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Chapter 13: Empty Millstone (IV)
It was just as Xuanmin had said: this version of Liu Chong indeed had his mole on the left cheek, and wore the bluish-gray overcoat as earlier this morning. There didn't seem to be anything off about him.
Clearly, this was the real Liu Chong.
As Liu Chong stepped in through the narrow door, his expression was partly one of confusion, mostly one of frustration. He crossed the threshold hesitantly, looking behind him every once in a while. Only after he took a couple more frightened steps did he take notice of Xuanmin.
First Liu Chong was stunned, then his face seemed to collapse into itself, his eyebrows drooping. [a] "Just now I saw... I saw grandmother..." [b]
He [c] pointed beyond the narrow door: "Over there."
Grandmother?
That would be Liu-lao-taitai, right?
They had just managed to lose the crowd chasing after them –– surely Liu Chong [c] hadn't brought them back again?!
Xue Xian, hanging lifelessly out of Xuanmin’s pouch, heard Liu Chong’s words and stiffened. He looked at Liu Chong and asked, "Where are they?"
"I chased after her, but grandmother disappeared." Though his face looked sad, Liu Chong's [c] tone was anxious –– he didn't even seem to notice that the voice had not come from Xuanmin himself. "She didn't see me. Now, I can't find her anywhere, no matter how hard I search."
As Liu Chong sucked his own thumb, he looked pitiful. Tilting his head, he looked back longingly at the narrow door, as if trying to see through it. Then, sorrowfully, he mumbled, "I want grandmother to come speak to me..."
Xue Xian pondered what he'd overheard Liu-shiye say to his friend earlier. Liu-lao-taitai seemed to be dead already. Based on the rumor about town, her death had been the fault of Jiang Shining's doctor parents. After she'd passed, the entire Jiang compound had caught fire, and they’d all perished.
Jiang Shining had been dead for three years, so Liu-lao-taitai had probably died around three years ago, too.
Liu Chong [c] had a one-track mind. If he said he missed grandmother, then this meant that he thought about her every minute of every day. These past three years had probably felt extremely lonely for him.
"Let's go." Xuanmin gestured at Liu Chong, then began to walk towards the old shack without further delay.
Maybe it was his alluring high priest aura, or maybe it was the way that he turned on his heels to walk away before anyone could even react... but Liu Chong [c] hurried after him unquestioningly. He stumbled over until he was walking side by side with Xuanmin, then mumbled, "I... I want to find grandmother."
"What's the rush? Let's go inside first," Xue Xian said, playing along.
Liu Chong tried to obey, but couldn't. He said, "I... really need to see her right now."
Xue Xian snapped, "Hold it in!"
Liu Chong stared at Xuanmin's icy profile, as though afraid. After a pause, he courageously blurted out, "How come you can speak without moving your mouth?"
Xuanmin: “...”
Xue Xian went with it: "I'm a ventriloquist. Ah... I can speak using my stomach."
Liu Chong's eyes seemed to bulge out of his head. They swivelled around and finally landed on Xuanmin's belly.
Xuanmin: “...”
In the time it took for them to speak, they had already reached the shack's front door. All they had to do now was cross the threshold, and they would be able to escape from the array.
Xuanmin didn't hesitate. He lifted a foot and gestured to Liu Chong to do the same. Clumsily, Liu Chong placed a foot into the threshold too.
Just as Liu Chong made to step into the shack, there came a duuuu noise from somewhere, like something was knocking against the stone flooring of the compound.
"Mn?" Liu Chong had probably never reacted as quickly as he did now.
His foot had frozen in mid-air. "Grandmother!" he yelled. He took his foot back and ran back out.
"Hey! Hold up!" Xue Xian hollered.
He saw Xuanmin raise his hand as if he wanted to pull Liu Chong [c] back. But before Xuanmin could act, there was a weng––– noise in Xue Xian’s mind. His vision went dark, and the world turned upside-down.
In the blink of an eye, the whole scenery around Xue Xian transformed. They were now standing inside Liu Chong's dilapidated shack, with Jiang Shining's pale face right across from Xue Xian. Liu Chong himself was nowhere to be seen.
Clearly, Xue Xian and Xuanmin had managed to escape the array. But at the last minute, Liu Chong had refused to take the step, and had been left behind.
