[Revised TL] 57 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 57

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Chapter 57: Bone Threads (II)

Xuanmin's half-open eyes seemed to merge with the dim light of the lantern, so that it was impossible to tell exactly where his gaze fell –– if it was on Xue Xian's own panicked eyes, or the tip of Xue Xian’s nose beaded with sweat, or lower...

    

A massive, invisible screen seemed to come down between the two of them. It made all other noises in the world appear faint and faraway, leaving only the entwined sounds of their breathing; inhale, exhale... Their breathing filled the room, so that suddenly the room and everything in it seemed to become narrow and cramped, too small for either of them to make any movement at all.

    

Immediately, Xuanmin’s wrist — the one that Xue Xian had been holding — moved. Xuanmin flipped his hand over and grabbed Xue Xian's fingers in return; he bluntly twisted them around, so that Xuanmin's hand was now clamped tightly over Xue Xian's. Perhaps it was because the strange heat in Xuanmin’s body had affected him, causing him an inability to control his strength, but his grip on Xue Xian's hand felt extraordinarily tight.

    

Xue Xian's mind finally cleared a little. He realised that Xuanmin's sweat was not only coming from the crook of his neck, but was all over his body. Xuanmin’s hands were damp with sweat too, and in the instant that he grabbed onto Xue Xian's hand, his fingers slipped between Xue Xian's fingers; when he tightened his grip, the skin of their fingers could not help but rub up against each other... Now the feeling was more than intimate –– it could be called affectionate, or even devoted. [a]

    

As Xuanmin drowsily closed his eyes then opened them again, a bead of sweat happened to roll down his face and off his chin. It fell onto the tip of Xue Xian's chin below, then streamed down Xue Xian’s neck and disappeared into his collar.

Suddenly, Xue Xian's breathing grew heavier, and a flash of alertness crossed his mind.

    

In the streets outside the compound, a cat yowled, its cry echoing across the night and sounding unusually close, as though it were right there in the room, beside the bed.

The cat's yowl was enough to thoroughly awaken Xuanmin. He brusquely took his hand away and shut his eyes once more.

    

Xue Xian's eyelid twitched as he, too, automatically retracted his hand and sat up stiff as a board. As Xue Xian wheeled his chair away, putting some distance between them, he saw that Xuanmin was sitting in his original position again: his eyes still closed, his face still set, and the hand that had grasped Xue Xian's so tightly was now relaxed and resting, again, on his knee.

    

After some time, Xuanmin opened his eyes again. He looked calmly at Xue Xian and said, "Sit farther away."

His tone was as neutral as ever, but something in his voice was slightly lower than usual, with a slight hoarseness.

    

Xue Xian had already moved away a little; now, the overwhelmingly strong heartbeat that he'd previously managed to repress seemed to suddenly burst forth again. His heart began to thump hysterically, as though about to explode, the pulse as loud and clear in his ear as the beat of a drum. The manic ba-dump, ba-dump of his heart filled his ear, so he had not heard what Xuanmin had just said in that low voice of his.

    

"Mn?" Xue Xian asked.

He had not yet recovered from that strange feeling of intimacy they’d just experienced –– his response came in a slight nasal tone, so that he sounded both tender and lazy. 

Xuanmin fell silent for a while, then mildly said, "Nothing."

    

Finally, Xue Xian's pulse slowed to normal, and he breathed a sigh of relief. But his right hand, which had been gripped by Xuanmin so hard that it now rang with numbness, was a reminder of all that had just occurred. As Xue Xian flexed the fingers of that hand, he silently wheeled his chair to the table and turned his back to Xuanmin, refreshing the lantern to distract himself from that strange, overwhelming feeling inside him.

    

As he fiddled with the core of the lantern, the tiny flame bloomed and the room suddenly became far brighter. Xue Xian turned his chair back around and used the new light to steal a glimpse of Xuanmin ––

The thin white robe on Xuanmin’s body was soaked through with sweat, the cloth sketching a contour of the muscles in his shoulders and arms... After the strangeness from earlier, even though Xue Xian felt that he had calmed down now, this new view of Xuanmin did not make him feel much better.

    

Seeing Xuanmin drenched in sweat, and recalling the extreme heat emanating from his body before, Xue Xian summoned a dredge of sympathy for once and said, "Shall I go get you some water, to help you freshen up?"

Knowing that Xuanmin hated to have even a speck of dirt on him, Xue Xian figured the monk must be deeply uncomfortable with all that sweat. That was the only thing that Xue Xian had considered, and he'd forgotten other details –– such as the fact that, to wash, one needed to take off one's clothes, and Xuanmin wasn't the only person in the room...

    

As soon as Xue Xian uttered his question, this fact occurred to him, and he wished he could take the words back.

Xuanmin continued to sit there, contemplating Xue Xian's question. He opened his eyes, looked at Xue Xian, then shut them again and said, "No. I only need you to sit a bit farther away."

"…You’re that annoyed with me?" Xue Xian retorted. "If I go even farther, I'll be out of the room."

Xuanmin kept his eyes shut. It was only when Xue Xian wheeled back into that 'special healing corner' that Xuanmin slowly said, "No."

Just No. Who knew what the hell he meant by that.

    

The place where Xue Xian now sat was to the side of the bed. From his point of view, he could only see Xuanmin's profile, and most of his vision was blocked by the bedposts. But this actually helped to dissipate some of the awkwardness from before, so that Xue Xian finally felt himself truly begin to relax.

And the reason why it was awkward was because... Just then, at that moment, Xue Xian had felt his body… react. Of course, as soon as he’d noticed himself stir, [b] he’d put a stop to it. But…

He wondered whether Xuanmin had been in a similar situation.

    

Xue Xian settled comfortably into his chair, leaning his arm against the armrest and propping up his head against his hand. His other hand fiddled absent-mindedly with the copper coin pendant, his thumbs unconsciously drawing contours around one of the coins. His idle gaze landed at turns on the quivering flame in the lantern and on Xuanmin’s form.

Based on all that sweat on Xuanmin's body just now, if Xuanmin had really had a reaction too, then surely that reaction would be visible? But Xuanmin was so reserved and detached that it was impossible to think of him having anything to do with certain worldly affairs. Besides, Xuanmin was still sitting cross-legged, with his monk's robes draped across his knees, so it was hard to see anything there.

    

What in the world was going on? How did it come to this?

The night was uncannily peaceful, and time seemed to creep by abnormally slowly. With nothing else to do, Xue Xian sat deep in thought for a while, then suddenly remembered the wound on Xuanmin's hand that he'd licked, and what Jiang Shining had tried to tell him before Xuanmin had stopped him.

Xue Xian: “...”

Xue Xian finally understood why Jiang Shining had told him not to mess with dragon spit. But the warning had come too late.

    

He laughed bitterly to himself and straightened up again. This way, he looked more serious, and less like an instigator. He stopped staring at Xuanmin, too, instead guiltily closing his eyes and focusing on healing once more.    

    

This night of healing was definitely different from all the other times he'd healed before –– perhaps it was the new bone that Xue Xian had absorbed, or perhaps it was because two of the seals on the coin pendant had now been broken. 

Before, Xue Xian was only able to feel a sense of swelling heat in the places where his muscles were mending themselves, or the turgidity of his growing bones –– it was as though his bones were trying to push themselves out of his body. But now, he could clearly feel the precise location of the swelling, as well as exactly where the bone he'd absorbed was growing. He could tell that all of the spiritual energy was gathered in the parts of his body that were injured: beginning from the broken and missing bones, the energy extended outwards, as though constructing a ghost of his past skeleton, with thin filaments spreading across his body.

    

The threads of energy seemed almost alive: as Xue Xian's spiritual power strengthened and deepened, the threads seemed to slowly grow longer too –– but the process took a lot of effort. Even after healing all night, Xue Xian was only able to grow half of the threads in his body, and now he was as exhausted, as if he'd been working at it for half a month.

In the morning, the sky lightened and the members of the Fang household began to step out of their rooms. But Xue Xian had already roused Jiang Shining –– who never slept –– and was planning to make Jiang Shining go find him something to eat.

"A-Ning, Xue... gongzi, what are you two doing?" Jiang Shijing asked. She had already washed her face and was about to bring some medicine to the three plague-ridden beggars when she came across the pair headed for the back door and waved them down.

    

"We're going to Huicui Hall," Jiang Shining said. He was familiar with the famous restaurants around Qingping and could at least show Xue Xian the way.

"Huicui Hall?" Jiang Shijing repeated, confused. "Why would you go there in the morning? Chen-sao is already preparing breakfast."

    

Jiang Shining wrung his hands. "This zuzong is very picky. He doesn't care about the difference between breakfast and dinner. He only eats meat, and there has to be a lot of it."

"At this hour, even if you go to Huicui Hall now and order meat dishes, you still have to wait a while for them to prepare it," Jiang Shijing said. If it weren’t for Xue Xian and Xuanmin, Jiang Shijing and her husband would probably still be sitting around in Wen Village, or even dead by now. So the entire Fang family held a sense of reverence and gratitude toward the two –– even calling Xue Xian by the basic honorific ‘gongzi’ felt awfully impolite, let alone letting him go hungry.

    

As Jiang Shijing spoke, Chen-sao happened to come out of the kitchen, and the two exchanged glances. Chen-sao clapped and said, "Chen-sao knows how to make all the specialty dishes at Huicui Hall. Xue-shaoye, tell me which dishes you'd like to try, and I should be able to lay out a whole table for you in no time."

Jiang Shining began to nod too. "We can get Xingzi to help Chen-sao. You missed dinner last night, so you must be ravenous now."

    

As a guest in someone's home, naturally Xue Xian was not about to order an entire banquet. Smoothly, he said, "Well then, thank you very much. It doesn't matter what you make, just do whatever you'd like. I don't mind as long as there's meat." As long as you don’t make me eat grass.

But...

Xue Xian looked around, then said to Jiang Shijing and Chen-sao, "Could I bother you for some hot water? The bald... Xuanmin was feverish last night and sweated through his clothes. He needs to wash."

"Feverish?" As soon as Jiang Shijing and Chen-sao heard this, their doctor modes kicked in. In unison, they demanded, "Are there other symptoms? Headache? Nausea?"

    

Other symptoms...

Drily, Xue Xian replied, "No, based on his physicality I don't think he's the type to catch cold. He was meditating last night. He’s probably just qi deviating or something." [c]

The Jiang siblings: “...” Qi deviation sounds far more serious than a cold, zuzong!

But remembering that masters were always eccentric, and not feeling comfortable asking for more information, the Jiang siblings simply nodded and went off to fetch hot water.

