Tea Smoke at the Valley Mouth
They followed the mountain stream for nearly another half morning before the valley at last began to loosen its grip.
Outside the mountains, the sun had long since risen. Yet here, in this deep ravine hemmed in by sheer cliffs and canopied over by ancient trees, daylight came with painful slowness. Layer upon layer of rock wall and old forest sifted the morning into fragments, leaving only thin blades of cold white light to slant down from above and fall across stream stones, patches of moss, and wet earth. Everything around them was washed in bluish gray, as though the whole valley had not yet truly woken from the night.
Water murmured at their feet, neither hurried nor slow, threading its way through the broken stones. The damp carried the peculiar chill of the mountains. It was not a cold that struck head-on, but one that seemed to seep from rock crevices, grass roots, and the breath of wet soil, creeping strand by strand into a man's bones.
Old Daoist Xuan walked in front. His gray robe was so worn it had taken on a shine, and the wineskin at his back knocked softly against his hip now and then. He still moved with that same crooked, shambling lack of dignity, swaying this way and that as if he had never once walked a straight line in his life. Yet his footing remained uncannily sure. Loose stones, slick moss, wet ground—none of it ever truly caught him wrong.
Fang Yingjie followed behind with the crude wooden staff, walking slowly.
The swelling in his right ankle had gone down somewhat over the past few days, but each time he set it down, a dull, pressing ache still rose from deep between the bones. His left shoulder and the ribs beneath it had not fully healed either; if his breathing quickened even a little, a faint heaviness would gather in his chest. Still, compared with the half-dead wreck he had been at the bottom of the cliff, he was far better off now. At least he could grit his teeth and keep up. At least he no longer had to collapse after every few steps.
They went on along the stream for a while longer, and gradually the terrain ahead began to open.
The two cliff walls, which had pressed so tightly together before, finally seemed to ease apart here. The mountain brook at their feet was no longer forced to squeeze through narrow cracks between stones. At times it spread into a shallow bank; at times it slanted past the edges of great rocks, the sound of the water broader now than before. When Fang Yingjie lifted his head, the sky above was no longer merely a strip of cold white cut out by the cliffs. Between the two mountains in the distance, he could already glimpse a trace of clear brightness beyond the valley.
The wind coming from ahead carried different scents as well.
No longer only wet moss, rotting leaves, and the dank, fishy chill of stone fissures that never saw the sun, but something looser, fainter, and unmistakably nearer to human habitation. Smoke from firewood mingled with the bitter fragrance of rough tea. Somewhere very far off, it seemed, something hot was giving up white steam.
Old Daoist Xuan narrowed his eyes and peered ahead.
"We're almost out of the valley."
Fang Yingjie looked up as well, and something stirred faintly in his chest.
The forest ahead was indeed no longer as dense as before. When the mountain wind passed through, even the treetops seemed brighter. After a moment of silence, he asked in a low voice, "Once we're out... will we see people?"
Old Daoist Xuan shot him a sidelong glance.
"What, you don't want to?"
"No."
Fang Yingjie paused, then said softly, "It just... feels a little like a dream."
To his surprise, Old Daoist Xuan did not immediately jab back. He only gave a light snort through his nose.
"Dream or no dream, you still have to walk out first. If you'd stayed curled up in that broken hall, by now you'd probably be keeping company with those four stone monsters, all of you moldering together."
Then, perhaps afraid he had sounded too serious, he added at once, "Besides, once we're out, there'll be hot soup and hot cakes. Do you think I enjoy roasting fish for you every day till I reek of grease and smoke? My robe's nearly been smoked into a cook's apron."
They climbed over a short slope of loose rock, and the mountain wall ahead bent sharply once more.
The stream turned out through the stones, and suddenly the world widened. Beyond the mouth of the valley lay a stretch of open ground, neither large nor small, sloping gently downward. A few willow trees grew there in sparse clusters. Beyond them, half-hidden, ran a dirt road that brushed past the valley entrance at an angle. There were no travelers or carts in sight, but beside the road there stood the unmistakable corner of an old banner, leaning crookedly in the wind.
The cloth had long since faded, its edges frayed and split, but the single character at its center could still just be made out:
Tea.
Fang Yingjie's heart gave a small leap.
Old Daoist Xuan reacted even faster. The lazy, wine-dulled gleam in his eyes lit up at once, like an old fox suddenly catching the scent of a hen.
"A tea banner!"
"Where there's a tea banner, there's likely hot tea. Where there's hot tea, nine times out of ten there'll be cakes. And if there are cakes..." He swallowed audibly. "Then there ought to be braised meat, or pickles, or at the very least a steaming pot of mixed-noodle soup."
Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, his pace had already quickened. His gray robe swung, the wineskin thumping at his back, and he looked for all the world like a man ready to leap forward on scent alone.
Behind him, Fang Yingjie hurried a few steps to follow. The moment he put weight on his right ankle, that dull ache surged back through the joint, and he had no choice but to call out in a low voice, "Senior... please slow down a little."
Only then did Old Daoist Xuan turn back. He frowned and cursed at once.
"Slow down for what? Are you walking on your legs, or grinding the ground with your life?"
Fang Yingjie choked on that and said quietly, "I... can keep up."
"The hell you can."
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes and pointed the thin switch in his hand at Fang Yingjie's right leg.
"The swelling only went down halfway yesterday, and today you're already trying to force it like this. If that leg of yours could talk, it wouldn't be cursing me right now. It'd be cursing you."
His mouth kept scolding, but his steps did slow, if only a fraction.
"Move it. If the hot soup ahead goes cold, I'm not waiting for you."
Fang Yingjie answered under his breath and followed with the staff.
The tea shack at the mouth of the valley looked even more dilapidated up close than it had from afar.
A few crooked wooden posts barely held up half of an old roof that looked ready to cave in at any moment. Most of the thatch had long ago been stripped away by wind and rain, leaving only blackened yellow stubble here and there, flattened across the beams. The shack was broken, but the stove was alive. A great iron pot sat over the fire inside, white steam rising from its rim in thin, twisting strands. Whatever simmered within mixed with the charred scent of firewood, the rich smell of frying cakes, the bitterness of coarse tea, and a trace of savory brine, filling the ramshackle shelter with the warm, noisy breath of ordinary human life.
There were only a few travelers sitting inside.
Two boatmen sat farther in, their trouser legs rolled up and dampness still clinging to hems and shoes, speaking in low voices over large bowls of steaming broth. By the stove stood a lean old man in his fifties, a washed-out gray cloth draped over one shoulder, turning cakes at the edge of the pan with long chopsticks while half-listening to the idle talk in the shack.
The moment Old Daoist Xuan stepped inside, he did not look at the people first.
He looked at the pot.
The faint haze of hangover in his eyes sharpened at once. He swept a glance over the simmering broth, twitched his nose lightly, and came alive as though everything in the pot, everything laid out on the board, everything hidden by the stove had already yielded seven or eight parts of its secret to his nose alone.
"Shopkeeper," he drawled from just under the awning, hooking the wineskin back behind his waist, "got any hot soup?"
The lean old man looked up, saw a ragged old Daoist in a gray robe worn shiny with age, with his hair and beard in disarray, and behind him a wounded boy leaning on a staff. He blinked in surprise, then nodded.
"Hot soup, yes."
