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Chapter 44: Plague County (II)
His Honorable Lord Xue [a] was a drama queen at heart. Even when he was running away, he had to run in an extravagant, awe-striking, tempest-whipping manner, as if it was an insult to his dignity to tone down his performance even by a little bit. But, due to his half-paralysis, his tail had a hard time cooperating.
"It was all thanks to the wind I summoned that we were able to control our direction," Xue Xian said lazily, patting his knee. He was reclining against a tree by the lake, his entire body dripping with water. "It's like walking. Obviously there's going to be a bit of turbulence. It goes without saying."
In reality, it had not been 'a bit' of turbulence: it had been excessive turbulence, enough to shake the brains out of his passengers.
The entire way, Stone Zhang had fervently asked the beast to hook his claws tighter –– If only I had eight limbs, Stone Zhang had thought, so that I could wrap myself around this one’s claws like a cuttlefish! Each time Xue Xian had flipped as he flew, or whenever Xue Xian had flown higher, Stone Zhang would feel both ecstatic that he was genuinely flying, and so terrified he could not stop his wails and cries. The experience had probably scared his soul right out of him.
As they’d glided through the sky, Jiang Shining had felt extremely fortunate and clairvoyant to have had the sense, back at the inn, to fold himself back into a paper man and slide into Lu Nianqi's chest pocket. Jiang Shining was light, and the pocket was a safe place, so he had not feared falling off, and thankfully had not screamed away all of his dignity like Stone Zhang had.
But even Jiang Shining had only enjoyed a brief moment of celebration. Xue Xian had flown too fast, and had not been able to control the wind to soften his landing, especially with that paralysed tail. Unable to come up with a suitable solution, Xue Xian had looked around and found a lake that seemed to be wide and deep enough for them to drop into.
Of course, an enormous beast smashing head-first into a lake at full speed would no doubt cause half the lake to splash out and rumble the foundations of the city wall nearby.
The zuzong must have thought himself extremely clever. As he saw that braking was impossible, he’d transformed back into a human midway. He’d even had the time to take his robe back from Xuanmin's hands.
Then there had been four little plunks as the group had fallen one by one into the water.
As soon as Xue Xian had hit the water, he had been scooped up by the waist by Xuanmin.
We could say that the two had then swum toward shore, but all Xue Xian could do in his state was superficially wiggle his arms –– naturally, Xuanmin had carried him to shore.
Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi had only been harshly slapped by the water, but Jiang Shining was almost soaked through –– after all, his skin was made of paper, not metal. He had already been at risk of dissolving into pieces several times.
Now, Xuanmin had laid Jiang Shining out to dry on top of some dry grass, and he looked like a real survivor. He still didn't dare to move, fearing that any small thing might result in dismemberment.
There was still some lingering panic in Jiang Shining's heart. "Zuzong, what were you thinking?” How could you throw us all down from such a great height?
Xue Xian stacked his elbow against a nearby rock and said, "I had a flash of inspiration."
“...” All Jiang Shining could do was silently curse him. [b]
Leaning lethargically against a tree — with his black robe in complete disarray, hanging loose and misshapen off his frame — the zuzong looked to be the pinnacle of relaxation.
Xuanmin hated the feeling of being wet, so he drew a talisman on his palm and instantly dried out his robe, turning the white hemp pristine again. He took a few steps across the damp grass and, with his still gashed finger, drew quick lines of blood across Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi's foreheads. He even dotted Jiang Shining's trembling, mushy paper body.
The blood marks quickly disappeared.
"I feel... as though a fire is cooking me," Jiang Shining said carefully.
"Clothes-cleaning spell," [c] Xuanmin explained. The reason why he'd only written a half-complete talismanic text on them was because the spell came with a flash of heat, and he hadn't wanted them to be distressed.
Jiang Shining's paper-thin body quickly turned dry, and he finally felt a bit less anxious, settling into the patch of grass with gusto.
Xue Xian tugged at his collar. His soaked robes were clinging to his body, heavy and uncomfortable.
Just as he'd decided to direct that latent, simmering heat within him to the surface of his skin and warm the clothes from the inside, Xue Xian saw that Xuanmin was now striding his way.
Although Xuanmin’s outfit of white looked far too inauspicious in the eyes of ordinary people, Xue Xian had to admit that it was indeed beautiful, resembling a smudge of white fog in the dark night. The hem of Xuanmin's robe brushed lightly against the stalks of dry grass, yet picked up not a speck of dirt.
Xuanmin stopped in front of Xue Xian and looked down at him. Xue Xian sat there, lifting his face to stare back at Xuanmin neutrally.
