[Revised TL] 27 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 27

The JJWXC raws are here. Please support Musuli if you can! The novel is very cheap to buy; this guide tells you how to use JJWXC.

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Chapter 27: Skeletons Beneath the River (IV)

Thirteen years ago, a widower named Lu Yuan moved from Lujiatang to the neighborhood east of the river. His wife had died long ago, and he had two small sons. He rented a small boat on the river and worked as a fisherman. Though he had the aggressive face of a boor, his personality was in fact a gentle, caring one: when he smiled, all traces of boorishness disappeared from his face.

    

The neighbors always said that Lu Yuan's two sons did not seem to be real Lus.

Lu Yuan was tall, with a wide frame. Having spent many years carrying heavy nets out of the water, he had muscular arms that gave him the sense of extraordinary strength. But his sons did not take after him. 

When they first arrived in the neighborhood, the elder boy was four years old, and the younger was two, and they were both dramatically thin. Although the younger boy was skinny, there was still a hint of his father Lu Yuan in his brow, which also looked permanently furious. But the elder son really did not look like Lu Yuan at all.

Whenever the three were seen together, it was always the elder boy, whose nickname was Shijiu, who drew the most attention, because he was abnormally pale, and seemed permanently ill.

    

Not only did Lu Shijiu not look like a Lu, but his personality didn't match, either. Lu Yuan was kind, and the younger boy, Lu Nianqi, was a mischievous little troublemaker who loved to run around as a toddler and never obeyed orders –– his father often beat him. But the elder son, Lu Shijiu, went around barely speaking a word to anyone. He did not behave at all like a normal child.

Often, Lu Shijiu would demonstrate that he was highly mature and knowledgeable. But sometimes, he would do strange things, which, when added onto his weak and pale face, gave him a ghostly aura. Most people were not fond of him.

So the neighbors liked to tease Lu Nianqi, but very rarely teased Shijiu.

What the neighbors didn't know was that Lu Shijiu really wasn't Lu Yuan's biological son.

Lu Yuan did not have much family: his parents had died when he'd been young. After his wife passed away from illness, Lu Yuan had spent a year in dejection, and his family’s finances had suffered. For that whole year, his son Nianqi had never had a full stomach, and had become pitifully skinny. So Lu Yuan had decided to lock up the family home and move with his son to Wolong County, planning to make a living off the fresher fish in this part of the river.

Before entering the city gates, he had taken his son to an old rural temple for a rest. There, they’d encountered Shijiu.

    

The child had looked to be three or four years old, yet he’d been sleeping alone in that temple –– Lu Yuan had immediately known that something was amiss. 

He’d asked Shijiu some simple questions, and been able to guess what had happened.

    

Shijiu was originally from Ge County, a hundred li away. He’d had too many siblings at home, and, when there had been a drought, his parents had been unable to feed all of their children and been forced to abandon some. They had probably planned to sell the child, but this Shijiu looked strangely ill and was unlikely to live long. Besides, he had vision issues: though he was only four at the time, his vision had already begun to turn blurry. Nobody had wanted to buy him.

Since they had not been able to sell him off, his parents had had to abandon him. If they’d dropped him somewhere too close, he might actually have found his way home, so they’d brought him somewhere a hundred li away. Every once in a while, travellers visited rural temples for a rest, so there was hope that perhaps a kind-hearted person would come across the child and take him away. 

    

But that was a highly optimistic thought. The mountain forests had far more bandits and wolves than kind-hearted people. Before being adopted by some kind-hearted person, the child was far more likely to be captured by criminals or eaten by animals.

But this Shijiu had been lucky. He'd met Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan had seen it this way: he’d already had a son to raise, and a second one would hardly have been that much more work. It meant Nianqi would have a playmate. So he’d taken Shijiu with him.

    

Later, Lu Yuan would discover that Shijiu was not a good playmate. He preferred to sit quietly than to run about having adventures. But Shijiu made a good, sensible son. Although he could not see well, he would spend every day helping Lu Yuan to prepare the fish and shrimp that he'd caught, or else be standing on a little stool over the stove, making a stew. 

So although Lu Yuan had to beat Nianqi every once in a while, he had never had to lay a finger on Shijiu. Indeed, he seemed abnormally generous to the child.

    

Little children love to chase after someone slightly older than them, and Nianqi was no exception. Despite Shijiu's silent disposition, Nianqi followed him wherever he went. To Nianqi, he was helping out, but Shijiu saw him only as a burden.

For instance, Shijiu had once had a tub of boiling water sitting in the corner that he’d planned to use to wash the fish smell out of their father's clothes and shoes. But Nianqi had run over in his bottomless trousers, insisting on giving him a hand. Nianqi had tripped and fallen bottom-first into the tub of water, and then had cried his head off.

In another instance, the tree in the courtyard had once been covered in bug shells, which from afar looked like fruits. Shijiu had brought over a broom, planning to knock down the bug shells. Again Nianqi had tottered over to help. As Nianqi helped sweep the bug shells to the side, he had become intrigued by the shells and had put one in his mouth, using it as a whistle. Nianqi had been delighted by the clear, beautiful sound of the whistle, but that night his lips had swollen up as thick as sausages, and he’d cried his head off again.

In the first few years, Shijiu would feel a migraine come on every time he even so much as looked at Nianqi. Then, as he became blind, he gradually stopped being able to see the child very well, and became used to him.

Shijiu had known that blind people could not see anything. But he found that he had begun to see strange things, and hear strange noises. Sometimes, he couldn't help but follow the noises outside and search for their origin all over town. After some time, he would finally give up and return to his chores.

    

The year that Shijiu turned nine years old, Nianqi was seven. One day at noon, Shijiu heard another peculiar noise and left the kitchen to search for it, staggering slowly toward the river. By then, Nianqi had become a bit more sensitive than he'd been as a baby, and, probably because his older brother was blind, he'd learned to be more caring. Seeing that Shijiu was leaving the compound, he followed him, and pestered him the whole way to come home.

But it was as though Shijiu had been put under a spell: [a] he seemed not even to be able to hear his brother.

    

That was the day that, amidst the thick fog on the river, Shijiu was standing by the river when he suddenly saw the shadow of a dragon. Startled, he accidentally fell into the water.

Nianqi leapt in to bring his blind brother to shore, but found that it was just like all of those times when they'd been young –– he'd thought he'd been helping, but he only ended up causing more trouble. On that day, he almost threw away his own life.

    

The two had fallen into a particularly remote part of the river, one rarely frequented by fishermen or leisure boats. If a couple returning from the market had not coincidentally passed by in that instant, they would have perished right then and there, with no one any the wiser.

The old man returning from the market did not know how to swim. But he did recognise Nianqi.

    

"By the time Dad got here, Nianqi had stopped moving," Lu Shijiu said slowly. "The water that day was violent. It was too dangerous to rescue both children at once. Dad pushed me up so that I could breathe, and brought Nianqi to shore first. As I waited for him to return, something happened in the water –– suddenly, the wind picked up and tall waves appeared. I could feel the appearance of a small whirlpool beneath our feet, which trapped his ankle, and he began to swallow water."

Lu Shijiu took a deep breath. Frowning, he forced himself to finish the story. "He pushed me onto shore, and then he was sucked away by the whirlpool. He went under, and never came back up."

    

"Ever since the day that Dad died, Nianqi became scared of water. And he stopped following me around,” Shijiu said.

Lu Shijiu did not look like he was about to cry, nor did he display any particularly strong emotion. As he spoke, he was as calm as though he were telling someone else's story. His eyes didn't even redden. As the others listened, they felt strangely uncomfortable, as though they were being sad on his behalf.

    

Xuanmin put away the two pieces of stone with the talismanic writing on them. Suddenly, he said, "I took a look at Lu Nianqi's palm. At the age of six, there is a break, and the rest was forcibly drawn out."

Shijiu looked over at Nianqi. He did not meet Xuanmin’s eyes, nor did he speak.

    

Finally, only when he could determine that Nianqi was not waking up anytime soon did Shijiu say, in a low voice, "Back then, I didn't really understand. I just wanted to draw out the line. Even if... even if he stopped growing, he would at least be alive. Good or bad, any kind of life is worth living. I just wanted him to be alive. But..."

But he hadn't known that, in lengthening Nianqi's life, he'd cut off Lu Yuan's.

An equal exchange.

    

Having admitted this, Lu Shijiu finally looked over at Xuanmin. "We're almost at the end of the tomb. There's not much danger anymore. The exit is up ahead. Could you help me? Take Nianqi out of here."

Xuanmin glanced at Shijiu. "Your final request?" 

    

Shijiu paused, stunned, then said, "Mn." He sighed. "Otherwise, I'll have come all this way for nothing."

Xuanmin opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Xue Xian piped up from inside the pouch. "The crater we’re in is about ten zhang deep. How do we get all the way back up there?" 

Then, before anyone had the chance to reply, Xue Xian sneakily added, "How about... I spit out all the water again and let you swim up? Great idea! Saves effort and time."

Shijiu: “...”

    

“Do not trouble yourself," Xuanmin said. "Since you have already swallowed it all, sit tight and live with it."

Xue Xian was furious.

    

As they spoke, Liu-laotou silently tapped Shijiu on the shoulder, then pointed somewhere with his finger.

Following the direction in which he'd been pointing, Xuanmin and the others saw that, along the pool wall, there was a shadow about as large as a man.

    

They shuffled closer and saw that it was a door made of metal.

It had been submerged in the water for who knew how long: the hinges and the locks had long rusted in place. Xuanmin's talismans had been proven not to work inside the cavern, so the group used nearby rubble to smash the lock off.

The squeaking noise of the metal door opening was torture to the ears. Nianqi, sprawled on the ground nearby, finally opened his eyes.

    

"You're awake?" Shijiu turned to him. "Can you get up? If you can, then stop lying there. If you want to get out of here, you have to walk yourself. Nobody is going to carry you."

As soon as his brother awoke, Shijiu reverted to that cold, aloof manner. He seemed to have no intention of improving their relationship.

    

"I know." Nianqi had swallowed too much polluted water, and the water grated at his throat, making his voice weak. If the conversation had happened earlier, Nianqi would have become upset at Shijiu's dismissive tone and butted back. Strangely, this time, Nianqi said nothing, instead silently clambering up. He bent over in a coughing fit and spat water out of his lungs.

    

Near where Lu Nianqi stood, the paper man Jiang Shining had been drying himself. He had finally managed to wring some of the water out of himself, but was still so fragile that any touch would tear him.

Xuanmin walked over and put Jiang Shining into his pouch to hang out with the turgid golden marble. Then, Xuanmin followed the group through the metal door.

    

Behind the metal door was a steep set of stairs leading all the way up –– it had probably been created by the engineers of the tomb, so that they could leave after having finished their work. Another set of stairs led to another tomb hallway, one that looked similar to the hallway they'd previously traversed. 