Old Daoist Xuan immediately asked, "Cakes? Meat? Pickles? You've got liquor too, I trust?"
The string of questions came so smoothly and so fast that he sounded less like a traveler passing through than a man returning to his own kitchen.
The shopkeeper did not seem bothered. He only smiled.
"Cakes, yes. Meat—only half a pot of braised offal left. There's a small plate of pickles. As for liquor, it's cloudy stuff. Not good."
Old Daoist Xuan slapped a hand against his thigh, all delight at once.
"Good, good! Offal is meat, and cloudy liquor is still liquor. Two bowls of hot soup first, four cakes, one plate of braised offal, a dish of pickles, and warm up a pot of liquor."
Then he glanced back at Fang Yingjie and frowned as an afterthought.
"Go easy on the chili in this little block of wood's soup. If he starts coughing and wheezing again in a moment, he'll ruin my appetite."
Fang Yingjie started slightly, answered softly, and lowered himself by degrees onto the bench beside the long wooden table.
Only now, with hot soup in the pot, voices under the roof, and that ragged old tea banner hanging from the beam and swaying gently in the wind, did he truly feel that he had stepped back out of the mountain wilderness of the dead and returned to the world of the living.
The soup came soon enough.
It was served in coarse porcelain bowls, the broth a cloudy yellow with a few drops of oil and some torn bits of greens floating on top. On any ordinary day it would not have seemed like much. But set before him now, steaming and fragrant, it warmed the heart before it even touched the tongue.
Fang Yingjie lifted the bowl and took a careful sip.
The heat slid down his throat and into him, and the cold that had been pressed into his chest layer after layer by mountain wind, lingering injuries, and several nights of bitter chill was slowly driven out by that single mouthful of soup.
Old Daoist Xuan was less restrained. He tipped up his bowl and drank half of it in one go. Then he let out a long breath and narrowed his eyes in satisfaction.
"This," he declared, "is what living men ought to eat."
As he spoke, the shopkeeper brought over the rest: freshly fried cakes, braised offal, and a small plate of pickles. The cakes were browned on both sides, their edges curled slightly, still carrying the scorched fragrance left by the spatula. The offal was a deep soy-red; under the rising steam its salt-rich aroma was thickened by that unmistakable hearty smell peculiar to such cuts. As for the liquor, it was indeed cloudy, served in a rough little porcelain pot with a thread of warmth still breathing from its mouth. It had at least been heated.
The moment the food was set down, the last remnants of Old Daoist Xuan's languid drunkenness brightened into open vigor. He snatched up a cake, tore it apart with one hand, stuffed a piece of braised offal inside, and bit into it before mumbling thickly around the mouthful, "Mm. Now this is more like it."
The two boatmen nearby had already been talking in low voices. Seeing the old Daoist and the boy sit down, they spared them only a passing glance and made no effort to lower their conversation.
One of them, dark and gaunt, said under his breath, "...I'm telling you, this really isn't a small matter. It hasn't been long since the fiftieth birthday celebration at Taihu ended, and right on its heels came word that something went wrong at Eaglebeak Ridge. They say a young fellow vanished. Several groups have been searching the northern road these past two days."
The other, a little older, frowned. "Stop treating rumors like iron fact. Yes, someone disappeared—but whether he's dead or not, no one's yet dared say for certain."
"That's one thing. Whether they're searching is another," the gaunt boatman replied. "Yesterday I passed through the small pier at Pingma and saw them myself—men asking all along the road about Eaglebeak Ridge. There was a middle-aged man with a face black as thunder, speaking one word at a time as if he were forcing the fire down in his throat. Beside him stood a young man in blue. Barely spoke a word, but he stood there like a blade. There was also an old escort master, gray-faced, sharp-eyed as poison, always staring at people's feet and the roadside. And another young fellow with no seriousness in his mouth at all—kept wandering back and forth like he was loitering, but his eyes never once idled."
The other clicked his tongue.
"Then that's probably them. I heard they're looking for a boy who fell off a cliff and vanished."
"Vanished, yes—but listen to what people on the road have been saying these last few days. Some say they found only a single shoe by the cliff. Some say there was blood, and severed vines—but no body."
"No body doesn't necessarily mean he's alive."
"Who knows whether he's alive? But those groups clearly haven't given up."
A bloodstained shoe. The edge of a cliff. Broken vines. No body.
The words struck Fang Yingjie like a handful of thin, icy needles driven straight into the tightest place inside his chest.
At once he could see the scene in his mind: the slanting grassy slope, the cold wind at the cliff's edge, vines hanging half-severed, blood on stone. Fang Zhongyi, Xuanyuan Xi, Feng Feiyun, Cheng Dingshan—perhaps they were still there even now, moving back and forth across that same stretch of ground, studying vine, grass, and stone again and again, searching every crevice and hollow where a man might conceivably lie hidden.
And he himself was sitting here now, holding a bowl of hot soup, listening as strangers spoke of him as no more than a missing boy who might or might not be dead.
His throat tightened.
He lowered his head and set the bowl back down on the table with deliberate care.
Across from him, Old Daoist Xuan had been tearing apart his cake in silence. At that moment he lifted his eyes, almost idly, and let his gaze brush Fang Yingjie's face. It was the lightest glance possible. He asked nothing and exposed nothing. He only dipped the piece of cake in the braising sauce, put it in his mouth, chewed slowly twice, and then turned toward the stove as though on a whim.
"Shopkeeper," he drawled lazily, "has the northern road really been this lively the last few days?"
The shopkeeper had just come over with another plate of offal. Hearing that, he nodded.
"It has indeed. Usually this road's quiet enough, but these past few days people have been stopping by every so often to ask about Eaglebeak Ridge."
Old Daoist Xuan picked up a piece of braised offal with his chopsticks, chewed thoughtfully, and frowned.
"Too salty."
The shopkeeper gave a helpless smile. "Mountain road tea shack, Daoist Master. You'll have to make do."
Old Daoist Xuan clicked his tongue, then seemed to ask casually, "Those people looking for him—are they still around here?"
The shopkeeper thought for a moment.
"They were, a couple of days ago. After that, it seemed like they headed farther north. I heard this morning that they were seen somewhere near Pingsha Market as well."
At that, the gaunt boatman beside them could not help cutting in again.
"It's not just the searchers. There've been more unfamiliar faces on the waterways too these past two days."
The older man frowned at once. "Keep your nose out of that."
"I'm not meddling. I just think it's odd," the gaunt one muttered. "At Pingma Pier, the northern road crossing, the way through Shawan—there've been more people coming and going lately, men who don't like to talk. They don't seem to be doing any real business, just moving in and out, with eyes dark as stones."
The shopkeeper shook his head.
"At a time like this, the stranger it looks, the less you want to touch it. Something's already gone wrong over at Taihu. Who knows what else is still churning beneath the water."
Only then did Old Daoist Xuan's eyelids lift slightly.
The motion was so slight it hardly seemed a reaction at all. A moment later, his gaze had already fallen again.
Fang Yingjie kept his head lowered and forced his breathing, little by little, back into stillness.
So Fang Zhongyi, Xuanyuan Xi, Feng Feiyun, and Cheng Dingshan truly had not given up. They were still searching for him in the north. But at the same time, there was plainly more than one set of people moving along the northern road and the waterways. Those "unfamiliar faces"—were they merely people of the martial world drawn by rumor, or were others following this trail in secret with their teeth already set into it? The moment that thought arose, the faint warmth that had just begun to return to him sank again.