Back at the inn, when he'd been waiting for Xuanmin to say what he'd wanted to say, Xue Xian had thought he would die of stress. If he had to wait for Xuanmin to speak again all while holding within him that utterly indescribable feeling, he feared that his brain would melt into fish food.
"Don't block my view," Xue Xian said.
Xuanmin was standing and he was sitting –– if Xue Xian looked straight ahead instead of angling his neck upwards, all he could see was Xuanmin’s hand.
Just as Xue Xian's glance began to move away, that hand dangling by his face suddenly moved.
Xuanmin stood rigidly, looking down at him as he gently lifted Xue Xian's chin with the crook of his finger. He brought Xue Xian's face upward and moved that still bleeding fingertip toward his forehead.
That touch to the chin had stunned Xue Xian. His eyes shot to Xuanmin's approaching finger –– maybe it was just him, but Xue Xian felt as though Xuanmin’s bleeding finger stalled for a moment in front of his face.
In that one short moment, Xue Xian had expected Xuanmin's finger to come into contact with his face, yet it stopped and lingered –– imperceptibly, for just a heartbeat –– before finally moving up and pressing down onto the center of Xue Xian’s forehead. The touch was neither heavy nor light, but dragged the blood gently, drawing a line. Xue Xian's eyes flitted up. He saw that reliably cold-as-ice, too-cold-to-melt-snow face of Xuanmin's, as Xuanmin rested his own calm gaze on Xue Xian's forehead. It was as though Xuanmin were doing something he wouldn't normally do, something he wasn't used to.
Xue Xian didn't know what the streak of blood on his forehead looked like, but he could feel that the sticky, oppressive robes around his body had already begun to dry at an alarming rate.
He tugged at his robes and complained, "Will you die if you bend just a little?"
Xuanmin's hands dropped as he finally looked into Xue Xian's eyes. "Not turning your back to me anymore?"
Xue Xian: “...”
Xue Xian wanted to smash the rock he was leaning against directly into the bald donkey's face. "I do what I want. Just try and stop me. Get lost!"
Xuanmin's temperament was always mild, and he had never acquired the habit of trying to guess what those around him were feeling. On the other hand, Xue Xian could flip through emotions quicker than the pages of a book, oscillating between clinging to someone and banishing them. It was as if someone who had never walked in his life were suddenly able to walk on water: the difference was just far too marked.
As Xue Xian barked at Xuanmin to leave, he saw that the bald donkey remained standing there looking at him for some time before faithfully getting lost. Xue Xian felt disdain rise within him like blood that he could spit right onto the bald donkey's face.
Now fully dry, Jiang Shining got up from the grass and puffed back into his humanlike form. As soon as he turned his head, he caught sight of Xue Xian's bleak face.
"What's wrong?" Jiang Shining asked. He thought for a while, then said, "Are you hungry again after the journey?"
"Mn," Xue Xian replied darkly. "My teeth are itchy. I want to eat human meat."
“...” Speechless, Jiang Shining glanced anxiously in Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi's direction.
In fact, Xuanmin hadn't gone far. He had simply walked over to Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi and begun to set up a rudimentary stack of branches between them. Xuanmin magically dried the wood, struck a match from his pocket, and lit a small bonfire, so that the two weaker ones wouldn't freeze to death while waiting for their clothes to dry.
Having lit the fire, Xuanmin came back and stood in front of Xue Xian again.
Xue Xian glared at him. "What now?"
Xuanmin unhooked the copper coin pendant from his hip and rubbed it with his thumb. Then he said to Xue Xian, "Your hand."
Suspicious, Xue Xian extended his hand. Xuanmin placed the pendant into his palm and said, "Some spiritual tools [d] deplete their spiritual power after a certain amount of time, but can be used for their other effects."
As he said this, Xuanmin glanced at Xue Xian's paralysed legs.
Of course, Xue Xian had heard of this idea before, but ‘spiritual tools’ were instruments used by mortals and of no use to him, so he had never thought about it. He knew, for instance, that the fact that copper coin pendants became covered in a layer of oil after some time was precisely because their spiritual power was being slowly depleted through use. These sensitive spiritual tools were excellent accessories: their functions ranged from calculating feng shui to controlling the five natural elements. As long as you had the skill, you could do anything.
You could do anything, which implied... it could even help someone grow his body back.
Having seen Xuanmin scan his legs, Xue Xian understood what Xuanmin meant. Only...
To most practitioners, such spiritual tools were as precious as life. Even for another person to touch the object would be a great offense, so it was completely unheard of to willingly put it in someone else's hands.
Xue Xian stared at the pendant in his own palm and could not think of anything to say, nor even how to feel.
Finally, he couldn't help but say, "Did you eat rat poison?"
Xuanmin: “...”