Whenever Xue Xian thought about last night, he felt awkward. He was trying to spend as little time as possible inside the room. So he spent the morning following Jiang Shining around aimlessly, then followed Chen-sao around until she asked him politely to leave the kitchen –– at which point he sullenly wheeled himself back to the guest hall table to wait for breakfast.

    

Jiang Shining had gotten excited as soon as he'd seen those familiar rows of medicinal herbs, so had gone off to help his sister prepare medication. The only ones left in the hall were Fang Cheng, who was checking over the accounts, and Xue Xian himself.

Xue Xian thought for a while, then decided to speak. "Respectfully, may I ask you a question?" he said to Fang Cheng.

Fang Cheng's hand stopped writing and he said, "Of course, of course. Ask away, and I'll tell you everything I might possibly know."

"Have you heard of dragon spit?" Unlike Jiang Shining, Fang Cheng did not know that Xue Xian was a dragon, so Xue Xian did not feel as embarrassed to ask him. "What effects does it have? Could it harm a human?"

    

"..." Fang Cheng gave him a confused look. "I have naturally heard of it, but I've never seen it. So in terms of effects... I only know the rumors."

"What do the rumors say?"

"Just that... if a girl comes across dragon spit... then she will… become pregnant." Fang Cheng was clearly not a natural storyteller –– that one awkward sentence seemed to be the full extent of his explanation.

Xue Xian: “...”

What?

Fang Cheng spoke again. "The rumors are always about how, in a certain place, a certain someone was fortunate enough to obtain some. They either sold it for an insane price or gave it to someone to take. The rumors say that apart from being able to heal wounds and illnesses very quickly, and to serve as an antidote for hundreds of poisons, dragon spit has other uses as well. They say that it can increase yin and hasten yang... Well, it's an aphrodisiac. And they say that its effect is quite long-term. But that's all just rumor, of course. If there really were a type of medicine that could heal everything and repel all poison, then just seeing it once in my lifetime would make my life worth it.”

Fang Cheng had spent all his life as a pharmacist, so when it came to talking about medicine, he did so very seriously and did not come across as inappropriate at all. But...

    

Although Xue Xian had roughly guessed the meaning of dragon spit last night, it was vastly different from hearing someone say it out loud.

To the point where he immediately wheeled himself into the courtyard to find Jiang Shining and said, "Let’s make a deal. Can we switch rooms tonight?"

“…No,” Jiang Shining said. “Just one night in the same room as dashi will send me straight to the afterlife. Didn't you agree to let me stay a few more days and spend my sister's birthday with her?"

Xue Xian said, "Alright, then we won't switch. But let me into your room. It’s not like I’ll take up bed space."

Jiang Shining laughed drily. "You’ll make Stone Zhang wet the bed. And how do you think Nianqi will react to that?”

Xue Xian: “...”

    

"Did you piss off dashi again?" Jiang Shining got the feeling that he had become everyone's mother, and wasn't even getting paid for it –– all this fretting was taking years off his life. Oh wait, he no longer had any years in his life.

With a blank expression, Xue Xian pinched his fingers together, leaving a small space between them. "Just a little bit," he replied. 

Jiang Shining thought, He must've gotten into huge trouble. It's definitely not 'a little bit.'

    

As the two spoke, the back door to the courtyard was pushed open and two youths dressed in pharmacist uniforms came in with baskets of herbs. Seeing Jiang Shining, they froze, then greeted Chen-sao as she emerged from the kitchen with a steaming plate. "Good morning, Chen-sao. What you're making smells delicious, you're making us both hungry. Where're shaoye and shao-furen?”

"Shaoye and shao-furen are both busy. Put the baskets away and wash your hands, we'll be eating soon," Chen-sao replied.

    

These youths were the Fang family’s servant boys. As they arranged the herbs they’d collected, they said to Chen-sao, "Ugh. We were supposed to get back last evening, but we came across a carriage train on the way, and they made us clear the road. That's why we were delayed by a night.”

"Carriage train? What carriage train?"

"The authorities." Now that the youths had begun to talk about it in more detail, their tones became mysterious. "You know how we reported the plague in the county to the higher-ups? The imperial court sent ceremonial exorcists to expel the plague. [d] They must be in the city by now. Guess who they sent?"

"Ceremonial exorcists?" Chen-sao repeated, stunned. "Then it must be..."

The servant [e] waved his hand. "They say that the officials that the emperor sent report directly to the Guoshi. There are so many types of officials that I can't remember what they're all called, but basically, these are the ones whose job it is to follow the Guoshi around every day. They’re probably some of the only people that have actually seen the Guoshi’s face.”

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The author has something to say: 

[Acknowledgments to those who gave money on JJWXC]

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[a] Musuli uses the single adjective 亲昵 (qin1 ni4) here, which means “very intimate” or “affectionate”. I chose to use “devoted” to escalate it in the same way that it escalates in Chinese. 

[b] Musuli uses the chengyu 蠢蠢欲动 (chun3 chun3 yu4 dong4). It literally means “beginning to wriggle” and is used to describe something that is becoming restless or about to make trouble. In my original TL I misunderstood this as “Xue Xian thought he got an erection out of restlessness”, but by rereading this chapter it sounds more like he stopped his ‘reaction’ before it could get worse –– i.e. he nipped it in the bud. 

[c] A quick note about qi deviation that I’ve mentioned before is that, in Chinese, this is known as 走火入魔 (zou3 huo3 ru4 mo2) literally “walk fire, enter demon” or “be consumed by fire, be possessed by demons”. It is used to generally describe that something has gone wrong during spiritual, martial arts, or mystical training. It is known as “qi deviation” in qigong, which is a set of folk Chinese practices that relate more closely to Daoism than to Buddhism. This is why 走火入魔 is translated as “qi deviation” in MXTX’s works, where the magic system is rooted in Daoist cultivation, as opposed to Copper Coins, which, as discussed, mixes Daoist and Buddhist references into a more generally secular geomancy-based magic system.

All in all, 走火入魔 can happen for many reasons, including practicing techniques without proper guidance from a teacher or using the wrong texts (i.e. not usually a mood-provoked issue), and can result in hallucinations and physical pain as well as, eventually, death. I will only occasionally be using “qi deviation”, especially because, for characters like Xue Xian, whose magical powers come from his nature as a mythical creature and not from intentional practice/cultivation, the term is fundamentally inaccurate. 

Here, my original TL said “being turned evil by demonic hallucinations”, which I actually kind of like, since it’s meant to be humorous. 

[d] The phrase Musuli uses here is 驱疫傩仪 (qu1 yi4 nuo2 yi2). 驱疫 means “expel plague/disease”; 傩 means “exorcise [demons/spirits]”; and 仪 means “ritual/ceremony”. Together, this phrase describes ritual-workers who normally deal with exorcism, and can apply their powers to getting rid of a plague. 

[e] Musuli uses 药郎 (yao4 lang2) here, meaning “medicine boy”.

This chapter was beta'd by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 56 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 56

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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Act IV: No Change

Chapter 56: Bone Threads (I)

The Fang household of today was composed of eleven or twelve members ––

The laoye and lao-furen had recently passed away, so now the heads of the household were Fang Cheng and his wife Jiang Shijing.

Chen-shu was the steward, while Chen-sao was both the housekeeper and the cook. The two had twin sons who stood behind the pharmacy counter and were responsible for serving customers and doing the accounts, although every night it was Fang Cheng's job to look through the accounts again.

Xingzi was an orphan who had been taken in by the late laoye. Ever since Jiang Shijing married into the family, Xingzi had been her personal maid –– although, in the years that had passed, Xingzi had learned much about medicine from her mistress, and could now be considered more of an assistant.

The rest of the servants helped with miscellaneous tasks, as well as cultivating and cooking medicinal herbs. There were also some young people around who were apprentices from local families.

    

But the servant boys weren't always there –– they sometimes had to travel for several days in order to find certain herbs –– and the apprentices didn't come every day either, as their families were usually poor and they spent much of their time helping their own parents. 

This meant that, although the Fangs’ pharmacy was always very busy, the home itself was usually quiet.

This evening was probably the rowdiest night the Fang compound had seen in many years. The beggars that Fang Cheng and Jiang Shijing had brought home happily washed and cleaned themselves, changing into fresh clothes that Chen-shu and Chen-sao had found for them. Although these clothes were not brand-new, they were clean, and — most importantly — had no holes.

    

There was a good reason why the Fang and Jiang families had been so close in life –– it was not just because they had coincidentally entered the same profession, but also because members of both families loved! to! fuss!

Seeing the beggars' frostbitten knuckles, Chen-sao clucked and retrieved a series of portable heaters, which she lit and put one by one into the beggars' hands, saying, "Here, hold this –– look at how cold you are... Hey! Don't scratch! That's how it is when you freeze: when you start to warm up, it gets itchy, but you mustn't scratch. Stay warm here, and I'll get you some medicine."

    

The beggars had not become homeless out of laziness, [a] but rather because starvation had struck their families. Being disabled, they had been more vulnerable to the circumstances that led people to end up sleeping on the streets. Even so, kidnapping was going too far. If these beggars were ordinary people, it would have been considered kind simply not to press charges. Who knew that, not only did the Fang family not press charges, they even welcomed the group as guests and agreed to do what they'd been kidnapped to do –– the Fangs were truly generous.

    

Now that Chen-sao was fretting over them, the beggars felt remorseful and uneasy. The rudeness they’d displayed back in the mountains dissipated and they became a row of stupid quails who stammered, "Don't –– don't worry. W-we're used to the cold, so let it be."

    

And now that Chen-sao was back home where she was comfortable, she became far braver. She glared at them and scolded, "Are you the ones hurt or am I the one hurt? Are you pharmacists or am I a pharmacist? Hold the heaters and don't let go. I'll be right back."

The twin brothers, who happened to be passing by, heard their mother's irritated tone and suddenly recalled the way they'd been scolded when they'd been younger. They shrunk their necks and tried to sneak past, but could not escape their mother's eye. "Where are you two going?" she shouted at them. "Are you being chased by a ghost? Come here."

    

Xiuping and Xiu-an awkwardly turned around and said in unison, "Mom, what is it? We've just closed the store and were on our way to bring the account booklets to Fang-shaoye."

“How big are the account booklets? Do you need two people to bring them over?" Irritated, Chen-sao pointed at one of them and said, "Bring me a cask of wine, the strong kind, and some clean rags."

    

"Strong wine? What do you need strong wine for? Has Dad pissed you off?" asked the brother she'd pointed to –– the younger twin, Xiu-an. His honorable older brother had already run away with the account booklets.