Across the table, Old Daoist Xuan behaved as if he had noticed none of it. He only tore off more cake, dipped it in sauce, and drank his cloudy liquor with great concentration.
By the end of the meal, he tossed back the last mouthful of wine, smacked his lips, and got to his feet.
Even while paying, he was still complaining.
"Cloudy liquor, salty meat. Only the soup was barely fit to drink."
The shopkeeper did not know whether to laugh or sigh. "If Daoist Master passes this way again, this old man will prepare something better."
Old Daoist Xuan snorted. One by one he counted copper coins onto the table—not a single one short—then turned and walked out.
Fang Yingjie followed with his staff. They had only gone a few steps from the tea shack when the pressure he had been holding down in his chest could no longer be contained.
"Senior..." he called softly.
Old Daoist Xuan did not break stride.
"I heard everything they said in there," he replied lazily.
Fang Yingjie paused.
Old Daoist Xuan let out another snort.
"And I saw the look on your face."
He lifted the wineskin and took a pull before continuing in the same slow tone.
"Those acquaintances of yours probably still haven't given up. They're searching for you in the north. And the new faces showing up on the waterways may not be there just to watch the show. This whole line of trouble is probably even messier than you think."
Fang Yingjie pressed his lips together. The emotion he had been suppressing all this time finally rose, slowly and unmistakably, into his eyes.
"I want to go."
This time Old Daoist Xuan stopped at last.
He turned his head and looked at Fang Yingjie from the side. First there was annoyance in that look, then irritation, and at the very end something like a weary, helpless of course.
"You want to go?" He snorted. "In the shape you're in, if you actually reach them, odds are they'll have to carry you."
Fang Yingjie did not answer that. He only tightened his grip on the wooden staff and said again, in a low voice, "I want to go."
The wind at the valley mouth had turned warm. The smoke from the tea shack had not yet fully dispersed. Old Daoist Xuan stood there with the wineskin in hand for a long moment, muttering what sounded like a curse under his breath, too indistinct to make out.
Only after a while did he turn, every line of his face proclaiming reluctance.
"You can want to go all you like, but not now. Get your leg steady first. If you collapse again halfway there, I'll have to drag you, and that'll be a nuisance."
At those words, Fang Yingjie's heart jolted. He looked up sharply.
Old Daoist Xuan, however, did not look back at him. He merely held the wineskin at his side and pointed with the tip of his foot toward the fork in the road ahead.
It was not the direction they had originally been following downstream, where they had meant to find some place or other to stop.
It was north.
"What are you dawdling for?" Old Daoist Xuan snapped. "If you wait till they've finished searching and scattered, then limp over afterward, you probably won't even catch a shadow."
With that, his gray robe swung, and he had already set off along the northbound dirt road at an unhurried pace.
His mouth still complained about the trouble of it. His feet had already chosen otherwise.
Fang Yingjie stood where he was, and felt, all at once, that the tight, aching heaviness in his chest—the one that had been pressing down ever since he heard the words bloodstained shoe and no body—had eased a little.
He lowered his head, tightened his hand around the staff, drew in a deep breath, and followed.
Ahead, the gray-robed figure swayed crookedly from side to side, as ill-composed as ever. Behind him came the wounded boy with the staff, one step deep, one step shallow. One before the other, their shadows stretched along the northbound road. Neither said the thing outright, yet the direction had already been decided.
The wind at the valley mouth was warm now. The tea smoke drifted farther and farther behind them.
At last, following this faint trail of rumor, they truly set out toward people, toward news—
and toward the old road in Fang Yingjie's life that had not yet been severed after all.
A Single Breath of the Heavenly Gate
After leaving the tea stall, the two of them continued north at an unhurried pace.
Old Daoist Xuan grumbled the whole way. The cloudy liquor in the stall had been sour as slops left overnight; the braised offal salty enough to choke a man; the northern road too dusty; the sun hot enough to brand the skin. From the wine to the dishes, from the proprietor to the stools and tables, there had not been a single thing to please his eye. Yet for all his complaints, his feet never once strayed from the road. In his faded gray robe, worn shiny with age, with the wine gourd swaying at his hip, he went straight on along the dirt track to the north.
Fang Yingjie hobbled after him on his wooden staff, but his heart would not settle.
Those idle scraps of talk in the tea stall pricked at him like needles, one after another—
the shoe by the cliff,
the blood beside the snapped vine,
and above all, those words: no body had been found.
More important still, Fang Zhongyi, Xuanyuan Xi, Feng Feiyun, Cheng Dingshan, and the others had truly not given up. They were still searching for him, combing the northern road and the country around Eaglebeak Ridge again and again.
He kept walking, but his chest grew heavier with every step. The ground underfoot had long since warmed beneath the day's sun, and the raw, biting chill of the ravine lay far behind him. Yet the cold he had brought out of that cliff and that abyss seemed to turn over quietly somewhere inside him and rise again.
At first Old Daoist Xuan merely thought he was lagging, and as usual tossed a few jests over his shoulder.
"You little block of wood—walk any slower and I'll think you're out collecting debts. I've got to hound you half the day before you move a single step."
"If I were ten years older, at the pace you drag along, you'd probably outlive me just by dawdling."
"So, the tea's gone and your soul's still back there? What is it? Did you really leave half your life under that stall roof?"
Fang Yingjie kept his head lowered and followed in silence, neither arguing nor answering.
At first the old Daoist found it amusing. But after more than half a shichen on the road, the boy still had not said a word. The hand gripping the staff had only tightened, and his face was paler now than when they left the stall. Only then did Old Daoist Xuan begin to feel that something was wrong. By nature, though, he was stubborn of mouth. Even when he saw it, he refused to soften first. He merely pretended not to care, glancing about along the roadside, now prodding at leaves, now kicking at roots, as if his only concern in life remained whether he might somehow scrounge up a decent mouthful of food before nightfall.
It was nearly dusk before they came upon an abandoned boat shed beside an old drainage ditch.
The shed had once been used for mooring small boats overnight, but it had long since fallen to ruin. Half the roof had collapsed, exposing blackened rafters that jutted up like bones. The floor was strewn with dead grass, torn nets, rotted planks, splinters of wood, and years of uncleared mud. The air smelled of damp rot and mildew. Still, broken as it was, the place could at least keep off the wind.
Old Daoist Xuan stood at the entrance, took one look inside, and scowled.
"This place isn't much better than a dog's den."
Yet grumble as he might, he ducked inside all the same, wine gourd in hand. He kicked away the worst of the broken boards, cleared a corner where they could settle, then nudged a crooked plank more firmly into place by the doorway with his foot.
"We make do for one night. If we keep going blind in the dark and you tumble into the ditch, I'll be the one who has to fish you out. Not worth the trouble."
Before long, a fire was crackling.
For all the old Daoist's other skills—which never seemed to belong to any proper clergyman—when it came to putting food together, his hands were astonishingly deft. He went to the ditch, lifted two wet stones, caught two half-grown ditch fish, then returned with a handful of wild scallions and several leaves of mountain ginger, muttering under his breath as he came:
"Small fish, but alive. Once a fish is dead, not even the Jade Emperor can boil the taste back into it."
