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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.
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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!
hahahaha everything xue xian does is so dramatic omggg
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