"You're finally here..." Seeing that they were safe and well, Jiang Shining breathed a sigh of relief. But he hadn't finished sighing when he suddenly gasped. "Where are Liu-da-gongzi [d] and Liu-shiye? Are they still trapped inside?"
Xuanmin nodded. Without another word, he headed into the shack’s inner room.
Since Xuanmin had said nothing, Jiang Shining didn't dare speak, either. Reluctantly, he followed Xuanmin and stood by the threshold of the doorway that separated the shack’s two rooms. He watched as Xuanmin knelt down in front of the nails and talismans by the chest of drawers.
Jiang Shining knew nothing about this kind of stuff, but Xue Xian, on the other hand, knew a thing or two.
If you wanted to break an array, [e] there were two ways: from in to out; or from out to in.
If you were imprisoned inside, you naturally had to seek the door that would take you out of the prison. If you were approaching an array from the outside, hoping to release those trapped within, then the easiest way to break the spell was to destroy it.
Of course, there were official techniques for destroying arrays, or so Xue Xian assumed. After all, there was a whole profession that required practitioners to know their way around ghosts and gods, [f] and they made a living out of activating and resolving arrays. [g] If it was so easy that anyone could do it, then such people would never be able to make ends meet!
So Xue Xian perked up as soon as he realised Xuanmin was kneeling down in front of the yellow talismans. Xue Xian needed to pay close attention and see how this bald donkey was going to resolve the array. What moves did the bald donkey have up his sleeve?
Look–– he's reaching! He's reaching!
Excited, Xue Xian looked on as Xuanmin reached out a hand and pinched one of the copper nails.
Does he intend to draw blood from his hand?
So he’s going to be doing something with his finger?
Xue Xian held his breath as he tried to guess what Xuanmin would do next.
And then... Xuanmin’s fingers twitched and he… pulled the nail out of the floorboard and tore off the talisman attached to it.
Next...
He pulled out the second nail, and tore away the second talisman...
Followed by the third one...
And then... Well, that was that.
Xue Xian: “………”
The nails and the yellow talismans were what anchored the array, and in order to ruin the array, they needed to be destroyed. But Xue Xian had been made to watch as Xuanmin chose the most basic destruction approach ever. Now, Xuanmin was calmly, slowly cleaning his hands, his expression grim as death, as though he’d just tasted the waters of hell. Xue Xian wasn't sure what other scammers would make of the scene. Surely seeing Xuanmin's lack of melodrama would drive them to suicide? Even Xue Xian was contemplating death after such a disappointment.
Xuanmin stood up and returned to the outer room. He took a sweep of the table there and found a tiny matchstick among the mess, which he swiped against the wall, kindling a small flame. Then, Xuanmin matter-of-factly lit the three talismans on fire, until they vanished completely.
But Xue Xian, who had utterly given up on life, did not bother to watch.
Based on the bald donkey’s demeanor, it seemed that the array had now been broken. They would soon be able to hear Liu Chong's [c] whining again.
******
Wait... it didn't work? Or was the bald donkey keeping something from them?
It seemed clear from everything they’d observed earlier that the reason why this shack had been full of yin energy earlier this morning was twofold: because of the ‘Direct the River into the Sea’ design pouring the entire household’s yin energy here, and because it had taken on the death door in the ‘Ghost Pounding the Wall’ array.
But then they had watched as the death door had been transformed into the life door. And the ‘Direct the River into the Sea’ design had been destroyed by the bald donkey in that very simple, unsophisticated manner. Yet the yin energy in this room still wasn’t dissipating, and didn’t seem like it intended to go away either.
The morning light shone brightly outside the shack now, coming into the Liu compound from the east. Because of the fire-protection walls within the compound, the light fell unevenly onto the shack. Half of the ridges of its roof were bathed in light and the other half was still immersed in darkness –– like the dialogue between yin and yang.
"Ah..."
Xue Xian looked up at Jiang Shining. "What are you sighing for? You're not the one trapped inside the array."
Jiang Shining stared back innocently. "I didn't sigh. Wasn't that you?"
"Of course not!" Xue Xian spat. "I never sigh. It's too depressing."
Jiang Shining: “...”
Xue Xian: “...”
The two of them stopped speaking, and exchanged another uncertain look. Then, slowly, they both looked over at Xuanmin.