As the fire grew stronger and the water in the pot began to simmer, the scallions and ginger leaves went in. The steam beat down most of the fishy smell, and something clean and savory slowly rose in its place. Woodsmoke, fish broth, and the faint scorched scent of damp timber mingled together, and even this ruin of a shed felt a little less cold.
Fang Yingjie sat with his back against an old length of hull-planking. At first he felt nothing much.
But once the fire had settled and his body finally stopped moving, everything he had forced down through the long day began to well up inside him, wave after wave.
First came a tightness in the chest. It was not violent, which made it worse. It felt as though someone had quietly stuffed a wad of cold floss between his ribs. Each breath pressed it deeper.
Then his breathing began to grow light and unsteady. The fire burned right in front of him, and the steam from the pot coiled steadily upward, yet all that warmth seemed to circle outside him and never pass through his chest. His palms were cold. His fingertips were cold. Even the wound in his right ankle, which ought to have been throbbing with heat and swelling, had sunk into a numb heaviness that seemed to seep into the bones themselves.
He meant to lower his head and endure it.
Instead, the moment he bowed it, his throat seized, and a string of coughs broke loose.
They were not loud, but each one twisted inward under his ribs.
His shoulders shook. His back bowed. The turmoil that had only hovered in his chest a moment before was driven loose by the coughing and surged straight up toward his throat. Even the firelight before his eyes wavered.
Old Daoist Xuan had been tending the fish by the pot. At the sound, his hand paused. He turned, took one glance, and his expression darkened.
"What's this miserable state?"
Fang Yingjie meant to say, I'm fine. But the moment he parted his lips, that faint sweet metallic taste rose in his throat ahead of the words. He could only cough again, low and stifled, and for a long while he could not force out a single complete sentence.
Old Daoist Xuan clicked his tongue, flung the stick he had been using to stir the fire onto the ground, and crossed the shed in a few quick steps. He caught Fang Yingjie by the wrist.
The hand smelled, as ever, of wine, herbs, and smoke. The palm was rough; the fingers bore thin calluses. There was nothing about it that looked like the hand of an austere Daoist. Yet the instant those two fingers came to rest upon the pulse, the floating air of impatience and reluctance seemed to drop from his face.
He said nothing. He merely shut his eyes and listened.
The fire popped softly. Fish broth shifted in the pot. Outside the shed, the dead grass by the ditch hissed under the wind.
Other than that, there was no sound.
A moment later Old Daoist Xuan opened his eyes, and the annoyance on his face returned in full.
"Out of order again."
"I knew it."
He let go of the wrist and gave a cold snort.
"You heard a few scraps of talk in that tea stall, and your soul flew clean out of your body. Your breath was already ragged as a torn bellows. I finally managed to bind half of it back together for you, and what do you do? You tear it open again yourself."
Fang Yingjie clenched his teeth. "I... didn't mean to."
"Of course you didn't mean to," the old Daoist said coolly. "You were merely stupid."
As he spoke, he set a hand behind Fang Yingjie's back and pushed him closer to the fire.
"Sit straight."
"Back up. Don't curl into yourself. Your breath already won't sink where it should. Hunch up any further and there'll be even less room in your chest. No one will need to strike you—you'll smother yourself first."
Fang Yingjie straightened as told, but the disordered current inside him only churned harder, half rising, half sinking, hot and cold all at once, impossible to bear.
Old Daoist Xuan watched him for a long moment, his brow knotting deeper and deeper, until at last he muttered a curse under his breath.
"What a nuisance."
"That time a few days ago, when I pressed your channels into place, was only an emergency measure. I dragged you back from the edge of the Ghost Gate, nothing more. But that breath was never truly yours. I can press it down for you once, smooth it through once, but I cannot trail after you for the rest of your life, holding you together by hand. If you still mean to go north—if you still mean to meet the people searching for you—then whether I like it or not, I have to teach you the method today."
With that, he rose, lifted the pot off the fire, and set the wine gourd aside, as if finally resigning himself to the fact that tonight's fish and drink would once more have to wait.
When he came back, he sat cross-legged behind Fang Yingjie.
His tone was still far from pleasant, but it had lost some of its usual glib mockery.
"Listen."
"This time I'm not merely going to straighten your breathing once and be done with it."
"I'm going to teach you the simplest sort of breath-nurturing method. It is not for winning fights, not for showing off, and not something that will let you cultivate any earthshaking skill overnight. It does one thing only—bit by bit, it gathers back the inner force you have let scatter."
Fang Yingjie started slightly. "Senior, this is—"
Old Daoist Xuan cut him off at once.
"What it is does not matter."
"A name won't make it hurt any less. What matters now is not where it came from, and not how marvelous it may or may not be. What matters is that you stop letting your breath come apart."
His fingertip tapped lightly between Fang Yingjie's shoulder blades.
"When the breath scatters, the body goes light. When the body goes light, the feet lose their root. And when your feet lose their root, even if you do meet your own people, you'll still be a sickly wretch who has to be carried on someone's back."
He paused, then gave another faint snort.
"Keep yourself alive first. The rest can wait."
As he spoke, he touched three points in turn: between the shoulder blades, at the center of the chest, and finally at the energy center.
"Close your eyes."
"First send the murky breath in your chest out slowly. Don't force it. Don't try to spit it all out in a single rush."
"And when you send it out, don't brace against it, don't hurry, and don't wrestle yourself half to death. You are not cultivating some inner force that can overturn rivers and seas. You are only pulling yourself half a step back from the Ghost Gate."
Fang Yingjie did as instructed.
At first it went badly.
The moment he let even a little of the breath out, the tightness in his chest worsened, as if the disorder within had been startled and surged upward in alarm. Old Daoist Xuan lifted a hand and struck him once just left of the center of his back. The blow was neither light nor heavy, yet it knocked that rising current downward at exactly the right moment.
"I told you to send it down, not drag it up."
"You're not cultivating—you're trying to twist yourself to death like a stake driven into the ground."
The slap hurt, but the disorder in Fang Yingjie's chest no longer rushed upward as violently as before. He gritted his teeth and began again.
Exhale. Inhale.
This time the old Daoist's palm came to rest against his back.
The moment that inner force entered him, Fang Yingjie shuddered.
A few days earlier, by the fire, Old Daoist Xuan had already used his inner force to press down Fang Yingjie's disorder and smooth his meridians. But then Fang Yingjie had been drifting in and out of life, aware of little beyond weight, depth, and steadiness. Only now, with his mind clearer and his own breathing under deliberate control, did he truly understand how terrifying the old Daoist's inner force was.
It was heavy.
Heavy like earth. Like black soil buried beneath the roots of a mountain for hundreds of years. Like cold water sunken in layers to the bottom of a deep pool. Like an old stone gate, dark with age and so massive one doubted it could ever be pushed open. It did not contend. It did not seize. It did not hurl itself forward. It was simply there—immovable.
No matter how the turmoil in his body rushed, collided, and churned, the instant that inner force met it, it was as though it had struck a wall it could never break through. It could only subside, little by little.
"Go on," said Old Daoist Xuan behind him. "Draw in the night air outside, slowly. Don't let it stop at the throat, and don't let it catch in the chest. Send it down. Settle it. Guide it to the steadiest point in your lower abdomen."
Fang Yingjie obeyed.
