”
“Much better.” Xiao Chunhe looked miserable. “Though it cramped up again halfway here.”
He had rarely ridden horses before. At the beginning, the insides of his thighs had been rubbed raw, leaving him limping for several days. At night his waist and back ached so badly he could not sleep, so he would whine in front of Yue Jingming. Daoist Yue was kindhearted after all. Pestered beyond endurance, he had personally compounded herbs to improve circulation and disperse bruising for him. Xiao Chunhe had then tried to get Yue Jingming to apply the medicine for him, only to be sternly refused, and had finally given up.
Still, every few days he would complain that this hurt or that ached. Yue Jingming had practically grown used to it.
“Sit down. Let me see.” Yue Jingming pointed at a nearby rock.
It was not that he was being considerate. If this half-demon felt unwell, he would drag Yue Jingming awake even in the middle of the night, wailing that he was dying. It always slowed their journey.
“See? I knew my wife still cared about me.” Xiao Chunhe dropped onto the rock without ceremony and hitched up the hem of his robe. “Come on, give it a rub. Ye Shijiu is always stuck to you, so I’ve been too embarrassed to say anything.”
Yue Jingming said, “You are capable of embarrassment?”
Xiao Chunhe smiled. “Of course. Every time I look at you and desire overwhelms me, I force myself to hold back.”
Yue Jingming had learned to ignore his indecent talk completely. He went down on one knee, lifted Xiao Chunhe’s lower leg onto his own, and found that the man’s muscles were indeed badly cramped. Somehow, he had still endured it all the way here.
Xiao Chunhe cried out in pain. “Gentler… ah… gentler, gentler! I’m dying, I really am!”
Yue Jingming poured true qi into the acupoints and kneaded the cramped muscles loose. “Do not shout.”
Tears sprang to Xiao Chunhe’s eyes from the pain. “Then let me kiss you.”
“…” Yue Jingming increased the pressure in his hands.
Xiao Chunhe’s vision instantly went black from the pain. He grabbed Yue Jingming by the shoulder and gritted his teeth. “If it weren’t for you, why would I have to suffer all this? Right now I could be reclining among perfumed beauties, drinking wine. Why am I putting myself through this?”
Yue Jingming frowned. “You practice both magic and martial arts, yet your constitution is so poor. It must be because of the demon-gu.”
Xiao Chunhe dropped his forehead onto Yue Jingming’s shoulder and wailed, “My life really is so miserable.”
Yue Jingming stiffened and did not move. Xiao Chunhe cracked one eye open to peek at him. “At a time like this, aren’t you supposed to comfort me?”
Yue Jingming said calmly, “Sit up. You haven’t shed a single tear.”
“…” Xiao Chunhe sighed bleakly. “You’ll be the death of me sooner or later.”
Yue Jingming thought for a moment, then took the fruit he had cleaned from his sleeve and held it out to him.
Xiao Chunhe stared at him. “I already had one.”
“This one is sweet,” Yue Jingming said.
Xiao Chunhe took it and stared at the fruit. The one he had eaten earlier really had been terribly sour, so he had secretly thrown it away. Foxes did not actually like fruit much, but when he saw Yue Jingming and the others eating it, he copied them. Unfortunately, he never knew how to choose and somehow always ended up with the sourest one.
“You’re not tricking me, are you?” Xiao Chunhe eyed it suspiciously for a long time before finally taking a bite.
Tsk.
“Wait here. There’s a stream ahead. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve filled the water.” Yue Jingming took Xiao Chunhe’s water flask along with his own.
Xiao Chunhe leaned against a tree with the fruit between his teeth and pressed a hand over his heart through his robes. The thing seemed to be beating a little too fast. He felt as though warm sunlight were spilling over him, and all he wanted was to roll around comfortably in it a few times.
After Yue Jingming filled the flasks, he looked up and found himself staring across the stream at an enormous, plump pheasant.
He remembered hearing a junior brother mention that someone in the town below Zushan Mountain had once rescued a fox. Out of kindness, the man decided that the fox’s suffering came from having killed too much, so he fed it nothing but vegetables and fruit every day. Before long, the fox died of malnutrition. The man wept over its body, but there was nothing he could do by then.
A person could survive on dry flatbread and vegetables three times a day, but a fox needed meat every day.
Foxes are cutest when they’re round and chubby.
Yue Jingming could no longer remember which junior sister had said it. The words simply came back to him now, and he found himself picturing a round, chubby Xiao Chunhe. A trace of a smile flickered through his eyes.
An hour later.
Liang Yun stared at the three enormous pheasants in Yue Jingming’s hands. “You actually went and caught pheasants? They’re huge!”
