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Chapter 12: Empty Millstone (III)
Even as he spoke, Jiang Shining couldn't help but shudder at the unthinkable implications of what he’d said. Xue Xian happened to stick his head out of the pouch at that moment, and saw Jiang Shining shudder.
Xue Xian had to admire the bookworm for this: A ghost scared of ghosts!
And although Jiang Shining had spoken in a low and hurried voice, Xuanmin had heard what he’d said. Xuanmin’s brows knitted together, then relaxed again. Calmly, he said, "I see."
"What the fuck do you see?" snapped Xue Xian.
He had always had a bad temper, and Jiang Shining's slow nature frustrated him. Now he had to deal with Xuanmin, who would stay calm even if the sky were falling down on his bald head! All this waiting around was killing Xue Xian. Without waiting for Xuanmin’s reaction, Xue Xian silently tumbled out of the pouch and deftly grabbed onto Liu Chong’s trousers, disappearing into the folds of his blue-grey overcoat.
Xuanmin's words seemed to jolt Liu Chong back to his senses. [a]
Jiang Shining raised his head and locked eyes with Liu Chong.
The pupils in those eyes were blurred, and looked as though no consciousness peeked out from behind them. It was terrifying. Just from looking into them, Jiang Shining thought he might piss his pants.
Jiang Shining turned to run. Alas, encountering a ghost is like encountering a wild dog: when you first meet its eyes, it seems hesitant and confused, but as soon as you make a move, it will immediately pounce on you. Liu Chong emitted a low, dull roar from the back of his throat and, forgetting all about Xuanmin, charged at the fleeing Jiang Shining.
The bookworm's white face turned green. He wanted to scream, but forced himself to swallow it down. Even in such a critical moment, he was unable to let go of his junzi’s decorum. He wanted to run, but he was afraid of looking bad when running, so one foot seemed to leap away while the other foot stood rooted in its spot. In his fright, he almost twisted himself into a knot.
Guangdang––
Jiang Shining teetered left and right, then finally gave up worrying about humiliation and simply fell to the ground, his arms and legs splayed in all directions.
This array’s fake ‘Liu Chong’ gave a similar air of foolishness [b] as the real Liu Chong. Each of his movements was clumsy [c] and over-emphasised, and when he charged forward, he did so like a juggernaut –– as though it were completely impossible to stop him.
Jiang Shining watched as Liu Chong came running towards him like a tiger attacking its prey. He breathed a deep sigh and tried to tuck his neck into his shoulders, then shut his eyes.
In that moment, there was a loud dong–– sound. Jiang Shining felt a sleeve sweep a gust of wind across his face, followed by a violent quake of the stone floor tiles beneath him. The ice-fold fingers that Jiang Shining had expected to feel against his neck never arrived.
Grimacing, Jiang Shining carefully opened an eye –– only to see Liu Chong splayed [d] on the ground in front of him. It seemed that, somehow, he had fallen flat on his face.
The fool [b] had not expected to trip: due to his slow reflexes, he hadn't even been able to stick out his arms to break the fall. Instead, he really had fallen face-first onto the ground.
Stunned, Liu Chong scrambled upright and dusted the dirt off of his clothes. He was still staring down at the ground, mystified.
It was then that Xue Xian slid out of Liu Chong's bluish-gray overcoat, holding a long piece of string in his hands. It looked like...
A belt?
Jiang Shining looked back at Liu Chong and realised that the reason Liu Chong [b] had fallen over was because, just as he'd wanted to pounce, his pants had dropped to his ankles and gotten tangled up with his feet. With Liu Chong’s naturally clumsy disposition [e] and less-than-nimble legs, the trousers had tripped him and caused a terrible fall. In fact, he had knocked his forehead against the ground, so although he stayed half-sitting on the ground, shaking his head, he could not shake the confusion away.
As Xue Xian glided out with the belt, he casually threw the belt at Jiang Shining’s face. "Don’t just stand there, tie his [b] hands and feet together!"
