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Chapter 68: Dog Tag (III)
It was only a twitch. Within a blink of an eye, it went away, and the dog tag was still.
A mistake?
Xue Xian's reflexes were still quite slow. He looked down dully at his own lap, unsure if he should check his pocket, as though waiting for the movement to occur again.
Danglang.
The gentle sound of metal clinking against metal rang out. In the absolute stillness of the room, it was loud and clear.
"It's moved," Xue Xian suddenly said, pointing at his own robe and looking up at Xuanmin.
Xuanmin was already looking over at him with those dark eyes –– it was unclear if he, too, had heard the clinking, or if he had simply been staring at Xue Xian.
The lantern light was so weak that, by the time it reached Xuanmin, it was extremely dim. Xue Xian could not see what expression laid behind those eyes –– but even if he had been able to see, he would probably still be unable to guess what Xuanmin was thinking. Not after all that had happened tonight.
Those eyes were probably completely calm and collected as usual...
Xue Xian repeated, "Something's moved."
Clearly, some things needed to be done in moderation. If you were too indulgent, you might become lazy and idle, or just a little stupid. Xue Xian's current slow state was in high contrast to his normal behavior. When they’d been talking earlier, the nature of their conversation meant it wasn’t obvious how dazed Xue Xian was. But now that something important was happening, he found himself stressed and confused. [a]
Xuanmin sat there, his body half-illuminated and half-submerged in the shadows as he looked back at Xue Xian. Finally, he said, "Mn."
In the silence of the night, Xuanmin’s voice was as deep as a lake. Combined with the orange glow of the lantern, his voice seemed even to lose its usual edge and coldness, and instead revealed a sense of warmth and fondness, which tugged at Xue Xian's heart in an inexplicable way.
Thus, Xue Xian faltered for some time. Only when the thing in his pocket moved again did he return to his senses.
After three twitches, Xue Xian was finally dragged out of the daze of his afterglow. He looked down and reached into his pocket.
The pocket had been drenched in sweat earlier, and was still a little damp. So as he took out those thin dog tags, these, too, were covered in a slight layer of moisture.
Danglang.
As Xue Xian retrieved the dog tags, that metal clinking noise arose again.
Now, Xue Xian could be sure that the movement came from only one of the dog tags among the pile. He spread those twenty or thirty flakes of metal across the desk under the dim lantern glow, reaching out to fiddle with them one by one.
Danglang.
"I found it," said Xue Xian, pointing at the suspect dog tag and picking it up.
"Perhaps the resentful energy has not yet dissipated," Xuanmin said.
"Mn," Xue Xian said idly. He brought the dog tag closer to the light and squinted at it again, then looked closer at the scratched-out name on the back. After a long time, he clicked his tongue and said, "I can't read it."
Those scratches were far too messy. It was impossible even to see the original markings, let alone read the name.
Xue Xian sat up and held the dog tag out to Xuanmin.
"What is it?" Xuanmin asked.
"Here. Do the rites," Xue Xian said lazily. Then he looked back at the rest of the dog tags on the table and counted them. "Twenty-eight. Do you need incense? You'll have to prepare twenty-eight sticks of incense."
As he spoke, perhaps because it had heard him and understood, the dog tag in his hand suddenly trembled again, as though wanting to escape his grasp.
"Don't move," Xue Xian told the dog tag without thinking.
Don't move...
Earlier, desperate for release, Xue Xian had taken hold of that hand in front of him and brought it into the folds of his robe. Xuanmin seemed to have said that to him, then. Xuanmin had said it more than once.
As he inadvertently repeated that phrase, Xue Xian's still-fatigued mind couldn't help but go back to the sound of Xuanmin's heavy breaths interwoven with his own. He trailed off, and by the time he'd managed to drag himself back out of the memory, he found that his cheeks and the tips of his ears were hot.
His body tense all over, Xue Xian held onto that dog tag and stole a glance at Xuanmin.
