Chapter 9: Riverside Immortal (Part 3)
Ni Su had never felt so out of place. A lamp burned on the table, and she ground ink, her shadow cast on the window screen. Lady Jiang’s young daughter, A-Yun, washed vegetables in the courtyard. Having finished the malt candy, she longed for more but was too shy to ask, only occasionally glancing towards the side room.
Tilting her head, she saw a furry, shimmering light floating beside the shadow of the older sister on the window screen.
She let out a small gasp, abandoning the vegetables, and ran to the window, curiously reaching out to the shimmering light.
The door suddenly opened with a creak.
The little girl looked up and saw the malt candy sister she had been thinking about.
“A-Yun, can you take this to Uncle Sun next door for me?” Ni Su crouched down, her moon-white skirt pooling on the ground. She patted the girl’s head and handed her a prescription.
A-Yun nodded, clutching the thin paper in her small hand, and ran out of the courtyard.
Ni Su breathed a sigh of relief, then looked up at the shimmering light on the window screen. She turned around. “I thought ghosts didn’t have shadows.”
And his shadow was strange.
“Besides you, only children under seven or eight can see it.”
The eyes of young children were different from those of adults; they could perceive things that ordinary people couldn’t.
“What should we do then? Should I extinguish the lamp when she returns?” Ni Su stood up, closed the door, and walked over to him.
Xu Hexue didn’t look up, simply nodding slightly in response.
He still wore the fur-trimmed cloak, unsuitable for summer. Pale and thin, his eyes were clear, his eyelashes thick. Faint shadows lay beneath his eyes, giving him a quiet, deathly, and desolate air.
Like someone chronically ill, neither the warmth of a fire nor the summer sun could dispel the chill deep in his bones.
“Miss Ni, come and eat!”
Lady Jiang’s voice called out.
Ni Su answered and blew out the candle. In the dim light filtering in from outside, she could make out his figure. “Xu Zi Ling, I’ll be quick.”
In the shadows, Xu Hexue didn’t move or speak.
Ni Su pushed the door open and went out. Lady Jiang had already set the food on the table. Her daughter, A-Yun, returned from next door, holding a bowl of pickled vegetables. “Where did you go? And why did you bring back pickled vegetables?” Lady Jiang asked.
“I asked A-Yun to deliver a prescription for me. The baby was born after a difficult labor, and Yue Niang needs medicine to recover,” Ni Su explained.
“At least they sent back a bowl of pickled vegetables. That Sun Da Lang, unlike his mother, still has some conscience,” Lady Jiang said, taking the pickled vegetables from A-Yun. She had made vegetarian noodles with fresh mushrooms, and the pickled vegetables would be a good accompaniment.
Lady Jiang invited Ni Su to sit and eat, then went back inside to help her mother-in-law eat half a bowl of noodles before returning to join Ni Su and A-Yun.
“Don’t mind the simple fare, Miss Ni. We only have seasonal vegetables to offer,” Lady Jiang said with a smile.
“Sister Jiang, your cooking is excellent,”
Ni Su said as she ate.
They chatted for a while, then Lady Jiang hesitated before asking, “If you don’t mind me saying, Miss, you don’t seem like an ordinary person. And you’re so young, why…”
She paused, rephrasing her question as Ni Su looked up at her. “Please don’t take offense, Miss, but doing this kind of work… it’s thankless.”
Unless driven by hardship, few women would choose to be medicine women. It was a disreputable profession, inviting scorn and disapproval.
The medicine women Lady Jiang had met were all old, their lives nearing their end.
Ni Su smiled. “Fortunately, Sister Jiang, you didn’t turn me away and even offered me a meal.”
“You saved Yue Niang and her daughter’s lives. How could I look down on you?” Lady Jiang sighed. “When I gave birth to A-Yun, my father-in-law was still alive. He was just like Yue Niang’s mother-in-law, constantly making snide remarks about me. But my mother-in-law wasn’t like that. Other women had to get out of bed the day after giving birth, but my mother-in-law took care of me for over a month. Later, she told me that she almost died giving birth to my husband, Chang Sheng. Only women understand women’s suffering.”