Just as Shijiu had predicted, there was no danger in the stairwell. There was not even a disturbing mural; it was surprisingly safe.

When they'd almost reached the top, Xuanmin's talisman suddenly burst back into flame.

    

But as the flame rose, it seemed to drag with it a strange smell, which spread across the stairwell.

Suddenly, Jiang Shining yelled from inside the pouch, "Wait! Don't move! Something's not right about this smell."

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[a] Musuli uses the phrase 中邪 (zhong4 xie2) here, meaning “to be hit by evil/hereticism”. 

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 26 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 26

The JJWXC raws are here. Please support Musuli if you can! The novel is very cheap to buy; this guide tells you how to use JJWXC.

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Chapter 26: Skeletons Beneath the River (III)

As the little marble silently regurgitated what he'd swallowed, the puddle of ejected water began to spread, edging ever closer to Xuanmin's feet. Xuanmin glared at the marble and, though his cold face betrayed no emotion, his tone was strained. "Are you going to throw it all back up?" he asked.

Xue Xian ignored him. He continued to spout water while radiating hatred.

"And after this, do you plan to bathe in the same water?" Xuanmin said, scowling.

Xue Xian: “...” 

The marble stopped.

After a while, Xue Xian grumbled, "Damn grifter. You really know how to gross someone out..."

"You are too kind. However, that is not actually one of my skills," Xuanmin replied, looking away. He walked over to the statues.

    

Xue Xian hesitated, then decided to follow along, rolling hot on Xuanmin’s heels. "Can you pick me up? I'm light-headed from being so full."

Xuanmin glanced at the streaks of water on the marble's surface. "I will once the corpse water on your body has dried."

“...” Xue Xian rolled to a stop. "If you keep grossing me out like this, I'll make sure to projectile vomit all over you!" he shouted. "Believe it or not!"

"I believe it." Xuanmin stopped too, and looked back at the marble with irritation. Finally, he bent down to pick Xue Xian up, gingerly tossing the marble into his pouch, as though he was disgusted even to touch him.

"How dare you handle me with such revulsion!" Xue Xian's muffled voice hollered from inside the pouch. "You're just as drenched with water as I am!"

    

Hearing this, Xuanmin stopped again. He drew a gash on his fingertip and casually squeezed out a drop of blood, which he used to draw what looked like a simple talismanic scrawl onto his own palm. In an instant, all of the water on his body evaporated, leaving no trace at all. As the white hemp robe dried, it became as light as a cloud –– even Xue Xian, inside the pouch, became fully dry.

Having gotten what he'd wanted, Xue Xian was content.

Even better, Xue Xian discovered that that strange spot on Xuanmin's hip even had the ability to help him digest –– he could clearly feel that the thing he'd absorbed from that patch of black soil was happily integrating itself into his golden marble.

    

Before, when Xue Xian had still been in a daze, he had sucked up the item from the soil without even knowing what it was, but now that he'd come back to his senses, he understood –– buried beneath the soil had been a part of his true body: either some of his blood, or one of his vertebrae, or a strip of his muscle. 

It was only a fragment. But as it slowly melted into the marble, Xue Xian felt indescribable contentment. Finally, after having been painfully empty for half a year, his spine began to have some feeling again. 

    

Whether you are growing your spirit or your qi, your flesh or your bones, you need to have some kind of starting point or source –– just like how flowers or trees require a seed. 

Xue Xian had spent half a year building up a form for himself through his qi, and had cobbled together a prosthetic spine from a string of qi in order to at least give the top half of his body some mobility. But qi could not compare to real bone –– qi was hollow, not a dense physical material. Now, though, Xue Xian finally felt as though he really had planted a seed for growing his spine back. 

    

Though Xuanmin had no idea what Xue Xian was thinking about inside the pouch, he was glad that there was no more trouble.

There were too many fallen statues around the pool for Xuanmin to inspect each and every one. He focused on the ones that had split open.

   

After looking at around a dozen, Xuanmin realised that there did seem to be a pattern to these statues. All in all, they could be grouped into three different categories: those with angry faces, those with crying faces, and those with grinning faces. And each of these categories seemed to hold a different type of body.

The angry statues' corpses lacked heads; the sad statues' corpses lacked both legs; and the happy statues' corpses lacked both hands.

    

"What have you discovered?" Xue Xian asked. "What are these statues for? They look extremely evil."

Frowning, Xuanmin replied, "I think I know."

Xue Xian was shocked. "How do you know everything?"

"Perhaps I read about it in a book,” Xuanmin replied calmly. “It must have made an impression."

    

These hundreds of statues were clearly not ordinary burial gifts, made to accompany the dead person into the afterlife. The statues clearly had a logic to them –– which meant they also had a purpose. In places like these, things related to the number three always held some kind of deeper meaning. Although Xuanmin could no longer remember where he had read about it, he did remember such a passage––

There was a feng shui design that could be used to reverse one's fortune, called ‘Hundred Soldiers Push the Flow.’ If done properly, it could help one avoid natural disasters and ensure a hundred years of prosperity –– the results were excellent. The main problem was that it was an evil design that harnessed yin energy, which most people were not willing to undertake.

Because to construct it, one had to sacrifice three hundred lives.

A hundred warriors, a hundred suffering commoners, and a hundred villains.

These three different stone faces seemed to correspond to those categories: the angry ones were warriors, the sad ones were the suffering commoners, and the laughing ones were the villains.

"Three hundred..." Xue Xian was stupefied. "What the hell? When mortals get up to no good, they can do as much damage as I can. Where do you even find three hundred people? That's no small number. Even if you went after them one by one, surely someone would notice? You'd have to be blind not to notice hundreds of people going missing."

As he spoke, Xuanmin saw something fall out of a statue with a dingdang sound. It sounded close — like some kind of copper sheet or other metal object.

Xuanmin frowned. He tore another strip of cloth from the bottom of his robe. After all, the item had belonged to a dead man and had clearly been in contact with all sorts of decomposing substances. 

Hearing the tearing noise, Xue Xian said, "If you keep going, your robes are going to be shorter by a huge chunk."

    

Of course, he had been using hyperbole. Xuanmin’s robes were long enough to cover his feet, but fell just short of dragging against the dirt, so that, even when he walked, they did not touch the ground. Even after all the pieces he'd torn, the robe was only missing around half a palm's length –– he could keep going another seventeen or eighteen times, and a change would still not show.

But Xue Xian couldn't shut up. He constantly felt the need to annoy Xuanmin.

    

His hand wrapped in the hemp cloth, Xuanmin pinched the item that had fallen to the floor and inspected it beneath the dim glow of the night pearls.

It was a small metal flake, with a carving of a beast on one side, and what seemed to be a name on the other — though the name had been furiously scratched out, leaving only illegible scribbles.

    

Seeing that Xuanmin had not responded, Xue Xian stuck his head out of the pouch while Xuanmin remained crouching. "Hey –– that looks familiar."

"You have seen it before?" Xuanmin had wanted to shove him back inside, but upon hearing Xue Xian's words, he instead brought the object closer to Xue Xian.

    

"I remember now," Xue Xian said. "On our way to Wolong County, we passed through several abandoned temples in the mountains. We found one of these in a temple. The temple was covered in old bloodstains. I assume a battle had taken place. Then, in front of Wolong Xian Cheng’s city gates, me and the bookworm came across another one."

    

These almost identical-looking objects must have been mass manufactured, or at least have come from the same workshop. Most likely, they were associated with the military.

All soldiers constantly walked that fine line between life and death, and any man who had been to battle could not escape with his sword unstained –– they neatly fell into the definition of ‘warrior’. But armies were very strict with their members. How could a hundred soldiers disappear without anyone raising an alarm?

Xue Xian had spent the past six months among humans, and knew little about the military. But Xuanmin knew a little more.

     

Every military man had a metal flake like this. Firstly, it was useful for army administration, and secondly, it could be used as a form of ID. Thirdly... if they died in battle and their corpses could not be recovered, then the tag could act as an index for the body, and be brought back to their ancestral home and interred in their body’s place.

If the soldier did not die in battle and left the army due to retirement or injury, the tag would not be taken back, but instead the name would be scratched out.

    

"Where did you hear about all this?" Xue Xian asked, looking up at Xuanmin.

Xuanmin paused, then said, "I don't remember. Perhaps I overheard some townspeople gossiping."

    

Xue Xian found the bald donkey extraordinary –– based on the spider-shaped mole, he clearly did have some kind of illness, and a grave one at that, considering he seemed to often wake up to find himself unable to recognise anyone around him. But for an aloof, arrogant monk who considered himself some kind of saintly high priest, who had amnesia and was also far away from home getting into all kinds of trouble... for such a man to overhear so much information from town gossip... that was hard to believe.

Xue Xian asked himself, Does he look like the kind of person to make small talk with locals?

Xue Xian responded, No. 

Xuanmin reached out with his finger and prodded that smooth head... or maybe it was Xue Xian’s body, who cares. In any case, he pushed the marble back into the pouch.

    

"The warriors are soldiers who aged out of the army or could no longer fight due to injury. So who are the suffering commoners and the villains?" Xue Xian mumbled from inside the pouch.

"Beggars and mountain bandits."

    

The response came not from Xuanmin, but from another voice –– a warm and peaceful one.

Xuanmin turned to see that Lu Shijiu and Liu-laotou had woken up and were walking toward him.

    

Liu-laotou was frail with age, and Lu Shijiu was even more twig-like than Jiang Shining –– how could those two have been the first to come back to consciousness? Plus, both the force of the whirlpool and the impact of the fall onto the pool floor had been painful, violent experiences, but neither of the two seemed to have any new injuries. 

They looked exactly how they had when the group had first met them at the stone doors –– down to the streaks of damp and the patterns of silt on their clothes. Nothing had changed at all.

    

Xuanmin took all this in, but said nothing. Instead, he turned his gaze to the hundreds of statues. "How do you know?" 

Lu Shijiu raised the bundle of sticks that he held in his hand and twitched his finger. "I can see, and I can deduce. Just now, I touched a few of the statues.” 

He continued: “These soldiers were abducted on their way home. It's actually extremely easy to kidnap these types of soldiers –– you can just tell their families they'd died in battle and their corpses couldn't be recovered, and you'd immediately be able to avoid all suspicion."

As for the drifting homeless... Most people never took notice of them to know if there were more of them or less of them on the street on any given day. It was even easier with the mountain bandits: to most people, exterminating bandits was great news, and if, after they were ousted from the mountains, someone wanted to come and cut off their heads and take them away somewhere, people hardly cared. 

With those three types of sacrifices obtained, the feng shui array could be constructed. 

    

Lu Shijiu's blind eyes were highly useful in a situation like this. He looked around, then pointed at two different places and said, "Something's here."

Xuanmin strode to each place and picked up two pieces of stone embossed with talismanic text. He could feel what was carved onto them just by feeling the surface with his fingertips. Xuanmin studied them, then said, "Looks familiar."