It was still difficult. The current had barely sunk half an inch before the disturbance in his chest flared again like a startled bird, beating upward so sharply that sweat sprang at once to his brow.
Old Daoist Xuan's palm grew heavier by a fraction, and that dense inner force pressed deeper in.
"Don't be greedy."
"You are not trying to make this breath strong. You are only trying to stop it from scattering."
"When others move their force, they think of how to strike outward. What you must learn now is how to gather it back first."
"If you can gather it, you can remain steady. If you can remain steady, you can live longer."
"So stop thinking about how to win. Learn first how not to die."
He spoke on, and gave a little grunt, as if to say that should already have been plain enough.
"The method itself is a stupid one. Slow, too. No one likes it. Others throw out a palm and split stone, shake the heavens. Here you are, sitting still and breathing for half the night like an old turtle warming its shell."
"But stupid has its virtues."
"For all their noise and glory, when the time comes to stake your life on it, what matters is who can endure and who can outlast."
"With a body like yours, don't think of anything else for now. First keep hold of your life."
As Fang Yingjie listened, the words did not seem merely to enter through his ears. They seemed to travel inward with that heavy inner force at his back, pressing deeper and deeper into the very core of his meridians.
He tried once more.
This time, the breath did not rebound into his chest. Bit by bit, truly, he guided it downward.
Only half an inch.
Yet in the lower abdomen there appeared the faintest warmth, no brighter than a spark buried in ash—dim, weak, but alive.
Old Daoist Xuan felt it at once, and for the first time his tone eased.
"Yes. That's it."
"As long as it does not break, there is a way forward."
"Your foundation is far too thin. Forget cultivating properly—simply staying alive costs you more effort than it does most men."
"If you can nurse this breath until it settles and grows familiar, only then will there be any point in speaking of bones, sinews, stamina, or control."
Even as he spoke, the force in his palm never withdrew.
That dense inner force was like an invisible embankment, holding fast around the fragile thread Fang Yingjie had only just managed to guide into place. It did not let it scatter. It did not let it turn wild. And it did not let the stale, turbid force shaken loose by old injuries in the chest surge up and shatter it again.
Outside the shed, thin water tapped against rotting planks in the old ditch with a hollow little sound. Inside, the firelight rose and fell. Fish broth murmured in the pot. The smell of food, smoke, and wine together kept this corner of the night from turning too cold.
Fang Yingjie sat with his eyes closed, fine sweat gathering bead by bead along his brow.
First came pain.
Not in the flesh, but in the meridians—as though someone were running a blunt blade inch by inch along the channels that had been thrown into chaos, forcing them back into order.
Then came numbness.
Not a dead numbness, but something like a thousand fine needles passing from the center of his back through chest and abdomen, teasing apart the knots of force that had been clumped together inside him.
And after that, the oppressive turmoil between his ribs—that churning pressure that seemed at any moment ready to explode upward and throw him into coughing blood once more—was truly held down, little by little, with every breath sent out and every breath guided inward.
It still hurt.
But it no longer felt as though it might break loose again at any instant.
So they remained for the better part of two quarter-hours.
Only then did Old Daoist Xuan slowly withdraw his palm.
The moment that support left him, Fang Yingjie felt the emptiness at his back at once, as though he were being lifted out of cold water. The injuries were still there. The pain was still there. But the chaotic hollowness that had weighed on his chest and chilled even his heart was finally contained.
When he opened his eyes again, even the firelight seemed steadier than before.
His chest was still tight, and his side still ached beneath the ribs, but the disorder was no longer crashing wildly through him. It felt as if someone had gathered it into an invisible shell where it now lay subdued, breathing slowly.
Old Daoist Xuan shook out his wrist, picked up the wine gourd, and took a long swallow. The look on his face was openly disdainful.
"That's more like it."
"From now on, go through it once at dawn and once at dusk. Don't start dreaming this will turn you into some peerless master overnight. First keep your little life from slipping away."
"If you can slowly raise this breath until it grows steady, then later there may be something to say about your bones, your flesh, your endurance, your control. Otherwise there's no point talking about any of it. With a frame like yours—ready to topple in a gust—anything you tried to cultivate would only be wasted on you."
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and sat in silence for a while before asking softly,
"Senior... does this count as transmitting an art?"
Old Daoist Xuan glared at him on the spot.
"Transmitting what art?"
"This is saving your life."
"If you truly want to learn some heaven-shaking skill, then start by raising yourself to the point where a passing wind doesn't send you staggering sideways."
The words were sharp, but his expression had lost its earlier chill. After a moment, as though he disliked even that much softness in himself, he immediately stiffened his face and added,
"But now that you've learned this breath, don't waste it."
"It is not for swagger and display. First stand steady on your own feet. First keep yourself alive. The rest comes later. If you can't even remember that, then anything else you cultivate will be for nothing."
Fang Yingjie listened with grave attention and answered in a low voice,
"I'll remember."
Only then did Old Daoist Xuan push over the bowl of fish broth he had kept warming by the fire.
"Drink."
"After regulating your breath, if you don't take something hot, it's all wasted."
Fang Yingjie accepted the bowl in both hands.
The earthenware was warm enough to sting his palms. The broth was fresh, salty, and hot. As it went down his throat, the breath that had only just been brought into order in his chest seemed to settle even more firmly.
He held the bowl for a long time in silence before saying quietly,
"Thank you, Senior."
This time Old Daoist Xuan did not curse at him at once. He only leaned back against a broken plank, took a lazy swallow of wine, and after a while said,
"Thanks are all very well."
"Just don't bring me any great trouble later."
His mouth still wore that same tone—afraid of complications, annoyed by effort, longing only for peace and quiet.
But Fang Yingjie understood now that this night was not the same as the nights before.
Before, Old Daoist Xuan had been saving him.
Tonight, Old Daoist Xuan had placed into his hands a real thing—something that could let him go on living by himself, and go on walking by himself.
Outside, the cold night had not yet passed. Wind moved over the old ditch, stirring up a fine wet rustle. Inside the shed, the firelight leapt softly, touching the old Daoist's ragged gray robe and Fang Yingjie's lowered face as he sat cradling the bowl.
Truth by the Shed Fire
The fire in the boat shed had lost the fierce strength it had carried earlier.
A few sticks of firewood, damp in places and dry in others, lay slanted across the bed of coals. The flames brightened and dimmed by turns, only now and then licking at the blackened underside of the pot through the cracks. The fish broth within had long since stopped boiling. Only a thin drift of steam still climbed from the iron rim, carrying with it the clean, fresh fragrance of fish bones simmered with wild scallions and mountain ginger leaves. In the old shed—half collapsed, half leaking—that scent turned faintly in the air. Outside, trickling water tapped against rotten posts in the old drainage ditch with hollow little sounds. From time to time the night wind slipped in through the seams of the broken planks, stirring the embers into a brief jump of sparks and throwing the exposed rafters overhead in and out of light, like a row of silent, blackened bones.
Fang Yingjie sat with the coarse porcelain bowl cupped in both hands, though it had long since been emptied. Leaning against a length of old hull board, he did not move for a long while.
