Qian Xuelang was in no hurry to tell the story. He first returned the horsetail whisk, then sat with Ren Yijue on a long bench outside the house.
The weather was clear today, and the sunlight pleasantly warm. Qian Xuelang’s hair was white with frost and his skin whiter than snow. Bathed in the bright sun, his entire figure seemed faintly luminous.
Ren Yijue found the sight dazzling, though he could not tell whether it was the golden sun that dazzled him, or the snow-like Jade Beauty beside him.
“I can tell you about this person, but there is no hurry. First, listen to something about my master,” Qian Xuelang said. “Before my master died, he cast a divination and received a deeply inauspicious result. Before leaving, he therefore gave me one instruction.”
Ren Yijue could not help asking, “What difficult matter was it? If the divination foretold disaster, why did your master still go?”
Qian Xuelang said calmly, “What difference do fortune and misfortune make? If there is something you intend to do, you do it when success is easy, and you do it when success is difficult.”
“If so, why perform the divination at all?” Ren Yijue asked, deliberately needling him.
Qian Xuelang shook his head. “I don’t know either. Master was always like that. If he wished to divine something, he divined it. If he wished to play the qin, he played it. If he did not wish to speak to people, he could go many years without saying a single word to anyone.”
When something followed one’s nature, what better reason could there be?
Ren Yijue had nothing to say to that and could only ask, “Then what instruction did your master leave you?”
“My master said, ‘If I return, then nothing need be done. If I do not return, I have no worldly possessions I cannot bear to leave behind. Whether you wish to live here or not is entirely up to you. But I do not want others touching my body. If news reaches you, no matter what happens, you must come find me and bring back my sword and my corpse.’”
The instruction seemed oddly incomplete. Ren Yijue thought, If death is involved, would an enemy really care what happened to the corpse? If he died in a duel, what would the opponent want with a body?
His thoughts shifted, and suddenly he understood. A soft “Ah” escaped him. “So your master went to participate in the Demon-Extermination War of those years?”
Several decades earlier, the righteous and heterodox paths had fought a great war. If that was the conflict, then indeed there had been demonic cultivators who stole the bodies of righteous cultivators to practice evil arts.
“Yes.” Qian Xuelang nodded.
The explanation made sense to Ren Yijue, and a dozen safe solutions immediately occurred to him. Unfortunately, one slipped out of his mouth. “If he was worried demonic cultivators might use his corpse, why not ask someone to burn it completely?”
The words were exceptionally cold and brutal. Even Ren Yijue startled himself after saying them and instinctively glanced at Qian Xuelang’s expression.
Ren Yijue might resent this icy man and become angry enough to want to bite him several times, but talking to him was extraordinarily relaxing. It was difficult not to say things he ordinarily knew better than to say.
“I don’t know either.” Qian Xuelang shook his head.
Ren Yijue hurriedly changed the subject. “The sword is here. I have seen it. But where was your master buried?”
“I was just getting to that. Don’t be impatient.” Qian Xuelang said. “Others were not permitted to touch him, but there was one exception.”
Ren Yijue understood immediately. “The person you remembered must be that exception.”
“Correct. He was my master’s friend. My master had several friends, but he and this person understood each other best,” Qian Xuelang said. “Perhaps they understood each other a little too well. This friend fell deeply in love with my master.”
Ren Yijue: “…”
Master and disciple really do not have to resemble each other in this particular way.
“Master said, ‘If he asks for it, give it to him,’” Qian Xuelang continued. “Presumably Master thought a body was useless once he was dead, and it could at least offer some consolation. That man had traveled beside my master. Now one lived and one died, and he was devastated. I told him Master’s final words, and he told me that the road of the Dao was long and there was no need to make Master travel any farther. I took that as his request, so I agreed. I saw Master one final time, took the sword, and left. That was the end of it.”
Only then did Ren Yijue truly sense that He Tianjun too had been a man without attachment.
Romance, longing, and all the tender complications of love were things that perhaps only this master and disciple could describe with such complete detachment, as though discussing something entirely ordinary.
