“Then why does an extinguished Longevity Lamp remain in the hall?” Zhou Fuxue looked at the name on that lamp’s Jade Tablet. “Guihe? Which senior is this?”
Mingzhu pushed the extinguished lamp upward with a fingertip, and it wobbled and swayed back into the air. “I’m not entirely sure. Going by the name, perhaps one of Master’s martial brothers. When someone dies and their lamp goes out, it falls to the platform below—but no one knows why this one never fell, and instead has floated up there all these years. Ah, never mind that. Come, come.”
He hopped across the trickling ice-water to the high platform at the hall’s center, set his lamp down upon it, and took Zhou Fuxue’s hand, pricking out a single drop of blood to fall onto the Jade Tablet beneath. Soon, the lamp lit slowly to life, and Zhou Fuxue’s name rose gradually upon it.
Holding up the Longevity Lamp, Mingzhu said, “Kneel.”
Zhou Fuxue blinked—then bent his knees and knelt on the frozen ground. The water crept slowly over it, cold to the marrow; his whole body chilled, yet he made not a sound.
Mingzhu said, “Zhou Fuxue, thirteenth disciple of Rizhao Mountain.”
For once his face had settled into gravity, those peach-blossom eyes narrowed slightly—and somehow, out of thin air, came a pressure that awed without anger.
Zhou Fuxue lowered his head slightly. “Your disciple is here.”
“Enter through Rizhao Mountain’s gate, and whether you were royal nobility or a peddler and laborer, you must lay down the past. Diligent each day, seeking without pause—you may not slack, nor scheme and scramble for gain. Orphaned young, having suffered every hardship, you see through things more clearly than most, and your nature is cooler and leaner than most. Guard your original heart, discard the dross and keep the true, and you may yet become a man of cloud-grace and moon-radiance. But let you grow arrogant and self-important, and the step into the Dao or into the Demonic Path lies a hair’s breadth apart—with no one left to save you. Understood?”
Zhou Fuxue: “Yes.”
The instant he’d recited his piece, Mingzhu dropped the borrowed solemnity altogether, hauling Zhou Fuxue up off the ground. “Hey, do your legs hurt? This water in the Longevity Hall is no ordinary water—if you touch it too long, I’m afraid the flesh would freeze right off the bone.”
Before Zhou Fuxue could react, Mingzhu had wrapped both hands around his waist, hoisted him up with a heave, and deposited him on the steps of the platform to sit—flipping his hem open without so much as a by-your-leave.
Never in his life had anyone treated Zhou Fuxue with such casual intimacy. His face flushed at once, and he struggled. “Don’t—don’t touch me, I’m fine.”
Mingzhu knelt beside him, puzzled. “Is that so? Then kick your leg for me, let’s see.”
Zhou Fuxue, not daring to look at him, kicked out wildly—catching the kneeling Mingzhu square on and knocking him backward. He staggered, failed to find his balance, and rolled clean down the steps.
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
“Senior Brother!”
Mingzhu was thick-skinned and thick-hided; he got up off the ground as if nothing had happened, shaking off his body the very water he’d just declared could rot flesh from bone, eyes curving in a smile. “Good—lamp’s lit, so let’s head back.”
He gave Zhou Fuxue’s Longevity Lamp a gentle push, and it floated up weightlessly into that field of glowing lamps, vanishing from sight in moments.
Zhou Fuxue gave an “mm” and was just rising when a bone-deep cold shot up from his kneeling knees, climbing along his meridians until his whole body seemed frozen stiff—and he stood rooted where he was.
So the claim about that water freezing the flesh from bone had been no exaggeration.
Mingzhu sighed beside him, then crouched down with his back to Zhou Fuxue. “Come. I’ll carry you.”
Zhou Fuxue froze a moment, then at last leaned onto Mingzhu’s back, saying quietly, “Thank you, Senior Brother.”
