“Down the mountain?”
Master Ziyun looked at the girl in surprise.
Fengxue nodded and repeated, “I want to go down the mountain to travel.”
Once a Qingming Mountain disciple’s cultivation had reached a certain level, they could choose to take up an ordination certificate and go wandering below. Whether staying in the world or leaving it behind, both were forms of cultivation.
But the mortal world was full of monsters and ghosts.
Demons and vicious spirits were savage and bloodthirsty, a disciple whose training fell short, however full of passion, was nothing but meat delivered right to their door.
So if a disciple wished to go down the mountain, they first had to complete one exorcism or demon-slaying commission alone, to prove they’d achieved enough to hold their own.
Fengxue could read the disapproval in Master Ziyun’s eyes.
Last night, when Xu Xiawu heard she wanted to go down the mountain, he hadn’t approved either.
The young man’s brow had furrowed deeper. “Down the mountain? You?”
Fengxue said, “Down the mountain. Me.”
Xu Xiawu drew a deep breath of the cool night air on the mountain and slowly let it out, saying in a low voice, “Do you understand that the vicious ghosts and great monsters of the mortal world are nothing like the little skirmishes you have with fellow disciples up here?”
Fengxue nodded again, her expression calm. “I know.”
Xu Xiawu rolled up his sleeve, on his pale arm was a long wound. The flesh around it was raw and inflamed, patches of it darkened, some parts rotting, giving off a faint stench of decay.
Fengxue said, “Senior Brother ran into a corpse demon?”
Xu Xiawu nodded, pulling his sleeve back down. “I go down the mountain often. One careless moment and I get hurt too. Things down there keep getting worse, not just man-eating monsters and vicious ghosts, but war and banditry as well. A place of peace like this mountain is getting rarer by the year.”
Fengxue said, “I still want to go down.”
Xu Xiawu had looked at her for a while, seen the resolve in her eyes that wouldn’t budge easily, snorted coldly, and swept his sleeve as he left.
To this day, he hadn’t said another word to Fengxue since.
Fengxue looked at Master Ziyun and said, “So, I’d like to take on an exorcism or demon-slaying commission.”
Master Ziyun was a kind-faced Daoist nun with silvering hair who oversaw the disciples’ many affairs.
Hearing Fengxue’s words, she asked gently, “Why do you suddenly want to go down the mountain? Things haven’t been good down there these past years, better to stay up here.”
She smiled. “I heard you gave those two little Yi boys a beating last night. They won’t dare bother you again anytime soon.”
Master Ziyun had heard a little about the love and rivalry among the younger disciples, and assumed Fengxue had simply grown tired of it all, or was nursing some heartbreak, and that was why she’d suddenly taken this notion to leave the mountain.
But the world below was so dangerous, of the disciples who went down each year, barely half came back whole. Some simply grew attached to the pleasures of the mortal world, but others never came back at all.
Thinking of how modest Fengxue’s skill in the arts still was, Master Ziyun couldn’t help worrying, and tried gently to hold her back. “You haven’t finished mastering your skills yet. Better to stay on the mountain a while longer.”
Fengxue said, “I can complete an exorcism or demon-slaying commission on my own.”
Master Ziyun shook her head and walked behind the long desk, where several wooden boxes sat, each holding letters bearing official seals.
When something strange happened in the mortal world that the local authorities couldn’t handle, they would turn to nearby temples and Daoist monasteries for help, to those who practiced cultivation.
The requests that reached Qingming Mountain weren’t only the ones sent directly by nearby offices, either.
If other temples and monasteries also couldn’t deal with a monster or ghost, the matter would be passed further up the chain, all the way to Qingming Mountain, Wanfa Temple, or the Bureau of Suppression.
Fengxue glanced over the desk. On Master Ziyun’s left were requests for help sent in from nearby towns and cities, usually small matters, an uneasy household, a haunted grave, a corpse stirring on the seventh day after death, piled loosely in a basket. On her right were requests passed up through several tiers already, concerning great monsters, heretical demons, vicious ghosts, most of them had already claimed a number of lives.
Master Ziyun sat between the two, choosing from both sides. After a moment, she picked up a letter from the box on the right and said, “Your fourth senior brother went down the mountain half a month ago to deal with a corpse demon haunting Green Mountain Road. He was clawed and the wound became infected with corpse qi, he has to scrape away the rotting flesh every day and wash it with mountain spring water. It’ll take half a year of enduring that agony before he heals. Did you know that?”
Fengxue made a small sound of agreement. “I saw Senior Brother’s wound last night.”