"Would your father dare?" Chen-sao replied. She pointed at the group of beggars standing around in one of the wing-rooms. "Everyone here has frostbite. We need to warm them up."

    

As soon as he heard the word ‘frostbite’, Xiu-an's face turned green.

He had been extremely naughty as a child, and was constantly wrestling with his brother Xiuping. On one particularly snowy day, the brothers had gone out to play in the snow, but had soon begun to fight again, getting snow all over their faces and in their clothes. Then, in a burst of brute strength, Xiu-an had fearlessly decided to bury his brother in the snow up to his neck. When they came home, his fingers had been frozen red, and his mother had spanked him so that his behind swelled enormously –– which had made Xiuping mock him for a month straight.

But a month later, something else happened, and the brothers no longer had anything to laugh about. The brothers had spent all day playing in the snow, then had come back and plunged their frozen fingers into hot water. The sudden change from cold to hot had caused frostbite to creep up their fingers and feet, which had subsequently swollen as fat as carrots. It had been itchy and painful, and they'd suffered enough for a lifetime.

    

Chen-sao had chopped ginger into tiny pieces and boiled it into a spicy liquid, which she'd mixed with strong alcohol to soothe their wounds. Xiuping had been alright –– he'd only gotten swollen knuckles –– but Xiu-an's wounds had split. The pain from the spice had made Xiu-an cry so hard that he’d blown snot bubbles, and his brother mocked him for another month after that.

That experience had been harrowing, and Xiu-an would never forget it –– just the mention of the alcohol treatment made him grimace with sympathy.

While Chen-sao's back was turned, Xiu-an waved at the beggars and mouthed, Pray for salvation.

The beggars: “...”

    

Qingping County winters were extremely cold, and it was not uncommon for people to get frostbite. Some would figure it out by themselves at home, but others would come to the pharmacy. After many years helping customers, Chen-sao was adept at treating frostbite. She swiftly chopped up a bowl of ginger and ground it with a pestle and mortar until it began to leak juice. Next, she poured the wine that Xiu-an brought her into the bowl and soaked the rags in the liquid, then used the rags to wipe down the beggars' wounds.

"This is good. It's split open, so although it hurts now, it'll heal quicker later," Chen-sao consoled as the beggars began to cry from the sting.

    

Thus the group of rough-looking beggars were swiftly made pliable and agreeable by Chen-sao. As they each held up their ginger-soaked hands, their eyes spilling over with tears, they meekly asked Chen-sao if there was anything she needed help with –– it was undignified of them to simply sit there.

    

In the meantime, Fang Cheng and Jiang Shijing did not rest either –– in fact, only one room in the entire compound remained calm, with not a single sound coming from it.    

That was the room occupied by Xuanmin and Xue Xian.

    

Although the Fang compound was not small, it was still quite limited: the beggars had been given two rooms, and those ill with plague had been quarantined in another room. Of the remaining rooms, one had been given to Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi, as well as Jiang Shining, who did not need to sleep; so the two zuzongs had to share the final room.

It wasn't as if they hadn't had to make do before, and neither of the two really needed to sleep, so they did not mind.

    

Of course... Xue Xian, still under the talisman's spell, had originally wanted to complain, but then something inside him had told him not to.

Perhaps all the times Xuanmin had restricted him really had had some impact, and he'd become used to it –– it was as though, if Xue Xian now went a day without being bossed around by someone, he would feel weird...

    

After having saved the souls of Jiang Shining's parents in the evening, Xuanmin had shut the doors to the room and sat down by the bed.

Ever since they’d met, Xue Xian had never actually seen Xuanmin lie down to sleep –– at night, if he wasn't meditating, he would be sitting with his legs crossed, constantly keeping up that utterly indomitable manner and giving off an intimidating and unapproachable aura.

   

But Xue Xian himself was in the middle of healing using the power of the copper coin pendant, and could not be bothered to provoke Xuanmin either. So the entire room settled into a profound silence, and no one in the Fang family dared disturb them.

    

When it had been dinnertime, Jiang Shijing and Fang Cheng had come to invite them, and when no one had answered their knock, they'd worried that something bad had happened to the two. But Jiang Shining had transformed into a paper man and stuck his head through a crack in the door to look around, then had come back to his sister and said, "Let's not knock for now. If they're hungry, they'll let us know."

He did not understand precisely what Xue Xian and Xuanmin were getting up to, but it looked meaningful and he did not think they wanted to be interrupted. Besides, the two zuzongs were inherently different from normal people, and did not mind missing a meal here and there.

    

The Fang family did not know Xue Xian and Xuanmin well –– they only knew that the two were masters of some kind, and that masters always came with certain eccentricities. In order not to offend, they had simply agreed to what Jiang Shining had suggested.

    

Normally, the Fang family went to sleep before wu shi, but today, with all the visitors, they only settled down around hai shi. One by one, the lanterns in each room were blown out, and the whispers slowly faded away to silence, so that a sense of peace finally fell upon the compound.

    

When Xue Xian finally opened his eyes again, the san geng had already struck, and those in the compound were fast asleep, snoring lightly. The oil in the lantern was half gone, and the core of the flame had not been refreshed for a while, so that the light was slowly waning like a sunset.

But the reason that Xue Xian opened his eyes was not because of the snoring nor the lantern –– it was because the talisman stuck to his forehead had begun to feel hot.

    

Because he was busy digesting a dragon bone, Xue Xian was already feeling quite flushed, but now the talisman on his head was getting even hotter than he was –– to the point where it really began to bother him. He hissed with pain and frowned over at Xuanmin, gently saying, "Bald donkey?"

Xuanmin did not respond.

"Bald donkey? Can you take off the talisman now? I'm not going to do anything in the middle of the night," Xue Xian said, gritting his teeth against the searing heat of the talisman.

Still no response.

"Bald donkey?" Now Xue Xian felt that something must be amiss. He called out again, then switched it up and said, "Xuanmin! Stop pretending to be dead. I know you're not actually sleeping."

    

In the dim glow of the lantern, he stared intently at the person sitting by the bed and waited –– but Xuanmin still did not move.

"Are you o––" Before Xue Xian could finish, he suddenly felt the burning hot talisman on his forehead loosen. It gently floated off his face and onto the floor.

    

Now that the talisman had fallen off, Xue Xian could move again. He immediately rolled his wheelchair to the bed and hesitantly prodded Xuanmin’s hand, which rested on his knee.

But as soon as he touched Xuanmin, he was startled by a feeling of extreme heat.

Right –– that talisman was Xuanmin's, so any strange behavior had to be caused by Xuanmin himself.

"Hey, bald donkey?" Xue Xian reached out to feel Xuanmin's pulse and found that the pulse was rapid and strong, giving him a sense of anxiety.

    

Was there another issue with the mole?

Although Xue Xian had only seen a few of Xuanmin's episodes, [b] he automatically went to check the neck while keeping his hand on Xuanmin’s wrist. But because of the dimness of the light, it was hard to see anything at all. Xue Xian had no choice but to shuffle closer.

    

There didn't seem to be any blood vessels coming out of the mole this time, but Xue Xian began to feel even more unsettled —

Because Xuanmin’s body temperature was so high that, as Xue Xian got closer, the steaming heat from the crook of Xuanmin's neck poured itself onto Xue Xian. The wave of heat brought with it the slight moisture of sweat, making the already overheating Xue Xian feel even hotter. The heat going straight to his head; he suddenly felt dazed.

Somehow, as he struggled to focus his vision, Xue Xian’s gaze moved from the mole on Xuanmin's neck to the side of Xuanmin's face.

Maybe it was the disorienting heat that made him feel lethargic, but Xue Xian's vision was still blurry, so that he wasn't sure if he was looking at Xuanmin's brow, or the bridge of his nose, or...

    

Indeed, high priests were on another level –– despite the sweltering heat emanating from Xuanmin, his face betrayed no hint of discomfort.

Xuanmin looked exactly the same as he'd looked earlier in the evening, when he'd first shut his eyes. If Xue Xian hadn't felt his quickened pulse, and if he couldn't feel the scorching heat coming out of his body, he might really have been fooled by Xuanmin's serene manner.

    

And now — perhaps because he'd been affected by the heat surging from Xue Xian’s body, or perhaps it was something else — Xuanmin's pulse was getting faster and stronger. The warmth in the crook of his neck was becoming increasingly hot. Xue Xian idly watched Xuanmin serene, shut eyelids; for some reason, Xue Xian didn’t want to move away from him at all.

    

Just as Xue Xian's brain was about to become entirely clouded over by the unbearable heat, the hand that he had placed on Xuanmin's wrist to feel his pulse accidentally twitched.

Xuanmin's disturbingly violent pulse suddenly jolted, and as his eyelids fluttered open, he locked eyes with Xue Xian.

    

In that moment, they leant so close to each other that their inhales and exhales seemed to intersect. It gave the incorrect impression that what was happening here was incredibly intimate…

---

The author has something to say: 

I was reading the comments from the previous chapter and wondered if I had accidentally walked into a class on mythological creatures’ biology. The homework seemed to be “the X uses of dragon spit” and everyone wrote 2-foot-long essays. *leaves*

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[a] No one becomes homeless out of laziness.

[b] Musuli uses 异状 (yi4 zhuang4) here, meaning “abnormal state”.

This chapter was beta'd by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 55 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 55

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 55: Ancient Drumbeat (II)

Xue Xian finished arranging his robe, but saw that Xuanmin was making no move to leave. He turned around in his wheelchair and complained, "Why are you just standing there?"

Xuanmin lifted up his healing hand and asked, "Do you know what humans use dragon spit for?"

Although Xuanmin seemed quite calm, something in his tone was amiss, as though a series of complicated emotions were running through him. Xue Xian grimaced. This bald donkey really has to find the exact thing I don't want to talk about, and then bring it up! Now that I'm human again, I can't help but feel... so weird about what I did.

Ha. Ha. [a]

    

Xue Xian rearranged his face into a blank expression and forced himself to come up with something to save his dignity. "It's my own spit. Why would I want to know what humans use it for?" he scoffed. 

He added: "It’s useful for healing –– that’s all I need to know. It's not like I'm going to start grinding down all my body parts to sell medicine. Am I crazy?" He glared at Xuanmin spitefully, then turned back around and knocked his fist impatiently against the armrest, adding, "I healed your wound, and I don't mind that you haven't even thanked me yet, but please stop it with the nonsense. Let's go!"

    

Xue Xian’s aim was to throw a little tantrum –– it didn't matter what he said, as long as his tone was aggressive enough to make Xuanmin forget about the whole 'licking wound' thing.

