Scent Beneath the Lamp
The last of the night was ebbing away, yet outside the ruined hall the sky was still a washed blue-grey, not quite white.
Fang Yingjie woke to a smell.
It was not the scent of medicine, nor damp mold, nor the dead old chill of ash that had filled the ruined hall the night before. It was warmth—grease, browned skin, a faint saltiness in the air—mixed with the light fragrance of wine, drifting toward him from somewhere nearby. The smell itself was not especially strong. And yet, after injury, after hunger, when the bones still held cold, it worked like an invisible hand, hauling him up bit by bit from the black depths of sleep.
At first he thought he was dreaming.
Dreaming of the roast-chicken stall below Mount Hua's gate, always ringed with people at night. Dreaming of fresh hot porridge on the mountain as the lid first came off the pot. Dreaming of the little pastries Xi Qian used to hide inside her sleeve. Dreaming of Feng Feiyun calling him a sickly wretch even as he tossed one candied plum after another into his arms.
Then, in the next instant, the dull ache between his shoulder and ribs surged up with vicious force, like a blunt hammer striking straight into the seam of the bone. His vision darkened. His throat tightened.
Not a dream.
He was still alive.
Fang Yingjie sucked in a hard breath. His eyelids trembled, and at last he slowly opened them.
The first thing he saw was a pool of dim yellow firelight.
The fire itself was not large. It shivered in one corner of the ruined hall, licking at a heap of old wood that was only half dry. Now and then it gave a soft crack. Over it lay a rough-cut branch, and on the branch a mountain fish, taken from some unseen stream, its skin blistered and browned. Fat still beaded at the edges and dripped into the flames, sending up fine white strands of smoke.
Beside it there lay half a mountain bird of some kind. Its skin had been roasted to a glossy brown. In the firelight the oil on it looked almost liquid.
Squatting by the fire was an old Daoist.
The very same old Daoist who had appeared in the northern seat the night before, carrying a wine gourd and sending Qi Jianfeng's killing blow flying with a single Black Tortoise Aegis.
He was astonishingly unkempt.
His old Daoist robe was grey with age and dirt, wrinkled as though it had been kneaded a hundred times over. The cuffs were dark and shiny with grease. There were several yellowish stains at the edge of the collar from things best left unidentified. His topknot sat crooked, as though he had gathered it with one careless twist of the hand and considered the matter finished. A few strands of greying hair stuck out at odd angles by his ears. His beard was no better—uneven, wild, streaked with old oil at the corners of his mouth. One hand held the wine gourd. The other turned the fish over the fire with practiced ease, the motion so quick and natural that one might think whatever else he had failed to master in life, roasting fish and drinking wine he had perfected beyond dispute.
As he turned the fish, he muttered to himself in a low voice.
"You've got to force the oil out of the skin before it's really fragrant."
"Too soft and there's no bite to it. Too old and it dries out... needs another little while."
"Mountain fish hate fierce fire. Burn the outside too fast and the inside still reeks of stream-water. Total waste."
He leaned in and sniffed at it with genuine concentration, then nodded in satisfaction.
Fang Yingjie stared.
For a moment he truly wondered if he had fallen into some fresh absurd dream.
The old Daoist, however, seemed to know already that he was awake. He did not even turn his head. He only lifted the wine gourd to his lips and said through it,
"If you're awake, stop pretending to be dead."
"If you keep it up, there'll be no fish left for you."
Fang Yingjie's throat worked. He had barely begun to open his mouth when the dryness and pain in his chest rose together, and he broke into a cough so hard it made his shoulders shake. Even his face paled with it.
Only then did the old Daoist glance back at him.
It was a face difficult to remember clearly and yet impossible to mistake once seen. He was somewhere past fifty, perhaps. In that greasy old robe, with that ragged beard, he looked older still. Sparse brows. Heavy lids. A red nose from too much drink. A beard going every which way, like some old rogue who had spent half his life in wine-shop alleys. And yet the eyes were astonishingly bright. Most of the time they drooped half-shut, as though he had never quite slept himself sober. But when he raised them and looked at someone properly, a man could not help feeling that whatever little thoughts he carried in secret had already been read through.
"Tch," the old Daoist said. "Hard life in you after all."
"You fell like that and still didn't come apart."
Fang Yingjie braced himself and barely managed to raise his upper body by half an inch. The moment he did, shoulder, ribs, legs, and ankle all cried out together. Cold sweat broke across his brow. Gritting his teeth, he said in a low voice,
"Was it... Senior who saved me?"
The old Daoist barked a laugh, as though the question itself were ridiculous.
"If not this poor Daoist, then who? You, perhaps? Curled up in the corner of a ruined hall like some half-frozen puppy and still planning to save yourself?"
"Last night, when I dragged you out from behind that pile of broken timber, you looked exactly like a little dog on the edge of freezing to death. Your breath was about gone. If I hadn't hauled you out, then what you'd be smelling this morning wouldn't be fish. It would be your own corpse."
He said it coarsely, almost brutally, and in the flattest tone imaginable, as though he were commenting on the weather.
Fang Yingjie stared for a moment before lowering his eyes to himself.
The worst of the outer wounds from the fall had already been dealt with. A strip of cloth was tied around his temple—it looked as though it had been torn from the inner edge of the old Daoist's own robe, and still bore a faint wine stain at one corner. The wounds across his hands and shins had been washed clean and covered with a paste of crushed mountain herbs. The smell of it was bitter and strange, mixed with wine, but cool on the skin and far better than the clumsy wrappings he himself had managed before. Even his right ankle had been rebound more neatly, the cloth tight enough to support the swelling without cutting into it.
The work was not particularly elegant.
Still, it was better—vastly better—than the rough, desperate bandaging he had done on his own.
Something warmed in his chest.
"Thank you, Senior," he said softly.
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes at once.
"What are you thanking me for?"
"This poor Daoist only found it unlucky to have you die nearby and ruin the mood for fish and wine."
Even as he spoke, he took the fish off the fire, blew on it twice, tore it roughly in half, and tossed one piece over.
"Catch."
"If you've got the strength to thank people, you've got the strength to chew."
Fang Yingjie caught it by reflex. The fish was still hot enough to sting his fingertips, and the piece nearly slipped from his hand. But the fragrance deepened at once, and with it came the sharp, sudden awakening of hunger.
Since falling from the cliff, he had lived on little more than stream water and a single candied plum. Water could ease thirst; a touch of sour-sweet could keep life hanging on. But neither could answer the emptiness in the belly after a night of terror, a fall from a cliff, and a day's labor through pain.
Now, with real hot food in his hand, he realized just how badly he was starving.
His stomach gave a long, disgraceful growl.
The sound rang embarrassingly clear through the quiet of the ruined hall, like a finger flicked against an empty bowl.
Heat rushed into Fang Yingjie's face. Even his ears burned.
Old Daoist Xuan clearly heard it. For once, however, he did not laugh at him. He only grunted and turned his face away as though he had heard nothing at all.
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and took a bite.
The skin was crisp and fragrant. The flesh itself was coarse, but roasted just right, carrying both the clean taste of mountain water and the warmth of the fire. The heat of it almost stung his nose. He no longer cared. He took another bite. Then another, cheeks full like some starving little beast.
Watching him, the old Daoist gave another grunt—whether in contempt or satisfaction was hard to say. He tore off a great mouthful of the bird for himself and said around the food,
"Slow down."
"You look as though you haven't had hot food in eight lifetimes."
Fang Yingjie's ears warmed again. He had no answer. His mouth was too full. He could only make a muffled sound of assent.
The old Daoist kept talking anyway. He turned the bird over, then fished a pinch of coarse salt from somewhere inside his robe and scattered it expertly over the meat. Dissatisfied with that alone, he took a swallow from the gourd, held it in his mouth, and sprayed the bird in a fine mist of wine.
"With mountain fowl, you draw the salt into it first. Then chase it with wine. Only then does the meat open."
The firelight struck the skin.
At once the fragrance grew richer. Wine met heat and rose with the fat, until for one absurd, impossible moment this corner of the broken hall smelled almost like some very mortal feast.