"What part?" Xue Xian asked.

"The talismanic text. I have seen it before."

But it was far too dark inside the tomb. No matter how hard Xuanmin looked, he could only see the outlines.

    

Lu Shijiu turned to look at Lu Nianqi, who laid unconscious not far from where they stood, then asked Xuanmin, "Nianqi, he..."

Xuanmin could hear the questioning tone in the boy's voice. Without turning around, he said, "He seems unusually afraid of water."

From inside the pouch, Xue Xian piped up. "Yeah. When I was in my daze, I couldn't hear anything that was going on outside. But that kid's constant screaming, I did hear."

Lu Shijiu hung his head. "That's my fault."

---

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 25 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 25

The JJWXC raws are here. Please support Musuli if you can! The novel is very cheap to buy; this guide tells you how to use JJWXC.

---

Chapter 25: Skeletons Beneath the River (II)

The water was deeper and colder than anything anyone could ever have imagined. In no time, a dense chill had seeped into the very cores of their bodies.

As Xue Xian felt the cold wash over him, his thoughts suddenly became crystal clear.

The niezhang had been boiling in his soup of confusion for so long that he barely knew what was going on, but had the audacity to ask Xuanmin, who still held him in his hand, "Bald donkey, how come I'm in the water?"

Who the fuck knew?

Xuanmin did not reply.

Perplexed, the niezhang asked, "Why are you here too?"

Xuanmin: “...”

No one fucking knew.

    

Being a marble, Xue Xian's faculties were not affected by the water, so he could naturally speak whenever he felt like speaking. But if Xuanmin tried to open his mouth, he would immediately swallow gallons of water –– and the issue wasn't just how cold the water was, but the fact that the origins of the water were unknown, nor did anyone have any idea how long it had been in the cavern. It was definitely disgusting. Make Xuanmin drink that? You might as well drown him right then and there.

    

As Xue Xian spoke, the two of them had reached the very depths of the water. With a massive thump, the golden marble landed at the bottom of the pool.

Although the thick layer of sediment and dirt at the bottom of the pool acted as a buffer, Xuanmin's hand was crushed to a pulp. Anyone else's bones would have been immediately ground to dust.

    

In his half-conscious state, Xue Xian got the feeling that, somehow, something had cushioned his fall. And although he wanted to say a word of thanks, the unbearable crescendo of heat continued to scorch his mind and the relentless dizzying sensation made him want to vomit. He rolled about chaotically in the sediment like a decapitated fly, as though driven by some innate, primitive urge –– he seemed to be looking for something. 

As soon as the sediment bed had been perturbed, specks of dirt erupted into the water and covered everything in Xue Xian’s vision. Never mind finding something lost –– it'd be a miracle if he could keep track of himself.

    

"I'm sick of this muddy water!" Xue Xian spat in a flustered tone. He seemed even more irritable than usual, if that was even possible.

Where is it, where is it, where is it...

He wasn't even sure what it was he was looking for, yet that one phrase spun about in his head, repeating itself endlessly.

    

Peng––

That tremor-like knocking sound rang out once again, sending Xue Xian into further panic. The vibration had disturbed the sediment flooring even more, and the water became ever more opaque. Xuanmin, nursing his mangled hand, quickly lost sight of the golden marble.

    

No person in their right mind would be able to bear to stay long in this endlessly deep pool, and Xuanmin was no exception.

Lu Nianqi was the first to succumb. Earlier, while in the throes of a seizure, he had narrowly avoided being struck on the back of the head by Xuanmin, but he was unable to escape the harrowing feeling of breathlessness when underwater. He thrashed around, causing himself to swallow several more gallons of water, and then went still.

Next was Jiang Shining, who had been knocked back into his small paper form. As a ghost himself, he did not need to breathe, but amidst the vicious and unforgiving flow of the water, his paper body was close to being dissolved by the water.

Finally, it was Xuanmin’s turn...

Xuanmin frowned. Just as his vision began to blur and fade into darkness, an earth-shattering roar erupted from the sediment bed. 

    

That sound pierced through the body of water and rang back and forth in the dark tomb. 

For a brief instant, Xuanmin, who was losing consciousness, was stunned. For some reason, this wailing, faraway noise felt familiar –– as though he'd heard it somewhere before. As the thought lingered, the black water swelled up again and began to twist and churn at great speed. In no time, a large whirlpool had formed, as though someone had drilled a hole at the bottom of the pool. The entire pool of water began to recede into that hole, the current quick and powerful.

Xuanmin, along with everything else in the water, was sucked away.

The whirlpool’s force was overwhelming. Nothing could resist it.

    

As he was sucked into the spiral, Jiang Shining grimly thought, Turns out that dying from having one’s paper body dissolve in the water isn't so bad. The worst way to die is being torn to shreds! [a]

Never mind the paper man –– even living humans like Lu Nianqi and Xuanmin were barely holding on. They felt as though every joint in their bodies was being stretched out –– if the whirlpool got any bigger, their flesh would undoubtedly slide off their bones. 

    

The strange but clear-sounding roaring noise accompanied the churning of the whirlpool. Altogether, the effect was awe-inspiring. There was something strange about it all –– as though such a monumental event was never supposed to occur in a cramped, dark space like the tomb, but instead belonged only to the expansive, magnificent horizons of the sea.

Dragon Swallows the Sea… [b]

Although Jiang Shining could not make out anything in the spinning waters of the whirlpool, the phrase surged out of him seemingly from nowhere. The strangest part was that he'd only ever encountered such a saying in the books he'd studied –– he had never been witness to such a phenomenon in real life.

Just as these fragmented thoughts appeared in his mind, he was sucked toward the eye of the whirlpool.

Pa––

With that, Jiang Shining's vision turned black and he lost consciousness.

    

The echoes of the great wave went on and on, hurtling tirelessly back and forth across the hollow tomb. 

Only after a long time did it slowly begin to recede. Gradually, it disappeared, and the tomb returned to that previous, uncanny quiet.

    

Those seven night pearls strung in the shape of the Big Dipper on the stone ceiling continued to cast their weak glow onto the crater below. But, of the black water that had previously filled the chamber, there remained not a single drop –– it had been entirely sucked clean by the whirlpool, which had even smashed the structure of stone steps into pieces so that it now lay in a pile of rubble across the ground.

And the loose sediment that had covered the bottom of the pool now lay in a pile in the corner, as though impatiently swept away by some invisible hand.

    

With the soft layer of mud and sand gone, the original stone flooring was now exposed. One part of it seemed to have been punctured and the shattered stone tiles pushed to the side, revealing black soil beneath it.

And in that soil was planted a single, glimmering, trembling golden marble. Strewn around the marble were several unconscious bodies, each of them deathly pale. 

These were Xuanmin and the others. 

    

Soon, there was a gudu sound as the trembling marble threw up a mouthful of water, breaking that mortifying silence.

Next came the heavy sigh of an ill person.

    

"Ah––" From inside the marble, Xue Xian let out a pained sigh of relief. He felt as though he were full to bursting.

During the chaos earlier, Xue Xian had still been in a daze, had been only dimly aware of breaking open the stone flooring and breaking something that had been laying buried inside the soil, absorbing it into his marble. In that moment, he had felt a strange, indescribable feeling of satisfaction, as though finally able to eat a food item that he had been eyeing for ages. 

Even that unbearable heat had been defeated for a brief moment.

But one thing hadn't been ideal –– as the golden marble had hungrily taken in that thing in the soil, in a fit of overexcitement, he'd also gone and swallowed all the water in the pool, too. 

And now... he was too full.

    

Xue Xian began to panic. The water hadn't actually entered his stomach since he didn't have one –– it had only been absorbed by the marble –– but how come the marble got to stay intact while he had to have a stomachache? It made no sense!

    

As the zuzong rolled about in a huff, Xuanmin's finger seemed to twitch, and his eyelids suddenly fluttered open.

For some reason, as Xuanmin opened his eyes, a sense of emptiness flashed across his gaze, as though he had momentarily forgotten where he was, who he was with, and what he'd been doing. He stared up at the Big Dipper for a time, then abruptly sat up.

    

Hearing the movement, Xue Xian leapt out of the patch of soil and rolled noisily across the stone flooring to where Xuanmin sat. "Bald donkey, could I please bother you for some kind of digestion talisman? [c] Or if you have pills." [d]

He looked up at Xuanmin, waiting for the bald donkey to respond.

But Xuanmin only stared at him. Then, in a deep voice, he said, "What kind of niezhang are you? Why are you hiding inside a marble?"

Xue Xian: “…”

Xue Xian: “……”

Xue Xian: “………”

    

What the fuck was going on?!

He stopped rolling –– he only sat there, stiff as a stone egg, gaping at Xuanmin. "What are you playing at?"

Xue Xian no longer felt turgid. He was so bowled over by Xuanmin's strange reaction that he felt as though all of the water inside him had suddenly evaporated. After another shocked pause, Xue Xian ran two more circles around Xuanmin’s body, inspecting him and thinking, Did he swallow too much water and get possessed by a water ghost? 

    

Quickly, Xue Xian rolled up close to Xuanmin’s side and peered at Xuanmin’s neck. Although the darkness of the cavern meant that ordinary people might easily miss small details, Xue Xian was capable of seeing everything clearly.

"What's that thing on your neck?" Xue Xian asked.

    

A strange mark had grown on the side of Xuanmin's neck. It looked like a poised spider. From what Xue Xian could remember, Xuanmin had only had a small mole in that location –– nothing at all like this.

Frowning, Xuanmin reached up and touched his neck.

    

As his fingers grazed the mole, the spider seemed to react minutely to the finger's warmth and immediately retracted its legs, transforming back into a normal mole.

With that, Xue Xian realised that what he had thought was a spider had in fact been a network of outstretched blood vessels, thin and gnarled like the legs of a spider.

    

As the blood vessels retreated, Xuanmin grimaced and shut his eyes, rubbing his temples –– he seemed to be feeling dizzy again. And just like that, he stopped moving.

This reminded Xue Xian of what had happened back at Guiyun Hall: at the time, he had also seen Xuanmin sway dizzily, then settle into the chair with his eyes closed, immobile for a long time.

    

Xue Xian spun about again and inspected Xuanmin from every angle, but could not find anything else amiss. 

"What... the hell is this?" Xue Xian had never seen anyone else behave in this way, and pondered it, confused.

    

Finally, after another long moment, Xuanmin moved again: his fingers began to massage his taiyang pressure point [e] and, frowning, he slowly opened his eyes. 

Xue Xian watched Xuanmin’s every move with trepidation. Eventually, the bald donkey looked down at him with a neutral face and said, "Look at how much trouble you can cause even without arms or legs. Niezhang, you deserve to be exorcised." [f]

Xue Xian said nothing. Actually, bald donkey, you can go back to being stupid.