“But I think, not all women understand women’s suffering,” Lady Jiang said, pointing her chopsticks towards the house across the street. “Look at Sun Da Lang’s mother. There are more people like her in this world.”
“Miss Ni, doing this kind of work… it might make it difficult for you to marry.”
This wasn’t meant as an insult, but a simple truth that Ni Su had long been aware of. Men who practiced medicine were doctors, respected by society. Women who practiced medicine were considered no different from medicine women, scorned and ostracized.
There were many more people like Old Madam Sun in this world, and few like Lady Jiang.
“I set my aspirations when I was young. Why should marriage change them?” Ni Su placed her bowl on the table, meeting Lady Jiang’s complex gaze. Her tone was calm and confident. “I don’t believe saving lives is wrong. If my future husband thinks it’s wrong, then it’s not me who is wrong, but him.”
Lady Jiang had never met such a peculiar young woman. Marriage was the most important event in a woman’s life, but clearly, it wasn’t the most important thing for this young woman in plain clothes with dark hair.
Staying with a peasant family, daily bathing wasn’t possible. Traveling, Ni Su had to forgo her usual habits. She slept fully clothed that night, light filtering through the screen and onto her eyelids.
Ni Su woke before dawn. She got up and walked around the screen. A single lamp burned dimly on the table, but the man was gone.
The lantern outside had been extinguished. Ni Su picked up the lamp and went out. The summer night was still, but the locust tree in the courtyard rustled softly. Shielding the candle flame with her hand, she walked towards the tree.
Ni Su looked up. The hem of his cloak hung down from the thick branches. He leaned against the trunk, and sensing the light, he opened his eyes, a rare look of confusion in them.
“Between humans and ghosts, must the distinction between men and women also be so clear?” Ni Su looked up at him.
She had lit the lamp for him, yet he had chosen to sit in the dark under the tree. Even as a ghost, he was a gentleman.
She held the lamp, the light illuminating her face.
Xu Hexue looked down at her, silent.
“Xu Zi Ling.”
At this moment, Ni Su suddenly felt a sense of closeness to him, perhaps because of his courtesy and propriety, or perhaps because he was holding a cicada, playing with it.
She suddenly wanted to talk to him. “Did you know that the cicada’s shell can also be used in medicine?”
“No,”
Xu Hexue said, his fingers stilling the cicada’s chirping.
“It’s called chan tui. It can dispel wind-heat, clear the lungs, soothe the throat, and calm convulsions.” Ni Su spoke effortlessly, the candlelight flickering on her face. “Last year, in July and August, I went to the mountains with the herbalists to collect them. Freshly shed cicada shells, glistening in the sunlight, look like amber. They’re beautiful.”
Xu Hexue, perched in the tree, looked at her for a moment. “Your mother was a good person. Now that her soul has returned to Youdu, she will surely find peace.”
He easily discerned the reason for her waking in the middle of the night, the source of her sadness, and why she was standing beneath the tree, making small talk with him.
Ni Su was silent for a moment, then lowered her eyes and asked, “After death, don’t people immediately reincarnate?”
“A thick fog perpetually shrouds Youdu. It can cleanse soul fire and alter appearances, but these things take time.”
Half a year in Youdu was equivalent to one month in the mortal realm.
Time was the ultimate tool of forgetting. The fog of Youdu could wash away a soul’s memories and gradually change its appearance. Once the time was up, upon reincarnation, it would be a completely different person.
Ni Su had heard many stories and read many books, but none of them were as direct and real as what this spirit from Youdu was telling her tonight.
Ni Su looked at the shimmering, floating light on the ground. “But you… you seem to remember.”
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have made a deal with her to go to the capital to find an old friend.
“Although I reside in Youdu, I don’t belong there,”
Xu Hexue replied simply.
So the fog of Youdu couldn’t wash away his memories or change his appearance.
Ni Su didn’t fully understand, but she knew her boundaries and didn’t press further. She stared at the flickering candle flame for a moment, then looked up. “Xu Zi Ling, why don’t we set off now?”