It went as planned. Xue Xian subtly peeked back at Xuanmin over his shoulder and saw Xuanmin shake his hand and put down his hand again. Exasperated, Xuanmin said, "Let's go." Clearly, he had no plans to keep the conversation going.

Xue Xian was very satisfied.

    

The two returned to Xu-da-shanren's compound in no time, but avoided the front doors, instead surreptitiously slipping into the courtyard from a side entrance.

    

The front hall where Xu-da-shanren had greeted his arriving guests was now completely empty. Instead, the noise of a crowd rose from some other hall near the back. Due to the thick fog, no one could not see into that hall from here.

As soon as Xue Xian and Xuanmin returned to the eastern room, Jiang Shining breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "You're finally back..." 

Indeed, without the two zuzongs, there had not been very many reliable, trustworthy people left in the room. If Xu-da-shanren and the other spirits had suddenly gone insane, then there would have been nothing Jiang Shining could have done.

    

"Why do you look so terrified?" Xue Xian sneered. "If you don't go out looking for trouble, then Xu-da-shanren won't come in either. Unless you're really unlucky, and he happens to come in here to retrieve something."

Hearing this, the group in the room were curious. Jiang Shining asked, "If we don't go out, they won't come in? True… Come to think of it, earlier I heard Xu-da-shanren giving instructions to some servants outside, telling them to prepare tea and wine. Then the sound moved away. It seems they really have forgotten that we're here."

Xue Xian waved his hand dismissively. "Of course they won't remember..."

Souls bound to land were not alive. They could only remember the faces and events with which they had been familiar in life, and were slow to react to outsiders and the unexpected. When Xu-da-shanren had Xue Xian and his group in front of him, then he would chat with them amiably as though he knew exactly what was going on. But if Xue-da-shanren could not see them, then he would not even think about them, and would soon completely forget that they existed.

So, earlier, when they had spent all that time in the room, Xu-da-shanren had not come to bother them –– but as soon as Xuanmin had wheeled Xue Xian out, Xu-da-shanren had immediately come to greet them again.

    

"I see," the scarred man said, nodding understandingly.

He was about to continue, but Xue Xian suddenly pointed at his troupe and said, "Don't. This has nothing to do with you. We're the outsiders here. You've been coming over year after year, ever since Xu-da-shanren was alive. So to those gathered in the hall, you're a part of them. They've forgotten about you momentarily, but they're going to come looking for you at some point."

    

As Xue Xian said this, they suddenly heard some footsteps emerge from the back hall, which seemed to be getting closer...

"Where're Renliang [b] and the others? Look at my terrible memory, I've somehow forgotten to greet my old friends. What a crime..." Xu-da-shanren was saying to someone as he came right upon the door.

    

Du du du ––

Everyone in the room jumped in fright.

    

"Renliang, are you in there?" Xu-da-shanren asked, knocking on the door. "The feast has been laid out and we're waiting for you to join us––"

Then came a creak––

Even the slightest touch to that ancient wooden door made it emit an ear-piercing noise.

    

"We're here, we're here!" the scarred man said as his entire troupe gathered into a dense mass, blocking the rest of the room from Xu-da-shanren's view at the same moment that Xu-da-shanren pushed open the door. "We just sat down here to rest. We'll be there soon."

The others gathered in the room could only see the troupe's backs. They heard Xu-da-shanren's cheerful voice say, "Come, come, you must be hungry after having travelled all this way. Come with me––"

The scarred man bellowed with laughter and agreed. Then, one by one, the members of the troupe streamed out of the door and followed Xu-da-shanren into the back hall.

    

The scarred man held the door open for them and was the last one to leave. Before he did so, he tilted his head toward the room and said, "Leave now, while you still can. Once we start performing, we can't help you, and it'll become harder for you to escape."

    

That was exactly what Xue Xian was thinking too. Now that the scarred man and his troupe had led Xu-da-shanren away, it was the perfect time.

Everyone in the room got up and dusted themselves off –– only the no-handed beggar seemed to hesitate.

    

"You need the two of us to save your friends, right?" Jiang Shijing said, gesturing at the old man and two children on the bed. "Take them back to the pharmacy with us. Be careful –– use your clothes to protect yourself from their rashes."

The beggars exchanged glances and eagerly agreed. With no more hesitation now, they hurriedly wrapped the three ill people in blankets and hoisted them into their arms, ready to leave.

    

As Xuanmin began to push Xue Xian's wheelchair out of the door, the scarred man returned, as though having suddenly remembered something. He said, "I can tell that the two of you are highly powerful [c] people. Just now, I felt something change within Wen Village..."

The scarred man glanced back at the back hall and seemed to travel back in time, wistfully recalling the laughter and joy of his long-dead old friends. He paused in contemplation, then said to Xuanmin, "If I may ask... Are they about to depart?" [d]

    

"Mn," Xuanmin replied. "The array that was interfering with the original feng shui design has been broken. The souls bound to this land are able to leave now."

"They can probably last the rest of the day," Xue Xian added, looking at the sky outside. "But by nightfall, they'll be gone."

    

To Jiang Shining and the other outsiders, those souls were terrifying things that they wanted to stay well away from. Although they stayed cordial when interacting with the souls, they were unable to truly feel warmth toward these dead –– all they could do was say a perfunctory word of thanks or of apology. But to the scarred man and his troupe, these were neighbors and extended family members that they had known since childhood. Each and every face, mannerism, and smile brought back vivid memories from the past...

With a complex expression on his face, the scarred man nodded and said in a low voice, "It's for the best."

…

On the way back from Wen Village, Xue Xian was unusually calm. He did not attempt to summon a tempest, nor did he turn into a dragon, nor did he seem even to consider sending the carriage into the sky again. The only thing he did was magically expand the room within the carriage, and then bring a light breeze behind the horse to speed up their journey.

 

Jiang Shining was suspicious of how quiet Xue Xian was being, and his eyes kept darting towards Xue Xian throughout the journey. Finally, Jiang Shining said, "What are you thinking about, all serious like that?"

Xue Xian glanced at him, then glanced at him a second time. Suddenly, he said, "Oh, right. You basically count as half a doctor..."

Jiang Shining: “...” Can’t you say something that makes sense? 

Seeing that Jiang Shining was edging away from him, Xue Xian nudged himself closer instead and said conspiratorially, "Let me ask you something. What does dragon spit do?"

Jiang Shining gave him an odd look, as though Xue Xian were a pervert.

"Hey –– what's that look for? I'm asking you a question," Xue Xian said impatiently.

"I just think it's funny that a dragon genuinely needs to ask what dragon spit does," Jiang Shining replied slowly. "It's... hard to explain. Do you really not know?"

    

Xue Xian rolled his eyes now. "Would you randomly explore whether your own eyes can be made into medicine, and if so, what effect it can have? I've never been that interested."

"True," Jiang Shining mumbled, nodding.

"Besides, I can usually just test stuff out on people. But how am I supposed to test out dragon spit?"

Jiang Shining looked at him and said uneasily, "It's best if you don't..."

"Why not?"

"Although I've never been witness to it personally, I have heard some rumors. You see, dragon spit..." Initially, at the start of the conversation, Jiang Shining had been careful to keep his voice down, but he had soon forgotten and his voice had inadvertently gone back to normal. So as soon as he began to explain, a hand suddenly shot out to interrupt him.

    

Confused, Jiang Shining watched as Xuanmin slammed his copper coin pendant into Xue Xian's hand, then stuck a talisman onto his forehead and turned his wheelchair around so that he now had his back to Jiang Shining. Then, Xuanmin shot a silent glance at Jiang Shining.

I don't know what I said wrong, but that look from dashi tells me that I was definitely wrong somehow, Jiang Shining thought. He laughed awkwardly at Xuanmin, agreeing to shut up, then turned to gaze out of the window.

"…Bald donkey, just you wait,” Xue Xian said. “When I get this talisman off, I'm going to beat you to death." Don't you know how torturous it is to only hear half of someone's sentence?

But the talisman was not going to come off anytime soon.

    

Even when they finally arrived at the Fang compound and settled into one of the wing-rooms, Xue Xian still could not move. 

Xuanmin claimed that corners of rooms were particularly well-suited for healing one’s body, and wheeled Xue Xian directly there. Thankfully, the bald donkey was kind enough not to make him face the wall again...

But facing the doorway was equally embarrassing, okay??

Xue Xian felt faint from sheer anger.

    

When Xue Xian and Xuanmin had gone off to find the dragon bone, Jiang Shining had passed the time by explaining the details of their journey so far to his sister. Jiang Shijing now knew that they required drops of her blood to perform the final funeral rites for their parents. But daytime was not an appropriate time to summon yin spirits, so they needed to wait until sundown.

No matter what, when it came to her parents, Jiang Shijing took things very seriously. So as soon as the sun disappeared behind the mountains, she and Jiang Shining went to find Xuanmin.

    

The sky was darkening and the night crept toward them; the lantern inside Xuanmin's room had already been lit.

Xue Xian sat in a corner with his eyes shut, lightly tapping the copper coin pendant and focusing on his healing. The lantern cast a warm glow onto him, giving his normally pale face a slightly flushed, healthy radiance.

    

As soon as the Jiang siblings stepped inside, they immediately relaxed –– Xuanmin was a straightforward person who did not like to waste words, so he had already placed the silver medical bell onto the table.

He reached into his pouch and took out that smaller pouch, from which he selected just the right length of silver needle. Giving it to Jiang Shijing, he said, "Three drops of blood from the laogong pressure point."

Jiang Shijing held the needle over the flame to clean it, and then prodded herself in the middle of her palm. She returned the needle to Xuanmin.

    

"Drip the blood here," Xuanmin said, pointing out three locations on the bell. "From west to east."

Breathing deeply, Jiang Shijing calmly brought her hand over and dropped her blood onto the bell.

    

As soon as the drops of blood fell onto the bell, they began to move by themselves. Each time they rolled over a certain part of the bell, it would suddenly begin to tremble, as though struck by something invisible. Each gentle tremor made Jiang Shining and his sister's faces contort with sadness.

When the three drops of blood had each travelled a full circle around the bell, they finally rolled off the bell and onto the table.

    

With washed hands, Xuanmin retrieved a brush and wrote the Jiang parents' names onto a sheet of yellow paper, which he folded into three and placed on top of the bell. Next, he lit the paper on fire.