The breathing exercise Old Daoist Xuan had just taken him through had run only a single, brief cycle, yet the turmoil that had been crashing and churning inside his chest had at last been gathered in and pressed under some measure of control. His injuries were still there. Beneath his ribs the ache remained a heavy, muffled throb, and his right ankle still pulsed with swelling pain. Yet that terrible frailty—that sense that he might at any moment fly apart again, and be dragged back into the freezing darkness below the cliff—had eased at last.
His body had lightened a little.
And because of that, all the words he had kept buried in silence began, layer by layer, to rise to the surface.
The boatman's idle remarks in the tea shed still pricked at him like fine needles: the shoe at the edge of the cliff, the blood beside the snapped vine, the searchers who had still not given up along the northern road.
And above all, that one sentence—
No body had been found.
When he had first heard those four words in the shed, it had felt as though they belonged to some other person, some absent stranger being discussed by others. But now, with the fire settling low and no one speaking in the dimness, the words had turned and come back to him, sinking little by little into his own chest.
He lowered his eyes to the faint sheen of oil still floating at the bottom of the bowl. His throat tightened.
Old Daoist Xuan lounged against a broken plank opposite him, a wine gourd tucked into the crook of one arm. One leg was stretched out, the other bent. He looked as slovenly as ever. The hem of his old gray Daoist robe trailed in the dirt, flecked with grass and mud. His beard was a mess, his topknot worse. In the firelight, with the flush of drink not yet gone from his face, he looked less than ever like any respectable elder. And yet, though he seemed to be resting with his eyes half closed, he was not truly asleep. The moment Fang Yingjie shifted the empty bowl on his knees, Old Daoist Xuan gave a soft grunt through his nose.
"You keep staring at that bowl and you'll wear flowers into it," he said lazily, without opening his eyes. "What is it? Did the fish broth hide a gold ingot at the bottom?"
Fang Yingjie's fingers tightened slightly. He answered in a low voice—but said nothing more.
Old Daoist Xuan waited a moment. When the boy still only sat there in silence, he raised the gourd, took a drink, and muttered, "Then speak. You little block of wood, you haven't had a proper color in your face since we left that tea shed. Left your soul behind there in broad daylight, did you? Planning to take it to bed with you tonight?"
Fang Yingjie's lips moved.
"Senior…"
The word was so soft that it seemed to be swallowed almost as soon as it left him.
Old Daoist Xuan heard it, but did not press him at once. He swallowed his wine, grunted, and said, "One round of breathing practice and the boy turns mute? If you've got something to say, say it. Keep hemming and hawing and this Daoist really will go to sleep. And if you happen to think better of it in the middle of the night and decide to cry, don't expect me to crawl back up and listen to you grind your teeth."
Fang Yingjie kept his head lowered. Only after a long silence did he finally say, very quietly,
"Mu Qi… isn't my name."
Stillness settled in the boat shed.
Outside, the wind stirred the dead grass with a soft rustle. Something in the fire split with a sharp little pop; sparks leapt and vanished at once into the dark.
Old Daoist Xuan did not even lift his eyes. He only gave a brief snort through his nose.
"Well, of course it isn't," he said at length. "That name of yours was faker than cheap wall paper—thin enough to tear with one poke. You didn't seriously think you were fooling anyone?"
The words were as sharp as ever, but there was not the slightest trace of surprise in them.
Oddly enough, that tone—so plainly one of I knew all along—steadied something in Fang Yingjie instead of tightening it. His fingers closed a little more firmly around the bowl.
"You knew already, Senior?"
"I did," said Old Daoist Xuan. "You're no good at lying, but you insisted on inventing a name anyway. Mu Qi—sounds like half a chopped-off piece of firewood. You're the only one who could say it aloud with a straight face."
At that, he finally lifted his eyelids and cast Fang Yingjie a glance, half amused.
"So? Tonight you're finally willing to throw away that half-burned fake log of a name?"
Heat rose faintly to Fang Yingjie's ears. Yet unlike before, there was no flustered embarrassment in him now. He only answered softly, and after a pause said,
"I… don't bear the surname Mu."
This time Old Daoist Xuan did not interrupt.
The firelight trembled over his eyes, and the habitual haze of drink there flickered with it. The look remained lazy, but it was no longer the look of someone wholly indifferent. It was the look of a man who had at last drawn a little of his attention out from behind the wine and mockery, and was waiting for the rest.
Fang Yingjie tightened his grip on the empty bowl until the bones of his fingers showed white.
After another moment, he finally said the words he had carried all the way to this point.
"My surname is Fang."
When the words left him, the silence in the shed seemed to deepen by another layer.
He himself could not have said why the single word Fang could tighten his chest more cruelly than the worst of the injuries beneath his ribs had done. Perhaps it was because ever since he had fallen from the cliff, rolled and crawled alone through the ravine, crouched in the ruined hall listening to the sounds of men killing one another, and then been hauled, scolded, saved, and dragged north by Old Daoist Xuan, the cord within him that was tied to that name had remained stretched to its thinnest, hardest limit. Now he had finally spoken it aloud. The cord had not snapped—but at last it seemed willing to slacken, if only by half an inch.
The wine gourd in Old Daoist Xuan's arm paused.
Only for the briefest instant. Brief enough that it might have been no more than the wine shifting inside the vessel.
"Which Fang?" he asked.
In a low voice, Fang Yingjie replied, "The Fang of the Fang family."
Old Daoist Xuan did not laugh. Nor did he needle him again. He merely turned the wine gourd once in his palm and, after a while, asked in the same even tone,
"Your name?"
Fang Yingjie swallowed.
"Fang Yingjie."
The moment he said those three words, it felt as though he had laid something immensely heavy down beside the fire. The breath in his chest, which had still been floating uncertainly until now, suddenly sank lower of its own accord. But the weight did not end there. Almost at once, another name rose up behind it.
He pressed his lips together. When he spoke again, his voice was lower still.
"Fang Tieshan… is my father."
That was the sentence that truly carried weight.
The instant it was spoken, the oily, careless looseness that still clung to Old Daoist Xuan's face seemed to lift, noiselessly, by half a degree—as though a draft from outside had brushed it away.
He did not speak at once.
The old pot by the fire gave a soft little burble of heat. The last of the fish broth formed one tiny bubble, then sank again. A cracked beam overhead groaned in the wind. Other than that, there was nothing for a while but the sound of breathing.
After some time, Old Daoist Xuan slowly raised the gourd and took a drink.
He swallowed more slowly than he had swallowed any mouthful before.
Then he let out a quiet, "Oh."
"So he's Fang Tieshan's son."
His tone was neither high nor heavy, and nothing much stirred on its surface. Yet that one light sentence struck Fang Yingjie harder than any of the old man's taunts had done.
Old Daoist Xuan lowered the wine gourd and looked at him.
It was not a long look. But in it, he seemed to measure the boy before him all over again from head to foot: the pale face still stubbornly set, the spine held straight despite his injuries, the hands clutching an empty bowl, the tension in the line of his shoulders after all he had just confessed. After a while he grunted, and the corner of his mouth seemed to twitch.
"No wonder."
"That mule-stubborn temper of yours is unlikable from every angle."
The words were still cutting, but the edge of them had changed. They no longer felt like mockery for its own sake. Hearing them, Fang Yingjie felt the tightness in him ease a little further. He lowered his head and did not answer at once. Then he said quietly,
"Senior, I did not mean to hide it from you."
Old Daoist Xuan rolled his eyes at once.