Fang Yingjie could not help looking up at him.
The old Daoist happened to be looking back just then. He bared a row of uneven teeth in a grin.
"What are you staring at?"
"You've never seen a Daoist who knows how to eat?"
He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and not in the least incompatible with holy vows. Fang Yingjie, who had still been keeping some awkward reserve around him, found himself at a loss. In the end he could only lower his head and keep eating.
Yet the old Daoist's line had already done its work. It was like a dull knife quietly scoring a crack through the thin ice still stretched over Fang Yingjie's heart.
Old Daoist Xuan squinted at him a while longer, then said,
"When I was tending your wounds last night, I found a little pouch tucked in your robe. Fire-tube. Silver. Odds and ends. Kept very neatly."
"You're no mountain orphan."
"And you don't look like some common little vagabond either."
He lifted the gourd again, then paused halfway and let the faintest half-mocking smile settle in his eyes.
"Go on then, boy. What's your name?"
The fire cracked softly.
The half-fish in Fang Yingjie's hands seemed, all at once, to grow heavier.
His heart tightened.
The cliff. The ambush. The false Fang Zhongyi. Eagle's Beak Ridge. Mount Hua. Fang Stronghold. All of it flashed through his mind in one cold line. He had survived, yes—but he still did not know how much chaos reigned above. He did not know whether the people who had laid that scheme were still searching for him. This old Daoist had saved him and did not look like a villain, but his origins were unknown, his temperament impossible to read. How could Fang Yingjie dare to spill out his true name and story so easily?
And he had never been good at lying.
The moment he truly needed a falsehood, his mind turned blank, as though a wall had come down inside him and every word had hit it and fallen away.
Seeing him frozen, Old Daoist Xuan arched a brow.
"What? Forgotten your own surname too?"
The question was lightly asked. It only threw Fang Yingjie further into confusion. All his life on Mount Hua, he had answered whatever his uncles and elders asked him, whatever his senior brothers and sisters asked him. He had never before been driven to invent lies to save himself.
But this old Daoist was a stranger. If he truly spoke the name Fang Yingjie here, and it found its way to the wrong ears—
He could not risk it.
His heart lurched. The words came out before he had even fully chosen them.
"My... my surname is Mu."
"My name is Mu Qi."
The moment he said it, he heard how wrong it sounded.
The invention was stiff and clumsy. "Mu" was barely passable as a surname. "Qi" sounded as though he had plucked it from thin air.
Old Daoist Xuan fell silent.
The silence lasted only a moment. Yet it fell like cold water down Fang Yingjie's spine.
Then—pfft—the old Daoist laughed so hard he nearly spat out the mouthful of wine he had just taken.
"Mu Qi?"
"Why not Mu Ba while you're at it?"
Fang Yingjie burned scarlet from face to neck. He lowered his head until he almost wished he could bury it in the fish itself.
"If Senior doesn't believe me," he muttered, "then... pretend I never said it."
The line came out full of embarrassment and no conviction at all.
Old Daoist Xuan looked at him—looked properly—and the laughter in his eyes softened by half a shade. His gaze lingered on Fang Yingjie's face for a moment, almost as if he were looking at some child who had done wrong and was too ashamed to bear it.
In the end he did not press further. He only took another slow mouthful from the gourd.
"Very well. Mu Qi it is."
"A name is a name so long as it answers when called."
He let it go so lightly, so casually, that it almost sounded like nothing. But to Fang Yingjie, it was as if something had come under him and quietly borne part of his weight. The old Daoist had very clearly seen through the lie. Yet he had chosen not to expose it, not even to question him further.
That refusal to ask steadied him more than comfort would have done.
It also filled him with shame.
Old Daoist Xuan, however, appeared not to care in the least. He turned back to the roasting meat and drawled,
"If you don't want to say it, I'm too lazy to pry."
"There are enough troublesome matters in the world already. The more you know, the easier it is to get yourself dragged into them."
As he spoke, he passed over another piece of roasted bird. Then, from beside the fire, he picked up a bit of flatbread toasted brown at the edge and shoved that into Fang Yingjie's hands too.
"So long as you don't die beside me, don't waste food, don't go mad and start screaming in the middle of the night, and don't decide after a full meal to cling to this poor Daoist and never leave—everything else can be discussed."
Fang Yingjie stared down at the steaming meat in his hands.
For a while he truly did not know what to say.
Since falling from the cliff, he had stumbled and crawled on alone. He had washed his own wounds by a stream, shivered in hollows among the rocks, and watched a hall full of blood and fire from the dark. Through all of it, there had only been one cold thing in his heart: survive.
But the words survive had been cold words, like a stone laid on the chest. They could prop a man up for a while. They could not warm him.
Only now—with the fire, the hot food, the fish, the wine, and this old Daoist who grumbled with every breath and still kept his hands busy for him—did Fang Yingjie suddenly feel that to be alive was not merely the same thing as not being dead.
Outside, the wind in the ravine was still cold. The roof still leaked. The four broken statues still stood in the corners like inhumanly ancient shadows. And yet here by the fire, with fish-scent, roasted meat, wine, and the old Daoist's unaccountable mixture of slovenliness and slyness, this frozen valley had somehow been forced to yield one small corner of human warmth.
In a very low voice, Fang Yingjie said,
"I won't cling to you, Senior."
The words were soft, almost as if he were afraid of disturbing something. Even he himself did not know how much they were worth.
Old Daoist Xuan raised a brow.
"You'd better not."
The mouth still sounded irritated, but the hand reached out to stir the fire and pile the wood a little closer. Then he kicked a flat stone nearer to Fang Yingjie with one foot.
"Sit closer."
"With a corpse-face like yours, another night in this cold and I'll have to bury you in the morning."
Fang Yingjie made a quiet sound of agreement and moved nearer. His shoulder settled against the faintly warmed stone behind him, and the firelight touched his face. Warmth went in by degrees, soaking through skin into bone, like an invisible hand slowly rubbing apart the cold he had carried down from the cliff.
He lowered his eyes to the half-fish still in his hands, then glanced again at Old Daoist Xuan.
The old man was stuffing the last chunk of bird into his mouth, cheeks puffed out, looking exactly like some old cat that hated to share.
Fang Yingjie hesitated, then held out the fish.
"Senior... would you like a little more?"
Old Daoist Xuan froze.
He turned, still chewing, and glared at him. There was annoyance in the look. Surprise too. And, for the briefest instant, something else so faint it vanished before it could be named.
"Eat your own."
He muttered it around the food and turned away, lifting the gourd to his mouth again.
Yet after that swallow, the way he fed the fire grew a little quieter, a little gentler than before.
The firelight threw both their shadows against the wall of the ruined hall, one long, one short, one large, one slight. They looked like two leaves blown together by the same wind for a little while, resting side by side, neither asking where the other had come from.
Fang Yingjie hugged his knees and looked into the dancing fire. Outside, the sky was still cold. The wind had not stilled. But the deep chill he had been holding inside himself all the way from the fall had finally loosened by a small measure.
At least for this last, unfinished stretch of night, he would not be enduring it alone.
Old Tales in the Ruined Hall
The fire crackled softly. Fish oil dripped into the flames, sending up threads of white smoke. Outside the ruined hall the sky had begun to pale, but the cold had not yet fully withdrawn. Wind came in through the broken eaves and shattered windows, tilting the flames and carrying the smell of roasted fish and wine to Fang Yingjie again and again.
He sat with the half-fish in his hands, eating little bites. His stomach had finally begun to warm. Yet if he ate too quickly, the dull ache under his ribs would rise with it, forcing him to stop and wait before taking the next mouthful.
Old Daoist Xuan squatted beside the fire, turning the mountain bird and muttering to himself without end.
"Fish is easy enough. Bird's the troublesome one. Too much fire and it dries out. Too little and it never cooks through. You little whelps know how to open your mouths and eat. That's all. You don't know a thing about the art behind it."
He sprinkled over another pinch of salt with the practiced air of a man engaged in the gravest business under heaven.
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and kept eating, but something in his chest tightened unexpectedly.
The old Daoist, who seemed far too lazy to concern himself with the thoughts of any young person, flicked him a glance.