Master Ziyun went on, “Your senior brother is counted among the most outstanding of the younger generation on this mountain, talismans, techniques, astrology, swordsmanship, all first-rate. That corpse demon wasn’t even especially powerful, but one moment of carelessness left him with corpse qi in his system, and now he must bear the pain of scraping his own flesh, day after day.”
She paused, gazing at the girl with soft eyes, hoping to see her reconsider in the face of such difficulty.
Instead Fengxue suddenly asked, “Master Ziyun, if someone were infected with demonic qi, is there any way to cure it?”
Ziyun blinked, faintly startled, and said, “Demonic qi is a good deal more troublesome than corpse qi, but there are ways. If it hasn’t been more than the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, cutting off the affected part directly, a hand, a foot, wherever it took hold, severing it clean… that might solve it.”
Fengxue sighed inwardly.
Master Ziyun asked, surprised, “Why the sudden worry about that? Could it be Ten-Li Street…” She thought of the more than ten young disciples who had died there, a shadow of sorrow crossing her face, and said gently, to reassure her, “Don’t worry. You haven’t been infected with demonic qi.”
Fengxue inclined her head. “Master, please, give the commission to me.”
Master Ziyun still held onto the letter, offering a few more words to try to dissuade Fengxue, but seeing her resolve unmoved, she couldn’t help turning stern.
“This commission I’m holding has already claimed the lives of more than ten fellow cultivators, and over a hundred civilians. The victims were all found with heads severed from their bodies, in a wretched state. Are you truly determined to do this?”
Fengxue nodded.
Master Ziyun studied her sternly for a moment, then let out a long sigh, the forced severity draining away, replaced by helplessness.
“I can’t agree to this. I can’t let you go throw your life away. Little Xue, the mortal world is in turmoil, monsters and ghosts spreading disaster, human life worth no more than straw, stay on the mountain. Qingming Mountain can keep you safe your whole life.”
Fengxue clenched her palm and said quietly, “The mortal world is in turmoil, that’s exactly why I want to go down. I want to go home and see it for myself.”
Master Ziyun paused, faintly startled, then sighed again. “I see. Most children on this mountain are orphans with nowhere else to go, I’d forgotten. You’re not the same as the rest of us, after all.”
She set the letter back in the box on the right, and picked up one instead from the box on the left, saying, “There’s a household not far off, in Ningzhen, that dreams of their deceased elder master weeping in his sleep. Doesn’t sound like anything dangerous, could be a forgotten ancestral offering, or something wrong with the family grave.”
A matter this small hardly required calling on Qingming Mountain at all, any minor practitioner with a bit of knowledge of the mystic arts could handle it properly.
Fengxue understood, this was Master Ziyun bending the rules a little for her sake.
She took the thin letter and offered her sincere thanks.
Master Ziyun, like a worried mother, carefully cautioned her. “I know how stubborn and headstrong you are. If it’s just sparring with fellow disciples on the mountain, that’s one thing. But when it comes to fighting monsters, ghosts, and heretical cultivators out there, pure stubbornness alone won’t serve you well. Remember, you only have one life. If you run into real trouble, do your best, but don’t go risking your life for it.”
Fengxue nodded and agreed.
Master Ziyun added, “Off you go, then. Once you’ve handled it, come back to me for your ordination certificate and token.”
She sat by the desk, a dim lamp beside her, its light falling over her graying hair.
“Come home soon.”
Fengxue bowed in farewell and had just turned toward the door when she heard, behind her, a murmur that sounded almost like a sigh.
“I haven’t been home in a long time myself. I wonder if the osmanthus tree by our gate is still standing.”
Fengxue turned back and asked, “Master, shall I go take a look on my way?”
Master Ziyun smiled kindly and said, “No need.”
Shaking osmanthus blossoms down together with her little sister, helping her mother carry out the freshly steamed osmanthus cake… the dappled shadow of the osmanthus tree on a moonlit night, the sweet fragrance of its blossoms, she remembered it all so clearly, and yet it had all happened over a hundred years ago now.
Before leaving, Fengxue exchanged most of the money she carried for talismans and pills.
The talismans up on the mountain were more powerful and much cheaper, and the pills were refined in-house as well, disciples who wanted to pay for them got a far better deal than buying the same things below the mountain.
She could also have used the peachwood token Master Lingyun had given her to get them for free.
But she didn’t care to do that.
She didn’t want to rely on someone else’s favor. Perhaps that would make things easier, she’d known that in her past life too, but she simply didn’t like doing it.
Since her skill with techniques was poor and she couldn’t draw talismans well herself, she made sure to prepare thoroughly on the mountain, tucking talismans into her cloth bundle, pills into her gourd, and borrowing a few basic Daoist texts along with a copy of the ‘Record of Cloud-Wandering’.