As Xuanmin spoke, he massaged the hand that hung limply by his side, slowly tugging at each knuckle. With each crack of the knuckle, he would steal a glance at Xue Xian.

With that, Xue Xian finally understood what it was that had cushioned his fall earlier. He decided to forgive what Xuanmin had just said to him and instead rolled closer, planning to ask about the spider-shaped mole, when he suddenly spied a horizontal shadow in the corner.

    

It was a stone sculpture as tall as a man, with a spherical, melon-like head on which sinister-looking features had been roughly carved.

This wasn't the issue –– it was common for mausoleums to be populated by statues –– but this statue had fallen to the bottom of the crater during the commotion earlier and split in half, revealing its core. And unless Xue Xian had turned blind in the last few minutes...

Encased inside the stone sculpture was a human. A real human who had been dead for a long, long time.

    

Xuanmin seemed also to have noticed this. He swivelled his head around and saw that there were hundreds of such statues littered across the bottom of the pool.

Xue Xian couldn't guess how long the sculptures had been soaking in the water, but he realised that he had swallowed every last drop of the corpse water. A wave of nausea welled up within him.

    

Still nursing his hand, Xuanmin stood up and moved to inspect the statues when, suddenly, a gurgling sound arose from beneath his feet.    

Mystified, he looked down and saw that the golden marble was spouting great amounts of water onto the ground... Xue Xian was so disgusted that he was vomiting.

Xuanmin: “...”

---

The author has something to say: 

The real body will return soon! It’s just that right now he needs to digest for a bit (x

I will try to update regularly at 10am from now on. But I keep ending up unable to keep to my plans, so I can’t make guarantees. I’ll try my best~

---

[a] Here, Musuli uses the chengyu 五马分尸 (wu3 ma3 fen1 shi1), literally “five horses separate corpse”. This describes the execution technique whereby a body is tied to five horses and each horse is made to run in different directions, causing the person to be literally torn apart by the force. 

[b] 龙吸水 (long2 xi1 shui3), literally “dragon sucks/swallows water”, is a colloquial term for the meteorological phenomenon of a twister or hurricane happening over a body of water. (Article in Chinese).

[c] In Chinese, he uses 劳驾 (lao2 jia4), a polite way of saying “please”. 

[d] The Chinese word here is 丹 (dan1), which refers to a pellet of traditional Chinese medicine that can be chewed and swallowed. A popular trope in the historical fantasy/jianghu genre is pills (dan) that have magical properties. The Chinese term for “golden core”, 金丹 (jin1 dan1), also uses this character.

[e] The taiyang pressure point is at one’s temples.

[f] The verb Musuli uses here is 收 (shou1), meaning to retrieve/recuperate/put away. 

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 24 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 24

The JJWXC raws are here. Please support Musuli if you can! The novel is very cheap to buy; this guide tells you how to use JJWXC.

---

Chapter 24: Skeletons Beneath the River (I)

As the hallway turned black, their footsteps halted.

Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi gasped, felt the air block itself in their throats as they forced themselves not to make a sound.

   

A gust of chilling winter wind blew its way across the open doors, bringing with it the strange smell of humidity and rot mixed together. The cold seeped into their bodies.

Even Xue Xian, dazed and boiling in the pouch, felt the change, though to him, this cool breeze was nothing to complain about. But such a relief was as useless as scooping water out of a boiling pot just to pour it back in –– it did not make Xue Xian feel any better. After the yin wind passed, Xue Xian felt just as hot again.

    

Ordinary people would long since have gone insane in such heat. Xue Xian wasn't immune: rocking back and forth inside the pouch as though in a dream, he idly wondered how he might be able to extract himself from the pouch, even if just for a moment of fresh air. At this point, he no longer cared about face –– irrationally, all he wanted was for Xuanmin to reach his cool hand into the pouch and give him some relief.

Because his mind was slipping, this zuzong could no longer stay quiet –– he muttered to himself incessantly. He was probably expressing all the thoughts that were running through his mind, but, because of his confused state of mind, everything his speech was slurred, like that of a senile grandmother. The words came out as a long string of repetitive gibberish.

    

With the yin wind blowing out the light, Jiang Shining and the others had turned rigid as coffins and fallen deathly quiet.

Naturally, Xue Xian's nonsensical mutterings emerged from the pouch and crept mysteriously into their ears.

    

"What's that noise?" Lu Nianqi stammered, trembling. "Where is it coming from?"

“Dashi, can we light another flame?" Jiang Shining asked anxiously.

The sudden blackness had swallowed any and all signs of the others' presence. Jiang Shining felt utterly alone.

    

Folk say that, in the quiet of the night, one's own senses begin to play tricks on us –– sounds from far away are mistaken for being close by, and it is impossible to actually tell where things are.

When Xuanmin had first heard the strange voice, his hand had automatically shot to another talisman, but he had stopped when he’d realised that the eerie sound was coming from his own pouch.

What was the niezhang up to now?

    

Frowning, Xuanmin tilted his head to listen. He found that the demon [a] was in fact repeating the same phrase over and over again –– “bald donkey.” The words came out in such quick staccato that he sounded like a furiously buzzing hornet.

Xuanmin: “...” What did I do?

    

Exasperated, Xuanmin decided to ignore Xue Xian and took out another talisman to light.

As soon as the small flame rose, there was immediately another hooo noise as it vanished.

    

"Stop wasting your time. It won't light," Lu Shijiu said dully. With a grunt, he pushed the doors to the tomb fully open.

In contrast to the all-consuming blackness of the hallway, the tomb chamber now seemed to shimmer with a weak glow.

    

The light was as dim as a gentle layer of frost on coal –– but enough to allow them to estimate the silhouettes of others.

Without so much as a word of warning, Lu Shijiu strode into the chamber. Xuanmin patted the still-muttering little lord [b] in his pouch and said to Jiang Shining, "Stay close." Then he, too, walked inside.

    

Afraid of being left behind, Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi followed suit.

As they stepped through the door, Lu Nianqi felt something beneath his foot, as though he had stepped on a small pebble. He stumbled slightly, and then there was an ear-splitting noise behind him as the heavy stone doors slammed shut. The sound was so startling that Lu Nianqi felt it in his bladder, and wished he could drop everything and run.    

Despite the faint glow inside the tomb, it was still too dark to see anything –– not even how large the tomb chamber was, nor what was strewn beneath their feet, nor what resided in the ceiling––

"Hold on. Are those holes in the ceiling?" Jiang Shining suddenly said, pointing upwards.

Holes in the ceiling

the ceiling

...ling...

...

As his words echoed across the walls of the chamber, Jiang Shining froze. His finger still stiffly pointing upward, he was too afraid to even move his neck..

Lu Shijiu quietly hushed him, then said in a low voice, "Be quiet."

With his voice suppressed to a bare whisper, the echoes died down too. 

    

Xuanmin looked up and saw that the ceiling was indeed pierced with seven tiny holes.

He reached into the void to feel the air, then said, "Not holes." If these were holes, the yin wind would not have blown in such a direction.

"Night pearls." Xuanmin studied them some more, then added, "There are seven, corresponding with the Big Dipper." [c]

    

A flash of understanding crossed Jiang Shining's face. Those seven circles were indeed not holes, but rather night pearls arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper.

The cold, white glow of the night pearls was far dimmer and creepier than natural daylight, and cast itself down faintly from above. 

    

"Someone hung seven night pearls, but the tomb is still so dark. That means the ceiling is extremely high..." Jiang Shining muttered.

"That’s obvious from the bounce of the echo," Lu Shijiu said. "The path ahead is quite difficult. Be careful. Don't step on the wrong stone, and definitely don't fall off."

    

Lu Nianqi had just extended his foot to take a step, and now he quickly yanked it back. "Wait. What do you mean, don't step on the wrong stone? What do you mean, don't fall off?" 

"Especially you,” Lu Shijiu said, then added, "Don't look down."

Lu Nianqi: “...” 

What kind of instructions are those? If I can’t look down while walking through this pitch dark cavern where you can barely see your own hands in front of you, how am I supposed to make my way through? I can’t take a single step!

    

In the time it took for them to have this conversation, everyone’s eyes had slowly begun to adjust to the darkness, and some parts of the tomb began to emerge into their line of sight.

They were standing on a stone platform suspended in the air. It was wide enough to fit two rows of people, but narrow enough that if Lu Shijiu and Xuanmin, who stood to the front of the group, took one more step ahead, they would fall into the void.

    

You're a ghost. You can't die twice, Jiang Shining told himself over and over. Finally, he gathered the courage to take a single step forward and fall in line behind Xuanmin, over whose shoulder he could see some of what lay ahead, which was... a massive crater, over which swam faint ripples of light. The light meant that the crater was filled with water, though Jiang Shining could not tell how deep the pool was, nor where the water was coming from. If he fell in, he had no idea whether he'd be able to come back up.

The strangest part was that circular objects floated intermittently across the water, like heavy melons... Jiang Shining could only see their outline, and could not tell if they were made of stone or some other material. As he cast his gaze across the pool, he counted more than a hundred of them, as though they were here to establish an array. [d]

   

And, in the black water in front of Lu Shijiu, there was a series of separate, narrow stone steps, each of which seemed to lead further into the chamber. The steps rose and fell in an uneven manner as they reached into the darkness, like meihuazhuang pillars. [e] 

This was their only path forward.

Jiang Shining peered further, and found that he could not see where the steps ended.

    

How long is this path?!

His knees buckled as he turned to stare anxiously at Xuanmin.

    

As Xuanmin observed their surroundings, there was a slight furrow to his brows. It was unclear what was going through his mind –– apart from the slight knitting-together of his brows, there was little else Jiang Shining could see on Xuanmin’s face.

Lu Shijiu spoke again. "My eyes can only see qi, so the tomb doesn't bother me. You must follow closely behind me. You cannot walk too slowly."

Calmly, he took the first step. 

Liu-laotou followed. He had spent his whole life rowing boats, so his back was deeply bent, and his silhouette had a depressing oldness to it. Seeing that such an old man was not making a single noise –– he seemed not to be even breathing –– Jiang Shining felt that he, too, had nothing to fear.

    

Xuanmin waited for Lu Shijiu and Liu-laotou to cross the first three steps, then went. 

All Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi could do was follow.

    

It was already terrifying just to look down from the edge, let alone to actually step onto the path. Jiang Shining couldn't help but peek down, and saw that the path was high-up and incredibly narrow –– he could fall at any time, right into that murky, uncertain water that lapped at the pillars around one zhang beneath his feet.

At the sight of this, there was a weng–– knock in Jiang Shining's mind. He felt light-headed.

    

There was some kind of hidden logic to the mess of steps. Lu Shijiu seemed to know exactly which steps to take, and which to avoid. The rest of them simply had to copy him.

But Jiang Shining still didn't feel safe. Lu Shijiu and Liu-laotou were about two zhang ahead of Xuanmin –– could the monk really see which steps the boy was taking? 