For a moment, Xuanmin's gaze seemed to lower slightly, but then he looked back up at Xue Xian's face. Eventually, his eyes settled on the dog tag in Xue Xian's hand. Not once did Xuanmin look directly into Xue Xian's eyes –– either because he happened to skip them as a coincidence, or because he was avoiding them.
Before, when the fog had first dissipated, Xue Xian had specifically chosen to use a casual tone when making his proposition to Xuanmin. He’d wanted to use his normal, nonchalant tone to squash the awkwardness of the intimacy between them.
Indeed, although he had been alive for many, many years, Xue Xian had never encountered a situation like this before, and didn't know how he was supposed to approach it. [b] All he could do was grit his teeth and treat it as ‘the most normal thing in the world’: a simple helping hand given between friends.
In the future, once many years had passed and the already ambiguous memory had faded to almost nothing, perhaps it really would reduce itself to a small, inconsequential matter. As for Xue Xian and Xuanmin, they could continue to interact the way they'd always interacted, and did not need to expend time or energy changing anything about their relationship.
That was also, perhaps, why Xuanmin had summoned that poisonous fog: with the dense white fog between them, they’d been unable to see each other's faces and unable, therefore, to catch anything in the other's gaze or expression. This helped the whole experience resemble a strange and blurry dream, and for no unnecessary complications to come out of it.
But now, as a single phrase had triggered Xue Xian's memory, he couldn't help but think of that moment. Certain emotions took advantage of the memory to come pouring back into him. Xue Xian realised that some matters could not be pushed aside simply by injecting a casual tone into one’s voice…
Xue Xian was still staring at the dog tags. Then, as he stole another glance at Xuanmin, he suddenly came back to his senses.
Xue Xian tugged the corners of his mouth upwards, wanting to say something offhand to offset that suddenly awkward atmosphere. Instead, he found himself putting on a false smile, one that looked extremely insincere as well. So he gave up, and just said, "I don't think it's resentful energy on this dog tag. There seems to be something else."
It was unclear whether Xuanmin had zoned out or if he was pondering something, but some time passed before he blinked and replied. "The souls have spent too long trapped beneath the river. They must be half disintegrated by now. In this fragmented state, it's unlikely that resentful energy can become so tangible."
Xuanmin paused, then got up from the prayer mat and walked over to Xue Xian with his hand out. "Give it to me,” he said.
When he’d been sitting down, he'd still been able to look at Xue Xian, but now that he was coming over, Xuanmin was definitely avoiding looking directly at Xue Xian. His gaze was focused entirely on the dog tag as he picked it up, wrapped it in talismanic paper, and murmured a prayer while giving the wrapped tag a flick with his finger.
The dog tag emitted a weng–– sound and spasmed against Xuanmin’s palm. Next, the blurred silhouette of a man slowly squeezed itself out of the dog tag and hovered before Xuanmin.
Xue Xian peered over at the man, but his face was indistinct, as though shrouded in fog…
Fog...
Xue Xian forced his face to become blank as he rolled his eyes and shoved the beginnings of that memory back into the depths of his mind. He continued to peer over––
The man's face was quite hard to make out, but Xue Xian could roughly see that everything that was supposed to be on one’s face was there. The man did not wear a soldier's uniform, but instead wore only a basic and slightly ragged overcoat –– the openings of its sleeves were empty, and hung limply against his side.
Clearly, someone so gravely injured had been unable to return to the battlefield –– he could no longer even hold a weapon –– so he must have retired. Xue Xian realised that such soldiers, forced to return home, would probably have had rather complicated emotions about their retirement…
As Xue Xian looked over at him, the man seemed stunned. The man looked down at his own body too, as though surprised that he now had a silhouette. Then, he got down on one knee in front of Xuanmin and Xue Xian and bowed his head in an incomplete but highly respectful greeting.
And because he had no arms, as he got back up, his movements were strained and stilted.