They had been in such a hurry these past few days that they had eaten nothing but dry rations.
Xiao Chunhe had been staring at the three pheasants all the way back. At Liang Yun’s words, he merely swallowed in silence.
“We happened to come across them, so I brought them back.” Yue Jingming put the pheasants down.
Ye Shijiu circled the birds excitedly, his admiration beyond words. He actually cupped his hands and bowed to Yue Jingming.
Yue Jingming said, “…”
“Hurry, hurry, clean them up.” Xiao Chunhe urged them on. “Those fruits finally have a use. I’ve got salt and cumin. We’re putting all of it on today!”
The four divided up the work and soon had the pheasants cleaned. They soaked them in salt and wild-fruit juice to remove the gamey smell, skewered them on branches, and set them over the fire. By then, night had fully fallen.
The moon shone bright among sparse stars, insects chirped, and the aroma of roast pheasant gradually spread through the air. The golden skin seemed almost to radiate holy light, glistening and sizzling as fat dripped into the flames with sharp crackles.
Xiao Chunhe sprinkled cumin powder over the birds, sniffed, and stared with shining eyes. “Today I’m eating until I’m completely satisfied!”
Liang Yun laughed. “Once we reach Zhongzhou, I’ll take you to my family’s restaurant. Their scallion-scented jade chicken is excellent, and so are the Longjing shrimp and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall. Pair them with a cup of mellow, sweet Phoenix Wine and it’s indescribably good. I have to eat there every time I go.”
Xiao Chunhe slung an arm around his shoulders and laughed. “Good, good, good! Then I, Xiao, did not make this friend for nothing.”
Ye Shijiu rapidly signed something to Yue Jingming, his eyes full of anticipation.
By now Yue Jingming understood most of his gestures. He deliberately slowed his speech. “Of course we’ll bring you.”
Ye Shijiu happily bowed to Liang Yun again.
The pheasants were large, but the four of them were all at an age when they could eat. The feast was soon divided cleanly among them, and Ye Shijiu and Liang Yun split two more dry flatbreads to fill the remaining space in their stomachs.
Xiao Chunhe lay contentedly beside the fire, patting his belly. He picked up Yue Jingming’s Clear Breeze Sword and examined the patterns on it. “Rongxi, did you come down the mountain just to subdue demons and eliminate evil?”
“Mm.” Yue Jingming was dividing up sachets that repelled insects and mosquitoes while Ye Shijiu watched and learned beside him.
“Subduing demons and eliminating evil sounds great, but unfortunately I don’t know any magic.” Liang Yun said, “My greatest dream is to wander the jianghu upholding justice, a free and unfettered hero. My family won’t allow it, though.”
“Subduing demons, eliminating evil, upholding justice… that’s all a little too vague.” Xiao Chunhe crossed one leg over the other. “All I want is chicken and wine every day, plus more money than I could ever spend. I wouldn’t call that wasting my life.”
“That isn’t wasting your life?” Liang Yun said. “Don’t you have any ideals? Anything you absolutely must do?”
“I do.” Xiao Chunhe drawled, “Marry Yue Jingming.”
By now Liang Yun had long realized that the two of them had not actually reached that point. Besides, Yue Jingming was a real Daoist and probably had no intention of marrying or having children. With some regret, he said, “That may be difficult. Brother Jingming, you truly won’t consider it?”
Yue Jingming tossed each of them a medicinal sachet. “I have no such intention.”
Xiao Chunhe clutched his sachet and looked devastated. “See? He’s a heartless man.”
Ye Shijiu thought he was truly crying and offered him a wrinkled handkerchief.
“Hey, hey, keep it for yourself, good boy.” Xiao Chunhe tilted his head away and, taking advantage of the fact that Ye Shijiu could not hear him, muttered, “Filthy child. You’re grimy enough already.”
Ye Shijiu only smiled at him.
The boy was already as lovely as carved jade, and the yuan core nourishing him made him even more so. Xiao Chunhe pinched his cheeks and pulled them hard to either side. “My, Little Ye, you look delicious. Roast you and sprinkle on a little cumin, and I bet you’d smell even better than the pheasant.”
Under Xiao Chunhe’s eerie stare, Ye Shijiu’s scalp prickled. He sprang up and hid behind Yue Jingming.
Xiao Chunhe burst out laughing at the success of his prank. Liang Yun joined in frightening the child. “You’d better behave, Shijiu, or the wolves will come carry you off.”
Ye Shijiu gripped Yue Jingming’s sleeve, only to discover amusement in Yue Jingming’s eyes too. He immediately realized the three men were teasing him and turned his back in a sulk, refusing to look at any of them.