"Still hurting?"
Fang Yingjie nodded.
"A little."
"A little, my foot."
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes and prodded the fire with a stick.
"When I dragged you out from behind that heap of broken timber last night, I turned you over and looked. Your robe was torn to pieces. Shoulder, back, ribs, and legs all bruised and gashed where branches and rock had scraped you open. There were still torn vine fibers wound around your sleeves, and half your trouser-leg was caked in mud and gravel. No one ends up in that state unless he's rolled and scraped down from high ground the whole way."
He raised the wine gourd and drank, then smacked his lips.
"With a fall like that, an ordinary child would have gone cold in that corner before dawn. You, somehow, kept the outer shell from dying and the inner breath from scattering too. But keep walking on that in your present state, and ten li later you'd be flat on the ground again."
Hearing it laid out so plainly, Fang Yingjie could not help tightening his grip on the fish.
He knew he was badly hurt. Yesterday, making his way out from the bottom of the cliff, he had lived entirely on one breath. Now that there was hot food in him and a roof of sorts overhead, the weakness and cold and pain only stood out more clearly. But if he truly allowed himself to lie still, another unease rose up at once—one he could not easily name.
After hesitating, he said in a low voice,
"I've rested some already."
Old Daoist Xuan gave a contemptuous laugh.
"Rested?"
"What you've done is not die yet. That's not the same thing as recovery."
He turned the bird over again on the spit. His tone was still casual, yet the words themselves left no room.
"The flesh wounds outside are nothing much. I washed them and salved them last night. The real nuisance is the breath inside. When you fell, you knocked the whole current loose, and with a frame like yours your bones and tendons were never meant to bear it. Your lungs and chest took the shock too. If you keep forcing yourself to move around now, you won't die quickly. But you'll make the rest of it much uglier than it needs to be."
With that he glanced at Fang Yingjie again.
"In all my years, I haven't often seen someone so thin and yet so stubborn."
"Like some undergrown calf—no flesh on the bones, but the temper arrived on time."
Heat touched Fang Yingjie's face again.
He wanted to answer. In the end he said nothing.
The firelight swayed quietly. For a little while there was nothing in the hall but the smell of roasted fish and wine and the soft crackling of wood. Then Fang Yingjie's eyes drifted, almost against his will, toward the deeper reaches of the hall.
The night before, half dead from the fall and wholly taken up with staying alive, he had only sensed that the place was strange. Now, with firelight steadier and his own mind calmer, the unease it roused in him deepened by the moment.
His gaze moved once more over the four corners.
In the east coiled the Dragon.
In the south, wings spread—the Phoenix.
In the west, horned and cloven, unmistakably the Unicorn.
And in the north, tortoise and serpent wound together in old, grave silence.
The four images still held the structure of the whole hall in their shadows, though broken and abandoned. Most especially the northern one. The tortoise-shell back was scored with cracks, the serpent-shape broken away by half, and yet the ancient weight of it had not truly dispersed. It felt as though if the light dimmed by another degree, it might wake again from the shadow.
The more he looked, the less it resembled some countryside shrine for villagers to burn incense and make petitions. It felt instead like some ancient ground where old laws, old houses, and old fortunes had once lain buried.
After a long while, Fang Yingjie finally asked in a low voice,
"Senior... what kind of place is this?"
Old Daoist Xuan had just been raising the wine gourd. At the question, he paused—not long, only a little.
He did not answer at once. First he narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze over the four corners of the hall. As his eyes passed over Dragon, Phoenix, Unicorn, and Black Tortoise, the wine-loosened vagueness in them seemed to sharpen by half a thread. Then it was gone again, so quickly Fang Yingjie almost thought he had imagined it.
"What?" Old Daoist Xuan clicked his tongue. "You've been awake this long and only now thought to ask?"
"I thought at first it might be a temple," Fang Yingjie said softly. "But it doesn't feel like one."
"Because it isn't any ordinary temple."
The old Daoist snorted, set the gourd against one knee, and said slowly,
"Long ago, these four lines all came from a single sect. It was called the Tianmen Sacred Sect."
Fang Yingjie blinked.
Old Daoist Xuan gave him a look of deep impatience, as though he were shocked that any boy could know so little.
"In those days there was no Azure Dragon Isle, no Phoenix Dance Palace, no Sacred Unicorn Cult, no True Martial Sect. Dragon, Phoenix, Unicorn, Black Tortoise—they were all branches split off from one house."
He took another swallow of wine before going on.
"Only later did they divide into Dragon Gate, Phoenix Gate, Unicorn Gate, and Black Tortoise Gate. Each held to its own line. Only after that did the people of the martial world begin gradually to speak of them together as the Four Sacred Gates of Tianmen."
He tipped his chin toward the four broken images.
"This place is one of the old gathering grounds they used in those years. If you insist on a name, there were people who once called it the Tianmen Sacred Hall. But it's been abandoned far too long. Not many still know it."
Fang Yingjie listened, stunned enough that he forgot to take the next bite in his hand.
Old Daoist Xuan, seeing the look, seemed perversely willing to say a little more.
"Even after the split, they did not tear themselves wholly apart at once. In the first years after, when something important came up, the old lines would still meet here and speak it through. Those sacred assemblies were, in the end, no more than a remnant of old sentiment after one house had become four. You had your mountain. I had my gate. But when something arose that truly touched the roots of all four, they would still sit together and talk."
He took another drink.
"By then, though, it was no longer one sect. Only a loose alliance. No gate could command another. No line could suppress another. What held them together was only what remained of old feeling and old covenants."
At the words old covenants, his tone altered by the smallest amount.
Fang Yingjie caught it at once.
"And later?" he asked before he could help himself.
The old Daoist glanced at him. For the first time, something faintly sardonic entered his face.
"Later?"
"Later people's hearts grew ever more mixed, and old sentiment thinner every year. Who still took the rules left by their ancestors seriously?"
He took another drink, and his voice thinned with it.
"What truly finished pressing them apart was the Sword God's old covenant. Once that covenant was laid down, the four gates could no longer move among one another as they once had."
"Think of it. The old alliance was already little more than a breath hanging on after the split. Each gate had its own calculations, its own intentions. What bound them was only the phrase 'born of the same source.' Once the Sword God's covenant came down on top of that, the last thing left that could still gather them and weigh on them was gone."
"After that, whatever remained of the sacred assemblies was only an empty shell. Fewer came. Fewer dared come. In the end, even this hall was left to ruin."
At that point he lowered his head and tore off another piece of meat, as if the subject ought to end there.
But Fang Yingjie's heart had moved.
Only now did he begin to understand that what had happened in the hall the night before had not merely been several groups of martial people crossing paths and drawing steel. It was the weight of old debts and older resentments, all pressing down at once into this broken hall.
He hesitated, then finally asked,
"Senior... what is the Sword God's old covenant?"
Old Daoist Xuan had just been lifting the gourd again. This time the pause was the slightest slip in his grip, no more than that. In the next moment his brows drew together, and for the first time real impatience showed openly on his face.
"Why are you asking so closely?"
He drank, and the wine ran down the corner of his mouth in a line. He could not even be bothered to wipe it properly, only swept it away with his sleeve.
"The old covenant is the old covenant. Some rotten rule made by a pack of old men several centuries ago. It presses this, forbids that, tells one line what it may not do and another what it must not become. It sounds profound enough. Strip away the grandness and all it is is one dead line of words used to suppress the living. Press people under it long enough and even their descendants forget what they were to begin with."
He stopped there, and as if annoyed with himself for saying even that much, immediately hardened his face and waved a hand.
"That's enough. Those ancient debts won't fill your belly. You're a little wretch who can barely walk straight. Stop asking after things that have nothing to do with you and burdening your own mind for no gain."
The turn in his tone was sharp enough that Fang Yingjie knew further questions would get him nowhere. He gave a quiet sound of acknowledgment and fell silent.
Old Daoist Xuan gave him a slanted look. Seeing him obediently close his mouth, he finally grunted and returned to the roasting bird.
"With all that spare energy you've got for old covenants, you'd do better to worry about whether this body of yours can even make it out of the valley."