"Th-thank you, dashis, for your help," he said. So he could speak, but his voice was abnormally low, and as hazy as his form.
Even so, the sound of his own voice made him jump in fright.
"I can speak again..." he muttered. "Can you hear me?"
Xuanmin looked him up and down, then nodded.
"Was it you moving around just now?" Xue Xian asked.
The man nodded and said, "It was."
"A final request not completed? Or too much resentment to transcend?” Xue Xian asked.
The man nodded, then shook his head. "I wouldn't dare. It's just..."
After all, the man was not a normal spirit. He was a fragmented soul made strong through forceful combination with resentful energy. He spoke slowly and with great effort, and needed to stop every few words, as though, in the middle of his sentence, he had forgotten how he'd intended to finish. He paused to think for a while, then added, "I heard that you were about to leave this place..."
Heard?
Xue Xian froze as he tried to recall it: earlier, when he’d had nothing to say but had still wanted to say something, he had indeed said something like, If there's nothing else, then let's tidy up and go back to the Fangs. But… Heard?!
"You heard? What else did you hear?" Xue Xian’s face turned dark, then green, then white. His gaze unconsciously floated to Xuanmin.
Xuanmin seemed to sense that he was being observed, so he glanced back at Xue Xian. But he soon retracted his gaze and looked at the man, as though waiting for the man to answer that highly awkward question.
If this dog tag had been conscious the whole fucking time, and had been able to hear everything in the outside world, then...
Xue Xian was positive that he had never in his life felt his face grow so hot.
When it had been just Xue Xian and Xuanmin alone together, then anything they did while under the influence of dragon spit fever could be kind of understandable. It was a secret held between you, me, the heavens, and the earth. It wasn't entirely impossible just to bury the matter and never speak of it again.
But if some random third person knew about your secret too, then that changed everything. That palpable awkwardness rippled back up into the room, still mixed in with that strange, indescribable intimacy. Any and all pretense about what had occurred between Xue Xian and Xuanmin being ‘understandable’ was ruined.
Xue Xian couldn't avoid thinking back to the details of what had happened –– this time, he willingly recalled them. But as he scanned the memory again, those dazed, vague moments did not become any clearer. He still could not remember if, amidst that unbearable anxiety, he had cried out, nor if he had muttered any other nonsense.
He probably hadn't, but who knew...
Well, one person did know, but...
Xue Xian glanced at Xuanmin again, then looked down and frowned. Maybe I should commit suicide right now, he thought. Or please just hurry up and do the rites for that damn spirit so he can transcend and go away.
By the time Xue Xian looked up again, he discovered that, for some reason, Xuanmin had moved slightly closer to him. And he didn't know if this meant anything at all, but Xuanmin now happened to be standing between Xue Xian and the soldier. It gave Xue Xian the feeling that he had just been protectively pushed behind someone's back.
Now that his vision was blocked, Xue Xian could no longer see the soldier, only Xuanmin's back. Naturally, the soldier could not see Xue Xian either. As he realised this, his embarrassed blush went away a bit.
Thankfully, that soldier replied, "My mind was never very clear. As soon as I became conscious, I heard the two of you say that you were going to leave, but... But before you leave, could you help me with something?"
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The author has something to say:
Yesterday I wrote a ton of fog into my story, and this morning I opened the door and saw that it was foggy outside. I felt chills down my spine!
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[a] What Musuli is alluding to in a very vague manner here is that Xue Xian came too hard and now is not as smart as he normally is.
[b] I had a reader ask about potential inconsistencies in terms of Xue Xian’s past sexual experience, because later in the novel Musuli states that Xue Xian had been promiscuous in the past. Here, I think Musuli specifically means that Xue Xian has never been mutually afflicted by an aphrodisiac when in the company of a second person and felt the need to offer to relieve them, i.e. he’s never been in this exact situation before.
This chapter was beta’d by Rogue!
Thankyou so much for the translation. Already in love so bad with these two, 💖💖💖
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