    

They tottered forward by seven or eight more steps, then something unnerving occurred to Jiang Shining––

"Why do I feel as though the water level is rising?" Jiang Shining rasped. 

"Water?!" Lu Nianqi, who had been walking ahead of Jiang Shining, suddenly froze. "There's water?"

"Don't look down!" Lu Shijiu hollered. 

Oh no...

Jiang Shining recalled the boy's warning from earlier, but it was far too late.

He watched as Lu Nianqi suddenly squatted down and laid across the steps on his stomach, clinging to the stone. "I... I can't go ahead. I want to go back. I want to go back!"

    

Slowly, Lu Nianqi shuffled his body so that he now faced the other direction. He tried to crawl back, but the step he needed to take was occupied by Jiang Shining. In a flash of panic, he landed on the step next to Jiang Shining's foot. 

"Don't!" Jiang Shining tried to grab him, but it was too late, and the movement made him lose balance so that he almost fell off his own step.

    

The stone step that Lu Nianqi had touched shattered and its broken pieces rolled past them, tumbling into the black water. 

There was a splash, and a small amount of water sprayed up at them.

    

Inside the pouch, Xue Xian suddenly felt something deep inside his body jolt up with a peng–– as though a new heart had suddenly appeared inside his chest.

Of course, he was still just a soul in its purest form anchored to a marble, and did not have a physical heart.

In his state of confusion, he muttered something, then fell back into an even deeper daze.

    

The sound of the stone falling into the water startled Lu Nianqi and seemed to trigger something within him. He began to tremble, and, in a panicked voice, stammered, "I-–"

He was interrupted by the water beneath him, which suddenly began to swell up. Like a corpse coming to life, enormous waves began to rumble forward and surge toward them.

Hua––

With a loud splash, the water drenched them all.

    

"Peng––"

Another heartbeat! Xue Xian felt as though he had suddenly grown blood vessels, which were now bringing hot, throbbing blood up his spine and into his body. 

And then, just as quickly, the feeling disappeared into the hazy, soupy heat. 

    

"Hurry!" Lu Shijiu's voice emerged amidst the sound of roiling waves.

Jiang Shining was holding on tightly to the edge of his stone step. Before he could even react, he felt someone violently thump the back of his neck and, with a puff, turned back into a sopping wet paper man.

He saw that Xuanmin was pinching his paper body in his hand, and, with his other hand, Xuanmin picked up the screaming Lu Nianqi before striding into the darkness.

    

There was no sign of the waves stopping –– the water continued to rise at a terrifying pace.

Even as the waves lapped across the steps, Xuanmin did not falter. He continued to walk, as steady as he was fast.

    

"No, we have to speed up!" Lu Shijiu shouted from ahead. "The water is rising faster. It happened much earlier than last time. I don't know if we can make it to the end. Hurry!"

Before he could finish, another great wave crashed into them.

    

Lu Nianqi had swallowed bucketfuls of water, and his whole body was soaked. His nose was stuffed full of that strange, half-wet half-rot smell. The waves assaulted the group relentlessly –– within the blink of an eye, the water had risen up to their ankles and was lapping at their thighs.

Just as Lu Nianqi wiped a fistful of water away from his face, another wave crashed into him with a vengeance. There was no end to the surging of the water, and he could not fight back no matter how hard he tried. He knew that the water did not care: it would keep rushing into him until it infiltrated every pore of his body and drowned him.

This desperate feeling was all too familiar, and he felt as though it were seven or eight years ago, and he was again that child in the river...

   

Xuanmin frowned as he glanced at the spasming youth in his arms. The violence of the waves seemed to have set off some traumatic memory –– the burdensome boy began to scream like a madman.

Without hesitation, Xuanmin lifted a hand to strike the back of Lu Nianqi's head.

    

"Peng––"

Another one! Xue Xian was briefly jolted from his daze again. He felt an indescribable feeling well up inside his soul, like something deeply familiar was being drawn out from somewhere far away and rushing into him. It seeped into his nonexistent veins and coursed through his nonexistent body, emanating heat and a sense of swelling.

    

Fuck...

Xue Xian grumbled. Am I a soaked mantou?

The swelling feeling was unbearable. He felt as though he was pushing at the boundaries of the marble.

"Peng––"    

"Peng––"

“Peng––"

As the noise returned, it was so clear now that Xue Xian was no longer the only person to feel it. The others, hurrying down the dark path, heard it too.

    

"Wh-what is that?" Although Lu Shijiu was familiar with the path, it seemed that this development was new. "Something's knocking against the stone steps!"

Xuanmin faltered, then began walking even faster. "Hurry."

Lu Shijiu was right: something really was knocking against the steps, as though something slumbering within the black water had suddenly been awakened and was hurtling violently into the steps' submerged pillars. With each knock, the whole mess of steps vibrated, and the already fragile path became ever more unsteady. It began to teeter back and forth, threatening to collapse.

    

"Peng––"

The knocking was becoming louder, and, with it, the entire structure of the steps wobbled. Then, there was a series of crunching noises and, in that instant, not only the steps beneath their feet but also the ones in front of them and behind them, all of them, disintegrated. Before the group could even think to struggle, they were swallowed whole by the water. 

    

As the waves rose over their heads, Xuanmin thought he heard something in his pouch emit a faint sizzling noise, like a spoonful of water sprinkled onto a hot metal plate.

The black water felt like needles pricking their bodies all over ––  to even open their eyes was agony.

    

Beneath the water, Xuanmin blinked and forced himself to keep his eyes open. In the corner of his eye, he saw a strange, smooth thing slither out of his pouch and sink rapidly into the depths, as though headed for the uncertain bottom.

Xuanmin was stunned. Having no arms and legs hasn’t made this one any more well-behaved, has it?

He raised his hand and reached out to rescue Xue Xian.

    

But just as Xuanmin’s palm came into contact with the marble, he felt a mammoth weight come down onto him, as though he were not holding a marble but an entire mountain range. 

Before he could extricate himself, the marble was already dragging him rapidly to the depths.

Xuanmin: “...”

---

The author has something to say: 

I only did the update after I came home from class, so this one was a bit late. Tomorrow I will put it in the draft box earlier. Sorry =3=

---

[a] Musuli uses 妖孽 (yao1 nie4) here, which combines “yao” with “nie” meaning sin/evil (the first character of “niezhang”). 

[b] Musuli uses 主 (zhu3), meaning “master” or “lord”. It’s rare for one-character nouns to be used in Chinese because two-character or four-character phrases are seen as more pleasing; here, the straightforward use of 主 is an assertion of Xue Xian’s power and status, done so in a sarcastic or ironic manner. 主 in this case isn’t necessarily saying that Xue Xian is master/lord of something or someone, but more to emphasise his general dominance as a mythical creature –– and his demanding behavior befitting someone of his status; because of this, I used “little lord” in English to steer the significance away from ‘lordship’. 

[c] The Big Dipper is called 北斗 (bei3 dou3) in Chinese. 

[d] Musuli phrases this as 列阵 (lie4 zhen4), a noun that literally means “rows/array” in a neutral sense. However, 列 can also be taken as a verb meaning “to arrange”, making this phrase “arranging a feng shui design/array” in context. 

[e] 梅花桩 (mei2 hua1 zhuang1), literally “plum blossom pillars”, is a martial arts technique also known as 梅花拳 (mei2 hua1 quan2), “plum blossom fists”. The technique is famous for having its practitioners walk on wooden pillars high in the air. Wikipedia and Baidu.

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 23 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 23

The JJWXC raws are here. Please support Musuli if you can! The novel is very cheap to buy; this guide tells you how to use JJWXC.

---

Chapter 23: Blind Soothsayer (VI)

"Dashi, what's wrong?" asked Jiang Shining. Being a ghost, Jiang Shining had a natural advantage compared to Lu Nianqi. Aside from a slight headache and some dull pain, he was not actually hurt, and was the first between the two to recover. He sat up in confusion and saw Xuanmin with the flame in one hand, gaping at something on the ground, frozen in shock.

In their limited interactions thus far, Xuanmin had maintained the disposition of a deathly calm pond –– it had seemed that nothing could scare him or anger him in any way. Jiang Shining had never seen him so taken aback. 

What the hell had made Xuanmin react in such a way?! 

Something inside Jiang Shining's heart went ba-dunk, and a sense of unease welled up inside him.

When he saw that Xuanmin seemed not to have heard him at all, he became even more distressed. He scrambled up to go to him, but as soon as he took a step, he tripped.

    

"Ow–– Look where you're going!" Lu Nianqi yelped, his foot darting away.

"My sincere apologies. I was not paying attention," Jiang Shining said. He turned and saw that the poor child was hugging his head and trying to protect his wounded hand at the same time. "I stepped on your foot –– why are you hugging your head?"    

“...” There was a pause. Reluctantly, Lu Nianqi responded in a muffled tone, "Somehow I landed on my face. I hurt my forehead."

That won Jiang Shining over. All of a sudden, his medical instinct kicked in. "Can you stand? Where else are you hurt?" 

"I hurt my hand again. It must be bleeding." Lu Nianqi wiggled his hand. Leaning on Jiang Shining's side, he stood up. "Apart from that, I'm fine. Monk... Uh, what's he discovered? Why isn't he saying anything?" 

The child had lost both his parents at a young age, so he did not know how to speak to his elders properly. If Xuanmin hadn't revealed some of his powers earlier, he wouldn't even have bothered correcting himself –– he would've just addressed him as ‘Monk’. 

    

The two of them limped and staggered over to Xuanmin's side. Because Xuanmin had such a cold demeanor, they didn't dare get too close, but instead hovered half a step away from him and stretched their necks out like meerkats to peer at the patch of ground he was staring at.

The talisman Xuanmin was holding probably had a special spell [a] to it –– in all this time, it hadn't burned away yet. The small flame that persisted didn't emit a whole lot of light, but it did allow them to see the face that had fallen to the ground.

Jiang Shining: “……”

Lu Nianqi: “……”

If you were in a dark flame lit only by a tottering, almost dead flame, at the bottom of a creepy island, and suddenly came across your companion's severed head, you would be so afraid that you might cry, or even go crazy. Plus, Xue Xian had landed face-up, and his streaked, bloodied face was already a fright in itself –– a ghoulish face in a place like that would send anyone halfway to heaven.

And yet...    

    

The first emotion that came to Jiang Shining's mind was pure exasperation.

Next, he thought: What's he playing at now...

And finally, a bell in his brain rang, and he began to tremble. "Oh no. His head's fallen off. Is he dead?" 

    

He finally understood why Xuanmin had been in such a stupor earlier. Although everyone had heard of decapitation, it was still shocking to actually witness it.

Just a second ago, the paper man had been happily tumbling around –– who knew that he'd actually go and get his head snapped off?