"Ah..."
That faint sighing sound again! But Xuanmin hadn't opened his mouth at all. And even if his mouth had been open, Xue Xian and Jiang Shining would not have misheard the sigh as his: this time, the sigh was long and drawn-out, with a faint shudder at the end. With that tinge of fatigue, it sounded like an old person, so clearly could not have been emitted by Xuanmin.
"That sounds like an old lady,” Xue Xian guessed.
"Don't you think this doesn't sound like a sigh?" Jiang Shining said. "It sounds so tired... When you see elderly people after they’ve just travelled very far or if they’re carrying something heavy on their back, they're so exhausted that they can barely breathe, so they start emitting this kind of noise... It's like a sigh, but different." He pondered this for a bit, then added, "This person's breathing is hollow and spent. They're ill."
“You can figure all that out from a sigh?" Xue Xian asked skeptically.
Jiang Shining shrugged. "If mother and father were here, they'd be able to deduce even more."
"Oh," Xue Xian said. He was deep in thought.
An old lady? Breathing laboriously? And ill?
Now that Jiang Shining had said it, it really did seem to be the case.
Suddenly, Xue Xian thought of someone. He began to slap Xuanmin with all his might, his paper claws going pili pala. Worried that his strength wasn’t enough, he yelled, "Bald donkey! Look at me!"
Xuanmin looked down.
Xue Xian, looking up at him: “...”
After a moment, Xue Xian couldn’t hold it in anymore. He shooed Xuanmin away. "Never mind. Stop looking at me. Put those eyeballs away."
Xuanmin: “...” This was the first time he’d heard anyone insinuate that eyeballs could be put away. What an unreasonable niezhang.
What Xuanmin didn't know was that, when Xue Xian had been a dragon, he had gotten used to being arrogant. He had been able to fly to the skies whenever he’d wanted, and had spent all his life looking down upon others, never the other way round. All the previous times that Xuanmin had looked at him, those had been mere brief glances, so Xue Xian hadn’t minded. But being looked at directly from so far up? Xue Xian couldn’t handle that feeling. [h]
Dragons need face!
Xue Xian didn't have many demands. The one thing he always needed, especially at a time like this, was face.
Of course, Xuanmin did not obey Xue Xian's order to cease looking down at him. It was as though Xuanmin were being contrarian on purpose: he continued to gaze calmly at Xue Xian.
What a bastard… [i] thought Xue Xian angrily.
He turned that unpleasant ‘sight for sore eyes’ face of his to Xuanmin and flashed a sarcastic smile, then rolled his eyes. Next, he turned back around so that Xuanmin could only see the back of his head and said, "What I wanted to say was: Liu-lao-taitai... Have you heard of this very unusual technique for protecting a home? I heard about it when I began wandering the human realm. They say that if an elderly member of the family passes away, you can bury them beneath your home, and it'll bring their descendants good luck."
What kind of lowlife [j] could come up with something like this?
“...” Jiang Shining felt that all morality and ethics that he'd spent more than ten years of his life studying had now been shattered.
“I have," Xuanmin replied. "This is known as the Building a Yin Foundation. The soul trapped beneath the home becomes the guardian spirit of the household. Paired with good feng shui designs, the effects are remarkable."
Just then, another low, trembling sigh was heard.
If the first two sighs had sounded far-off and vague, this sound was now much clearer –– so clear that they were now able to trace its origin.
Xuanmin looked over at the right-hand wall, then walked over.
The smattering of paper ingots covered almost the entire floor. It had never occurred to them that there might be some trap door beneath the ingots. Xuanmin crouched down near the corner of the room. From here, he could see into the inner room: that chest of drawers, and the spot on the floor where the three talismans had been nailed down.
Brushing some of the ingots away, Xuanmin extended his index finger and used his knuckle to knock on the stone floor.
Du–– du––
The sound rang hollow: there was something underneath.
"It's empty!" Xue Xian and Jiang Shining exclaimed at the same time.
Xuanmin looked around and found a small crack along the side of the wall. He followed the crack all the way to a stone block on the floor around the size of four palms, surrounded all over by cracks.
"This gap..." Jiang Shining reached out and tried it. "I can't even fit my finger in."
The gap was indeed extremely tight. Without being able to fit a finger inside, there was no way to pry it open. And if they couldn't pry it open, then they'd never discover what lay beneath.