Then he glared at Xuanmin. "Pick me up, quickly. I almost tore my arm off trying to get that belt."
Pick me up...
Jiang Shining was speechless. How can a half-paralysed one still manage to jump up and down and run around like that?
As he reflected on what had just occurred, Jiang Shining felt guilty: once again, he had been the weakest link and had created a hassle for everyone else. He decided to ignore whether the removal of someone’s belt was against the junzi’s code of conduct, and obediently began to use the long string to tie together Liu Chong’s left hand and right leg. As he did so, he muttered, "Sorry."
Xue Xian wrinkled his nose at Jiang Shining’s ridiculous behavior.
The lengths Xue Xian had gone to to help those two bastards –– he, the handicapped one, [f] had actually lowered himself to the point of stealing someone’s trouser belt! That bald donkey should've immediately knelt to the ground to show his eternal gratitude, and then raised Xue Xian up reverently with both hands and placed him back where he belonged. But the bald donkey didn't look like he was even considering thanking Xue Xian –– what a piece of shit! [g]
Xue Xian glowered at Xuanmin, his painted face emitting a foul expression of hatred. Only then did he notice that Xuanmin’s left hand was holding his copper coin pendant, as though planning something with them.
Wait… Was this bald donkey finally going to show some moves?
Xuanmin had not expected belt-stealing to be a technique for subduing a ghost, nor had he ever expected events to develop in this manner. He had been stunned for a moment, then came back to his senses.
But then, Xue Xian watched, aghast, as the monk calmly took his fingers away from the copper coin pendant.
As he was picked up from the ground by Xuanmin, Xue Xian suddenly felt rather regretful: If I'd known, I never would've gone to take Liu Chong’s [b] belt. I wanted to see what the bald donkey was made of!
He had missed a golden opportunity, and felt deflated. His whole paper body fell limp and his head lolled to the side, so that he dangled from Xuanmin's pouch like a hanged man.
Xuanmin glanced at Xue Xian with a frown, puzzled as to what he was up to now. He reached over to rub the paper man's head with the tip of his finger. As he did so, all the paper man did was raise his head weakly, and, as Xuanmin brought his finger away, the man fell limp again, as though all the bones in his body had melted away.
Xuanmin: “...”
Xuanmin was now certain that the niezhang was up to no good again. [h] He shook his head, then, still expressionless, said to Jiang Shining, "Let's go."
In that moment, the narrow door rattled in its frame as Liu-shiye began ramming into it. After just two assaults, even the wooden bolt seemed to quake.
Guang–– guang–– guang––
Jiang Shining shuddered at the noise, and hurried to follow after Xuanmin.
They crossed door after door in this labyrinthine compound and, at one point, ran into another crowd of people. The crowd had initially seemed ordinary, putting on a show of talking amongst themselves, but as soon as they’d caught sight of Xuanmin and Jiang Shining, a ghostly aura had immediately possessed the crowd and they had begun acting aggressive. Running away from these oft-slow, oft-quick spirits was like flying a kite: no matter how close or how far the spirits were, they were relentless in their chase.
As Jiang Shining ran through another doorway, his heart pounding in his chest, he took a head count: those running after them included not only the mass of the Liu family servants, but also three Liu-shiyes, two Liu Chongs, two old ladies clutching wooden canes...
Among the crowd were two particularly weak-looking servant girls, but as they chased after Jiang Shining, they were able to shove an entire old tree out of the way. Sure, the tree looked like it had been on the brink of death anyway, but the girls had practically ripped the trunk in half. Did they have knives for hands?
Jiang Shining was terrified. Before this, he had only just woken up in an empty room. He’d only gone through two doors before running into Xue Xian and Xuanmin –– what dog-shit luck!
However, if he still hadn’t figured out the logic behind the pathways and doorways of this compound by this point, then all the books he’d read in life would have been for nothing.
Thankfully, Xuanmin looked extremely sure of himself. Although he took sweeping, hasty steps, he did not seem perturbed at all. He seemed to have it all planned out –– he ducked in and out of the narrow doors without a smidge of hesitation. Jiang Shining certainly wasn't the type to get lost, [i] but he was nevertheless confused by all the twists and turns they'd been taking. Xuanmin, though, seemed perfectly in control.