Silence settled again, broken only by the occasional crack of the fire.
After thinking a little, Fang Yingjie asked softly,
"Then the people last night... were they the people of the Four Sacred Gates?"
The old Daoist shot him a sidelong look.
"At least you're not blind."
"The white robes were the Unicorn line. The red were the Phoenix line. The blue, the Dragon line. And as for this poor Daoist—"
He pointed lazily with one hand toward the broken tortoise-and-serpent image in the north and bared his teeth in another grin.
"Obviously I'm the shabby old Daoist of the Black Tortoise line."
Fang Yingjie stared at him.
It was very difficult indeed to connect this slovenly, sharp-tongued old drunk—roasting fish over a fire with wine gourd in hand—with the figure in the northern seat the night before, the one who had snapped apart Qi Jianfeng's killing move with one black aegis. And yet the connection was undeniable.
The old Daoist saw him looking and immediately took offense.
"What are you staring at?"
"Do you think everyone of the Black Tortoise line has to wear solemn black robes and pull a funeral face?"
"If a man can drink wine, eat meat, and roast a fish, does that somehow make him not Black Tortoise anymore?"
Fang Yingjie was once again left speechless. In the end he could only mumble,
"That's not what I meant..."
The old Daoist snorted.
"Then eat your fish."
"For someone who speaks so little, you put an awful lot through your head."
He tore off another piece of bird and tossed it over. Fang Yingjie caught it and bit into it obediently. The meat had more chew than the fish, seasoned with salt and wine, and the warmth spread through him by degrees.
Old Daoist Xuan watched him eat and gave the faintest smile—or perhaps not a smile at all.
"The old history of Tianmen—you may listen if you like, but don't carry too much of it in your heart. The old sect, the Four Sacred Gates—those things all stand very far from a little frame like yours. What matters most now is that you steady this life of yours first."
Fang Yingjie sat quiet for a while. In the end he still asked,
"Senior... how long before I can walk properly?"
Old Daoist Xuan gave him a slanted look.
"What? Half a life picked back up and you're already thinking of running?"
Fang Yingjie pressed his lips together.
"I... can't stay here forever."
This time the old Daoist did not answer at once. He wiped the mouth of the wine gourd on his sleeve and thought a moment before saying,
"If you want to leave, you first need to be able to leave."
"With wounds like yours, the flesh is not the main problem. It's the breath inside. Last night I only pressed the channels straight enough that you could sit up and swallow fish this morning. Otherwise you'd not even have managed that."
At that, Fang Yingjie's heart gave another little jolt.
So while he had been unconscious, the old Daoist had done more than dress his outer wounds. He had used inner force to steady his breath.
The old Daoist clearly saw that thought pass over his face and answered it before he could speak.
"Don't think too much. Your body was too flimsy. If I hadn't pressed down that chaos for you a little, you wouldn't even have managed half a fish."
Then he added,
"But your foundation really is poor."
"Weak sinews. Thin breath. You were never meant to endure much. It's only by stubborn luck that you didn't break apart in the fall."
Fang Yingjie flushed again. There was still nothing to say in answer.
Old Daoist Xuan watched him in that uncomplaining silence, and the edge in his expression softened by another degree.
"All right. Don't rush to leave."
"First steady the wounds. Then worry about the rest."
He picked up a charred stick from the fire and drew a couple of crooked lines in the dust, either idly sketching or thinking something through.
"If you follow this valley down, it isn't that there's no road out. But in your present state, even if I turned you loose, you wouldn't get far. Most likely you'd either fall into another ditch or get carried off by wolves, and then I'd have to collect your corpse. Very troublesome."
The word corpse made Fang Yingjie's heart tighten, and he answered at once,
"That won't happen."
The old Daoist curled his lip.
"Oh? If you say it won't, then it won't?"
"You could barely stand up just now. Don't start imagining yourself some great hero."
Fang Yingjie had no reply. He lowered his head and ate in silence.
Seeing him so, the old Daoist at last seemed to find the whole matter faintly amusing rather than irritating. He waved a hand.
"Enough. Stay put for now. Don't go trying to run about today."
"Once I've smoothed the breath a little more, then we can talk about what comes after."
Fang Yingjie answered with a quiet sound.
The fire had burned more brightly again. Warmth crept upward from his feet by degrees. Outside, the light was still thin and white, and the wind still carried the damp chill of the valley, but in this corner at least there was finally something like the air of a place where living people could stay.
Old Daoist Xuan took up the wine gourd and leaned back against the broken pillar, eyes half-shut as though he might fall asleep on the spot. Yet Fang Yingjie knew perfectly well that the old man was not truly asleep. He was watching. He had been watching all along.
Hugging his knees, Fang Yingjie slowly finished the last of the meat. The long cold he had carried inside him ever since the fall—the cold he had endured, gritted through, and borne all by himself—was finally, bit by bit, beginning to melt under the influence of one fire, one wine gourd, one fish, and this old Daoist with the sharp mouth and the unexpectedly soft heart.
The four broken statues still stood heavy in the corners of the hall. The old desolation had not gone. The air of ancient ruin had not gone. And yet by the fire sat one old man so slovenly he scarcely resembled a Daoist at all, and one battered boy so miserable-looking he scarcely resembled a young hero. Between them they had somehow forced the cold and deathly feel of the place back by a little.
Watching the flames, Fang Yingjie suddenly felt that this hall, which had once seemed as cold as a tomb, had somehow gained enough human warmth to rest in.
It was not much warmth.
It smelled of wine. Of smoke. Of roast fat. Of something old and strange that he could not quite name.
But for him, in this moment, it was enough.
Setting His Breath Right by the Fire
The fire had settled into a steady burn.
The ruined hall was still broken, and the wind still found its way in through all four walls. The chill buried in old brick, ash, and stone had not truly dispersed. Yet with the fire alive in one corner, with the wood now and then giving a soft crack, with fish oil dripping into the flames and lifting into thin white steam mixed with wine and meat-smoke, the deathly stillness of the place had been beaten back by a few degrees.
Fang Yingjie had been starving before. With one fish and a piece of meat in his belly, warmth finally began to return to his stomach. And once warmth returned, the injuries he had been forcing down by sheer will began, one after another, to rise to the surface.
At first it was only a dull, muffled ache, like cold water slowly seeping out through cracks in stone and sinking into the bones. But after a while the pain drew from his left shoulder into his ribs, then from the ribs toward his back. If he drew too full a breath, something inside his chest seemed to catch and tighten. Even swallowing became difficult.
He lowered his head, meaning to hide it and endure in silence. But no sooner had he swallowed the last mouthful of fish than a rusty sweetness surged up in his chest, and he gave a low cough. His shoulders shook, and the movement pulled at the injuries at once, draining what little color remained in his face.
Old Daoist Xuan had been leaning against the broken pillar with his wine gourd in hand, drinking a mouthful at a time. Hearing the cough, he did not even raise his eyelids.
"Go on and cough," he said lazily.
"You'll cough if you hold it in, and you'll still hurt if you grit your teeth through it. You little whelps may not be good at much, but putting on a show of stubbornness comes naturally enough."
Fang Yingjie's face warmed.
"I'm not—"
"Not what?" the old Daoist cut in irritably. "Not dying? Not hurting? Or not half-crippled from that fall?"
His mouth kept scolding, but he had already straightened where he sat and set the wine gourd down by his side. He jerked his chin toward the fire.
"Come here."
Fang Yingjie hesitated.
Old Daoist Xuan's brows went up at once.
"What, are you waiting for this poor Daoist to come and invite you properly?"
"Get over here. Give me your hand."
Fang Yingjie edged nearer and held out his wrist.
The firelight made the old Daoist look even more thoroughly disreputable than before. His robe was wrinkled into a disgrace. The cuffs were greasy and dark. His beard went in all directions. Two wisps of greying hair stuck out by his temples. He looked less like a master of healing and more like some old scoundrel who had got drunk behind a wine shop and, waking up, happened to pick up a stray beggar-child along the way.
Yet the moment Fang Yingjie's wrist settled into his hand, his heart gave a small, involuntary ease.
