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Fei Qian and Lü Bu both drank quite a lot, from the afternoon straight through into the deep hours of the night. By the end, only Fei Qian and Lü Bu remained. Zhang Liao, Gao Shun, Wei Xu, and the others still had matters to attend to the next day and had been forced to take their leave early.
Lü Bu was not truly happy. Although he kept laughing boisterously, drinking bowl after great bowl of wine, then tugging at Fei Qian and chattering on and on about matters of Bingzhou, about matters of Luoyang—not once did he speak of the matters in Chang'an. Fei Qian, too, was not happy. Though he, like Lü Bu, drank with laughter and merry noise, deep within his heart, because of the affair with Liu Xie, there lodged a persistent sense of guilt and regret.
Lü Bu, his spirits inflamed by the wine, seized his Fangtian painted halberd and began to sweep and whirl it about in the rear courtyard. The originally brilliant crimson and ornate halberd, under the night sky, reverted to the very essence of a weapon. All that remained was the pale, gray-white gleam of its blade-edge and the dense, bone-chilling cold concealed beneath. The mournful, piercing shrieks emitted by the sweeping halberd fell upon Fei Qian's ears with a peculiar sensation—as if it were not the halberd itself producing those sounds, but rather Lü Bu, using the halberd, giving voice to a raging howl.
He became like a human tornado. The grasses and shrubs of the entire rear courtyard were slashed apart and sent swirling into the air. Even the grey bricks underfoot were scored with line after line of marks beneath the razor-sharp blade-wind. A few unfortunate branches that had extended outward just a little too far were caught up in the vortex. With a few soft, tearing hisses, they were reduced to small chunks, and then further into splinters and dust, vanishing to who knew where.
Lü Bu let out a long, resonant cry, and his movements grew ever more urgent and frenzied. The fierce gusts sprayed outward, stirring up even the finest grit and pebbles and sending them shooting in all directions—like those harsh, biting winds that sweep down from the north across the lands of Bingzhou, whipping up sky-filling clouds of dust, striking against robes and garments with an audible patter and crack. Lü Bu halted his form. With an offhand motion, he planted the Fangtian halberd upright in the courtyard, its butt-end sinking deep into the grey bricks, and there it stood, amidst the surrounding wreckage.
"Exhilarating! Truly exhilarating!" Lü Bu strode over in great steps, seized a jar of wine, and, disdaining the use of ladle or bowl, hoisted the jar and drank directly from its mouth, gulping down nearly half of it in great swallows. Only then did he exhale a cloud of alcoholic breath and collapse heavily onto his backside beside Fei Qian. He raised his head and gazed up at the heavens. "...That direction... that must be Bingzhou, right?" Lü Bu let out a grunt, staring fixedly upward. "Before, back in Bingzhou, I would often look at the sky at night, gaze at the stars in the heavens... But now... these stars all seem to have changed..."
Lü Bu gave a drunken belch, raised one hand, and made a couple of clutching motions in the air. "...Mm, they even run away... Hmph... Just wait till tomorrow, and I'll catch you..."
"Ha ha ha... The moon is eternal, the stars last a thousand ages—how can the strength of man possibly seize them?" Fei Qian, also quite deeply drunk, replied with eyes half-narrowed. "These things... they've been here for tens of millions of years already... and before them, we are like the blink of an eye... and then we're gone... And you still want to catch them..."
It was unclear whether Lü Bu understood or was simply not listening at all, merely speaking to himself: "Worthy younger brother... tell me, did I do right... or did I do wrong?"
"...What's right, what's wrong?" Fei Qian's mind had already grown exceedingly sluggish.
Lü Bu rocked his head and gently tapped the wine jar. "...Before, a Hu's head could be exchanged for twenty coins... enough for me to have a proper... uh, a proper good meal... Later, someone came and told me that, in truth, a Hu's head was worth fifty coins..." Lü Bu gulped down another draught, glug, glug, before continuing. "...Later, I gave that fellow... mm, a good thrashing... and then that bastard actually called men to come arrest me... Ha ha ha, I thrashed them too, thrashed them all!"
"...And later still... Lord Ding... sought me out..." Lü Bu let out a long, drawn-out sigh. "...And then later... that someone also came to find me... telling me I had, in fact, been deceived... that Chancellor Dong thought very highly of me..."
"Ha ha ha ha, deceived again... Wuwu, deceived again..." Lü Bu murmured, repeating the words, and collapsed onto the ground. "...Deceived, ah!"
Fei Qian shook his own muddled head, unable to react in time to grasp whether Lü Bu was saying he had been deceived by Ding Yuan, or by Li Su, or by Dong Zhuo... or by all of them?
The Chang'an night had grown deep. The bright moon overhead was not perfectly full, resembling a great flatbread that someone had taken two bites out of. Across the vast territory of the Han, north and south of the great river, and even a thousand, a hundred generations hence, it would still be this same moon—for the vast majority of its time, a waning, incomplete moon—silently casting its light upon the people of this land, observing the affairs of this land. Silence settled over the courtyard.
Only the sound of Fei Qian's and Lü Bu's breathing remained, along with the insects that had hidden within the shrubbery and survived the recent catastrophe, now chirping and buzzing softly. A gust of night wind swept through, like an enormous, invisible hand, gently ruffling the treetops and the bushes, shaking their branches and leaves. Then, amidst the rustling sounds, as if sensing something far more amusing in the distance, it abandoned these branches and leaves, turned, and swept away into the far-off dark.
Fei Qian had nearly assumed Lü Bu had already fallen asleep when he heard Lü Bu's low, heavy voice: "Chancellor Dong... truth be told, treated me rather well... Truth be told, I hadn't originally intended to do this. I truly hadn't thought of doing this..."
"...Chancellor Dong was sick... sick in the head... forgot things..." Lü Bu murmured, as if speaking to Fei Qian, and yet as if speaking only to himself. "...Xiao Cao and I... we were discovered... Chancellor Dong wanted to kill me... But, heh heh, ha ha, but..."
"...Ha ha, and then, a day later, Dong... actually forgot... actually... forgot..." Lü Bu gave a convulsive twitch, like a laugh, yet like a sob. "...But, I didn't forget! I was afraid... afraid that Chancellor Dong would at some point remember again... and then... someone came looking for me..."
"...This place is far too filthy... I've become filthy too... I truly want to go back... go back to Bingzhou, go back to the grasslands... But now, ah... I can't go back anymore... can never go back anymore... never go back..." Lü Bu suddenly began humming a nameless folk tune. But after only a few lines, perhaps because his tongue was tied from too much drink, or perhaps because he was singing while lying down, he choked on his own saliva.
"Cough, cough... cough, cough..."
Lü Bu rolled over and sat up, dragged over the wine jar beside him, and gulped down the remaining liquor until it was gone. Then he hurled the jar to the side, staggered to his feet, and pointed at the moon in the sky, roaring at the top of his lungs: "I only wanted to live! To live on, decently! Is that not allowed?! Ah?! Is it not allowed?!"
Beneath the broken, waning moon, Lü Bu stood alone in the courtyard, his shadow stretched long, long behind him. Lifting his head, he howled at the sky, like a lone wild wolf that had strayed far from the great grasslands, having lost its way—solitary, and covered head to foot with wounds.