"Of course you meant to hide it from me," he said irritably. "Otherwise why invent that half-charred firewood name in the first place? So I could use it for kindling?"
He grunted again.
"That said, it wasn't entirely foolish. You had only just crawled back from the edge of death. You recognized no one. It was only natural to keep your guard up. If you'd blurted out your entire ancestry the moment you woke, that would have been the act of someone tired of living."
Then, as though annoyed that this might sound too much like an excuse on the boy's behalf, he added at once,
"Of course, that name was still ugly."
This time, instead of only shrinking with embarrassment, Fang Yingjie felt a small warmth stir in him at the words only natural. After a moment, he lifted his head.
"I did not mean to deceive you, Senior. It's just that… what happened on the cliff—I still have not made sense of it. Who was right and who was wrong, who was real and who was false, I could not tell. After I fell, I knew only two things: that I could not die, and that I could not go on giving my name to others at random."
He paused. His throat felt faintly raw.
"But today, when I heard those words in the tea shed, I understood… there are some things I can't keep shut inside myself any longer."
Old Daoist Xuan did not interrupt. He only sat with the wine gourd in his arms and listened.
Fang Yingjie had never been the sort who could put his thoughts smoothly into words. Whenever he came to something important, there would always be a pause between one sentence and the next while he searched inwardly for the least wrong way to say it. It was the same now. After a silence of several breaths, he continued in a low voice,
"I had been traveling with Senior Martial Sister Xi and the people escorting us. Something went wrong on the road. We ran into an impostor… and into a trap laid to kill. After I fell from the cliff, I did not even know whether I would live. It was only today, hearing that people were still looking for me along the northern road, that I realized… they have most likely not given up."
His fingers tightened on the rim of the bowl as he recalled those words from the tea shed—the shoe at the cliff, the blood by the broken vine. His face turned a shade paler.
"Among those searching for me are elders of my Fang family, men from Mount Hua, and friends who traveled with me." His voice dropped. "If they are still looking, then I can't go on hiding and never show my face."
At the words Senior Martial Sister Xi, Old Daoist Xuan's eyelids lifted slightly.
"Senior Martial Sister Xi?" he asked.
Fang Yingjie nodded.
"She is my fellow disciple from Mount Hua. She is also the daughter of my Sect Leader Martial Uncle."
"I grew up on Mount Hua."
The fire stirred. In its light, the looseness in Old Daoist Xuan's eyes flickered once.
He had been there for the night of blood and fire in the ruined hall. He had seen and heard enough already to know that this child was no nameless waif washed into some mountain ravine by chance. And now, hearing Fang, Fang Tieshan, and Mount Hua laid together at last, he understood most of the matter without needing anything else.
Old Daoist Xuan did not press for the impostor's name, nor did he ask for the full workings of the scheme that had led to all this. He only let out a quiet snort.
"I knew it," he said. "Picking you up was never going to be any simple, good-hearted bit of charity."
He tipped back his head and took another drink.
"Bad enough that you're a Fang. Worse still that you're Fang Tieshan's Fang."
It sounded like a complaint. Yet beneath the complaint there was something else—something light, almost too faint to hear, but real.
Fang Yingjie looked up.
"Senior… did you know my father?"
At once Old Daoist Xuan frowned.
"Know him? Hardly." He sounded displeased. "What, do you think this Daoist has nothing better to do than spend his days chasing all over the world making acquaintances?"
But though that was what he said, the expression on his face was no longer quite as lawless and evasive as usual. After a moment he lifted one hand and gestured vaguely in the air, as if saying even this much cost him unnecessary effort.
"I never properly sat down and drank with Fang Tieshan more than once or twice—if that. But I heard his name often enough. In the martial world, there are not many who truly met him and truly understood what sort of man he was, and those few would never mistake him for an ordinary figure."
He paused very slightly, then added, with equal lightness,
"He had backbone."
Only that.
Once the words were said, he stopped there and did not elaborate further.
But it felt to Fang Yingjie as though something had struck him softly in the chest. Since falling from the cliff he had endured everything by sheer force, rolling on, dragging himself on, enduring in silence. Though he rarely spoke of it, the cord tying him to his father had never once truly loosened. And now, in this broken boat shed, with the smell of fish broth and wine still lingering by the fire, he heard this single, spare judgment from Old Daoist Xuan's mouth, and the ache that had been pressed down in his chest suddenly surged upward.
He lowered his eyes.
"I want to find them."
Old Daoist Xuan made a sound in his throat, as though asking a question to which he already knew the answer.
Fang Yingjie drew a breath and said it more clearly.
"I want to find the parties they were speaking of in the tea shed today. If Brother Xi and the others are still somewhere along the northern road, around Pingsha Market, then I have to go see them. And…" He faltered, and his voice sank without his willing it to. "I also want to know what has happened to my father."
By the end of the sentence, even he himself no longer sounded certain of his own words. He said he wanted to know, but hidden deeper inside him was another thought, one he barely dared let himself touch at all—perhaps Fang Tieshan was still alive. Perhaps he had not died. Perhaps behind everything that had happened—losses, disappearances, ambushes, the fall from the cliff—there was something still unrevealed, something waiting for him to walk back into it piece by piece.
But that thought burned too hot, and carried too much danger. He did not dare voice it.
So what reached his lips was only that one sentence: I want to know.
Old Daoist Xuan looked at him over the wine gourd and said nothing for a long while.
The firelight fell over that slovenly face—crooked beard, loose topknot, even his brows looking somehow disreputable after so much wine and smoke. But now, without the grin, without the jibes, without the easy habit of shoving others back with words, there was a trace in his face wholly different from before: not the stern authority of some lofty elder from a great orthodox sect, nor the dry severity the old men of the Black Tortoise line sometimes wore like ceremonial armor, but something quieter and heavier. It was the look of an old man who had seen too much wind and frost, too many debts of wine, and too many tangled, unspeakable accounts in the martial world—and still had not closed his eyes entirely against any of it.
Under that gaze, Fang Yingjie felt his chest tighten again. After a pause, he said softly,
"I know you dislike trouble, Senior. I also know this life of mine was something you only happened to fish back up on a whim. I should not ask for more. I only…"
He bit his lip. It was plain he had weighed the rest of the sentence over and over before finally forcing it out.
"I only can't make it there alone."
He said it very quietly, as if afraid that any greater weight in the words would make him sound too helpless, too much like a petitioner. Yet that was precisely why the sentence carried such force. It was honest, plain, and without the least effort to make himself sound noble.
Old Daoist Xuan lowered his eyes and gave a low snort.
"At least you have enough self-awareness to know that."
He tucked the wine gourd in against his chest and leaned back against the plank, muttering something under his breath too blurred to catch. After a moment he lifted a hand and pointed idly toward the fire, as though counting a debt he had no wish to acknowledge.
"My original thought was simple enough. I would haul you out from the bottom of the cliff, press your injuries down a bit, nurse you through the valley, and toss you beside the road once you could walk. That would have counted as merit enough for one old Daoist."
He shot Fang Yingjie a look that said plainly: Who knew you'd be so troublesome?
"But look at you. A Fang. Fang Tieshan's Fang, no less. All the way north and you keep drawing bigger and bigger trouble down on my head."
Fang Yingjie's heart tightened. He parted his lips as though to speak, but Old Daoist Xuan had already waved him silent.