The four chatted idly for a long while before finally falling asleep around the fire.
Yue Jingming meditated as usual. Xiao Chunhe slept curled beside him, Liang Yun lay spread-eagled on the other side of the fire, and Ye Shijiu slept on a thick branch above their heads, arms and legs dangling while he basked in the fire’s warmth.
Crack.
The sound was almost imperceptible in the night. Xiao Chunhe’s eyes snapped open, and he saw that Yue Jingming was already looking deep into the woods.
A dozen or so breaths, some heavy and some faint, came from different directions. Xiao Chunhe lowered his voice. “Demons?”
Yue Jingming lowered his eyes. “People.”
Understanding, Xiao Chunhe half-closed his eyes and pretended to sleep.
Before long, a hooked branch reached out from the darkness and caught Liang Yun’s bundle. Just as it began to drag the bundle away, the snoring Liang Yun suddenly sprang up, seized it, and gave it a hard yank. A figure came tumbling out of the shadows.
Yue Jingming and Xiao Chunhe rose almost simultaneously, one drawing his sword and the other his fan. In moments, they had knocked everyone hiding in the darkness into the open.
But the group quickly realized something was wrong. These people were neither assassins nor bandits. Every one of them was filthy and disheveled, so thin they were little more than skin and bone. They had no ability to resist at all and huddled together with their arms over their heads.
Yue Jingming asked, “Who are you?”
They seemed terrified, trembling too badly to answer. A child about Ye Shijiu’s age crouched at the back, snatched one of the discarded bones from the ground, and shoved it into his mouth.
At once, the others began fighting frantically over the scraps.
“Hey—” Xiao Chunhe could not help calling out.
Those were nothing but bones the four had gnawed clean and casually thrown aside, yet these people treated them as life-saving delicacies and even began fighting over them.
Liang Yun stood frozen in shock. “Are they… human?”
No one knew when Ye Shijiu had woken in the tree. He jumped down, gestured twice at Liang Yun, then took a dry flatbread from the bundle and handed it to the nearest person.
The gaunt strangers descended on that one piece of bread like starving wolves. Some still tried to steal the rest of the bundle, but the sword in Yue Jingming’s hand frightened them too much to come closer.
“Are they under some kind of evil spell?” The sour stench coming from them made Xiao Chunhe instinctively retreat a step.
“They really are human. They look like starving ghosts reborn,” Liang Yun said in amazement.
“It does not look like sorcery.” Yue Jingming frowned. “Perhaps the smell of roast pheasant drew them here.”
Ye Shijiu silently put a hand to his forehead, pointed at his own stomach, then at the dry rations inside the bundle.
Yue Jingming suddenly understood. “Refugees?”
Ye Shijiu nodded vigorously.
Of the three adults, one was a Daoist who had spent years cultivating in the deep mountains, one was a fox demon who knew little beyond pleasure and revelry, and one had been raised in wealth and privilege since childhood. None of them knew much about the hardships of ordinary people. Ambushed in the dead of night by a group of refugees who no longer looked human from hunger, they had somehow gone from suspecting demonic arts to evil spells without grasping the obvious. Fortunately, Ye Shijiu had seen refugees several times while at Xingyang Daoist Temple and cleared up the misunderstanding.
“They’re pitiful. Here, take all of this.” Liang Yun opened the bundle and took out every bit of dry food, only to be instantly swallowed by the crowd.
Yue Jingming flew forward and hauled him back out. Seeing the refugees wolfing down the food and fighting over it, he stopped them several times, then divided the water among them as well.
Xiao Chunhe watched with mixed feelings, then took Ye Shijiu with him to gather more fruit for them.
Only after the frantic refugees had eaten their fill did they seem to recover some trace of humanity. Their previously empty, numb eyes began to move again.
“Th-thank you, great heroes… thank you for saving our lives…” The child who had first eaten the bones dropped to his knees with a thud and repeatedly kowtowed to them.
“No need, no need. It was nothing.” Liang Yun helped him up. “Where did you come from? How did you end up like this?”
“We came from Yongyuan. There was a great drought there a year ago. Nothing would grow, and the court did nothing, so we fled south all the way to Zhongzhou.” The boy wept. “There have been disasters everywhere. We finally reached Zhongzhou, but the prefectural authorities refused to let us into the city. That would have been one thing, but then they drove us out to the outskirts, saying they would give us somewhere to settle. Who knew… who knew…”
“Who knew they would drive us into Prince Wenren’s hunting ground and make us prey for them to hunt for sport!” Even remembering it terrified him. “They denied us food and water and forced us to fight wild beasts. So many people died… A few of us were lucky enough to escape into these mountains, but we were too afraid to leave. We could only wait here to die…”
“What?!” Liang Yun flew into a rage. “Prince Wenren, Zhou Ran, is His Majesty’s own younger brother by the same mother. He’s famous for being virtuous and benevolent. How could he do something like this?”