Then he brought out a stick of incense, which he lit using the flame from the burning paper. A delicate, fragrant wisp of blue smoke emerged into the room. Those watching felt themselves suddenly relax and feel profoundly peaceful. [e]

    

As the incense burned, no one in the room said a word, allowing Xuanmin to mumble his brief prayer.

Ding––

The bell suddenly rang out, the tail end of the sound lingering tenderly, which made the Jiang siblings flinch.

Ding––

And another...

    

"Is... is that Mom and Dad?" Jiang Shijing asked as her tears began to flow onto the table.

Xuanmin calmly replied, "They have been trapped in the bell for too long. They are no longer able to show themselves to you, but they can use the sound of the bell to bid you farewell."

    

Libation, inscription, incineration, invocation. These are all a dead soul needs.

    

In a trance, the Jiang siblings stared at the bell. Although they could not see their parents' faces, they nonetheless dared not even to blink...

In the corner, Xue Xian silently opened his eyes and gazed at the table. Because he could not nod, he instead closed his eyes gently. Remembering the kindness with which the Jiangs had treated him over ten years ago, he, too, bade farewell and thank you to the couple ––

The medicine you gave me worked very well, and the heater was very warm. Thank you. May your journey be peaceful.

    

In the Xu family compound at Wen Village, the high-pitched song of a huadan role rang out among the accompanying beat of a copper gong and leather drum. "Do not let the bright moon fall behind the mountain curve / from now on..." [f]

That same play was performed year after year, from the beginning all those winters ago to the end, today –– and yet, no one ever tired of it. The guests gathered in the Xu compound never stopped loving hearing those words, and watching those characters.

    

Old friends, old home, old stage... It was as though these ten or so years had never passed, and they had never become separated by the border between yin and yang.

Xu-da-shanren sat by a table and sipped his tea, watching the tragic drama on the stage. His finger drummed lightly against the table as he hummed along to the tunes. After some time, he suddenly said in a warm voice, "Renliang, great job..."

    

As the troupe leader, the scarred man himself did not perform –– he sat next to Xu-da-shanren by the table. Hearing Xu-da-shanren's words, he was stunned, and watched as the old man smiled at him. There was something behind the smile, as though... Xu-da-shanren had long known that the village had ceased to be, and that his old friends were all also gone.

    

The scarred man collected his thoughts, then raised his untouched cup of tea and saluted Xu-da-shanren. He took a sip. "Next year, perhaps... we won't be able to come."

His expression was as forlorn as Xu-da-shanren's. They looked at each other tenderly.

    

As they each finished their cups of tea, the two smiled at each other, as though they had finally met against all odds and were now forced to part again.

You need to go, and so do I...

    

As the sky darkened, the thick fog that surrounded the village dissipated too. Along with it, the melancholy sound of singing faded away as well, becoming ever dimmer and receding into the distance.

Do not let the bright moon fall behind the mountain curve / from now on the moon will never set / and we won't turn old / we'll live every day of the next hundred years just as we'd lived this night… [1]

As long as you're here to listen, we'll be here to sing for you. Our promise holds true, whether we are living or dead.

----

The author has something to say: 

Footnote 1: “Do not let the bright moon fall behind the mountain curve / from now on the moon will never set / and we won’t turn old / we’ll live every day of the next hundred years just as we’d lived this night” –– comes from the Yue opera 春香传 [f] 

I want to finish this act, so this came a little late~ This is the first update, and in the evening there will be another update, probably around midnight~ Kiss 

The third act ends here. In the next act, a certain someone will soon be able to step onto the ground.

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[a] The Chinese here is 呵呵 (he1 he1), whose pronounciation would approximate to “huh” in English. In TGCF, this is what Pei Ming says when he sees Hualian kiss, and is translated there as “Hoho.” However, because this is a dry laugh that is rather common in Chinese whereas “Hoho” is a less common onomatopoeia in English, I have chosen to use “Haha” and emphasise the sarcasm of the laugh with full stops. 

[b] Chapter 50 established the scarred man’s name as 仁良 (ren2 liang2), but here Musuli has his name as 德良 (de2 liang2). 仁 means “kindness”, 良 means “good”, and 德 means “virtuous” or “kind”, so clearly the mixup between Renliang and Deliang is a human error. I’ve decided to keep Renliang since this is what Musuli used first.

[c] Musuli uses 本事 (ben3 shi4) here, meaning “skill” or “talent”.

[d] The word Musuli uses her is 消散 (xiao1 san4), “dissipate”. 

[e] Here, Musuli uses the adjective 宁静 (ning2 jing4) which means peaceful/calm but is also literally made up of the given names of the Jiang siblings - Ning and Jing. 

[f] 春香传 (chun1 xiang1 zhuan4) literally means “legend of spring fragrance/perfume”. The original story is a highly famous Korean folk tale, featuring a woman named Chunhyang (春香). Chunhyangjeon is usually told via pansori, an oral storytelling tradition involving music. Musuli is specifically referencing the Chinese Yue opera adaptation from 1954.

This chapter was beta'd by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 54 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 54

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 54: Ancient Drumbeat (I)

All of this zuzong’s scales stood on end and his entire body seized up in embarrassment. When he saw that the wound on Xuanmin’s hand was quickly beginning to heal, Xue Xian finally came back to his senses and said, "Look, you're not bleeding anymore. Shouldn't you thank me now?"

As Xue Xian said this, he began to talk to himself in his head, and concluded that his actions had been entirely logical and reasonable. Reassured that he had not completely, irreversibly humiliated himself, Xue Xian’s spirits lifted again.

    

But then Xue Xian realised that Xuanmin had not moved since he’d opened his eyes. He hadn’t even put down his hand, which was still held up in a Buddhist greeting –– nor had he put away the coins, the seals of some of which were now successfully broken. When Xue Xian spoke, Xuanmin didn’t even glance at the wound that Xue Xian had licked...

Now this was weird.

    

Xue Xian's head rested at too awkward an angle to be able to see Xuanmin properly. It seemed that, when he'd transformed back into a dragon, in order to avoid burying Xuanmin alive, Xue Xian had adjusted his size into something smaller. But this was still his original dragon form, and, despite the adjustment, he was still massive. Xue Xian pondered this, then tilted his head ever so slightly and lowered his neck so that he could observe Xuanmin while half-propped against the ground.

Now that Xue Xian had changed his point of view, Xuanmin’s strange behavior became clearer. His brows were slightly furrowed and his lips were pursed, and, although his eyes were open, his gaze was shrouded by a black mist that let through not a hint of light. He seemed not to be staring at anything at all, but instead submerged in some kind of dream state.

    

The most startling part was that the mole on the side of Xuanmin's neck was unusually prominent –– it now looked like a bruise-colored [a] spider's web that crept from his neck all the way into his robe collar, looking particularly ominous against his pale, smooth skin and the pristine white fabric. The overall effect was that of something evil and ominous. [b]

Even Xue Xian, who barely considered his own flesh dripping off his body as a serious wound, was now stunned by the sight of the spider's web. He reached out a claw and shifted part of Xuanmin's robe aside so as to see the mole better.

Xue Xian hissed with surprise. The blood vessels had spread across Xuanmin’s entire shoulder, and even some of the muscles across his back seemed to brim with the hints of more zigzagging veins.

    

"What the hell is this?!” Xue Xian murmured as he pushed Xuanmin's collar back to its place. At this rate of infection, half of Xuanmin's body would soon be completely covered in such markings, turning him from a high priest into a yao-monk. 

    

No matter which way you looked at it, there was something deeply wrong with Xuanmin. But if Xue Xian suddenly woke him up now, would that harm him?

Contemplating this, Xue Xian waved a claw in front of Xuanmin's face. There was no reaction –– Xuanmin did not even blink, and that thick blackness continued to cloud his eyes ominously. 

    

How had Xue Xian gotten the bald donkey to open his eyes earlier?

Right, he had licked his wound.

But had it been because Xue Xian had disturbed the wound itself, or had it been the dragon spit...

    

Xue Xian thought for a while, then used the tip of his tongue to lick Xuanmin's half-healed wound again.In response, Xuanmin's fingers twitched.

Xue Xian: “...” Do I have to fucking lick him back to life? What kind of impression does that make?

    

This was nonsense. If Xue Xian didn't know Xuanmin well enough to know that Xuanmin had absolutely no sense of humor, he would think that he was being played. It was fortunate that this was Xuanmin; if it were anyone else....

Xue Xian tried to imagine himself licking someone and thought he might vomit with disgust.

He gathered himself together and squinted at Xuanmin. If you don't wake up now, I'm going to give you a ‘shower’...

Just as Xue Xian opened his jaw and tried to estimate the best angle from which to approach the wound again, the web of blood vessels across Xuanmin's shoulders suddenly receded. Like the sea pulling back a great tide, the web quickly vanished back into that small mole on the side of Xuanmin's neck.

    

And in that precise moment, the murkiness in Xuanmin's eyes disappeared too, and, as though suddenly wiped clean, his black eyes regained pools of light.

Then, he frowned, and the hand holding the copper coin pendant dropped. Xuanmin was truly awake.

    

As Xuanmin came to, he saw something move against his head in the corner of his eye and glanced over. He came face to face with a certain someone who had been about to head in for another ‘mouthful’.

Xuanmin: “...”

Xue Xian: “...”

    

For a long time, neither of them said anything. Finally, Xuanmin asked, "What are you doing?"

Xue Xian: “...”

Could I maybe say that I was planning to eat your meat for dinner? [c]

Or… using your head as a mirror to admire my teeth?

No, Xue Xian couldn't be that much of an asshole. Although Xue Xian didn't mind mocking people and in fact relished it, when it came to Xuanmin, he couldn’t be so callous. After all... in a way, the bald donkey had been born to vanquish the likes of Xue Xian.

The niezhang quickly ran through all of the options in his panicked mind, then awkwardly said, "Are my yawns your business too?"

Normally, Xuanmin would glare at him coolly with a face that said Do whatever nonsense you like. But now, there was something profound in Xuanmin’s expression, as though he had not fully returned from whatever vision he'd just experienced.

    

"Why the tragic face?" Xue Xian asked. "What happened just now? You weren't responding to anything."

Xuanmin's gaze fell upon the pendant in his hand, and he absent-mindedly rubbed those two shiny coins with his thumb. After some contemplation, he hooked the pendant back onto his hip and said mildly, "I remembered some things."

    

"What things?" Xue Xian asked immediately. Then he casually added, "Of course, it's the usual rules. If you don't want to tell me something, you can just say that it's not part of what you remembered."

