“Looking at the map, we seem to be fairly close to Lintu.” Ye Shijiu unfolded the map and examined it carefully by the firelight, his eyes full of confusion. “But Zixu Mountain is clearly in the southeast of Great An. How did we suddenly end up in the northwest?”
Xiao Chunhe said, “Zixu Mountain’s formations lead in every direction. You lot charged around blindly, so naturally you couldn’t return to where you started.”
“Martial Uncle, you’re finally willing to talk to us?” Ye Shijiu eagerly leaned closer. Even the little bamboo figure tucked inside the front of his robes poked its head out and stared at Xiao Chunhe with two bean-like eyes.
“…” Xiao Chunhe planted a hand over his face and pushed him away.
Ye Shijiu was not annoyed. Grinning, he pulled a paper-wrapped parcel from his sleeve. When he opened it, there was a large, glossy chicken leg inside, still kept warm with true qi. He offered it to Xiao Chunhe as though presenting a prize. “I deliberately saved this last night. Martial Uncle, you eat it.”
Xiao Chunhe was silent for a moment, then tapped him on the forehead. “I’m full. Eat it yourself.”
Ye Shijiu swallowed. “Then let’s split it in half.”
He tore off half and held it out to Xiao Chunhe with an expectant expression.
Helpless, Xiao Chunhe accepted it and took a bite. Ye Shijiu immediately brightened and swallowed his own half of the chicken leg in a few bites. Perhaps in this boy’s mind, as long as a person could eat, nothing could be too terribly wrong.
Once they had shared the chicken leg, Ye Shijiu grabbed the bamboo figure and ran off excitedly to play. Xiao Chunhe watched his lively back and smiled, slowly eating the rest of the meat.
“He worried about you the entire time after you left. He was afraid mentioning you would make Brother Jingming sad, so he didn’t dare bring it up either. He spent quite a while feeling miserable all by himself.” Liang Yun smiled.
“Thank you.” Xiao Chunhe looked at him. “Actually, I…”
“Brother Jingming already told us.” Liang Yun slung an arm around his shoulders with easy familiarity. “If you ask me, you were really too disloyal. Something this serious, and you kept all of us completely in the dark. Even if we couldn’t help much, at least we could have talked you through things when you were upset. Don’t bottle everything up by yourself.”
Xiao Chunhe asked, “What did he tell you?”
“That you took the Myriad Demons Scroll to avenge your mother, and that you returned to Zixu Mountain alone because you didn’t want to drag us into it.” Liang Yun patted his shoulder. “That powerful old fox came after us when both you and Brother Jingming were badly injured. Jingyi and Shijiu were unconscious too, and I’m just an ordinary mortal who couldn’t do anything. You had no choice except to go back with him. Don’t blame yourself. You already did very well.”
Xiao Chunhe pulled up one corner of his mouth, but the faint smile vanished almost at once. “You really believe whatever Yue Jingming tells you.”
Liang Yun looked at him solemnly. “It isn’t that we believe whatever Brother Yue says. We believe you.”
Xiao Chunhe turned his head in surprise.
Liang Yun clenched his fist and thumped him on the shoulder. “I’m an ordinary mortal. I don’t understand any of your techniques. I only trust what I’ve seen for myself. Xiao Chunhe is my brother.”
After thinking for a moment, he took out a heavy gold ingot and stuffed it into Xiao Chunhe’s hand. Lowering his voice, he said, “Whatever you do, don’t let Brother Yue find out, or he’ll lecture me again.”
Xiao Chunhe weighed the gold ingot in his hand. “You’re that afraid of him?”
“To tell you the truth.” Liang Yun sighed. “Whenever he gets angry, I always feel like he’s my father.”
Xiao Chunhe: “…”
Liang Yun patted his shoulder sympathetically. “You don’t have it easy either.”
The corner of Xiao Chunhe’s mouth twitched.
Still, after the two of them made such a fuss over him, Xiao Chunhe’s gloomy mood improved considerably. Even the final bites of chicken leg tasted better.