The hand was astonishingly steady.
There was wine on it. And herbs. The pads of the fingers were slightly rough, the marks of someone long used both to wielding weapons and to gathering mountain medicine. Yet when two fingers came down across his pulse, they pinned the floating thread beneath the skin as steadily as iron pegs.
At first Old Daoist Xuan still wore that look of half-drowsy indifference, as though he were only touching the pulse out of habit and not truly bothering to look. But after a few moments, the wine-loosened carelessness drained little by little from his expression.
He said nothing.
He only pressed his fingers down by another fraction.
A log cracked softly in the fire. Outside, the wind gave a long low moan through the shattered windows and split eaves. Beyond that, the ruined hall held no sound at all.
Fang Yingjie lowered his eyes. The pressure of those two fingers did not seem heavy, yet it felt as though they had pinned down the whole confused, rolling, overheated knot inside his chest as well. Without meaning to, he held his breath.
After a long pause, Old Daoist Xuan clicked his tongue.
"Your life is still hanging on."
"But it came very close to being worn away by your own foolishness."
He still did not let go of Fang Yingjie's wrist. He tested the pulse once more, then raised his other hand and pressed several points lightly but precisely across his chest.
At first there was only a faint numbness. Then that numbness sank inward, and from the center of the chest down toward the ribs there spread a strange aching fullness, as though several blocked channels had been teased open by the finest of needles.
He could not help drawing in a breath.
Old Daoist Xuan glanced at him and sneered.
"Only now you know it hurts?"
"When you crawled out from the bottom of the cliff yesterday, how was it you never once remembered you were made of flesh?"
The barb made Fang Yingjie color again.
"If I hadn't kept moving then," he said quietly, "I could not have gone on at all."
The old Daoist lifted his eyes and looked at him for a short moment.
It was a very brief look, and not quite as full of mockery as before. It was more as though he were measuring something. Then his lids drooped again.
"Fine. With half your life gone, at least you still knew to keep moving. So your brains didn't all spill out in the fall."
"But that was luck, not skill."
As he finished speaking, he raised a hand and pressed lightly against the outside of Fang Yingjie's left shoulder.
The pressure was not heavy. Fang Yingjie still sucked in air at once. It felt as though a tendon had been hooked and yanked from somewhere deep between shoulder and back. Pain went black behind his eyes.
"Hurt?" asked the old Daoist.
Fang Yingjie gritted his teeth.
"It's... bearable."
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes again on the spot.
"Bearable, my foot."
"First you hit the tree with this shoulder, then the rock ledge. You nearly tore the whole line of it loose yourself. Your ribs took a shock too, and the breath in your lungs is still floating. If it were only torn skin and split flesh, it would be easy. Wash it, smear medicine over it, sleep a night, and you live. But you also knocked the breath inside yourself into chaos. That's the real nuisance."
He let go of Fang Yingjie's wrist, shifted, and sat more squarely cross-legged on the ground.
That one change of posture reduced the old wine-soaked slovenliness in him by another degree.
Watching him, Fang Yingjie felt a flicker of unease.
"Senior," he asked quietly, "am I... very badly hurt?"
Old Daoist Xuan snorted.
"If you were hurt badly enough to be past saving, I'd never have bothered dragging you out from behind that pile of broken timber in the first place. Why waste the effort? Dig a pit, toss you in, and save myself the trouble."
"You won't die of this. But neither will you muddle through on gritted teeth alone. The wounds outside will scab over after a few days. What matters is the breath inside. Last night I only pressed it down and smoothed your meridians halfway. Enough to make sure you could sit up and swallow food this morning. If I don't straighten it out again now, then the moment you catch wind, cough, or run a fever, you'll have a fine time of it."
He gave Fang Yingjie a look of open disdain.
"Especially with a body like yours."
"Your frame is thin. Your breath is thin. You were never meant for being beaten and dragged through hardship. It's only because your life runs stubborn that you still have a breath left at all."
Fang Yingjie's face reddened again.
There was nothing to argue. That had been true all his life.
Perhaps because Fang Yingjie still did not try to bluster or defend himself, the old Daoist's expression softened by the smallest degree.
"Enough. Sit straight."
"Back upright. Don't slump like dying grass."
Fang Yingjie obeyed. The moment he straightened his spine, pain tightened beneath his ribs so sharply that the color drained from his face again.
Old Daoist Xuan looked him over and still showed no mercy.
"That little bit already has you baring your teeth? There's more of that waiting for you yet."
Before the words had finished, he had already lifted two fingers and tapped them lightly at several points across Fang Yingjie's chest—Tianchi, Shanzhong—and then in sequence at shoulder, arm, and side. None of it was heavy. Every point, however, landed with astonishing precision.
At first there was only a thin numbness. Then it burrowed inward from the skin into the channels beneath. After a little while, the clogged, dull heaviness in his chest, the thing that had made him unwilling to draw a full breath, really did begin to loosen.
Only then did the old Daoist draw back his fingers.
"We'll smooth the current next," he said. "If it hurts, endure it. Don't shout. If you jerk and throw the current off under my hand, and it sends the meridians astray by half an inch, you'll have something real to cry about later."
Fang Yingjie's heart tightened, and he nodded quickly.
Old Daoist Xuan glared at him.
"Nodding isn't enough. If you truly can't bear it, say so. A little wooden block like you isn't good at lying, but you are born to stubbornness. Very annoying."
The words were harsh. Yet Fang Yingjie heard the concern beneath them and answered softly,
"All right."
Only then did Old Daoist Xuan place his palm against Fang Yingjie's back.
The instant that palm settled, Fang Yingjie's whole body gave a faint shudder.
It was not cold.
It was not heat either.
It was a force—deep, thick, and astonishingly steady—flowing slowly from the old Daoist's palm into the channels along the back of the heart.
It was unlike Long Tianxiao's broad and upright palm-force. Unlike Qi Jianfeng's heavy, domineering leg-pressure. Unlike Feng Feiyun's odd, agile unpredictability. It came slowly, quietly, deeply—like some underground river running through a mountain's belly for a hundred years. It did not look impressive. Yet the moment it entered the meridians, it brought with it an indescribable steadiness, as though no matter how wildly the breath inside him churned, the instant it met this current it would be pressed down and made to submit.
The knot of disordered qi scattered through Fang Yingjie's chest, ribs, and back had only just touched that entering current when it felt as though some huge invisible hand had laid itself over it.
Then the pain came.
Not the hot sting of split skin and torn flesh.
This rose from within, inch by inch.
It felt as though someone were taking a dull, heavy blade and using it not to cut but to prise apart every tendon and meridian that had been twisted into knots. Wherever something was blocked, the force pressed there. Wherever something had gone tight and rough, it smoothed there. Wherever some line had been knocked out of true by the fall, it gathered and nudged it slowly back.
Fang Yingjie had only borne it for two or three breaths when sweat sprang across his brow.
Old Daoist Xuan's voice came from behind him, cold and unimpressed.
"That's already too much for you?"
Fang Yingjie gritted his teeth.
"No."
"No? Then be quiet."
He cursed him, but the force in his palm only grew steadier.
"The breath inside you is running about like a whole nest of rats startled by a cat. If I don't catch them one by one and shove them back where they belong, you won't sleep a proper night again."
The description was absurd enough that, despite the pain, Fang Yingjie almost laughed.
The laugh never came. The ache in his chest surged again, and he had to clamp down on it and sit rigid.
Old Daoist Xuan went on the whole time.
"Don't force that left shoulder to lift the breath. Lift it and it jams."
"This line under your ribs got knocked crooked in the fall. Don't brace against it. Let it go the way it wants."
"You've clearly learned a bit of breath-regulation before, but too shallowly. Nowhere near enough to suppress this kind of internal disorder. Most likely you've just been relying on youth, never having truly suffered enough before to know better."
"Tch. With a frame this thin, and still running all over the mountains like that. Your family must be very trusting."
The last line was softer, almost casual.
Yet the words your family struck straight through him.
For an instant Fang Yingjie's chest tightened hard.