"Don't rush to thank me, and don't rush to apologize either," he said. "You're clumsy with words. Your thanks never come in any new pattern, and if I hear too many of them I'll grow sick of the sound."
With that, he hooked a charred stick of wood from the dirt with his foot, pulled it toward him, and casually scratched two crooked lines into the filthy ground among the scales and ashes.
"The tea-shed owner said there were still searchers to the north in the last two days. This morning someone else claimed they'd been seen near Pingsha Market. If those people really have not broken up yet, then they're most likely circling these crossings—road junctions, bends in the waterways, places like that."
As he spoke, he tapped the stick twice, sketching the rough course of the dirt road leading north out of the valley. Beside it, he marked a clumsy shape that looked less like a wharf and more like a crushed cake.
"Here—Pingsha Market. A little east of it is Xiaoping Wharf. If the searchers are truly working the northern road, they're not likely to avoid either place."
Fang Yingjie stared at those crude scratches, and his heart gave a hard thud.
"Senior, do you mean—"
Old Daoist Xuan clicked his tongue in annoyance, as though disgusted that even now the boy required every last word to be spelled out.
"I mean—" He flung the stick to the ground, frowned, and said with extreme reluctance, "I'll see you there."
And because even that sounded too soft to his own ears, he added at once,
"I'll take you only as far as the point where you can meet the people looking for you. Once you've found them, whether you return to Mount Hua, go looking for your father, or go on throwing this little life of yours away elsewhere, none of that is any affair of mine."
He fixed Fang Yingjie with a warning look.
"Let me make it clear now: I'm not choosing your road for you, and I'm not helping you settle any scores. Fang Tieshan's accounts, Mount Hua's accounts, Fang Stronghold's accounts—not one of them has anything to do with me. I'm only—"
He broke off, as if hunting for an explanation that would sound least like kindness and most like exasperation. At last he gave a cold snort.
"I'm only not about to watch you stagger into the northern road half-crippled and get yourself killed outright. If that happened, I'd only have to waste more effort collecting your corpse later. That would be an even greater nuisance."
Fang Yingjie lowered his head and looked at the crooked lines on the dirt. All at once, the tightness that had been lodged inside him loosened for real.
He knew Old Daoist Xuan's mouth still spoke in irritation, but the matter itself had already been taken up.
There had been no grand promise, no ringing declaration of loyalty in the manner of the martial world—only this: a stream of complaints, a piece of charred wood drawing a road in the filth, and then, as lightly as though it were nothing at all, the words I'll see you there.
And precisely because it was done that way, it weighed all the more.
After a long silence, Fang Yingjie said quietly,
"Thank you, Senior."
Old Daoist Xuan glared at once.
"There you go again."
Something moved faintly at the corner of Fang Yingjie's mouth—as though he wanted to smile, and yet only felt his nose sting instead. He lowered his head and forced the heat back down into his throat.
Only when the boy had fallen silent again did Old Daoist Xuan let out a grunt, raise the wine gourd, and take another swallow.
"You'll have cause enough to thank me later," he said. "We leave before dawn tomorrow. Tonight you run that breath through again and smooth it out properly. Don't fall apart into a pot of porridge halfway down the road. Once we reach Pingsha Market, if you really do run into people, you can't very well open your mouth and cough for half a day like I've been dragging a sack of broken bones north just to beg for pity."
Then, as though some afterthought had struck him, he turned his head and looked sidelong at Fang Yingjie.
"And another thing."
Fang Yingjie looked up.
Old Daoist Xuan's brow was knit in open impatience, yet he said the next words anyway.
"You've already touched the edge of this breathing method, so from here on you work at it every morning and every night. Don't go thinking that because you're young—and because you've only just clawed back half a life—you can fling yourself out into the world and start hunting people and trouble at once. If you truly are Fang Tieshan's son, then from here on the trouble around you will only grow worse. Without a foundation, what will you use to bear it?"
As he spoke, his fingertip tapped lightly against the earth, as though indicating the lines he had just drawn—or perhaps something deeper, older, and far less easily spoken.
"This method is nothing remarkable. It's just an old, clumsy thing handed down from years long gone, best suited to helping the young put down roots and continue their breath. Clumsy, yes. Slow, yes. But it builds deeply. In the condition you're in now, don't think about anything else first. Learn it well before you speak of more."
Fang Yingjie stared.
"Handed down from long ago?"
The instant Old Daoist Xuan heard that tone, he knew the boy wanted to press further. His face darkened at once.
"Ask less," he snapped. "It's enough for you to know it can keep you alive. What, if I explain every detail tonight, will you wake tomorrow with two more pounds of flesh on your bones?"
Fang Yingjie was blocked off at once and could only answer in a low voice,
"I'll remember."
That seemed to satisfy Old Daoist Xuan somewhat. He leaned back again and, with one hand, tugged over a half-worn blanket lying at his side, then tossed it toward Fang Yingjie.
"Wrap yourself in that and sleep."
"Tomorrow we go first to Pingsha Market. If we find nothing there, then we ask at Xiaoping Wharf. If those different parties really have not yet dispersed, they're bound to have left some trace."
Having said that, he seemed to consider the matter finished. Hugging the wine gourd against his chest, he closed his eyes and once again became the same indolent, slouching old Daoist who might at any moment fall asleep against a broken plank.
As though the truths laid bare tonight—the real name, Fang Tieshan, the searchers on the northern road, the promise to see him there—had all been no more than a few offhand words, hardly worth speaking.
But Fang Yingjie, clutching the old blanket that still held the warmth of the fire and the faint scent of wine, did not lie down at once.
The firelight shone over the crooked lines scratched in the dirt, over the fish bones and stick of charred wood lying among the ashes, and over the old Daoist opposite him—sharp-tongued, unkempt, afraid of trouble, and yet in the end the man who had taken the road upon himself for Fang Yingjie's sake.
Fang Yingjie lowered his eyes to his own empty hands.
The name Mu Qi would remain here, by the fire.
From this night onward, he was no longer only the little block of wood with no clear past, the sickly stray Old Daoist Xuan had cursed at and dragged northward step by step. He was Fang Yingjie, son of Fang Tieshan, a boy who had survived the cliff—and a boy who, before dawn tomorrow, would follow the road toward Pingsha Market and the river mouths along the northern route, walking one step at a time back toward the life he had lost.
At that thought, the cold tension that had held itself knotted within him since the fall finally eased at its deepest point.
Outside, the night wind still blew. The thin water by the old drainage ditch kept slapping softly at the wood with hollow sounds. Within the shed the fire had sunk low, no more than dim red life buried under ash, like a few stubborn seeds of flame that refused to die out.
Slowly, Fang Yingjie drew the old blanket up over his shoulders, leaned back against the broken plank, and at last closed his eyes.
After this night, the false name would be left by the fire.
And the road north had truly been set.
Poetic Coda
At the valley mouth the grasses gleam in newborn light;
tea smoke drifts out, carrying away the dust of old roads.
One pot of hot broth brings news from afar;
a half-broken life is given one more breath to endure.
By the dragon cliff, blood-stained traces are still being sought;
on the northern road, lamplight yet marks those who have not fallen away.
Most of all, in the deep of night, the hearth burns warm enough
to teach him, from this moment on, to seek his own kin without fear.
(End of Chapter Twenty)