Yue Jingming returned from the mountains carrying some mushrooms and said they would stew chicken for dinner. Ye Shijiu and Liang Yun became wildly enthusiastic and quickly set up a pot and started the fire. Seeing that, Xiao Chunhe could hardly sit idle, so he gathered some firewood as well.
“Did you bring the seasonings you had before?” Yue Jingming asked him.
“No.” Xiao Chunhe felt his answer sounded rather stiff, so he added, “There are spares inside the scarf I gave you.”
Yue Jingming took the scarf from inside his robes and handed it over. “I don’t have enough true qi. I can’t open it using the formula you taught me before. You do it.”
“Oh.” Xiao Chunhe took it. Their hands brushed accidentally, and Yue Jingming froze for an instant before withdrawing his hand and turning to something else.
Xiao Chunhe opened the storage scarf. The pillow, underclothes, banknotes… everything he had thrown inside was still lying there neatly. But there were now some of Yue Jingming’s belongings as well, probably things he had placed inside before losing his cultivation: several ancient books, little paper figures, pills… and a very familiar hair ribbon.
He stared at the ribbon for a moment, then took it out and examined it by the firelight. A peach-blossom-colored hair ribbon obviously could not belong to Yue Jingming. Xiao Chunhe had owned several similar ones, but he used them casually and threw them away just as casually, so he truly could not tell which one this was—
“Did you find them?” Yue Jingming approached carrying a bamboo tube. The moment he saw the hair ribbon in Xiao Chunhe’s hand, his expression paused.
Xiao Chunhe looked at him. “This hair ribbon is mine?”
Yue Jingming nodded. “Mm.”
“But I haven’t worn a ribbon this gaudy in ages.” Xiao Chunhe stared at him suspiciously. “When is this from?”
Since reuniting, he had preferred dressing similarly to Yue Jingming. Their hair ribbons had to be close in color, and even their clothing styles were mixed together. Yue Jingming never cared about any of it and simply let him arrange things as he liked, unless…
“Before you faked your death.” Yue Jingming looked at the ribbon. “You were resting in the carriage, and your hair ribbon came loose.”
Xiao Chunhe stared at him incredulously. “And then you secretly kept it?”
Yue Jingming said, “I didn’t have time to return it then. Later, after you faked your death, I thought we would never see each other again, so I kept it.”
Xiao Chunhe raised a brow. “You had plenty of chances to return it afterward. Why didn’t you?”
Yue Jingming lowered his eyes. “Did you find the seasonings?”
“Here.” Xiao Chunhe tossed them to him.
Yue Jingming pressed his lips together, his gaze falling on the hair ribbon still in Xiao Chunhe’s hand.
Xiao Chunhe said, “Perfect. Give me back the scarf and the hair ribbon together.”
Yue Jingming said without expression, “These are mine.”
“They were mine originally.” Xiao Chunhe wound the ribbon once around his hand and sighed admiringly. “This color really is pretty—”
Before he could finish, someone snatched away both the hair ribbon and the scarf.
Xiao Chunhe stared at him in shock. “I’m not even with you anymore. Why are you still keeping these things?”
He had been planning to use the scarf to store his newly acquired large gold ingot.
Yue Jingming said blandly, “None of your business.”
With that, he took the seasonings and walked away.
Xiao Chunhe looked down at his empty palm and clicked his tongue.
Perhaps he should have taken the opportunity to tease Yue Jingming, or clung shamelessly and fought to get the things back, using the chance to draw close to Yue Jingming and ease the stiffness between them, just as he had always been so skilled at doing before.
But he did not feel like doing any of it.
He felt a sour, secret joy welling from the bottom of his heart, accompanied by the agonizing pain of the demon-gu. It came more fiercely than any of the half-real, half-feigned pain from before.
…So it had been that early.
Back then, he had thought Yue Jingming far too kind and had already decided to leave… Yet it had begun that early.