His mother. Fang Stronghold. Fang Tieshan. Mount Hua. Zheng Chong. Xi Qian. Xuanyuan Xi. The false handover on the cliff. The ambush. The broken edge of the ravine. The cries above.
The whole line of it came surging back at once.
His lips pressed together. His breath wavered by half a beat.
At once the old Daoist's palm sank and struck him lightly between the shoulder blades.
"Hold your mind still."
The voice was not loud. It was very heavy.
"If you let your thoughts run wild again, I'll stop right here and truly leave you to suffer."
Fang Yingjie started and forced the wandering thoughts back down. The next instant, the broad, steady current entered him again.
The whole treatment lasted about the time it took to drink one cup of tea.
By then Fang Yingjie's clothes were damp with sweat. The hair at his temples clung to his skin. Yet that blocked, stone-heavy oppression that had been sitting in his chest and ribs really had been loosened little by little, pressed down, and smoothed. It still hurt. But the breathing came easier. It no longer felt as though a slab of rock had been wedged in the center of his chest.
Only then did Old Daoist Xuan slowly withdraw his palm.
The moment it left, Fang Yingjie felt an odd lightness. Not because the pain was gone, but because the worst knot inside him had finally been shifted aside by half.
He sat there for a long while, not moving, only taking one breath after another. Firelight shone on the fine sweat along his temples, and also on the first trace of life slowly returning to his pallid face.
Old Daoist Xuan shook out his wrist as if he had just finished some thoroughly thankless labor and immediately began complaining again.
"Troublesome."
"You don't even look as though you've got enough flesh on you to cause trouble, and yet the mess inside you is enough to wear a man out."
"This poor Daoist has taken a real loss on this one."
Fang Yingjie turned his head slightly.
"Senior..."
The old Daoist cut him off at once with a wave.
"Don't start."
"If you open your mouth and it's another 'thank you,' I'll regret saving you on the spot."
He said it sharply, yet as he spoke he was already picking up a half-bowl of warmed water and thrusting it into Fang Yingjie's hands.
"Drink."
"Settle the breath. If you start coughing yourself half dead again in a moment, I won't listen to it."
Fang Yingjie took the bowl. It was warm in his hands. The water was bitter with herbs, but once it went down, the current that had just been smoothed in his chest seemed to settle more firmly, and even the dryness in his throat eased.
He drank slowly. When he had finished, he lowered the bowl and asked in a quiet voice,
"Senior... why did you save me?"
In truth, it was something he had wanted to ask much earlier.
But last night there had been shock, fear, the fish, the wine, the fire, too many things crowding together in the chest. The question had never made it out. Only now, after pulse-taking, medicine, and the old Daoist's internal treatment, had his wariness eased enough to let it surface.
Old Daoist Xuan had just been lifting the wine gourd. At the question, he paused.
"Why?"
He even appeared to think about it for a moment.
Then he clicked his tongue.
"Who knows."
"Maybe this poor Daoist had too much to drink last night and the head wasn't clear. Maybe you were curled up in that corner looking like a little dog freezing to death, and it put a bad taste in the mouth. Maybe I'm getting old, and the heart has gone soft by half an inch with the years, and I can't bear to watch some little thing like you die right in front of me."
At the last of that, he seemed disgusted with himself and gave a little shiver.
"In any case, it certainly wasn't because you're the least bit lovable."
Fang Yingjie had been listening with his chest tight. At the last line he blinked.
The tension and caution inside him eased by another degree.
"But you still saved me."
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes.
"You've already said that."
"What good is saying it over and over? What, are you about to knock your head on the floor and beg to become my disciple? I don't take on nuisances."
Fang Yingjie's face reddened at once.
"That's not what I meant."
"Good." The old Daoist snorted, leaned back against the broken pillar, and took another swallow. "You little wooden block. Honest as a post, but not truly stupid. Those are the troublesome kind. They remember the smallest thing done for them, and then you can't shake them off."
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and did not answer.
He really was no good at saying pretty things. Still less at dressing gratitude up sweetly. But he was not blind. Old Daoist Xuan might complain with every other breath, yet his hands had been steadier than iron. If he had truly wished to be rid of the boy, he could have dressed the outer wounds, lit the fire, and left him in the corner to live or die. Instead he had gone to the trouble of smoothing the broken current inside him too.
At that thought, the last threads of caution in Fang Yingjie's heart slackened further.
Old Daoist Xuan, however, showed no sign of caring about any of it.
"That's enough for today," he said. "The worst of it is pressed down."
"Remember this—it's only pressed down, not healed. For the next two days, move little, show off less, don't go wandering, and don't start imagining you can fly. If you scatter that bit of order I've just put back into you, don't expect me to clean up the mess again."
Fang Yingjie nodded. This time he nodded very seriously.
"I'll remember."
Old Daoist Xuan gave him a sidelong look.
"You'd better."
Then he reached for the half-worn blanket nearby and tossed it straight over Fang Yingjie's head.
"Wrap up."
"Close your eyes and rest. Don't move around."
"If you spend the whole night coughing again, I'll throw you out to the mountain wolves."
Fang Yingjie held the blanket, which still carried warmth from the fire and the faint smell of wine, and answered softly,
"All right."
The wind still moved outside. The fire still jumped. The four broken images still stood in their corners, and the ruin, cold, and old desolation of the place were all still there. A single fire and a wine gourd had not truly changed that.
Yet wrapped in that old blanket against the broken wall, Fang Yingjie felt the cold and tension he had been carrying ever since the fall finally loosening, bit by bit.
He lifted his eyes once more toward Old Daoist Xuan.
The old man had already gone crooked by the fire again, one leg stretched out, one bent, beard untidy, robe untidier, looking in no way at all like a proper elder.
And yet, for the first time, Fang Yingjie felt one thought settle clearly inside him—
The old man's mouth was terrible.
But his hands were steady.
And somehow, it really did seem that he had no intention of leaving Fang Yingjie behind.
Down from the Ruined Hall
Wrapped in the old blanket, still faintly warm and wine-scented, Fang Yingjie drifted off at last against the wall of the ruined hall.
The sleep was no easy one.
The wounds kept tightening and heating by turns. In his dreams there were cliffs, loose stone, wind, and falling. At times it seemed he was plunging back into that spinning blackness. At times he was once more crouched behind broken timber, watching white robes, red shadows, blue cloth, and lamplight tangle into chaos. Yet every time the dream deepened to its coldest point, there remained beside it some faint, steady sound—the crack of a burning stick, the soft leap of a coal, the dull knock of a wine gourd against stone—as though something nearby refused to let him sink completely.
When he woke again, the day was already broad.
Outside the ruined hall the light was a cold bluish white. Wind moved through broken eaves and split shutters, stirring torn hangings and dry vines. Yet inside, some of the fire's warmth still lingered. The flames themselves had sunk into a bed of glowing charcoal beneath ash. Now and then the wind touched them and they brightened red.
Old Daoist Xuan was already crouched near the doorway with his back turned, gutting a newly caught mountain fish with a small knife. A stem of grass hung from the corner of his mouth. He must have been up for a long time already.
Only now, in full daylight, did Fang Yingjie properly see the traces the night had left inside the hall. Several greenish bricks were cracked open as if some heavy palm had split them. One ruined pillar had lost a chunk, the stone beneath showing pale white, and nearby was a dark little smear of dried blood. Wood splinters, roof tiles, and broken ornaments lay scattered over the floor—remnants, perhaps, from white robes, red robes, blue robes, all impossible now to tell apart.
The break in the old hall the night before had not been dream or delirium. It was still there in the cold dust, raw and undeniable.
Fang Yingjie tried to sit up. The moment his left shoulder moved, something under the ribs pulled sharply. Pain flared through him. His elbow went weak and he nearly dropped back against the wall.
Old Daoist Xuan did not turn around.
"If you're awake, then lie there sensibly."
"This poor Daoist spent enough effort last night getting half a thread of order back into your body. If you scatter it all over again today, don't expect me to lift another finger."
Hearing that, Fang Yingjie did not dare force himself further. He only shifted to a steadier position and said softly,
"I only meant to get up..."