    

"Wh-where's his body?" Jiang Shining stammered.

Lu Nianqi still hadn't shaken the look of utter trauma off his face. Only his eyeballs moved over to look at Xuanmin.

Xuanmin made no noise, nor did he show any emotion –– all he did was reach into his pouch and procure that headless paper body. That body, which had been so energetic earlier, now lay lifeless in his palm without so much as a twitch, as though turned back into an ordinary piece of paper, silent and unmoving.

    

Jiang Shining opened his mouth again yet found no words. Finally, Lu Nianqi said, "Is... Is he a human or a ghost? The state he's in... Will he survive?"

"He should..." Jiang Shining began, but trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence. Then, it occurred to him to bend down and pick up the fragile sheet that was Xue Xian's head. Hesitantly, he said, "Xue… Xue-xiong? [b] Are you awake? If you are, say something."

“...”

Jiang Shining held his breath and waited, but there was no response. Quivering, he quickly placed the head into Xuanmin's palm.

"Could we paste him back together?" Lu Nianqi ventured.

    

What use is that? Have you ever heard of a human gluing his head back on? Why don't you try doing that to yourself? 

The words surged in Jiang Shining's stomach, but, seeing as Lu Nianqi was but a child, he forced them down. He gazed down at Xue Xian’s decapitated body with eyes full of worry and frustration.

    

All of a sudden, Xuanmin, still staring down at his palm, said, "There is no hope. Let's burn it."

In unison, Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi shouted, "What?"    

    

Xuanmin was still wearing that neutral expression –– he looked utterly serious. Appalled, Jiang Shining's whole body began to tremble. "Dashi, are you for real?" 

"I do not perform funeral rites for paper men." As he said this, Xuanmin moved the burning talisman closer to Xue Xian's corpse.

    

Just as the flame stretched its tongue out toward the paper, a sad voice boomed into Xuanmin's ear. "Halt! How dare you?" 

The sound had clearly not come from the paper man, but rather from the empty space near Xuanmin's ear.

Jiang Shining had still been in disbelief about Xue Xian's death. Now, his head shot up and he stared at Xuanmin. Circling the monk, he looked around but was afraid to say a word, for he could not see Xue Xian anywhere.

    

In fact, when the paper body had ripped in half, Xue Xian had known that he would experience yet another maiming. Instead of facing his agonising fate, Xue Xian had torn his soul out of the paper body. Without a physical anchor, his soul was as fickle as wind or air, unable to be seen by anyone. Incidentally, this was exactly what Xue Xian wanted –– all his previous agitation had ended up getting his own head ripped off. It was humiliating. He wanted to be invisible.

So he had quietly gathered himself behind Xuanmin, like one of those goblins that perched on people's shoulders, [c] watching them. 

    

Xue Xian had wanted to freak out the bald donkey by swimming up toward Xuanmin and muttering ominous things into his ear.

But Xuanmin didn't even turn around. Calmly, as though nothing was wrong, he asked, "Not faking dead anymore?" 

Xue Xian: “...”

It was as they say: no matter how strong you think you are, there is always something that can defeat you. Xue Xian couldn't believe that, out of everyone in the world, he had to run into this bald donkey. 

    

"How did you know I wasn't dead?" Xue Xian finally said through gritted teeth. 

Xuanmin put the two pieces of the paper body, which he had threatened to burn, back into his pouch, then said, "Good people often die early. It is always the villains who tend to live long, fulfilling lives." [d]

Xue Xian could strangle the bald donkey. [e]

But then...    

At the thought of something, Xue Xian pushed his fury down. With all the will in him, he managed to soften his voice and say, "Fine. Someone of my status has no need to engage with a bald donkey like you. Say whatever you want."

Hearing this, Xuanmin tilted his head and stole a glance at the air around his ear. What was wrong with the niezhang? He had actually managed to suppress his anger and behave properly for once.

    

Xue Xian cleared his throat –– he knew that, to say what he wanted to say next, he needed to have some humility. Seeing Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi in the corner of his eye, he lowered his voice. 

Bare souls have no bodies, so of course they are neither big nor small, neither fat nor thin –– they are but gusts of wind. Xue Xian gathered himself into as tight a bundle as he could and crept toward Xuanmin's ear canal, so that no other person could hear what he was about to say. “Bald donkey. Let’s make a deal.”

Though Xuanmin did not speak, he seemed to settle in, waiting for Xue Xian to begin.

"Let me borrow your body," Xue Xian said.

Xuanmin: “...”

Xue Xian played back what he'd just said and realised that the phrasing had been wrong. He added, "I'm not saying I'll kick you out. I mean, let me find a place to stay. Ideally, near your hip."

Xuanmin: “...”

Xue Xian: “...”  Why is it so hard to express yourself?

    

He didn't know what to do. Bare souls couldn't stay in the air for long without anything to latch onto –– they needed to find something physical, or else they would slowly dissolve. The longer a bare soul wandered, the more it harmed its own integrity. Xue Xian had spent so long building up enough energy to heal the upper half of his body –– he didn't want to start all over again at full paralysis.

The little paper man was broken. He couldn't do that all over again.

   

And the reason why Xue Xian wanted to be near the hip...

Ever since the golden marble had entered Xuanmin's pouch, Xue Xian had had the feeling that there was something special about Xuanmin's body. Xue Xian had recalled that bell-like noise he'd heard a couple of times previously. Both times, the noise had come from somewhere in Xuanmin's hip and had knocked Xue Xian back, leaving him seeing stars. 

The changes that the marble was experiencing had to have something to do with Xuanmin's hip.

Xue Xian had begun to come up with all sorts of theories –– if both he and the golden marble stuck themselves tightly to Xuanmin's hip, would he soon somehow be able to regain his original body? 

Although his spine had been extracted from his dragon body, there was a possibility that he could slowly grow out new ones –– as long as he took care of himself.

He needed to get back into his original body and grow it all back. The only other option was his current situation: movements severely restricted, and needing to make all sorts of bargains and compromises just to get anywhere at all.

"Never mind. All I meant was that I need somewhere to live. It doesn’t matter where. Forget the hip. Why don't I go inside your pouch?" Xue Xian said. Xuanmin had still not responded, but Xue Xian had already updated his request several times –– he knew to make an active retreat when things weren't going well.

Xuanmin glanced at that empty pocket of air near his ear. "Before, you were more upset about being in the pouch than someone might be about the death of his parents. Now, you want to go back in?"

Xue Xian forced himself to be nice. "Yes, yes. Just tell me if you agree."

"Why?" Xuanmin replied.

Xue Xian deadpanned, "You have a beautiful skeleton."

Xuanmin shook his head. He had nothing to say to that. But he mulled it over, then took the golden marble out of the pouch.

    

Xuanmin’s index finger twitched and soon a gash appeared on it, from which welled a single drop of crimson blood. With that drop of blood as ink, he used his finger to write talismanic text across the marble. Xue Xian recognised that talisman: it was the same one he himself had previously used on the paper silhouettes.

As Xuanmin finished his last stroke, the golden marble shone brighter, then died down again.

    

Xuanmin moved his hand toward the space where Xue Xian seemed to be hovering, and suddenly closed his fist. Then, he slammed his hand toward the marble –– Xue Xian was thus sent into the marble. 

This did not mean that Xue Xian had managed to wholly return to his original body. Instead, the golden marble that contained his body’s essence was currently acting as any other ordinary object: a simple receptacle; a temporary anchor for his soul.

Despite the caveat, Xue Xian was overjoyed.

He had to admit, when the bald donkey wasn't actively provoking him, he wasn't actually all that bad. This action had thoroughly touched Xue Xian's heart. 

    

As Xuanmin moved to place Xue Xian back into his pouch, he glanced down at the golden marble and asked, "Will you still climb around?" 

I'm as smooth as a baby's ass and as round as the moon. [f] I don't have arms or legs, how the fuck am I supposed to climb anywhere? Xue Xian thought. But he had just benefited from a great kindness on Xuanmin's part and knew he should not be so insolent, so he swallowed his pride and obediently replied, "No more climbing."

"Are you still planning to jump all over the place?" [g]

“...” Xue Xian pouted and finally said, "I'll behave."

Only when Xuanmin saw that Xue Xian had truly gone tame did he tuck the golden marble into the pouch.

Once inside, the niezhang settled in and caused no trouble.

Firstly, Xue Xian had promised Xuanmin he'd be good –– he couldn't immediately go back on his word. He had to at least pretend to care. Secondly, the marble had been an ingenious idea on Xuanmin's part. Confined to this marble as round as the moon, he couldn't tumble about even if he wanted to. All he could do was roll about softly inside the pouch to the back-and-forth rhythm of Xuanmin's footsteps, and not much else.

    

Although Jiang Shining hadn't overheard Xue Xian's bargaining process, he had observed Xuanmin's hand movements and gotten a good idea of what had happened. He pointed at Xuanmin's pouch and asked, "Is he hurt?" 

Xuanmin shook his head.

The bookworm breathed a sigh of relief.

    

Having finally dealt with the troublesome marble Xue Xian, Xuanmin at last took a look around the cave.

Lifting the flame talisman higher, Xuanmin studied their surroundings –– someone had constructed this basement chamber, for which the floor tilted quite strongly in one specific direction.

    

Xuanmin brought the flame to that direction.

At the sight of two massive shadows in the corner of the chamber, Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi both jumped.

"What is that?" Jiang Shining shrieked, backing away.

"Tomb guardians," Xuanmin said. [h]

The slope only went on for three or four zhang, and ended at a half-open set of stone doors. At each side of the door stood an enormous stone carving of a mighty beast. Each beast was around one zhang tall, and though they were immobile, they cast a powerful, violent aura. Their eyes tilted down, so that they seemed to be quietly surveilling the chamber from a great height.

Beasts of such appearance were only usually seen in the most extravagant princes' mausoleums.

    

"Tomb?!" Jiang Shining did not doubt Xuanmin. A chill ran down his neck and he rubbed his hands anxiously, saying, "So this Gravestone Island really is a big gravestone?"

Lu Nianqi had turned green. "But... I've never heard of that! We call it Gravestone Island only because it looks like a gravestone. If it really was a tomb, how would pharmacists dare to visit?"

Xuanmin moved the talisman closer to the beasts. "They are new."

"How new?" asked Jiang Shining.

"Three to five years."

    

Sculpted three to five years ago... which meant this tomb was only erected three to five years ago, too? But... for whom?

    

Xuanmin brought the flame back to where they stood, and then looked up at the endless ceiling. He shook his head.

There was no way out where they'd come in. All they could do was follow the path and see where it led.

With a sweep of the flame, Xuanmin began to walk.

    

Though Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi trembled all over in fear, they dared not let Xuanmin go too far without them. After a brief moment of hesitation, they scurried after him. 

"I'm not scared, I'm not scared," Jiang Shining muttered dully to himself. "I'm a ghost too." He seemed to really feel a bit better once he’d spoken.