Mingzhu hoisted him up. “Aiyo. Every time a new disciple comes, Master makes me do this song and dance. I’m bored stiff of it. What good is surface ceremony anyway? Rizhao’s honored ancestors can’t see a bit of it, and you all still have to suffer through it.”
Riding on his back, listening to him rattle on in his usual, outrageous fashion, Zhou Fuxue found—for reasons he couldn’t name—that the earlier distaste was gone. He rubbed his cheek lightly against the shoulder blades of Mingzhu’s back, thinking, He looks so thin and frail, and yet his back is so warm and broad.
Ten-year-old Zhou Fuxue had tasted every bitterness the world could serve, and this was the first time he had ever been truly sheltered—even if his shelter was nothing but a playboy wastrel everyone looked down on.
Perhaps badmouthing Rizhao’s honored ancestors inside the Longevity Hall had invoked Karmic Retribution, for the moment Mingzhu had delivered Zhou Fuxue back to Wenxian Residence and applied his medicine, a little Daoist Attendant arrived with word that the Sect Master wanted him.
Mingzhu had a stolen fruit from Fifth Junior Brother’s stores clamped in his teeth, and mumbled around it, “Me? What for?”
The little attendant looked at him in despair. “You’ll know when you get there, Eldest Senior Brother. The Little Shishu is in the hall too.”
Mingzhu: “……”
Guilt seized him at once, and he waved the boy off frantically. “Go, go, quick—tell them you couldn’t find me!”
The little attendant looked ready to cry. “Senior Brother, don’t make this hard for me. The Sect Master says you must come today, or he’ll send people to drag you there.”
Mingzhu nearly cracked his head on the table. Only after a long while did he resign himself: “Fine. I’ll go. I’ll go.”
Zhou Fuxue sat in his chair, his knee wrapped by Mingzhu’s clumsy hands into a thick, lumpy poultice of gauze—hideously ugly, though Zhou Fuxue paid it no mind. Watching Mingzhu’s face, mournful as if attending his own funeral, he asked, puzzled, “Senior Brother, what’s wrong?”
Mingzhu pulled a face of pure grief. “The Little Shishu lied to me again. He’s definitely told Master all about morning lesson.”
From the side, the little Daoist Attendant ventured carefully, “Um…… Eldest Senior Brother, every time you spout your nonsense at the Little Shishu, he promises he won’t tell the Sect Master. And every single time, the moment class ends, he goes straight to the Sect Master and reports you. It’s—it’s been so many times now, you really ought to have learned.”
Mingzhu: “……”
Mingzhu nearly wept. “Thirteen, I’ll have someone send your lunch over. You eat by yourself.”
Zhou Fuxue: “And you?”
Mingzhu said, “I’m going to go kneel.”
Zhou Fuxue: “……”
Mingzhu followed the little attendant all the way to Daoist Master Guining’s residence. Without even stepping inside, he flipped up his hem and knelt directly beside the Sect Precepts carved outside the great hall. “Your disciple knows his error.”
Within the hall, Daoist Master Guining seemed long accustomed. He said simply, “Five shichen. Kneel up straight. Let the disciples coming and going see exactly what the Eldest Senior Brother of Rizhao Mountain is made of.”
Mingzhu knelt ramrod straight. “Yes.”
It was lunchtime; disciples streamed back and forth in twos and threes past where he knelt, glancing at him sidelong—some mocking, some amused, some wincing in sympathy. And the Eldest Senior Brother, seemingly without shame at all, cheerfully greeted acquaintances through a face full of bruises.
Daoist Master Guining half-reclined on a soft couch within the hall, his cold, piercing eyes carrying an awe that needed no anger, watching Mingzhu outside with indifference. “That temperament of his truly takes after that worthless father of his—no drive, knows his errors and never mends them. Without strict discipline, who knows—one day he’ll fall into the Demonic Path too.”
The Little Shishu stood at his side with hands lowered, smiling gently. “Brother, spare him the punishment. Those words of his, however biased, are still a kind of independent thinking—far better than disciples who do nothing but swallow their books whole.”