"Bald donkey, where are we going?" Xue Xian had finally awoken from hanging corpse-like by the pouch.
Xuanmin replied, "That was the death door. We must go to the life door."
Skeptically, Xue Xian said, "Unless I’m blind, I’m pretty sure we've been to this same courtyard three times already."
"This is the delusion door,” Xuanmin said calmly.
"So?"
"If you look behind you, you shall see."
Slowly, Xue Xian lifted his heavy head and haughtily twisted it around. All he could see was white hemp cloth. "…Are you messing with me? When I turn around, all I see are your stupid robes."
Xuanmin: “...”
Jiang Shining, though, heard Xuanmin and took a look back. It was only after a few more steps that he suddenly realised: "What happened to the crowd? They've all disappeared. Just now I could still hear their hungry groaning."
Xue Xian finally understood. Looking back at Xuanmin, he asked, "You managed to lose them?"
Xuanmin simply replied, “Mn.”
Among the Eight Doors, the two neutral doors, neither auspicious or inauspicious –– the delusion door and the scenery door –– weren't completely useless doors. The delusion door was usually well-hidden, so was an excellent place to shield oneself from danger.
By coming in and out of the delusion door three times, Xuanmin was finally able to lose the kite behind them.
Now, he turned around again and exited the courtyard via a narrow door in the southwest. He began taking large, quick steps down a long corridor.
"Isn't this the death door that we accidentally went through earlier?"
Xue Xian had just asked this when Xuanmin pushed open a narrow door in the corner of the corridor and shoved Jiang Shining through it. "The death door is the path for yin souls,” he said to Jiang Shining. “To you, it is highly auspicious."
Jiang Shining was taken by surprise and stumbled, but successfully crossed the threshold into the courtyard.
The versions of Liu-lao-taitai and Liu Chong who had been inside had long been drawn out by Xuanmin and Xue Xian. Now, the wing was utterly empty. Apart from Jiang Shining, there was not a soul in there.
As soon as both of Jiang Shining’s feet stepped into the courtyard, he swiftly disappeared, like a bubble popped.
"Did that bookworm leave the array?" Xue Xian asked.
Xuanmin nodded. He began walking through the compound again, headed straight for the life door.
The life door was even more familiar to Xue Xian.
"Isn't this Liu Chong's dilapidated shack?" Xue Xian could see that dark little building at the end of the stone tiled path. No matter how Xue Xian thought about it, he just couldn’t imagine a place laden with yin energy to have anything to do with a ‘life door’. "If you had said this was the death door, I’d be far more inclined to believe you.”
“It once was," replied Xuanmin coolly. "But we saw the Liu compound get flipped upside-down. Now, the death door has become the life door."
"What do you mean?" Xue Xian frowned. He suddenly remembered what Jiang Shining had said about Liu Chong's mole shifting from the left side of the face to the right side. A thought flashed across his mind. "The mirror?"
Xuanmin looked down at the paper man and felt that this niezhang may have been troublesome, but he was not stupid. [j] "The Liu compound's original Eight Doors had the death door in the southwest, the open door in the northwest, and the life door in the northeast."
Xue Xian cast his mind back to when Xuanmin had been standing at Liu Chong’s shack doorway, asking Liu-shiye about the locations of each family member's room––
The northwest room was Liu-shiye’s own. The northeast room belonged to Liu-shiye's younger son, Liu Jin.
Of the Eight Doors, the open door was the main door, an excellent location for doing good business. Liu-shiye wanted to be promoted quickly to a high-up position, so naturally had given the open door to himself. The life door was about securing a healthy line of descendants, so he’d naturally given it to his younger son, hoping Liu Jin would one day bear him many grandchildren and maintain the Liu family.
Now, Xue Xian understood what Liu-shiye had been trying to do with that ‘Direct the River into the Sea’ design.