This zuzong seemed incredulous. Xue Xian dangled the pendant in front of Xuanmin and swung it, then swung it again... giving Xuanmin the opportunity to take it back.
But as Xue Xian swung it for the third time, Xuanmin pushed Xue Xian's claw back and said, "There is a seal on the coins that has not yet been undone. But it should still be useful. I don't need it at the moment, so you can have it."
"Seal?" Xue Xian repeated, surprised, but quickly seemed to understand –– so that's why the coins looked so drab and grey, as if they were ordinary coins with no magic in them at all. But... "Who sealed them? You?"
Xuanmin shook his head. "I do not remember. Each coin has its own seal. Recently, two of them seem to have started to come loose. Perhaps they will be undone soon."
Xue Xian bit the tip of his tongue and pondered this. In the end, he accepted the pendant –– before, when he'd been a paper man and then a marble, he had been able to take advantage of his small size to reside in Xuanmin’s pouch and let whatever was in Xuanmin’s pelvic bones quicken his healing. But now that he'd returned to his original body, whether he was in human form or dragon form, Xue Xian could no longer go ahead and stick to Xuanmin's hip.
Imagine that... Even thinking about it made Xue Xian’s eyes hurt, let alone actually making it a reality. It was because of this change that, in recent days, Xue Xian's healing process had slowed down significantly. He could still feel the process happening inside him, but compared to before it was far slower. He didn't want to constantly drag his two paralysed legs around, waiting for others to carry him places.
It was downright humiliating.
Xue Xian mulled this all over. Then he clutched the pendant tighter and closed his eyes to focus on healing his spine.
A half-complete talisman not being as effective as a full talisman, it took some time for Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi's clothes, and their shocked faces, to return to some semblance of normal.
Once Lu Nianqi recovered, he immediately felt guilty for burdening the rest of the group. He asked Jiang Shining, "Aren't you in a hurry?"
Jiang Shining, sitting on a rock not far from him, looked back at the dim lantern glow of the distant city. "We have to wait for wu geng. We're right at the door anyway, so there's no rush."
There was a curfew within the city at night, and its gates were shut tight, with no one allowed to leave or enter unless it was an emergency. Even if they did get in, it wasn't as if they could go knocking on someone's door in the middle of the night. But it seemed that much of the night had already gone by, and the wu geng bells would be ringing soon.
"The last time I saw my sister was three years ago. She came back to Ningyang after she got the news," Jiang Shining muttered. "I can't remember much of what happened after I died –– it only got better after I became a paper man –– but I do remember how much she cried. I can even hear it now..."
Once the wu geng bells rang and the city gates opened, the townspeople would slowly begin to rouse too. Jiang Shining would be able to see his sister again, make sure she was doing well, and finally help the trapped souls of their parents transcend.
Throughout his short life, Jiang Shining had never really spent much time away from home and family. He was not familiar with that strange, nervous feeling that appeared when one was close to returning to one’s home.
But now, by the shores of that unknown lake, gazing at the gates of a city he was supposed to consider as a second home, Jiang Shining realised that he only needed to wait a little bit longer before all of his problems would disappear, leaving him free and at ease forever. With that, he suddenly felt a sense of hesitation...
Dang––
After a long wait, that wu geng bell finally rippled forth from the city center.
The group quickly tidied up and made their way to the city wall. With a creak, the ancient gates were pushed open by the guards and the view of the town within was revealed to them, along with a mysterious smell.
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The author has something to say:
Exams month, plus a presentation and some other class stuff~ The updates might come a bit later in the day, but I’ll try to make it before midnight.
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[a] Musuli phrases this as 这姓薛的 (zhe4 xing4 xue1 de), “this one surnamed Xue”. The ironic effect of such phrasing is difficult to convey literally in English, so I went for a different approach with a similar effect.
[b] Musuli phrases this as “Jiang Shining silently spat out a mouthful of blood”. Spitting out blood is a common trope in historical fantasies, and in this case (as well as elsewhere in Copper Coins) is used purely metaphorically, to show frustration or injury to one’s dignity. I decided not to translate it this way since, in English, it could easily be read as literal.
[c] Musuli uses the word 咒 (zhou4) here, meaning incantation or curse. However, because it does not have an adverse effect in this context, it is more appropriate to translate it into English as “spell”.
[d] Musuli uses 法器 (fa3 qi4) here, where 法 is used to indicate anything Buddhist-related but in this instance has its meaning broadened to anything magical/mystical associated with Xuanmin’s practices; and 器 means tool/machine/mechanism.
This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!
"But now that he'd returned to his original body [...] Xue Xian could no longer go ahead and stick to Xuanmin's hip."
ReplyDeleteWell, I can think of *one* way to solve that... ;)
What a coincidence! Me too
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