    

In reality, even such a perfunctory question was highly unusual coming from Xue Xian. He was normally far too self-absorbed to pay attention to other people's issues, especially their private issues –– good, bad, sad, happy, he could never get himself to care. If people wanted to tell him about it, he would listen, and, depending on his mood that day, he might actually become interested and let them continue speaking, or end up becoming irritated by their rambling. And if people didn't want to talk about it, he would never consider asking.

But Xuanmin was different –– when it came to Xuanmin's past, Xue Xian constantly harbored a desire to investigate. The conversation they'd had back at the inn had been instigated deliberately, since, at the time, Xuanmin's past had had a direct connection to their situation with the poster. But this time...

    

This time, there had been no real reason to ask Xuanmin anything. Xue Xian had only asked because he genuinely wanted to know more about Xuanmin. It was only when he'd already asked the question that Xue Xian realised: Xuanmin probably did not want to talk about it at all. So Xue Xian had added on that second part, to provide a way for Xuanmin to step away from the conversation without being rude or dishonorable.

    

But Xuanmin did not take the way out: he seemed uninterested in maintaining that aloof, intimidating, and cautious aura around Xue Xian. Xuanmin gazed into the distant fog for a while, gathering his thoughts. After some time, he calmly said, "Not much. The memories are extremely fragmented. Much of them are of copying sutras at a desk as a youth. But..."

    

"But what?" Xue Xian asked. Xuanmin had paused and begun to frown, as though remembering something unhappy. 

A faint sense of loathing crossed Xuanmin's face. "Two images flashed by, in which I was holding something in my hand."

"What were you holding?" Xue Xian said.

Xuanmin paused again, then said, "It looked like human skin."

"... What?"

Xuanmin glanced at Xue Xian and repeated, "Human skin –– pieces of it. Smaller than my palm, but bigger than an elm seed. Two of the pieces were thicker, and the others were all paper-thin."

    

Xue Xian tried to think of the things Xuanmin would possibly hold in his hand –– such as a muyu, [d] a talisman, a book, an inkwell, or maybe even potentially an alms bowl –– but human skin? Now that was unbelievable.

"Human skin?" Xue Xian asked. "You're sure of it?"

Xuanmin nodded.

"And... Do you remember why? Or what you did with it? Maybe you found it somewhere," Xue Xian suggested.

But that was really unlikely. Could you just come across several pieces of human skin on the street somewhere?! What a sight that would be! But to think of Xuanmin somehow obtaining human skin... There was no way he'd have gotten it in an innocent manner.

Although Xuanmin's attitude was indeed different from that of ordinary monks, it was also hard to believe that he would ever do something so evil...

    

But no... Xue Xian recalled what Xuanmin looked like with his robes drenched in blood and then recalled that, a very long time ago, before Xue Xian had become so close with Xuanmin, he himself had told Jiang Shining: There's something indescribable about Xuanmin. He's like the sharp cutting edge of a sword wrapped up inside white hemp cloth. Beneath the cool demeanor is something incisive, as though, if it came down to it, he'd be willing to commit murder… [e]

But that was also different from being inherently evil. [f]

    

Xue Xian had zoned out pondering all this, and when he came back, he found that Xuanmin was staring at him. There was something strange in Xuanmin’s gaze, as though he were waiting for Xue Xian to say something. Xue Xian faltered, then changed the tone in his voice to something more casual and asked, "When is the memory from? Also your youth?"

"Mn," Xuanmin said.

Now Xue Xian was really confused. "Are you sure? If you don't know what had happened before and after you were holding the skin, how could you know you'd been young at the time?"

Xue Xian spread his hands. "Young hands look different. Besides, I was sitting in front of a desk, which had sutras that I'd been copying."

Xue Xian: “...”

Clutching human skin while copying sutras? Do you want to blaspheme your Grandpa Buddha [g] to death?

    

In all seriousness, now that Xuanmin had asserted that the memory was from his youth, Xue Xian found it completely impossible to explain the memory. Clearly Xuanmin had not obtained the skin through killing spirits. [h]

But there had to be some other explanation, right?

Finally, Xue Xian injected a lazy singsong tone into his voice and said, "Well, there's no point in randomly guessing. We'll have to wait until you remember more. You've managed to remember something just from breaking the seal on two coins, so maybe when you break the next one, more memories will come. Perhaps when you break the seals on all five coins, you'll be able to get all your memories back."

    

That sounded rather reasonable. Both of them were straightforward people who naturally didn't want to waste too much time trying to make sense of something that refused to make sense.

Xuanmin reached out his hand and patted Xue Xian's divine dragon chin, then said, "Let's go."

    

Xue Xian was stunned for a second, then suddenly remembered that he was still coiled around Xuanmin's body. If he didn't transform back into a human, then Xuanmin couldn't move either. Xue Xian cleared his throat and summoned a gust of wind to put his wheelchair upright, and then a white light surged forth and covered him as he put his clothes back on and sat back into the chair.

As he arranged his robe, Xue Xian saw Xuanmin walk over to where the dragon bone had been buried and extract a handful of copper nails and talismans from the earth. Xuanmin tore off another piece of white cloth and wrapped the items inside, then put them away. It was only then that he came over to the wheelchair.

    

Having learned his lesson, Xuanmin now knew not to let Xue Xian go off on his own again. He gripped the wheelchair's handles tightly as he got ready to push Xue Xian back to the Xu compound. But as Xuanmin’s gaze passed across the wound on his own hand, he paused.

The skin between his forefinger and thumb, which had been angrily torn apart earlier, was almost healed and was already beginning to form into a scab. It seemed that, within half a day, it would go back to normal, with no hint of having been damaged at all.

Xuanmin only needed to think back a bit to realise how Xue Xian had managed to treat his wound.

The only problem was... Dragon saliva... Was that really a substance to be used so casually?

---

The author has something to say: 

By the time I finished my essay it was already night time. I’m kind of slow with this~ Sorry. I’m going to go sleep for a bit. Tomorrow there will be updates at noon and in the evening~

---

[a] Musuli uses 青紫 (qing1 zi3) here. 紫 means purple, and 青 can mean blue and/or green. 

[b] Musuli uses 邪性 (xie2 xing4) here, meaning “evil/heretic characteristics”

[c] The exact wording here is “planning out how to 下嘴” (xia4 zui3), where 下 means “to use/enact” or “come down” and 嘴 meaning “mouth”. I.e. 下嘴 means “dig in” or “eat” here, but the literal word choice is ambiguous as to what the mouth is actually doing/where it’s going. 

[d] 木鱼 (mu4 yu2), literally “wooden fish”, is a wooden percussion instrument commonly used by Buddhist monks and believers. (Wikipedia) In my original translation I had this as “mokugyo” because this is sometimes known in English under that name, but as that is a Japanese transcription, I have chosen not to use it anymore.

[e] The prose here makes reference to Chapter 17, but the 2 lines of dialogue do not match up, so I also did not make the translations match up. Xue Xian is paraphrasing himself here, rather than directly quoting himself. 

[f] The term Musuli uses here is 杀戾气 (sha1 li4 qi4), “a murderous and sinful impression” -- i.e. that Xuanmin might look inherently murderous, rather than simply willing to commit murder.

[g] Musuli uses 佛祖爷爷 (fo2 zu3 ye2 ye) here, literally “Lord Buddha grandpa”. I chose to translate this into “grandpa” rather than transcribe into “yeye” since this is used humorously and so would land better in full English. 

[h] Musuli uses 杀孽 (sha1 nie4) here, “killing nie”, where the “nie” is the first half of “niezhang” and means “evil”.

This chapter was beta'd by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 53 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 53

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 53: 'Ride the Air' Design (IV)

These motherfuckers really had buried his dragon bones into the fucking mud!

Of course, Xue Xian was delighted to have found another part of his body. But in addition to joy, he also felt an immeasurable rage. To have to go across the entire land digging in the dirt to find bits and pieces of his own body... Probably no one else in the world understood the complexities of that feeling.

    

Xue Xian had felt that feeling at Gravestone Island, and then again at Stone Zhang's compound... Now, he was starting to get used to it, and it really bothered him. He didn't plan on waiting for Xuanmin –– Xue Xian had already investigated the surroundings of Wen Village and was now headed toward Thumb Mountain, sure that Xuanmin would not lose his way.

    

Thus, Xue Xian summoned another gust of wind to push his wheelchair and zoomed away. In an instant, he was sitting by the old ginkgo tree at the foot of Thumb Mountain.

    

Normal trees' crowns always faced the sun –– this was the case no matter what, even if the tree's trunk was twisted this way and that. But this ginkgo faced the earth, its forehead skimming its ankles so that it was entirely bent over –– a strange sight.

    

Although Xue Xian had never been to Thumb Mountain before, he could see that there used to be a stream coming down it. The hint lay not in traces of the water on the mountain, for there were none, but because the ginkgo's orientation demonstrated that, in recent times, it had found far more nutrition in the earth below than in sunshine. Although sunlight filtered in from above, it was dimmed by the village's fog.

    

Thus, if Xue Xian wanted to find his dragon bone, all he had to do was look beneath the tree.

    

Xue Xian slowly pushed his wheelchair so that he could see the patch of earth beneath the ginkgo tree. The patch of earth was about one zhang in width, and was of a slightly darker color than the soil around it –– it was damper and contained more moisture, and seemed less packed, as if someone had recently dug it.

    

Although the person who had disturbed the earth had attempted to cover their tracks, a close look revealed the difference. Besides, just Xue Xian's presence made the patch of mud begin to tremble. The person who had buried the bone had assumed that no ordinary townsperson would visit a haunted, abandoned village in the middle of nowhere, and had thus assumed their hiding spot would be safe. But they had not considered that the dragon himself [a] might come knocking at the door.

    

Xue Xian laughed coldly. He curled his fingers into a claw shape and swiped at the ground. In response, something deep within the earth jolted with a peng, like a heartbeat, sending a large ripple through the entire mountain and scaring a flock of birds away. 

    

As the piercing caws of the birds dissipated, Xue Xian clawed again.

Peng––

With this jolt, something invisible seemed to thrust into that patch of damp mud, making the earth look recently ploughed.

Peng––

And after that third jolt, Xue Xian lost his patience and clawed as hard as he could.

Suddenly, the entire patch of mud sank deep into the ground, as though sucked away by something, and the earth around it began to quiver, soften, and slide. A pitch-black hole appeared and grew ever wider as more and more earth fell in, so that it quickly became a kind of sinkhole, hungrily devouring everything around it.

    

In the blink of an eye, even that bent over ginkgo tree was also sucked into the sinkhole, which made no sign of stopping as it began to loosen the very foundations of rock beneath Thumb Mountain. Xue Xian hurriedly pushed his wheelchair back, trying to resist the pull of the sinkhole.