"To get up and do what?" The old Daoist flung the fish guts outside. "Climb the cliff and go die?"
His mouth remained sharp as ever, but his hands never stopped. After cleaning the fish, he reached into a cracked basin nearby for mushrooms and mountain greens he had gathered at some point and stuffed them into the belly with the skill of long habit.
Fang Yingjie colored faintly.
"I can't lie here forever."
Old Daoist Xuan let out a dry laugh.
"No? Well, today is hardly the day to prove it."
"You can sit, you can eat, you can breathe somewhat more evenly than yesterday. With your luck, that already counts as a great triumph. You're not going to outpace that ankle, and you certainly won't outrun the chaos still sitting in your chest."
He glanced back over his shoulder.
This time there was perhaps a little less open annoyance in the look. The voice, however, remained merciless.
"Lie there, sickly one."
"When you can walk to the doorway and back without panting like a dog, I'll call that progress."
Fang Yingjie's ears heated again. But he knew the old Daoist was only telling the truth. He made a soft sound of acknowledgment and did not push the point.
That day, he indeed failed to leave the hall.
By late morning he had only just managed a dozen steps along the wall before the swelling in his ankle worsened again. The tightness in his chest turned sour enough that he nearly sank to the floor where he stood. Old Daoist Xuan watched from the side with the wine gourd in hand, counting under his breath.
"Seven... eight... nine... tch. By the tenth step your face is already that white. Mu Qi, are you hurrying down the road—or letting the road hurry you into the grave?"
Fang Yingjie went hot with embarrassment, but he had no answer to give. He could only grip his teeth and make himself stand.
Seeing that he truly meant to endure without complaint, Old Daoist Xuan finally held his tongue. Instead he tossed over a thicker walking staff he had cut and shaved a little.
"Use that."
"That other skinny stick of yours wouldn't support a mouse."
Fang Yingjie caught it.
"Thank you."
This time the old Daoist did not snap back. He only waved a hand and turned away.
"At your rate, by the time you finish thanking people, the fish will be cold."
And so another two days passed in the ruined hall.
It remained cold. It remained broken. By day the four broken images in the corners looked older and emptier than ever. By night they sank into the dark like hulks one ought not stare at long. Yet once the fire was lit, once the smells of fish and meat and wine spread into that corner, even the old eeriness of the place gave way.
By day Old Daoist Xuan went out to catch fish, hunt birds, and gather herbs. Sometimes he came back with wild fruit, chestnuts, or mountain roots from who knew where, his robe full of mud and leaves, looking like some old hill-monkey that had robbed the mountain itself. At first Fang Yingjie could only sit by the fire and wait. Later, once his ankle would bear a little more, he began helping—adding wood, washing fish, tending the flames. He still moved slowly, but no longer so pitifully as on that first day.
And between them, impossible as it seemed, there began to grow something that looked like the shape of days.
The old Daoist's mouth, however, only grew sharper.
He complained that Fang Yingjie walked too slowly, stacked the wood badly, and had no feel at all for how to turn fish over a fire. Yet if Fang Yingjie coughed hard in the night, the old man would rise cursing, wedge more broken planks into the cracks where the draft came through, and throw another armful of wood on the fire.
Every day he brought back herbs. Not once did he neglect to change the dressings. When the fish or bird came off the flames, he always bit into it himself first; if it tasted wrong, Fang Yingjie never got it.
One night the valley wind was especially fierce, moaning under the eaves. Half asleep, Fang Yingjie heard Old Daoist Xuan get up and circle the hall, then heard him brace back into place a board that some old shock of palm-force had knocked loose in the wall. All the while he muttered, "Broken place. Drafts from every side. A wonder anyone can live in it." Fang Yingjie did not open his eyes. He only drew the old blanket closer around himself. Even so, warmth went through his chest by another inch.
At first he had still been awkward around the old man. Later, after being scolded often enough, he found he no longer feared him. When Old Daoist Xuan complained that he ate too slowly, Fang Yingjie only bowed his head and took another bite. When he said he moved like a snail, Fang Yingjie did no more than redden at the ears, plant the staff more firmly, and take another step.
Once, while watching Fang Yingjie whittle splinters off a stick beside the fire, the old Daoist suddenly remarked through the stem of grass in his teeth,
"The name Mu Qi gets uglier every time I hear it."
Fang Yingjie's hand stopped. His ears turned red.
Old Daoist Xuan went on lazily as if he had noticed nothing.
"Mu Qi, Mu Qi... sounds like half-split kindling."
"From now on, I'll just call you Little Wood."
Fang Yingjie pressed his lips together.
"Call me whatever you like, Senior."
Old Daoist Xuan looked askance at him.
"What? You don't like it?"
"No."
"No? Good." He tipped back the wine gourd. "A false name doesn't need to sound pretty."
Fang Yingjie's heart gave a hard little jump. The half-shaped bit of wood in his hand snapped cleanly in two.
The old Daoist behaved as though he had said nothing at all. He only bent over the fish again.
The hall fell quiet.
The firelight swayed, making the ruined figures in the four corners brighten and darken in turn. Fang Yingjie stared at the snapped wood in his hand. Heat, shame, and something softer and more helpless tangled in his chest together. He had thought his clumsy invention of Mu Qi might perhaps fool the old man for a while. Now it was obvious that Old Daoist Xuan had seen through it from the very first and simply chosen not to tear it open.
After a long time Fang Yingjie asked,
"If you knew, why didn't you ask?"
Old Daoist Xuan snorted.
"What for?"
"If a man doesn't want to speak, asking is wasted effort."
"And if you take a needle and go poking at another man's half-healed wound, all you get for your trouble is blood on your own hands. Very bothersome."
He said it as though it were no more than laziness.
To Fang Yingjie, the words landed with strange weight.
The old Daoist, however, had already changed the subject.
"And besides, I'm not your father. Why should I care what you're called?"
"So long as you don't spend the night coughing like some strangled chicken and keep me awake, that's enough."
At that, something tight in Fang Yingjie eased again.
By the dawn of the third day, before the sky had done more than begin to pale and while the stream outside still carried the chill of night, Old Daoist Xuan rose earlier than usual.
He did not go out for fish. He did not gather wood. He only stood at the doorway with the wine gourd in hand and looked down the valley, following the course of the water with his eyes. Then he turned and said,
"We're leaving."
Fang Yingjie, still wrapped in the blanket and not yet fully awake, blinked.
"Leaving?"
"Mm." Old Daoist Xuan answered lazily. "Downstream. We'll get out of this damned place first."
Fang Yingjie pushed himself onto the staff.
"Where are we going?"
Old Daoist Xuan tucked the wine gourd into his belt behind him and frowned.
"You ask a great many questions for such a little block of wood. I'm no immortal. Do you expect me to have already calculated where we'll be lodging three months from now?"
"First we go down out of this dead place. After that, once we find signs of people, we'll see. We can hardly stay in this ruined hall until winter and dry into jerky beside those four stone beasts."
And having said so, he turned and walked off at once.
His gait was still loose and lopsided, as though the next pebble might trip him. Grass clung to the hem of his robe. He looked exactly like a drunk old Daoist who had only just climbed up from behind the wrong wall.
Yet the direction he took had clearly long since been chosen. He followed the line of water through the valley bottom without deviation.
Fang Yingjie seized the walking staff and limped after him.
Only then did the road truly begin.
The ruined hall, the fire, the four broken images, and those few days of uneasy shelter gradually fell behind them. Ahead there was still valley, water, stone, forest—an unknown road leading who knew where. Yet for some reason Fang Yingjie no longer felt the same absolute desolation he had known when first waking at the bottom of the cliff.
Old Daoist Xuan walked ahead, weaving a little with every step as though he might be knocked flat by a rock. Fang Yingjie hobbled after him on the stick, gritting his teeth. At first he could still manage the pace. After they had gone perhaps a li, the swelling in his right ankle began rising again. Each step felt like fine needles working into the seams of the bone.
He dared not complain. He only kept moving.
Old Daoist Xuan, however, seemed to have eyes behind his head. After a while he stopped, turned, and barked,
"Were you born a snail?"