Daoist Master Guining remained unsatisfied. “No need to plead for him. Let him kneel properly and learn his lesson. If someday he’s led astray by these heresies of his, who will be able to restrain him?”
The Little Shishu was silent a moment. “Then why, this time, did you insist he go to Hundred Swords Mountain? All these years he’s done nothing but dream of escaping Rizhao. Are you not afraid he’ll seize this chance and bolt?”
“And that is precisely why I’m sending Zhou Fuxue.” Daoist Master Guining gave a cold laugh. “Mingzhu looks warm to everyone, but in truth he is a colder, more detached man than either of us. The only thing that can hold him in place is probably……”
Little Shishu: “Hm?”
Daoist Master Guining paused before finishing. “Only Zhou Fuxue, who shares his suffering.”
“He does treat Zhou Fuxue somewhat differently, I’ll grant. But can you truly be certain that a mere Zhou Fuxue can keep him docile and prevent him from fleeing?”
Daoist Master Guining said, “Then add a spirit-veinless Lu Qingkong to the scales.”
The Little Shishu fell silent again.
Daoist Master Guining looked out at Mingzhu beyond the hall and seemed to give a cold laugh. “Guihe. With men as heartless as that, whenever they meet someone like themselves, they are always, always undone by too much feeling.”
Guihe lifted his head slightly. Daoist Master Guining’s fingers brushed the long-extinguished censer as he lowered his eyes and said quietly, “And once he has something he cannot bear to lose, he will never—unto his dying day—think of leaving this Rizhao Mountain again.”
With a creak of the door, Guihe walked out of the hall holding a green bamboo-ribbed umbrella. He descended the steps step by step, came to Mingzhu’s side, and said softly, “A-Zhu, stop kneeling. Go home.”
Mingzhu gazed up at his promise-breaking Little Shishu with soulful resentment. “Little Shishu, you went back on your word again. You’ve ruined me this time—five full shichen of kneeling!”
Never in all his outrageous years had he ever knelt more than two shichen. This time, by the time he finished, it would surely be the dead of night.
Guihe looked the picture of innocence. “That’s why I said stop kneeling. Kneeling that long is miserable.”
He crouched beside Mingzhu and angled the umbrella to shade his head, blocking the blazing sun overhead.
Mingzhu said, “Aiyo, Little Shishu, don’t get me in trouble again! Last time I listened to you and left before my time was up, and Master added half a shichen to my sentence. And here you are again today? I’ll only believe that if it comes out of Master’s own mouth.”
Guihe said, still gentle, “You could also disobey your Master, just once, and trust your Little Shishu.”
Mingzhu: “Don’t trust him.”
Guihe could only rise and draw back the umbrella, helpless. “Then I’ll go on ahead. Kneel properly.”
Mingzhu batted his eyes. “Little Shishu, look how fierce the sun is—won’t you consider leaving the umbrella to shelter your Shizhi from it?”
The Little Shishu’s robes trailed the ground, his bearing as serene as an ice vessel under the autumn moon. He turned slightly, eyes curving in a gentle smile. “I cannot. I’m sorry, A-Zhu.”
Mingzhu showed not a trace of embarrassment at being refused. He gave an “oh,” and as Guihe turned to go, Mingzhu called to him once more. Good-tempered, he turned back. “Truly, I cannot.”
Mingzhu blinked, the picture of innocence. “No, that’s not it—I only meant to say, Little Shishu, your shadow fell off.”
Guihe: “……”
Mingzhu was holding, pinched between his fingers, a jet-black, human-shaped shadow—still bouncing and squirming and chattering nonsense. And bold as brass, Mingzhu showed not the slightest fear or surprise at the shadow leaping about in his grip, as if he’d merely caught a bug, his eyes shining with nothing but curiosity.
Guihe’s face drained white in an instant. He looked down at his feet—where no shadow remained at all.