Xue Xian stared at Jiang Shining's pale, greenish ghost claw, then at Xuanmin's slender, white donkey claw. Finally, with much difficulty, he said, "Alright, I'll go in. I will deign [k] to slide in and bump it up for you."
I'll deign...
Jiang Shining scoffed at the way this one spoke so highly of himself. Was he not embarrassed?
Xue Xian made a big show of puffing out his chest and flexing his neck, then leapt out of Xuanmin's pouch.
There was nothing Xuanmin could do about this niezhang. He could only let Xue Xian tumble out of the pouch and glide toward the gap in the flooring. As Xue Xian left the pouch, Xuanmin reached into the pouch and took out that smaller pouch, unwrapping it a little. It contained a neat row of needles of varying lengths. The longest was as long as the length between one's wrist and knuckle; the shortest was as short as two finger joints.
There seemed to be a carving on the tip of each silver needle, but it was too intricate to make out. Jiang Shining could only make out the approximate form from afar, and didn't dare to peer closer.
Xuanmin selected a rather thick needle from the pouch and returned the bundle to his pocket.
Xue Xian was busy approaching the stone. Just as he finally made his way to the gap and got ready to slide in, a large hand appeared in the sky and grabbed him by the head, moving him away.
He didn't even have to look back to know exactly which bastard’s [l] hand this was!
"…Bald donkey, you are committing a great sin!” [m] Xue Xian said. “You'll be punished for sure!"
Xuanmin deadpanned, "This one respectfully awaits his punishment, sir." [n]
As he spoke, Xuanmin put the frustrated Xue Xian, whose efforts had been useless after all, back into the pouch. Xuanmin inserted his needle into the crack, then lunged forward suddenly, prying it open.
There was the sound of a hollow stone plank grinding against more stone. That frail-looking needle had actually managed to shift the stone. Xuanmin stuck his hand into the raised stone flooring and lifted it aside.
In that instant, a relentless chorus of grieving, mournful wails poured out of the stone like a tsunami wave.
Xue Xian felt as though a ten thousand jun weight [o] had just crashed into his chest, knocking him to the floor so suddenly that he felt dizzy. Thankfully, he was only a paper man, or else his internal organs would have exploded out of his body.
Both Jiang Shining’s frankly pathetic scream and Xuanmin's quiet murmuring voice wormed their way into Xue Xian's ear. By the time he was able to sit up, he saw that Jiang Shining had rolled to the wall, where with a light puff, he reverted to his original paper form and lay thinly on the ground as though half-dead.
Even Xuanmin had a hand pressed against his chest as he coughed several times before recovering.
"What the hell is this?" Xue Xian had lost all of his strength. All he could do was hang limply outside of Xuanmin's pouch.
Weakly, he lifted his head and looked back at that rectangular gap in the flooring. He saw that the gap was half-filled with yellow dirt, and there seemed to be a heavy metal chain buried among it. A yellow talisman was entangled with the chain. The strange thing was that the chain was moving: it was snaking its way through the dirt.
Frowning, Xuanmin scanned the slightly damp earth, then looked up around the room, as though searching for something.
Confused, Xue Xian watched as the monk stood up and went to the table, rifling around the items until he finally came across a half-ruined brush. He brought it back to the gap in the flooring and carefully used the brush to clear away the yellow dirt.
“...” That bald donkey never failed to impress Xue Xian. "What the hell?” Xue Xian said under his breath. “Would a bit of dirt make your hand rot off your arm?"
The layer of yellow dust was quickly brushed off, revealing what was hidden below.
"This is... a millstone?" Xue Xian asked.
This circular stone block had a puncture hole in the middle. It stood on a platform and had a handle sticking out of it... It did seem to be a millstone. But it was incredibly small, not even as large as a palm. There was also some strange, talismanic text carved on the surface of the millstone. The chain was attached to the millstone on one end, and to the millstone’s handle on the other.
Without the yellow dirt acting as a buffer, the chain made direct contact with the millstone. As it slowly moved, friction caused a Hua–– hua––– rubbing noise. Each time the millstone moved, the handle would move a bit too, as if an invisible person was chained to it, pushing it around day in and day out.
Instinctively, Xue Xian said, "Liu-lao-taitai?"