Yet such detachment somehow resembled deep feeling as well.
“What final words did your master leave?”
The dead were gone, but the living still needed something to hold onto. Ren Yijue did not feel it proper to ask too much about that friend, so he steered the conversation somewhere less personal.
“‘All is empty. A hundred years, a thousand years, all are of no use,’” Qian Xuelang said. “When Master first met me and tried to persuade me to return to the mortal world, he said the same thing.”
Ren Yijue fell silent. If an ordinary person had left such final words, he would have assumed they had died utterly disillusioned. But He Tianjun had been an emotionless Daoist of extraordinary cultivation, at least as Qian Xuelang described him. Ren Yijue could not tell what the words meant.
“At the time, I thought…” Qian Xuelang suddenly slowed. “I thought perhaps Master regretted it.”
Ren Yijue failed to hold back. “Ah?”
“What?” Qian Xuelang looked at him, puzzled.
Ren Yijue froze. “No… I only… didn’t expect…”
“Didn’t expect what?”
“…I didn’t expect Your Excellency to arrive at such a normal conclusion…”
Qian Xuelang frowned slightly. “You are truly rude.”
Ren Yijue agreed. “…That was rude of me.”
“What should a person look like when they die?” Qian Xuelang looked at him for a moment, light as cloud. It did not truly sound like a question, and soon his gaze drifted away again. “I have never experienced death in this life, but I imagine it must feel very unpleasant. Master… was extremely happy.”
“In my entire life, I had never seen Master smile that way. It was sweet as honey, as though he had not died at all, but attained the Dao.”
Happy as though he had attained the Dao. Ren Yijue could not help shaking his head inwardly. Only Qian Xuelang could say something like that. This time, he did not dare voice the thought.
“As for that man…” Qian Xuelang paused. “He looked more like the one who had died. Afterward, he always believed Master’s weapon had not been good enough, that something in its forging had fallen short. He thought Master had left those instructions because he was worried about my safety, so he specially forged Honglu for me.”
Ren Yijue was surprised. “So Honglu was forged by that… mm… Senior?”
“Correct,” Qian Xuelang said. “Wentian was forged by him as well.”
He did not explain what “Wentian” was, but Ren Yijue had already guessed that it was the proud sword inside the house. The person was proud, the sword was proud, and even the name was proud.
Elio’s Notes: Wentian (问天) literally means “Question Heaven.” The Chinese chapter title, 红鹭问天, can be read both as the two weapon names, Honglu and Wentian, and as the phrase “Honglu Questions Heaven.”
“But Wentian did not break,” Qian Xuelang said. “It was never truly the sword’s fault.”
Ren Yijue sighed softly. “The sword has lost its master and is hated by the person who forged it. No wonder it cries so mournfully.”
By this point, Ren Yijue had already guessed who that Senior must be. Someone capable of forging two peerless divine weapons, Wentian and Honglu, powerful enough to participate in the Demon-Extermination War and survive it, could only be one person.
There was only one possibility: the forgemaster Wei Wenfeng.
Qian Xuelang noticed the change in his expression and suddenly asked, “You guessed, didn’t you?”
Ren Yijue looked faintly embarrassed. “…If I said no, would that seem rather insincere?”
Qian Xuelang watched him silently.
“Fine. It is the forgemaster Wei Wenfeng, isn’t it?”
Qian Xuelang suddenly smiled. The smile, however, resembled something carved from ice and sculpted from snow, without the slightest trace of living warmth.
“Exactly. People truly do concern themselves only with the living.”
There was no blame in his voice. He had merely confirmed once again something he had long understood.
Ren Yijue felt as though someone had struck him heavily in the stomach. Sourness churned inside him, and bitterness rose in his mouth. He studied Qian Xuelang again and again, then suddenly felt that perhaps this way was better.
If Qian Xuelang became a man of feeling, he would suffer far too much.
Qian Xuelang asked again, “You and Wei Wenfeng are alike. Both of you are full of feeling. Just now, none of this had anything to do with you. Why are you so sad?”
Ren Yijue immediately found him detestable again.