Xuanmin strode past the tomb guardians and pushed the half-open stone doors. 

No matter how old a wooden door is, when opened, it will always faithfully make a creaking noise. But stone doors are different: when opened, the stone of the door grinds against the stone of the floor with a huohuo sound. It was an eerily hushed noise; as it echoed across the walls of the chamber, it raised the hairs on Jiang Shining's neck.

Lu Nianqi crossed his legs. He thought he might piss. But he would rather die than admit weakness, so no matter how much he wanted to retreat, he had no choice but to take two confident steps ahead. 

In these kinds of places, you never know whether it’s safest at the front of the group or at the back. 

    

When the door was open almost all the way, it suddenly struck something and made a loud protesting noise, then refused to budge. It seemed to be stuck.

“There's something behind the door!" Lu Nianqi shrieked. He sounded terrified, though he was trying to suppress the tremor in his voice.

    

Xuanmin was in no hurry to check behind the door. First, he used the talisman to light up the surroundings––

"Oh mama..." Lu Nianqi blurted out.

    

Actually, the area looked to be a simple hallway into the tomb: its design was the same as the chamber they'd just left, only narrower. What had scared Lu Nianqi out of his skin were the walls of the hallway, which were covered in paintings of grotesque beasts even more awe-inspiring than the tomb guardians. The murals were outlined not in ink nor full color, but in crimson.

"A-a-are these drawings made of blood?" Lu Nianqi said. Ultimately, he really was still a child: he was the one most affected by what they were seeing.

These murals were huge. How much blood would you need to paint them? 

    

The cowardly Jiang Shining began to quiver too, then stopped and said, "It shouldn't be. Smell it: if it was painted with blood, this whole place would stink of metal and flesh." 

"True." Lu Nianqi quickly calmed down, sniffed, and said, "No blood."

    

Once calm, they began to notice more of the details.

For instance, the color of the drawings were far too bright. If it really was blood, it would have long dried into a dark brown.

    

"Cinnabar." Xuanmin said as he scanned the murals.

It wasn't out of the norm to see blood nor beasts in a tomb, but the cinnabar was strange. Cinnabar had the side effect of warding evil and suppressing ghosts, so if it was being used for these murals, it meant that those who had buried this person did not want them to rest in peace nor to be reborn into a good life... but instead to never, ever come back.

This was an extremely evil practice.

    

Although Jiang Shining had never seen a mausoleum, let alone gone for a walk inside one, and so was not intimately familiar with the rules of such places, he did know about cinnabar. Having grown up in a clinic and absorbed the expertise of his parents, his knowledge was not one of rote memorisation: rather, most herbs and their uses came instinctively to him. Still, when he'd had some spare time, he'd liked to idly flip through the pages of the medical textbooks, and had learned a great deal about cinnabar.

"Painting beasts with cinnabar..." Jiang Shining mumbled. "How much do you have to hate the person in the tomb to do this to them?"

    

Xuanmin waved his hand dismissively. "Perhaps there are evil spirits in the tomb."

If the person buried in the tomb could not rest peacefully, then those building the tombs had no choice but to paint cinnabar murals and try to secure peace.

    

It was too risky to make careless remarks in such a place, so Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi stopped speculating.

They saw that Xuanmin had abandoned the murals and was now making his way to the back of the door, so they hurried along.

    

At this sight, Lu Nianqi's face really drained.

There was something stuck beneath the door, which had stopped it from moving further. But the doorstop was not some object: it was people.

Two people: one old, one young.

The old one lay curled up on the ground with one hand pressed to his shoulder. His robes were ragged and covered in mud, and there was a nasty patch of blue across the back of his hand –– he was injured.

The young one leant against the wall with his eyes shut tight and his lips drawn in a firm, pale line. He looked frail, perhaps even weaker than Jiang Shining –– extremely thin with cheekbones jutting out abnormally. In his hand, he clutched a bundle of three twigs tied together with a piece of red string. 

    

If Xue Xian had stuck his head out in that moment, he would find that he recognised that string, and that he also recognised that youth––

It was none other than Lu Shijiu.

    

"Shijiu?!" Lu Nianqi stood in shock for a while, then rushed over. At first, he was afraid to touch Lu Shijiu, but once he saw that his brother did not seem wounded, he began to shake Shijiu's shoulders.

“Shijiu? Lu Shijiu?! Wake up!" Lu Nianqi shrieked. Seeing that there was no reaction, he began to push the old man. "Liu-laotou! Liu-laotou, wake up!"

    

Jiang Shining took a step toward them. "Let me see."

But just as he bent down for a closer look, the pale-faced Lu Shijiu, who had been thoroughly shaken by his brother, weakly opened his eyes. 

At the same time, Liu-laotou stirred. He began to spasm, as though dreaming of falling, and then his eyelids fluttered open too. His gaze looked on emptily for a moment, and then he began to sit up.

Hurriedly, Jiang Shining held out a hand and helped him up.

    

Liu-laotou and Lu Shijiu stared at each other for a long time, then turned their confused gazes at the others. They seemed still to be in shock.

As Jiang Shining and Xuanmin observed Lu Shijiu, they found that it was just as Lu Nianqi had said: although there was some strangeness to him, it was impossible to tell that he was blind from the way that he moved.

Lu Nianqi slapped Shijiu's shoulder and screamed, "Are you stupid? Can't you see qi? It's me, don’t you recognise me?"

    

That slap seemed to restore Shijiu's senses. Hoarsely, he whispered, "Nianqi?" Then, he slowly turned to gaze at his brother. His eyes really did not seem to be handicapped at all. As he stared at Lu Nianqi, there seemed even to be some light behind his gaze –– they were only slightly darker than ordinary eyes.  

But soon, Jiang Shining noticed that Lu Shijiu did show habits unique to blind people––

It was taking far too long for Lu Shijiu to recognise his brother. His eyeballs darted up and down Nianqi uncertainly, then his hand shot out to feel the boy's face. 

Lu Nianqi hissed. "Don't touch me there. I just fell on my forehead. You can't feel my freckles anymore."

    

Hearing this, Xuanmin glanced over.

Indeed, that smatter of freckles on Lu Nianqi's forehead had been scratched away, leaving a patchy scab that changed the look of his face.

    

Now Shijiu was tugging at Nianqi's hand, which he pulled close to his face, as though getting ready to read his palm.

Scowling, Nianqi yanked his hand back. "And don't look at my hand. I slashed it earlier and it had finally begun to heal when I fell down here and hurt it again. If you keep touching it, you'll get it infected."

    

Silently, Lu Shijiu tucked his own hands away and nodded. He seemed to have confirmed that the person sitting across from him was indeed his brother. Slowly, he said, "Lu Nianqi."

This time, there was no skepticism.

    

Back at the Lu courtyard, Lu Nianqi had been so upset that he'd cried. But now that he'd come face to face with his brother again, Jiang Shining saw that the child took up that stubborn attitude once more, as though he'd never even wanted to come looking for Lu Shijiu. Seeing this made Jiang Shining feel exasperated.

But then Jiang Shining saw that Lu Shijiu wasn't much better, either. After Lu Nianqi helped him up, he immediately pushed the boy's hands away from his arm –– he seemed to hate needing assistance. Not only was there no warmth in Lu Shijiu's gesture, but there was even a hint of... ice. 

    

What was wrong with these two? 

As Jiang Shining observed the brothers, he finally understood what Xue Xian had meant by the boys' relationship not being ‘very family-like’.

    

Jiang Shining wasn't blind. He considered himself good at judging the intentions of others. The panic that Lu Nianqi had exhibited back at the compound and the deep, grateful sigh of relief that Lu Shijiu had just emitted demonstrated the brothers' care for each other. How could they suddenly act so dismissively toward each other? 

Lu Shijiu was muttering to Liu-laotou. Once he'd made sure the man was okay, he gripped his bundle of sticks and turned away, now silent.

Xuanmin looked at Lu Shijiu, then back at Liu-laotou. He frowned.

    

Jiang Shining saw the expression on Xuanmin's face. Though he didn't know what Xuanmin was thinking, he thought to remind them all of why they were here: "Dashi, weren't you and Xue-xiong looking for this boy Shijiu?" [i]

Xuanmin nodded and reached into his pouch for the golden marble.

    

Inside the pouch, Xue Xian had been rocked dizzy by the movement of Xuanmin's hips. Back when he'd been a paper man, he had already been suspicious about the marble's slightly odd behavior when inside Xuanmin’s pouch, but now that he was the marble, he'd found that there was nothing slight about it! 

At first, he'd felt as though he'd entered a pool of hot water, at the bottom of which was a hot spring pumping relaxing thermal water into his bath.  

But as the temperature of the water grew increasingly hot, to the point where it was hot enough to peel off someone's skin, Xue Xian had thought: This isn't a bath. This is a fucking dragon meat soup!

But it was too late –– there had been no way out. Because he’d discovered that the heat had a kind of stickiness that had melted all the defenses in his body. After that, he stopped being able to move at all.

As such, Xue Xian had stopped paying attention to what was going on outside the pouch, which is why he had not spoken in a long time. He had no idea what the others had done, nor who they had met –– he floated about in a daze.

Just as he thought he might melt into the soup, Xuanmin rescued him.

    

What a strange bald donkey. His hand was of a completely normal temperature –– it was even a bit cold compared to ordinary people –– so how come his hip area, where the pouch was located, was such an unbearable furnace? 

As Xuanmin held Xue Xian, the latter breathed a sigh of relief –– he was finally cooling down.

As Xue Xian’s soul’s temperature fell, he gradually began to come back to his senses.

He rolled about in Xuanmin's palm to speed up the cooling down process, then sat still and began to look around him, his gaze filtered through the golden surface of the marble.

    

"Lu Shijiu?" Xue Xian asked. "We found him?" 

"Mn," Xuanmin said.

    

Still with a brain full of hot soup, Xue Xian's reaction was slow. After some time, he idly said, "Oh, perfect. And you're got your sticks with you, too. I need you to find some people for me."

He did another tumble, then said, "Bald donkey. Give him money."

Xuanmin: “...”

Xue Xian watched as Xuanmin reached into the pouch for his silver pieces. Squinting, the marble idly said, "I'll pay you back in gold."

    

Lu Shijiu took a ‘look’ at the two, then said to Lu Nianqi, "Take the money. Don't overcharge."

Lu Shijiu was young –– only seventeen or eighteen –– but he had a strange habit. Since he had a family to feed, naturally he charged for his soothsayer services, but, instead of having a set price, he had a set number. Customers could pay in gold, silver, or copper –– it didn't matter to him –– but if they wanted to pay in copper, it had to be three copper pieces, and if they wanted to pay in silver, it had to be three silver pieces; or, if they were insane and wanted to pay in gold, three gold pieces. 

Xue Xian was of the insane category. Each of the last two times he'd visited, he'd paid three golden pearls.