    

Clearly, all of this had been caused by Xue Xian trying to get at his bones. It seemed that the dragon bones had been clamped down tightly, tied to some kind of array, so that any slight shift would harm the entirety of Wen Village. 

The things Xue Xian had to go through to take back what rightfully belonged to him... Xue Xian laughed with rage.

    

He relaxed slightly, and the shaking earth beneath the village and the mountain seemed to calm down a bit too. The sinkhole itself became less aggressive; it was now swallowing everything around it in a slower, less terrifying manner. Even Xue Xian's wheelchair was no longer straining as hard against the sinkhole's pull...

But when Xue Xian closed his hand into a fist to summon the dragon bone, the earth around him began to rumble once more, and the sinkhole resumed its eager current.

    

Xue Xian's brows furrowed, and his expression became cold.

With that aloof expression set against his pale face, he appeared uncannily apathetic, and extremely intimidating. The difference between his demeanor now and his unserious, carefree day-to-day attitude was as clear as night and day — and highly unnerving.

    

You extracted my spine from my body while I was still alive, and now you’re telling me I’ll kill people if I try to take back what’s mine? What the hell are you playing at?

But it was precisely because of this absurdity that Xue Xian was unable to proceed.

    

As Xue Xian stared into the sinkhole with a face full of hatred, another figure appeared beside him. Although the figure did not approach him, Xue Xian could feel their body heat — which, amidst the freezing chill of the fog, felt like such a breath of fresh air that Xue Xian's heart suddenly skipped a beat, then slowly resumed again. With the advent of that warm body, Xue Xian’s anger and irritation suddenly seemed to dissolve by half –– replaced by a profoundly reassuring sense of peace and relief.

    

"Let me," Xuanmin's deep voice rang out from behind him.

Then, that light white robe drifted past Xue Xian's vision as a slender arm reached over his shoulder and retrieved the copper coin pendant that Xue Xian had still been gripping tightly in his hand.

    

Xue Xian listened, stunned, as that familiar chime of the copper coins rang out from behind him and was followed by an immense force pressing down upon the plants and rocks around them. It pushed against the fierce current of the sinkhole, which slowed down and finally came to a complete halt, the mud and boulders no longer tumbling into the abyss. The mountain now stood rigidly again.

    

Xue Xian looked up and saw that Xuanmin was, in turn, looking down at him. Xuanmin said, "I'll hold it back for you. You go ahead and retrieve your bones."

    

Two short, simple sentences, but they seemed to wipe away all of the fear, confusion, and resentment in Xue Xian's heart. Xue Xian looked back into the seemingly infinite sinkhole in front of them, feeling the thrumming call of his dragon bones buried deep within, and suddenly snorted with laughter -– a laugh that was so different from his daily mockery and sneering; a laugh that contained no irony. A genuine, sincere laugh. 

    

Xue Xian didn’t say the fake polite phrase If it’s not too much trouble; neither did he give a word of thanks. He simply flexed his shoulders and said, “Mn. Are you holding it steady? I'm going for it now––"

Then, he reached out those fingers and clawed again.

    

This time, Xue Xian stopped trying to restrain himself. Although Xuanmin was using all of his power to hold down the shifting earth beneath the mountain, there were still slight tremors when Xue Xian began to pull. As the force buried in the soil shuddered in response, the skin between Xuanmin's thumb and forefinger split from the pressure and began to bleed. But Xuanmin’s face did not change –– he continued to hold down the mountain with his copper coin pendant, steady and safe.

    

As Xue Xian strained harder, the pendant's ringing grew louder; the fog surrounding Thumb Mountain seemed to be drawn toward them, so that it wrapped itself around them and began to swirl violently. 

Just as Xuanmin's hand fully split open, a distant dragon's roar rose from within the dark abyss. Next, a thick piece of white bone leapt out from the ground and flew into Xue Xian's hand –– in the instant that it came into contact with his skin, it seemed to suddenly melt from some great heat and slowly sink into his flesh, integrating itself fully into his body.

    

It felt as though someone had lit Xue Xian's palm on fire, and that the flame had crept into his body and crawled all the way to his heart, before making its way up to his head and scorching his brain.

For a brief moment, all Xue Xian could feel was that endless flame extending all across his body, accompanied by burning pain. Apart from the agony, Xue Xian was aware of nothing else, not even where he was or what was happening. The only thing he could remember, somewhere in the ocean of his blurred mind, was that the reliable Xuanmin was standing right beside him.

    

After a long period of pain, Xue Xian finally found something that could help appease the scorching flame inside him.

He nuzzled eagerly against that thing and allowed it to cool him down while his half-conscious mind gradually began to emerge from its agonised daze. When he was finally able to open his eyes and look at his surroundings, Xue Xian saw that he had long transformed back into his dragon form –– from the looks of the flipped-over wheelchair and the tattered grass around him, it seemed that he had done so rather suddenly...

    

And that 'something that could help appease the flame' happened, of all things, to be Xuanmin –– 

Xue Xian's dragon body had somehow managed to coil itself around Xuanmin. And not only was he wrapped around Xuanmin, but his scales kept rippling against Xuanmin's body, as though needing to extract every bit of relief from Xuanmin's ice-cold body to soothe his own...

Xue Xian: “...”

    

What now? This was rather embarrassing...

A divine dragon had somehow become someone's large, unwieldy pet. Seeing the way Xue Xian was slithering all over Xuanmin's body, those who knew the context would be able to chalk it up to a panicked attempt to cast off some of the heat in Xue Xian’s body. But those who did not know the context... would think he was extremely clingy.

The main problem was that, apart from Xue Xian himself, no one else was able to actually know about his ‘about to die of heat’ context –– including Xuanmin.

    

Xue Xian wanted to die. [b] But he finally forced himself to peek over at Xuanmin's face.

Although he was being crushed on all sides by immense dragon scales, Xuanmin was simply standing there calmly and silently with his eyes closed. One hand was folded in a Buddhist greeting, and the other was still gently rubbing the copper coin pendant. Somehow, perhaps due to Xue Xian's newfound dragon bones or some other enigma, the coins looked just slightly different from before.

    

Xue Xian had been using the coins to heal his body earlier. It seemed that he had established some kind of minor connection with the pendant, as though tying a thin thread between him and the coins. 

As Xuanmin traced the contours of each coin with his thumb, Xue Xian could feel, ever so slightly, that something within the coins was slowly loosening –– and on the surface of the coins was a dim, oily glow, as though they had finally begun to shed some of that dull rust they’d had before...

    

Xue Xian suddenly recalled that Xuanmin had mentioned a seal on the coins, but that two of the seals had begun to loosen. Soon, some kind of turning point would cause the seals to shatter.

Seeing the way Xuanmin was now, it seemed that the turning point had arrived.

    

Realising that Xuanmin was not paying the slightest attention to the thing wrapped around his body, all sense of embarrassment evaporated from Xue Xian's mind. Compared to his own body temperature, Xuanmin's coolness was extremely comfortable, and, now that he had nothing to worry about, Xue Xian abandoned the last shreds of his dignity and enthusiastically resumed running his long body against every part of Xuanmin's, hoping to cool himself down as quickly as possible.

    

The copper coins in Xuanmin's hand trembled one by one, each tremor sending a strange, prickly feeling rippling across Xue Xian's body, as though each of his scales were lifting up to let the hot air escape through his pores. This kind of intimate connection with the pendant was a new feeling to Xue Xian, but it was so beneficial that he readily accepted it.

    

Kada––

As a sound reminiscent of reeds knocking against each other rang out within Xue Xian's mind, he lazily opened his eyes and shifted his long dragon body. Raising his head, Xue Xian rested it on Xuanmin's shoulder to look over at Xuanmin's hand –– in doing so, he noticed that the copper coins had entirely changed their appearance. Two of the coins had shed their drab grey shells, and now shone brilliantly with a layer of oil, so that their raw spiritual power could be felt from afar.

    

But then, Xue Xian noticed the wound on Xuanmin's hand; fresh blood welled up from a horizontal gash between his thumb and forefinger, streaming down the back of his hand. The blood dripped onto the ground, which was already splattered with several large bloodstains. 

It was obvious where the wound had come from. Within Xue Xian's conscience, he suddenly discovered the emotion of guilt. It occurred to him that, as a divine dragon, every part of his body was a treasure to humans. From his dragon scales to his dragon spit… Basically, he could easily help stop the bleeding.

    

Thus, a certain dragon — whose mind was still in the throes of disorientation and confusion — bent his head and licked a stripe across the wound. As the metallic taste of the blood hit his tongue, Xue Xian's mind suddenly cleared. That finger of Xuanmin's — which had, until this moment, been unconsciously clicking away at the coins — suddenly stopped too. Xuanmin opened his eyes.

Xue Xian: “...”

Question: If I explain my ‘context’ now, can I get my dignity back?

---

The author has something to say: 

Just to say: I need to take tomorrow evening off. The morning after it I have an exam, and I have an essay due too Orz. After that I’ll do a double update~ 

---

[a] The Chinese here is 本尊 (ben3 zun1), where 本 means “oneself” and 尊 means honorable/venerable. 

[b] Musuli uses 生无可恋 (sheng1 wu2 ke3 lian4) here, which is a slang term meaning “nothing left to live for”. 

This chapter was beta'd by Rogue!

[Revised TL] 52 铜钱龛世 | Tong Qian Kan Shi | Copper Coins -- 木苏里 | Musuli -- 英语翻译 | English translation -- Chapter 52

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 52: 'Ride the Air' Design (III)

After having been torn off, Jiang Shining’s hand had returned to its original paper form. It hung from the talisman to which it was stuck, and billowed gently with Xue Xian's breath, making the zuzong look ridiculous. It was obvious who the culprit behind this was.

Xuanmin looked over at Jiang Shining, and the latter cleared his throat. Still trying to hide his torn hand from his sister, Jiang Shining smiled at Xuanmin and said, "I was extremely fascinated by dashi’s spell, so I couldn't resist reaching out to touch it..."

    

Who would believe that? Jiang Shining had always been a stickler for the rules. Even if he had been overcome by curiosity, he would rather have let it choke him to death than touch Xuanmin's talisman without express permission. Besides, Jiang Shining had seen Xuanmin use talismans several times now, so why would he suddenly be fascinated?

Even an idiot would know that it was Xue Xian who had forced Jiang Shining to do it.

    

Calmly, Xuanmin retracted his gaze and said nothing. He gently peeled that paper hand away from the talisman and said to Jiang Shining, "Give me your wrist."