Oh, but poor, dim-witted [b] Liu Chong. With his disposition, it was difficult to divine or influence the yin and yang of his destiny. He'd lived twenty-odd years, but the thing he was best at was folding those gold paper ingots, smaller than half the size of his own palm. With that one skill, he'd built a mountain inside his room to honor his ancestors. [k] In order to be as fair as possible, he had even divided the ingots into equal piles, writing his family members’ names on each.
May you peacefully climb mountains of gold and mountains of silver...
In Liu-shiye’s childhood, had Liu-lao-taitai also burned paper ingots with him and taught him the same sayings? Although, even if she had, he had probably long forgotten it all. Or else why would he treat his eldest son no better than he might treat an old shoe?
Direct the River into the Sea.
Liu Chong was the river.
The Liu family was the sea.
But what Liu-shiye had overlooked was the fact that feng shui arrays were extremely precise. Any minor change would cause the entire cosmos [l] to flip itself upside-down. The inauspicious would become auspicious, and the auspicious would in turn become inauspicious. When Liu-lao-taitai and Liu Chong had buried that copper mirror beneath the tree and said, Bury a mirror, turn evil omens into good omens. May the broken pieces rest in peace, they had inadvertently changed the array.
Thus, the Eight Doors had flipped upside-down, and the death door had become the life door.
…A few steps away from the shack that sagged with yin energy, the narrow door linking the path to the main courtyard creaked open again.
Xue Xian had become almost numb to the chilling sound. Don't tell me it's another Liu Chong!
He stuck his neck out from Xuanmin's hip to take a look...
It really was Liu Chong!
"This is never going to end, is it?" Xue Xian said, his temper rising again. He made to push himself out of the pouch, but just as half of his body had already left the pouch, he stopped. He glanced sideways at the bald donkey's copper coin pendant and thought, Now's the time!
With the utmost concentration, paper man Xue reached over with his claws and grabbed onto the copper coins like a fishing hook to its prey. He shoved it into the bald donkey's hand, then said, "What are you waiting for?"
Xuanmin pressed him back down with a finger. "Calm down. This one has a mole on his left cheek."
“...” Xue Xian was so enraged that he couldn't speak. He collapsed back onto the side of Xuanmin’s pouch.
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[a] Musuli phrases this as, “The 傻子 who is always eight beats behind everyone”, where ‘beats’ refers to music performance or reading sheet music. For 傻子, see footnote b.
[b] Musuli uses 傻子 (sha3 zi), which means “idiot”. Sometimes when I use this footnote, she is using 傻 by itself, which is an adjective rather than a noun, meaning “idiotic”.
[c] Musuli uses 痴愚 (chi1 yu2), which combines “foolish”/”crazy” with another, slightly more formal word for “fool/ish”.
[d] Musuli uses the chengyu 五体投地 (wu3 ti3 tou2 di4), literally “five parts of the body facing the ground”, to describe Liu Chong being on all fours with his head bowed.
[e] Musuli uses 笨拙 (ben4 zhuo2), meaning “clumsy” or “ungraceful”.
[f] Musuli uses the phrasing “dragging two wasted legs with him.”
[g] Musuli uses the Chinese insult “不是个东西” (bu2 shi4 ge dong1 xi), literally “to not be a thing”.
[h] Musuli uses the phrasing “the niezhang’s insanity/mental illness was probably acting up again”, which is a colloquial Chinese way of describing ridiculous behavior.
[i] The Chinese word here is 路盲 (lu4 mang2), literally “road/route blind”: someone who is terrible with directions.
[j] Musuli uses 蠢 (chun3), which means “stupid”.
[k] Musuli’s phrasing is, “he had filled his room with filial intent”, but this is awkward and far less impactful in English as it is in Chinese.
[l] The Chinese word here is 乾坤 (qian2 kun1), which can mean “cosmos/universe”, “heaven and earth”, or “sun and moon”. 乾 and 坤 are the first two hexagrams of the Zhou Yi / Yi Jing (I Ching).
This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!
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