    

Obediently, Lu Nianqi accepted three silver pieces from Xuanmin. As he moved to put the money into Shijiu's pocket, his brother stopped him, saying, "My shirt's been ripped. You keep it for now. Don't steal it."

"Why would I steal it?" Nianqi shot back, scowling.

    

Lu Shijiu ignored him and said to Xuanmin, "What do you need me to divine?"

Xuanmin stretched out his palm with the golden marble.

Xue Xian said from the marble, "Please help me inspect this marble. What other hands has it passed through? Where are these people now?"

Lu Shijiu did not take the marble. Instead, he squatted down and brought his face close to Xuanmin's palm as he passed the bundle of sticks thoughtfully over the ground.

    

If Jiang Shining, who stood to the side, had decided to take a look at that moment, he would have noticed that it wasn't Lu Shijiu making the traces on the ground: it was the sticks themselves, and Lu Shijiu was only lightly touching them. As Lu Shijiu studied the marble, the sticks traced an intersecting matrix of straight lines on the ground, as well as the occasional circle.

    

Suddenly, the sticks made a pata sound and fell to the ground. Frowning, Lu Shijiu picked them back up.

Half-closing his eyes, he touched the markings on the ground as his lips moved soundlessly, muttering to himself.

    

At last, he looked back up at the marble in Xuanmin's hands and told Xue Xian, "Strange. I could only find four people. There's a fifth that I can't find anywhere. It's as though they don't exist."

Xue Xian mulled this over. "Five? Okay. Tell me the four you found."

"Mn." Shijiu nodded and said, "First is a fisherman. Second is the one I can't see. Third is a geomancer. Fourth, I think you've met... it's a man who works in the yamen, named Liu. The fifth is this dashi here."

Xue Xian: “...”  Well, I knew about those four already.

    

"Where are they all now?" Xue Xian asked.

Lu Shijiu returned to the markings on the floor and said, "The fisherman is in Anqing Prefecture, across the river. The geomancer is in the Shu region, [j] cultivating [k] in a small dragon cave on Mount Panlong. And that shiye named Liu..." 

As his fingers moved across the diagram, the frown on his face disappeared and he relaxed back into a neutral expression. "Last night, Liu-shiye was in a fire. He won't live past today. And as for dashi, I don't need to tell you."

He had finished. He put his hands back in his lap and looked calmly at Xue Xian.

    

"Liu-shiye won't live past today?" Jiang Shining repeated, stunned.

Back at the Liu compound, he had heard Liu-lao-taitai talk about the repaying of debts. But he hadn't realised something would really happen to the man, nor that it would happen so soon. 

Lu Shijiu reached back into the diagram and nodded. "Yes. He definitely won't see tomorrow. Right now, he's laying on a bed in a shack."

    

The Jiang family had all perished in a fire, and Jiang Shining's parents had then become trapped inside the millstone –– they had experienced injustice after injustice. The fool [l] Liu Chong had had to live for years in that shack filled with yin energy, absorbing so much of the Liu family's bad luck that he'd almost died from it.

Now, Liu-shiye had been in a fire, and was bed-bound in a shack... Indeed, he was getting what he deserved.

Lu Shijiu looked at Xue Xian and asked, "Is there anything else you need?" 

As Xue Xian shook his head, the whole marble rocked lightly. "I've asked all the questions I have."

    

Lu Shijiu then looked at the others. "Anyone else?"

Xuanmin tucked Xue Xian back into his pouch. As the marble tumbled out of Xuanmin's cool hands, Xue Xian thought, If only I had arms. Then I could hold on for a little longer.

But he did not have arms. The marble rolled back into the pouch, and Xue Xian resumed his slow transformation into dragon meat soup.

    

Now, Xuanmin was extracting a folded-up sheet of paper from his chest pocket.

It was the paper that he had been inspecting back at Guiyun Hall. It was covered in scrawling, messy text as well as some rough diagrams, as though the notes had been taken in great haste, though other parts of the text were arranged in neat and tidy rows.

As Xuanmin handed the paper to Lu Shijiu, it was still folded up, and a single phrase could be read in the corner of the page: Find this person.    

In a low voice, Xuanmin said, "I want to know who gave me this paper. Thank you."

    

Lu Nianqi solemnly accepted three more silver pieces from the monk. Again, Shijiu studied the paper closely as the bundle of sticks in his hand darted back and forth across the ground.

Inside the pouch, Xue Xian was terribly curious, too. Knowing he didn't have long before his brain became too hot to think again, he perked up his ears and listened carefully to the goings-on outside. 

    

After some time, just before Xue Xian thought he might lose consciousness again, he heard Shijiu's muffled voice: "It's you."

Xue Xian: “...”

What the hell? Did Xuanmin just give a soothsayer his own notes and ask whose they were? Xue Xian suddenly recalled what Jiang Shining had been saying before –– that the medicine Xuanmin was taking smelled just like medicine used to treat loss of soul.

Was this bald donkey really an amnesiac?! He was way too fucking good at pretending to be normal! 

    

Xue Xian wasn't the only one stunned. Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi both gaped at Xuanmin.

But Jiang Shining quickly felt that he was being impolite and averted his gaze, retreating into himself. [m]

    

In any case, Xuanmin did not notice that he was being gawked at. It was as though he didn't even care about the others' reactions. His face still blank, he calmly asked Lu Shijiu, "Are you sure no one else has touched it?"

Lu Shijiu ran his hands across the ground again, then nodded and said, "No."

Xuanmin nodded too. "Thank you very much."    

    

Now that Lu Shijiu had finished, Lu Nianqi piped up. "So the reason you didn't come home for half a month was because you were stuck in this creepy place?"

Ignoring him, Lu Shijiu gestured at the doors behind him. "We can't go back the way we came. We need to go that way."

Nianqi glowered at him, then huffed away to sulk.

Lu Shijiu paid no attention to the boy. He began to walk down the hallway, toward another set of doors in the distance. Silently, Liu-laotou followed. The two took a few steps, then stopped and looked back at Xuanmin and the others. "We've already explored the place, and were close to finding the exit. I think this time, we can make it out."

Lu Shijiu tilted his head, gesturing for them to follow.

    

Xuanmin only looked at them for a bit, saying nothing. Then, he began to walk too. As he strode, he said to Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi, "Walk behind me."

The two obeyed, scurrying closely behind him like a tail. Although they were terrified, they also feared getting too close to Xuanmin and stepping on his pristine, cloud-like robes.

    

Seeing that Nianqi still looked upset, Jiang Shining said in a low voice, "Your brother must be tired to death. He's probably been searching for a way out all this time. Look at his overcoat –– it's damp, like he fell into the water. Although it's partly dry, it must still be very heavy. It's taking him so much effort just to walk that of course he'll only speak when necessary." 

Lu Nianqi glanced at the wet patches on his brother's coat and seemed to grunt in agreement. His face relaxed a little.

    

At the second set of doors, Lu Shijiu stopped and felt the stone with his hands. Staring at the doors, he blinked slowly and said, "There's danger ahead. Stick close to me."

As his brother blinked, Lu Nianqi couldn’t help but blink in quick succession too. Then he slapped the side of his head. 

"What is it?" Xuanmin asked, glancing at him.

"My vision feels blurry." Nianqi blinked again, then mumbled, "I think it's fine again. Forget it. Let's get out of here."

    

Xuanmin scanned the boy's face, then looked at Lu Shijiu.

Following Xuanmin's gaze, Jiang Shining studied the brothers too. He couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. But just as the answer surged toward him, Lu Shijiu suddenly pushed the doors open.

The grinding noise of the door echoed across the hallway. The talismanic flame in Xuanmin's hand jumped up, and then died.

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Thanks for the support =3=

[Acknowledgments]

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[a] Musuli uses the word 玄机 (xuan2 ji1) here. Literally “dark/profound/mysterious machine/mechanism”, the word means “arcane truth” in a religious context. Here, however, it’s used to vaguely describe the fact that there is some kind of magic added to the fire talisman, so I have translated it as “spell”. 

[b] Xiong: see glossary.

[c] Musuli uses 背后灵 (bei4 hou4 ling2) here, literally “灵 behind the back”. 灵 means soul/spirit or fairy/elf, i.e. in this case, any kind of conscious creature. It’s vague and doesn’t come with a good/evil evaluation, so I chose the English word “goblin”. 

[d] This comes from an idiom in Chinese: “Good people have short lives; people who do harm are gifted a thousand years.” Xuanmin only used the second half of this idiom, but its comprehension depends on the reader’s knowledge of the full idiom.

[e] Musuli phrased this as, “Xue Xian wanted to send him to the skies (to heaven).”

[f] Musuli’s phrasing here is 光溜溜圆滚滚 (guang1 liu1 liu1 yuan2 gun3 gun3). 光 means “smooth” and 圆 means “round”. The repeated syllables behind each adjective are for emphasis, a common stylistic technique in Chinese. In the way that Xue Xian uses it here, he is not only emphasising the fact that he is smooth and round, but doing so in a sarcastically whimsical and lyrical manner. I’ve chosen to use similes in order to convey his tone.

[g] Musuli uses the phrase 翻天入海 (fan1 tian1 ru4 hai3), literally “flip the skies and enter the sea”, to describe Xue Xian’s troublemaking behavior.

[h] The Chinese phrase here is 镇墓兽 (zhen4 mu4 shou4), literally “beasts who hold down a tomb”.

[i] Jiang Shining uses 小兄弟 (xiao3 xiong1 di4) here, meaning “small brother”, a polite way of referring to a teenager or a youth.

[j] The Shu area is roughly correspondent to modern Sichuan. Between the Tang and Song dynasties, there was a major kingdom called Great Shu or, now, Former Shu. (Wikipedia).

[k] Musuli uses 清修 (qing1 xiu1) here, where 修 means “to hone a skill”, and in this case, means cultivation. 清 describes the cultivation as peaceful and calm.

[l] Musuli uses 傻子 (sha3 zi), which means “idiot”. 

[m] The phrase Musuli uses here is 眼观鼻鼻观口口观心 (yan3 guan1 bi2, bi2 guan1 kou3, kou3 guan1 xin1), literally “eye observes nose, nose observes mouth, mouth observes heart”. There are two layers of meaning to this. The first, literal one, comes from the Chinese idiom 眼观鼻，鼻观心 (which excludes the middle part about the mouth), in which the act of having one’s eyes turned down to one’s nose and one’s nose turned down to one’s heart demonstrates physically retreating into oneself in a meek, deferential manner. This is what Jiang Shining is actually doing, out of politeness. The second layer of meaning is that the full phrase Musuli uses is also current in Buddhist practice as a technique for meditation, and sometimes includes a final line about having one’s heart observing one’s dantian. While Jiang Shining is not religious, this is a pertinent phrasing that refers to Xuanmin’s status as a Buddhist monk.

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!