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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!
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