Last of all, she handed in that dog hide packed full of trapped, vengeful souls.
Her deliverance chant could only give the ghosts a little peace, if they were to be truly released and delivered, it would take an elder of much deeper cultivation burning incense and chanting on their behalf.
With all that done, Fengxue stood on the mountain path, fed the birds one last time, tossed the spirit fruit still in her hand out into the boundless mist, and turned to walk cleanly down the mountain road.
Once below, she looked back at the immortal mountain rising like a peak of cloud.
Fengxue bent low and bowed, deeply, for a long moment.
”””
After Fengxue left, the little cabin where she normally lived received a few visitors.
“Is this where Sister Fengxue lives?”
The little girl looked left and right, calling out brightly, “Sister Fengxue, pretty big sister, we brought you chili-filled buns!”
The disciple escorting them said with a smile, “She’s probably off practicing her sword. Senior Sister Chi is always diligent like that.”
The moment Ah Yao heard Fengxue wasn’t there, he emerged from behind a tree and looked curiously around. The wooden cabin wasn’t large, much like the little huts mountain hunters used to shelter in overnight, plain and simple, the wooden door shut tight, the packed-earth yard outside swept clean. On the roof, several birds stood in a neat row, tilting their heads to study them with curiosity.
“Fellow Cultivator Chi isn’t here?” He felt relieved, if he were honest.
Lu Yuan asked, “Practicing her sword this early?”
The escorting disciple nodded. “Senior Sister Chi is always like this.”
Her talent wasn’t much, so all she could do was practice the sword, and she threw herself into it with unusual dedication.
The pity of it was that no matter how hard she practiced, her raw talent set a ceiling on what she could ever achieve.
But he couldn’t very well explain that to outsiders, so he just gave a small smile.
Lu Yuan’s expression showed a hint of admiration. “No wonder her skill is so good, she skinned that thing so fast, and cut down a heretical cultivator on top of it!”
The disciple’s eyes went wide. “What?”
Ah Yao said, astonished, “You didn’t know? Fellow Cultivator Chi killed a heretical cultivator using beast-making techniques yesterday, no, wait, it was actually two! Saved a whole bunch of people, too!”
The disciple looked equally shocked. “Something like that happened? Senior Sister Chi’s sword… can slay heretical cultivators?”
Lu Yuan nodded earnestly.
Ah Yao added, pale-faced, “Not just slay heretical cultivators, skinning, beheading, all of it, done with real expertise.”
The disciple said hesitantly, “But everyone always says… they say Senior Sister Chi’s sword is just an ordinary mortal blade, that it can only kill bandits, and can’t touch monsters.”
Ah Yao said, “That’s nonsense!”
Ye Xingyue chimed in, “Nonsense, total nonsense! Sister Fengxue is amazing!”
Lu Yuan said, matter-of-fact and serious, “We saw it with our own eyes. She slew a heretical cultivator, delivered restless souls to peace, and held her own fighting techniques against another, brave and righteous [1]admirably courageous and just jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2991345_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2991345_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, truly impressive.”
The disciple looked a little embarrassed, laughing sheepishly. “So Senior Sister Chi really is that skilled? Guess what everyone says isn’t necessarily true. I should ask her to teach me some swordsmanship sometime.”
Privately, he thought to himself, maybe what she’d said about leading someone out of the Demon Den really had been true after all.
Ye Xingyue said, “Sister Fengxue also beat up two bad guys right at the mountain gate!”
Ah Yao said, “Those were probably Qingming Mountain disciples too, not actual bad guys.”
Ye Xingyue snorted, pouting. “They started a fight without even checking who was right or wrong, and called us country bumpkins, how is that not being bad guys? Senior Brother, don’t you think so? Senior Brother?”
The little girl turned her head this way and that, looking around, but couldn’t find her senior brother anywhere.
Just as she was starting to wonder, a lazy, clear laugh drifted down from above.
She tilted her small head back and saw the youth in red sitting on the roof, teasing the two gray sparrows in his hands.
“Senior Brother!” Ye Xingyue stamped her foot. “Are you a monkey or something, jumping around everywhere?”
Ye Pengzhou arched his striking brows, raising a finger to his lips. “Shh, I’m having a chat with the birds.”
Ye Xingyue asked, curious. “What are the birds saying?”
Ye Pengzhou lifted a hand and let the two birds fly up, then land again on his shoulder. Propping his chin on one hand, he glanced toward that patch of snow-white shadow behind the trees and said with a smile, “The birds say the little Immortal Maiden’s gone down the mountain, and she won’t be coming back.”
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