"At your speed the sun will set before we get out of this valley."
Fang Yingjie's face warmed.
"I can still walk."
"You can still walk, can you? Nonsense." Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes. "Your ankle's swelling up like a steamed bun. Keep forcing it, and before long I'll really have to carry you."
The words were full of irritation. Yet he had not taken so much as one extra step forward. He only stood where he was and waited for Fang Yingjie to come up.
By the time Fang Yingjie reached him, a film of sweat had already formed over his brow. Old Daoist Xuan glanced once, said nothing more, and snapped a thicker branch from the roadside. In a few strokes he shaved off the side-twigs and tossed it over.
"Use this one."
"That other little stick of yours wouldn't prop up a mouse."
Fang Yingjie caught it.
"Thank you."
This time the old Daoist did not mock him. He only waved one hand and turned away.
"By the time you're done thanking me, the sky will be dark."
And so the two of them made their way downstream, one before, one after.
The road was not all hardship.
Old Daoist Xuan would walk a while, then stop—not to rest, but to peer up at trees for fruit, into pools for fish and shrimp, under old vines for roots. Sometimes he would dig out something like wild yam and stuff it into his robe while muttering,
"This damned place is all rock and weeds. Hardly a decent thing to eat in it."
Yet at the next bend, if he saw a patch of wild mountain pepper, tender mushrooms, or a tree of half-ripe plums, his eyes would brighten like a man discovering treasure.
At first Fang Yingjie could make no sense of him. Gradually he began to see the pattern. The old Daoist's mouth complained without pause, but when it came to anything edible his eyes were sharper than anyone's. And whenever a little meal was finally cooked, the tenderest piece always found its way into Fang Yingjie's hand first.
Once the two of them paused by the stream and the old Daoist roasted two small fish. From somewhere in his sleeve he produced half a lump of salt with the pained expression of a man parting with gold and rubbed it over them.
As Fang Yingjie took the fish, he could not help asking,
"Senior, are you really traveling the martial world? Or merely traveling in search of food?"
Old Daoist Xuan glared at him at once.
"And what if I am? Since when does wandering the world mean a man can't eat?"
"You little block of wood. Anyone who has never had to keep a household knows nothing of grain and firewood. Out in the martial world, what matters first? Not the sword. Not the saber. Fill the belly. Empty-bellied, even the King of Heaven falls flat."
He said it with complete seriousness. Hearing it, Fang Yingjie found himself smiling a little.
The smile was so faint he barely knew it had appeared. Old Daoist Xuan saw it all the same. One corner of his mouth twitched.
"What are you grinning at? Grin all you want—there's no extra fish."
Even as he spoke, he passed over the best-cooked fish without hesitation.
The farther down they went, the broader the valley became.
Sometimes they passed broken bridge stones or old carved slabs half sunk in earth. Sometimes they saw fragments of old stele faces buried in the mountainside, their inscriptions worn so badly by weather that only a few blade-like grooves remained. Once, after rounding a slope where old pines clung to the rock, they saw across the opposite hillside a run of stone steps almost swallowed whole by weeds. At the top still stood the half-ruin of a gate among deep trees.
Fang Yingjie stopped and stared a long while.
"Senior," he finally asked, "was that another of Tianmen's old sites too?"
Old Daoist Xuan kept walking, boots crunching over gravel and dead leaves.
"Most likely."
"In the old days the Tianmen Sacred Sect spread itself wide enough. Main halls, side courtyards, training terraces, old ceremonial grounds—plenty of scraps left behind. Once the people scattered and the old rules went with them, the places naturally fell to ruin one by one."
After listening, Fang Yingjie asked quietly,
"What was the Tianmen Sacred Sect really like back then?"
This time the old Daoist did not immediately cut him off.
"There was nothing mystical about it."
"It was only one sect with four roads of skill within it."
He lifted the wine gourd and gestured ahead with it, as though picking up bits of old tale from the roadside and tossing them back over his shoulder.
"The Dragon line—best in palm-work. Upright, grand, built on taking the center and driving the other man back through force. That boy in blue you saw last night? That's his road. Once his palm comes out, he presses the center first, and the longer he fights, the more he resembles a river-tide battering the bank."
"The Phoenix line—body movement, finger-work, grappling, claw-work. Fastest of all once it gets in close. Most troublesome at close quarters. Like flame-tongues slipping into cracks: the narrower the opening, the more dangerous it becomes."
"The Unicorn line—best in the legs. Fierce, heavy, fast, oppressive. Of all the four, it is the best at stamping the breath out of a man. Most imposing to watch too. Most overbearing."
Here he paused and cast Fang Yingjie a sidelong look.
"As for the Black Tortoise line—stupidest of all."
Fang Yingjie blinked again.
Old Daoist Xuan seemed to grow only more certain.
"It is."
"It isn't as handsome as Dragon palms, not as nimble as Phoenix arts, and not nearly as grand-looking as Unicorn leg-work. The Black Tortoise road is the slowest to train, the slowest to show results, and the poorest in flourishes. But its root is the deepest."
"It doesn't only cultivate a current of inner force."
"It tempers sinew, bone, skin, and flesh. It tempers breath too. The inside must learn to sink. The outside must learn to endure. Put plainly, a man must become able to strike—and able to bear being struck. Train it to completion, and the whole body becomes like something sheathed in unseen armor. Blade or palm may land, but that does not mean it truly gets through."
Something stirred in Fang Yingjie at that.
He had always thought true inner skill must amount to breath control, the meridians, the gathering and release of force. Yet hearing the old Daoist now, he could not help feeling that the Black Tortoise road was something else: a way of smelting the body itself into both weapon and armor.
In a quiet voice, he asked,
"Then why did they still split?"
Old Daoist Xuan answered as carelessly as before.
"When there are many people, hearts become complicated. When there are many skills, roads diverge."
"Some want to preserve the old ways. Some want change. Some think the gates should remain one. Some think each line ought to stand by itself. Argue long enough and naturally things come apart."
There he stopped, clearly unwilling to spill out the whole tangle of centuries. He only jerked his chin.
"The road is long enough. We can talk later."
"For now, mind that leg of yours. It matters more than the ghosts of old Tianmen."
At once the old covenant came back to Fang Yingjie's mind. Heat rose faintly into his ears. He had only just begun to open his mouth when Old Daoist Xuan glanced over.
"What?"
"You were about to ask about the old covenant again, weren't you?"
Caught outright, Fang Yingjie reddened and nodded honestly.
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes.
"Ask less."
"You can barely manage your own leg, and already you're worrying about some dead old men making rules hundreds of years ago?"
He took a swallow of wine and, as if to block the line of inquiry entirely, changed the subject on purpose.
"Walk faster, Little Wood."
"If we don't find somewhere to make a fire before dark, I'll roast that foot of yours and eat it."
That ended it. Fang Yingjie could only grip the staff and hurry after him.
And so the two of them, one old, one young, kept on down the mountain stream.
One slovenly and crooked in step, forever muttering about trouble, nuisance, and how he wanted nothing to do with other people's affairs.
The other still not healed, limping badly with the support of a stick, awkward, honest, and stubborn besides.
Old Daoist Xuan called him Mu Qi for a time, then grew dissatisfied with it and switched to Little Wood, Wooden Seven, or sickly wretch according to mood.
Every time Fang Yingjie heard one of those names, his ears warmed. He never once corrected him.
And Old Daoist Xuan never exposed the lie. He behaved as though the name were true.
Wind came down through the mouth of the valley carrying the smell of stream water and trees. The road ahead remained long, and the world remained as tangled as ever. Yet from that day onward, the old Daoist and the boy had truly left the ruined hall behind and begun walking together, turning that brief companionship by the fire into a road to live on.
Poetic Coda
By a dim lamp, wine-fire warmed the ruined hall;
One fish called back a soul from the cliff's edge.
Under old light, Tianmen's shadow showed again;
In rough words there hid an elder's quiet grace.
Only when his breath was set right did the boy know he still lived;
Only with a staff in hand did he feel the road split before him.
From then on they went together with the valley wind—
No true name asked, and yet each knew the other.
(End of Chapter Nineteen)