Xiao Chunhe was less impulsive. “If you escaped, there are plenty of wild animals in these mountains. You could hunt them to fill your stomachs. Why starve yourselves like this?”
The boy answered fearfully, “There’s an immortal master beside Prince Wenren who keeps his eyes covered. Once he has looked at someone, he can find them no matter where they go. Prince Wenren forbade us from making fires or eating anything, saying every living thing in the hunting ground was his private property. If we were caught, we would be tortured until we wished we were dead.”
“Outrageous!” Xiao Chunhe snapped. “Everything in these mountains belongs to Heaven and Earth. Since when did it become his alone?”
“Calm yourself.” Yue Jingming stopped him, then asked the boy, “Is the immortal master beside Prince Wenren surnamed Cen?”
The boy hesitated. “I-I don’t know his surname. I only know Prince Wenren favors him greatly, and… and he likes digging out people’s eyes and boiling them to eat. We’re all terrified of him.”
By then, the others had also eaten their fill and began talking over one another about the atrocities committed in the hunting ground.
In the firelight, Yue Jingming noticed similar marks on all their wrists, each faintly giving off black qi. “Where did the patterns on your wrists come from?”
“They branded us when we were driven into the hunting ground.” One person pulled up his sleeve. “It’s a maple leaf.”
“Is something wrong with it?” Xiao Chunhe looked at Yue Jingming.
“There is a weak formation on it. Perhaps that is how the man tracks them,” Yue Jingming said.
The refugees turned white with terror. “What do we do? If they find us, they’ll make us wish we were dead! Daoist Master, please save us!”
“I will do my best,” Yue Jingming said.
The formation was weak but complicated. Even Yue Jingming had to spend considerable effort drawing talismans and breaking it. Seeing him tire, Xiao Chunhe voluntarily stepped forward to help.
In a pause between drawing talismans, Yue Jingming glanced at him. “Thank you.”
“No need. I just can’t stand seeing humans behave worse than demons,” Xiao Chunhe snorted.
Even as he said it, he quietly moved closer to Yue Jingming and transferred some of his own true qi to him.
For the first time, Yue Jingming clearly felt Xiao Chunhe’s true qi. Unlike the true qi of cultivators, it carried a faint warmth and felt light as air, almost like… those two tufts of soft white fur on a fox’s ears.
After they erased the marks from the refugees’ wrists, the two went to an empty part of the forest to meditate and recover their true qi.
A full moon shone high in the night sky. The forest was utterly still. Yue Jingming was circulating the No-Thought One-Mind Art when a sudden weight settled in his lap.
He slowly opened his eyes and found a little bundle of fur there. He froze.
The fox was much smaller than the illusory corpse beneath the cliff, no larger than an ordinary fox, but terribly thin. Even someone who had never raised a fox could tell that its health was poor. Its red fur looked dull beneath the moonlight, and the white fur over its chest and belly was stained with old blood. The injuries seemed to have been there for a long time.
In the moonlight, Yue Jingming cautiously reached out to touch the little fox. “Xiao Chunhe?”
Its warm fur was just like Xiao Chunhe’s true qi, impossibly soft beneath his fingers and rising and falling with each shallow breath. As if sensing his warmth, the great fluffy tail curled affectionately around Yue Jingming’s wrist, leaving only a snow-white tip peeking from his sleeve and resting against his palm.
Yue Jingming knew how to take a person’s pulse, but he had no idea how one took a fox’s. He sat stunned for a long moment before carefully lifting the animal and tucking it against his chest, circulating true qi through his own body to nourish its meridians.
The fox seemed to make a tiny sound, then curled peacefully in his arms and fell asleep. The pendant on its ear rested tight against Yue Jingming’s chest, the only cool point amid all that warmth.
Yue Jingming lowered his eyes to the fox in his arms. After a long while, he reached out and gently pinched the pointed ear bearing the pendant.
The fox’s ear twitched lightly in his palm.
Yue Jingming pressed his lips together. Half of him found this entire situation absurd, his reason warning him not to cross the line. The other half could not stop thinking about the story his junior sister had told, of the man who had raised a fox only to starve it to death.
If… if he were the one raising Xiao Chunhe, he certainly would not let the fox become this thin.
The moment the thought arose, his heart stirred. Yue Jingming abruptly snatched his hand back and sat rigid beneath the moonlight, stiff as stone.
Utterly absurd.