"Mn?" Jiang Shining asked, momentarily confused.

    

He subtly adjusted his position so that he blocked his sister and brother-in-law's view, then brought out his mangled wrist. Still nervous that his sister might see something, he kept trying to glance back at them from the corner of his eye, so did not pay attention at all to what Xuanmin was doing. All he felt was that someone was applying pressure all around his wrist, and, when he looked back, the hand had been put back with no sign of fracture or wound –– only a tiny, almost imperceptible scar. 

    

Not only had Jiang Shining not been punished, but his hand had been returned to him. High priests really were on another level.

Jiang Shining pinched his wrist and moved it around a little. "Thank you so much, thank you. Next time..."

As Xuanmin's gaze lightly fell upon him, Jiang Shining froze and immediately began to shake his head, saying, "There won't be a next time."

    

"Mn," Xuanmin said nonchalantly before swiftly turning back to face the unfortunate Xue Xian.

"Stop staring at me. I've accumulated a whole mouthful of blood out of sheer rage. If you keep staring at me like that, I'll spit it out all over your face." Xue Xian had been stewing there, feeling oppressed, and Jiang Shining's meek There won't be a next time had only made him even angrier. He wanted to reach out and twist Xuanmin's head off.

    

Xuanmin had been in the middle of reaching out to remove the talisman, but hearing this, he paused, looked at Xue Xian, and retracted his hand. He turned and made to walk out of the door.

As Xuanmin turned, his white robe lightly billowed and Xue Xian, who was still allowed to lightly twitch his finger, quickly managed to grab onto Xuanmin's sleeve and tug at it. Xue Xian fluttered his eyelashes and condescendingly said, "Come back, don't go. I'll generously agree not to spit on you, alright..."

Xuanmin looked back just in time to catch sight of the niezhang suddenly being seized by a winter shiver. Xue Xian silently sneezed in the direction of the wall.

    

As soon as the niezhang sneezed, he raised his eyes and locked his gaze with Xuanmin’s.

Xue Xian: “...”

Xuanmin: “...”

Awkwardly, Xue Xian said, "That was the blood."

Xuanmin: “...”

"I spat it out. I decided to spare your face."

Xuanmin: “...”

Xue Xian was still fuming with anger, but seeing that smooth, pleasant face of Xuanmin's, he reluctantly decided to put his fury aside. Instead, Xue Xian rolled his eyes and thought, Fine. Let me reason with you.

    

So he twitched his finger again and tugged Xuanmin's sleeve toward him.

He'd intended to pull Xuanmin closer to speak to him in a low voice, so that no one else in the room would overhear his humiliating capitulation. And as for the bald donkey... well, Xuanmin had already seen Xue Xian lose all of his dignity several times, so there was no need to fear embarrassment anymore.

But as Xue Xian tugged Xuanmin's sleeve, before he even had the chance to open his mouth to speak, the bald donkey, as though possessed, suddenly changed his mind, shot a glance at Xue Xian, and removed the talisman from Xue Xian's forehead.

    

"This village might have something you're looking for. It is best if you explain..." Xuanmin said, grasping the wheelchair's handles and turning Xue Xian around to face the scarred man and the others.

Xue Xian had no choice but to repress his bewilderment at Xuanmin's accommodating behavior. He said to the scarred man, "If what I'm looking for really is here, it could only have been placed here about half a year ago or less. Have you visited or passed through his area in the past six months? If so, did you notice some kind of change –- for instance, in the fields and forests, or in the shapes and flows of the surrounding mountains and rivers?"

The scarred man shook his head. "Not really. After all, this village has been abandoned for some time. We are usually elsewhere, and rarely come to this area. It's actually quite sad. Whenever Qingming Festival or Zhongyuan Festival come up, we simply buy paper money from whatever town we're stationed in and burn the money there. The last time we were in Wen Village, it was last winter, and––"

"I remember!" the old woman standing behind the scarred man interrupted. "There really is something! Leader, do you remember that each time we turn the last corner of the mountain path into Wen Village, we pass by a small hill and see the crown of that old tree?"

    

The scarred man paused to recall the scene, then clapped and said, "Oh, right! Thumb Mountain [a] and that old ginkgo tree! So that's why it felt weird when we were coming into the village just now –– the stream that runs down Thumb Mountain has disappeared, and the ginkgo tree is slumped over in a strange way. Also, Thumb Mountain's shape looked a bit strange. I didn't look too closely so I don't know how it had changed. But-–"

He frowned again and said to Xue Xian, "Wasn't there an earthquake a few days ago? In these mountainous parts, some slight shifts are bound to happen during earthquakes. Would that count as what you're looking for?"

    

Hearing this, Xue Xian cocked an eyebrow. "Of course it counts."

Anyway, even that earthquake might've had to do with his dragon bones.

    

"Which is the mountain that you call Thumb Mountain?" Xuanmin asked. 

The scarred man walked over to the window and peered out from the torn paper, pointing a finger to the south. "There –– do you see it? That one. It's called Thumb Mountain because it looks like a thumb."

    

Xuanmin nodded, then exchanged glances with Xue Xian.

"My own bones are for me to dig," the zuzong said.

This sent jitters across the room –– what did that one mean, My own bones? Who would need to dig their own bones out of the earth?

    

"You should be quiet," Xuanmin said. He picked up the twig he'd previously used to draw a circle around Xue Xian's wheelchair and walked across the room, drawing three lines on the floor: one for Jiang Shining and his family; one for the beggars whom they'd all ignored up to that point, so they had no idea what these beggars were doing here; and one for the theatre troupe. 

Then, Xuanmin said to the scarred man, "As long as you stay inside these lines, you have nothing to worry about. If you'd like to leave, you may simply walk out." He nodded a farewell and pushed Xue Xian out of the room.

    

Xu-da-shanren was far too generous a host. As soon as he saw the two walk out of the eastern room, seemingly about to leave the Xu compound, he came over to persuade them to stay.

Unlike Jiang Shining, Xue Xian was not soft at all. If he decided to become cold, he really could come across as cruel and immovable. Most of the time, though, he didn't really care either way, and would arbitrarily decide whether to be reasonable or not.

    

Now, Xu-da-shanren seemed to bring out the best in Xue Xian, or perhaps he was simply in a good mood. Xue Xian put on an apologetic face and said, "We aren't leaving the village. We are simply taking advantage of the fact that we have a wheelchair to look around and admire the scenery –– we'll be back. After all, we need to return your wheelchair."

Reassured, Xu-da-shanren smiled as broadly as the Laughing Buddha [b] and said, "There's no need to return the wheelchair. All it does here is collect dust. If it can be useful to you, xiao-xiongdi, then your humble servant Xu is overjoyed. However, you must return! Once you've feasted, the theatre troupe will take the stage, and xiao-xiongdi must see the show!"

Xue Xian's serious manner in front of Xu-da-shanren was rather believable and polite, except for a slight hesitation to his tone of voice. But as soon as he and Xuanmin exited the compound, he forgot all about decorum––

He had a carriage!

He didn't need to have people carry him around anymore. He could go wherever he wanted!

    

Xue Xian tried to restrain his excitement and turned to Xuanmin behind him. "Before, it was because we were in front of strangers, so I had you push me around. But you can let go now. It's just a two-wheeled carriage. I can manage it by myself."

Xuanmin shot him a skeptical look, but let go anyway. He knew that if he tried to get in Xue Xian's way now, the niezhang really would explode.

If someone who had the power to twist your head off became angry, you knew they would be capable of anything.

    

But as soon as Xuanmin took his hands off the wheelchair, he regretted his decision. He immediately experienced how it felt to let go of something and have it immediately vanish before your eyes ––

In the instant that he loosened his fingers, Xuanmin suddenly felt a gust of violent wind rise, the howl of the wind sounding uncannily similar to the roar of a dragon. A thick white fog rushed to cloud Xuanmin’s vision, and by the time he was able to swat it away, he found that both the wheelchair and the person sitting inside it had disappeared without a trace, having gone elsewhere to frolic.

    

Xuanmin: “...”

He had both expected this, and not expected this.

He’d known that the niezhang would not have just sat there dutifully, but he hadn’t known he was going to be that dramatic.

    

Xue Xian borrowed the wind as his legs and dove into the sky, half pushing the wheelchair, half letting the wind blow him forward. But he was used to using the wind to carry his dragon body, not a human body in a wheelchair, so initially used far too much force. The rickety old wheelchair became as swift as the wind and as quick as lightning.

Before he could adjust, Xue Xian had already zoomed through half of Wen Village, and was now only a few steps away from Thumb Mountain.

    

He slapped the armrests of the chair and the wooden wheels suddenly came to a halt, sinking slightly into the mud. 

"Did the bald donkey get lost?" the niezhang had the audacity to mutter to himself. He wondered how he could get Xuanmin to find him again. In reality, this was easy: Xue Xian still held Xuanmin's pendant in his hand and could simply ring it loudly to notify the monk of his location. But at that moment, such a thing did not occur to him. 

    

Instead, Xue Xian scanned the thick fog around him, then saw the peak of the mountain jutting out from above the fog, and inspiration struck.

Xue Xian's idea of 'inspiration striking' was different from that of normal people. The last time inspiration had struck him, he had suddenly transformed from a dragon into a human in the middle of the sky and dropped all of his companions straight into the lake to become a pot of human meat dumplings. 

And this time...

    

Xuanmin had closely looked around in the fog for Xue Xian's traces in the mud and had begun to follow them. But he had only taken a few steps when he suddenly heard an ear-splitting dragon's roar.

Xuanmin looked up to see that an immense black dragon's head was now sticking out in the distance amidst the fog. It swivelled to face in Xuanmin’s direction and was calling out, "Here!" And then with a puff, it disappeared into the fog again –– probably because its lower body did not have the energy to sustain its massive head.

Xuanmin: “…………”

    

But Xue Xian's semi-transformation back into his dragon body had called out to something hidden within the mountain. As Xue Xian squirrelled back into the fog, the entirety of the land on which Wen Village stood began to tremble.

---

The author has something to say: 

Reporting to everyone that, after the long wait, next week we can wild out. 

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[a] The Chinese name is 拇指山 (mu3 zhi3 shan1), literally “thumb mountain”. I decided to translate and not transcribe this because, as with Gravestone Island, the name is an informal one given entirely based on its appearance, and the location in question is key to the narrative. 

[b] Maitreya Buddha’s Chinese name is 弥勒佛 (mi2 le4 fo2), “Mi-le Buddha”. He is commonly known as the Laughing Buddha because he is portrayed as smiling or laughing. 

This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!