Not far away, Ye Shijiu and Liang Yun were heating the wok and pouring in oil. Yue Jingming went over to hand them the seasonings, then turned to feed the horses tethered nearby. The forest was deep and night heavy. Firelight illuminated their faces. With a sudden sizzle, the fragrance of meat and hot oil burst into the air. Ye Shijiu shouted and jumped aside, Liang Yun laughed wildly with the spoon in hand, and Yue Jingming watched them fool around with a smile on his face.
All the colors of the scene around Xiao Chunhe suddenly became vivid.
Yue Jingming lifted his head and looked across the fire at him.
Xiao Chunhe heard the slow beating of that cold, silent heart inside his chest. It was so clear and practiced, as though, unbeknownst to him, this heart had already beaten like this countless times.
Across the fire, Yue Jingming tossed something toward him.
Xiao Chunhe instinctively caught it, expecting the scarf. Instead, it was a pitch-black pill.
Yue Jingming touched a finger to his own lips, signaling for him to swallow it.
Xiao Chunhe hesitated briefly, then put the black pill into his mouth. Bitterness instantly spread across his tongue. His expression did not change as he swallowed it.
The agony from the demon-gu slowly subsided.
Yue Jingming tossed him something else, then turned to rescue the spoon Liang Yun was nearly bending in half and took over the great responsibility of cooking.
Xiao Chunhe looked at the familiar malt candy, put it in his mouth, and immediately felt the sweetness drive away the bitterness of the medicine. His brow moved slightly.
He had always thought he was not afraid of bitterness. In the past, eating candy had merely been another habit copied from ordinary humans, and he had often taken smug pride in how perfectly he observed and imitated them. Only tonight did he finally realize that he was not someone who did not mind bitterness after all.
After taking medicine, he truly did like having a piece of candy in his mouth.
Yue Jingming poured water into the pot, and beads of oil immediately floated across the surface. He was about to put on the lid when someone stopped him.
“It won’t taste good if you cover it and stew it now.” Xiao Chunhe handed him the mushrooms and stared seriously into the pot of chicken, nose twitching. “Add some more firewood.”
“There’s more here!” Ye Shijiu immediately came over carrying a huge armful and was about to shove all of it beneath the pot.
“Little ancestor, are you trying to set the entire mountain on fire?” Liang Yun hurriedly stopped him.
“I’ll do it.” Xiao Chunhe rolled up his sleeves, crouched beside the pot, and concentrated on tending the fire.
Yue Jingming wiped his hands, then heard Xiao Chunhe suddenly ask, “Is your junior brother all right over there?”
“He’s fine. The formation is linked to me. If anything changes, I’ll know immediately.” Yue Jingming said, “Staying too close would actually disturb him.”
“Oh.” Xiao Chunhe leaned closer to sniff the pot. “Add a little more salt.”
“All right.” Yue Jingming added more salt as instructed.
“This meal of ours definitely won’t lose to the restaurants in Lintu.” Liang Yun said. “Pure wild game. Ordinary people could never get something this authentic.”
“Exactly.” Ye Shijiu proudly planted his hands on his hips. “Right, Brother Liang, we seem pretty close to Lintu now. Do you want to go home and visit?”
Liang Yun scratched his hair. “No. I finally got so far away, only to come right back again. If I go home now, Father will definitely scold me. Better to finish delivering the treasure first and return afterward.”
“Hahaha, fair enough.” Ye Shijiu understood perfectly.
Every time he failed to finish the lessons Master assigned, he was nervous about seeing Master too.
The two of them chatted away. Xiao Chunhe, who was tending the fire, suddenly turned and looked at Liang Yun, then very quickly looked away again.
Yue Jingming immediately caught his gaze. “?”
Xiao Chunhe shook his head and continued feeding wood into the fire.
Yue Jingming watched him for a moment, then reached out and plucked a tiny dry leaf from his hair. Afterward, he restrained himself and withdrew his hand.
Xiao Chunhe looked at the shadows swaying across the ground and cleared his throat. “Thanks.”
Yue Jingming answered, “No need to be polite.”