"Ah..."
That fatigue-ridden sigh arose again…
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The author has something to say:
Done with the rest~ Thank you for everyone’s concern, I’m much better after having taken the medicine~ Kiss kiss! Goodnight, tomorrow I’ll write out the names of people who gave money on JJWXC, thanks everyone =3=
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[a] Musuli described his eyebrows as stitching themselves into the shape of the 八 character.
[b] In Chinese, Liu Chong calls his grandmother 祖母 (zu3 mu3), a more formal address for one’s grandmother.
[c] 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”.
[d] Da-gongzi: Eldest gongzi.
[e] Here Musuli uses 阵局 (zhen4 ju2). Whereas 局, meaning “situation”, is more of a neutral descriptor for a feng shui design that combines magical (talismanic, etc) and non-magical (architectural) elements –– i.e. the original good-luck design that Liu-shiye had put into his home –– 阵 describes a battle formation, and here is used to indicate when the design becomes aggressive and traps people inside. Thus, 'Direct the River into the Sea' is a 局, but ‘Ghost Pounding on the Wall’ is a 阵 or 阵局. Both can be translated to “array” (see my note in Chapter 7) but only a 局 can be a “design”.
[f] Musuli uses the phrasing “eating 鬼 and 神 food”, i.e. “getting food money from dealing with 鬼 and 神.” While 神’s (shen2) primary meaning is “god”, it can also be used more broadly to vaguely describe anything mystical. Similarly, while 鬼’s (gui3) primary meaning is “ghost”, it can also be used more broadly to vaguely describe anything evil.
[g] A summary of the different verbs when it comes to arrays/feng shui designs and how I’m translating them:
To break: 破 (po4) meaning break/smash. Musuli uses this to refer to individuals escaping (breaking out of) the effects of an array.
To activate: 布 (bu4) meaning lay out/spread out/arrange. I’ve chosen “activate” because geomancers in Copper Coins must not only design the physical feng shui elements, but also add their own magical approach to make it work.
To resolve: 解 (jie3) meaning solve/undo. Musuli uses this to refer to the ‘solving of a case’, in a way: geomancers must figure out, from beginning to end, what the array does, how it has been activated, and how it can be undone.
To destroy: 毁 (hui3) meaning destroy/ruin. Musuli uses this to refer to the specific act of destroying an array, usually by taking apart the elements of the feng shui design that make it effective.
To take apart: 拆 (chai1) meaning take down/take apart.
[h] The Chinese phrase here is “he couldn’t digest it.”
[i] Musuli uses the Chinese insult “不是个东西” (bu2 shi4 ge dong1 xi), literally “to not be a thing”.
[j] Musuli uses the insult 孙子 (sun1 zi), which literally means “grandson”. Using it implies that he is the person’s “grandfather”, i.e. their superior, who demands respect and deference. But here, it’s also wordplay because whoever came up with the technique was likely some elderly person’s grandchild, using their grandparent for their own ends.
[k] The Chinese phrase here is 屈尊 (qu1 zun1), a polite expression that means something like “to trouble oneself”.
[l] Musuli uses the Chinese insult 王八蛋 (wang4 ba1 dan4, literally “turtle’s egg”: a very common insult that has a close meaning to ‘asshole’ or ‘piece of shit’ in English.
[m] Here, the Chinese phrasing is 作孽 (zuo4 nie4), meaning to do evil –– but ‘evil’ is the ‘nie’ in ‘niezhang’.
[n] The Chinese phrase here is 恭候大驾 (gong1 hou4 da4 jia4), which comes from the longer phrase 恭候大驾光临 (... guang1 ling2) meaning “I respectfully await your honorable presence in my home” or other place –– i.e. a form of invitation toward a person of high status. 恭候 means “to respectfully await”; 大驾 indicates someone of very high standing (because traditionally the most important person takes the biggest carriage/palanquin); and 光临 is a very respectful way of saying “visit”, “arrival”, or “presence”. When Xuanmin says 恭候大驾, he refashions it for his context: he is sarcastically agreeing with Xue Xian that his behavior toward Xue Xian was unacceptable, and equally sarcastically accepts to be punished in the future –– i.e. he is awaiting/inviting Xue Xian, the person of high standing.
[o] 1 jun = 30 jin = 15kg
This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!
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