You Will Have Better
If one really examined the matter, Wangyu and Lu Zhuobai were not much alike.
The difference between the two of them was not merely in their faces; far more of it lay in that quality which the turning of a glance gives away without meaning to.
Beside Lu Zhuobai’s deliberate imitation, which always let slip some unmistakable warmth of the living in the fall of his lashes or the blink of his eyes, Wangyu seemed, from the inside out, to be nothing but……
A bone-deep, deathly stillness.
As he stood there looking at Zheng Nanlou, the outer corners of his eyes dipped a little and the corners of his mouth lifted slightly, composing what was to all appearances a mild and gentle smile.
At first sight one might find it clear and approachable, but look at it long enough and one would notice that the warmth never soaked as far as his eyes.
As though someone had carved a smiling mask with great care and then frozen it in ice: gentle to look upon, and never melting.
Most of all those eyes, where beneath the fog-like grey lay a blank vastness that kept nothing at all.
He was cold snow that never melted the year round, fit only to rest on the summit of a lone peak beyond the clouds, destined never to fall into anyone’s palm.
At the sight of him Zheng Nanlou had said “Master” by reflex, though he himself was slow to come back to his senses.
Not until Wangyu came closer, and the familiar soft scent of “Nightbloom Sleet” drove into his nose, did he start as though out of a dream and try to rise and bow.
But Wangyu put out a hand and pressed his shoulder down.
He raised his head and met Wangyu’s lowered gaze. That look seemed to come down from somewhere very high, too far off to see clearly.
“There is no need,” Wangyu said.
The place was genuinely cold, and the white mist of his breath curled between them. The slanting daylight fell across it like a crumpled length of gauze, so that the man before him seemed to blur a little further.
Inside that “dream,” as fragile as glass, Wangyu’s hand traveled on along the line of his shoulder to his neck.
Tu Xiao had left several very deep marks there, and they were still throbbing, burning as though a branding iron had been laid on them.
But the moment those fingertips, like white jade, touched him lightly, Zheng Nanlou felt a clear, cold spiritual energy pour straight into his throat, like the coolest, clearest mountain stream washing down, and it rinsed that scalding pain away in an instant.
The hand rested at his neck only a moment before it withdrew, so quickly it might have been a hopeless fancy.
Zheng Nanlou raised his own hand at once, and caught only a thread of dispersing cold.
He was somewhat startled. “Master, you…… this spiritual energy……”
Wangyu only said, “The interdiction of this Sunken Sword Abyss has no effect on me.”
The lighter he made of it, the more it showed the vast, unbridgeable gulf between Zheng Nanlou and himself.
Zheng Nanlou’s fingertips had already dug deep into his own palm, but the restlessness of the love gu in his chest could not be kept from reaching his face. It forced the corner of his mouth into a curve close to reverence, and even drove the corners of his eyes red, as though that brief nearness, light as a dragonfly skimming water, truly had stirred him past bearing.
And still he had to press his lips together, arrange himself into a picture of meek courtesy, and say carefully:
“Thank you, Master.”
But Wangyu’s gaze did not linger the least fraction over this display. He looked away as though he had noticed nothing at all, and the plain white hem of his robe swept past in front of him, raising a faint cold draft.
In the instant that draft touched his face, Zheng Nanlou’s taut back went slack.
He let out a soundless breath.
Wangyu walked straight over to where Tu Xiao lay at his last gasp.
He looked down at him a while, then suddenly raised a hand; a bright white spiritual energy like moonlight flared at his fingertips and drove at once into the space between Tu Xiao’s brows.
Tu Xiao, whose breath had been no more than a thread, loosed a scream that tore at the heart and lungs, his whole body shaking violently beyond his control. Both hands clawed wildly at the ground, and he did not even notice when his nails bent back.
His eyes opened wider and wider, the eyeballs seeming about to burst from their sockets, until at last two lines of bloody tears seeped out of them.
As the spirit light grew brighter, Tu Xiao’s limbs went suddenly rigid, then convulsed twice, and he collapsed entirely onto the ground and moved no more.
Wangyu drew back his hand, and as the wide sleeve fell his bearing was as dignified and refined as ever, as though nothing at all had happened.
Standing to one side, Zheng Nanlou saw of course that he had been searching Tu Xiao’s memories, and asked cautiously:
“Does Master now know who he was?”
Wangyu turned his head at that, the moon-white light in his eyes not yet faded, like two flickering fireflies, and it softened Zheng Nanlou’s mind all over again.
He spoke, but did not answer the question directly:
“Not long after your party set out that day, the sect received word from other schools. Their letters said that the disciples they had sent toward the Thousand Peaks secret realm had gone silent as soon as they entered the Sunken Sword Abyss, and they wished to join with our sect in the search.”
“When I read them the matter struck me as strange, and I thought suddenly of the theft from the Xie clan of Jiangzhou a year ago. It seemed to me the two might be connected, so I came on ahead.”
“As it turns out, my guess was not wrong.”
In a few brief sentences Wangyu laid out the whole course of the affair.
Tu Xiao and Tu Yin, a pair of demonic cultivator brothers, had a year ago stolen by some means an incomplete ancient text from the Xie clan’s treasury. The book recorded that one of the Xie ancestors had, at the end of his life, sealed his own destined artifact, refined over a hundred years, at the far end of the Sunken Sword Abyss.
The two of them found their way here, only to discover that the seal could be opened by the Xie bloodline alone. The Xie clan of Jiangzhou lay ten thousand li off, so they set their sights on Xie Heng of the Hidden Snow Sect and conceived the notion of waylaying him and carrying him away.
To lure Xie Heng into the trap, the pair put out false word that the Thousand Peaks secret realm was about to open. That realm’s properties suited Xie Heng extremely well, so he was certain to come, and the road to it had to pass through the Sunken Sword Abyss. Add to that the abyss’s own interdiction, which happened to suppress a cultivator’s power, and it was a perfect place for an ambush.
But the brothers feared their own bodies alone would not be enough to subdue an opponent, so by a heretical secret art they smelted together the remains of rotting corpses and made a monstrous shell. The thing could kill passing cultivators in their stead, and its huge bulk could hide the pair’s whereabouts as well.
But the Sunken Sword Abyss held neither the spiritual energy of heaven and earth nor any dark and baleful miasma. To keep themselves alive, the Tu brothers could only feed on the flesh and blood of the cultivators who came through.
Hence the horror Zheng Nanlou had seen.
Wangyu reached out and patted the top of his head twice, his palm warm, the motion unhurried.
“You saw that there was a mechanism in that passage aimed at outsiders, and contrived to drag Tu Yin into it while he was off his guard. That was well done.”
His voice had not changed much; only the ends of the words lifted a little, and hearing it made Zheng Nanlou’s ears grow warm.
“Only,” he said, drawing the hand back again, “it was still rather reckless.”
“If I had not come in time, what would you have done?”
Zheng Nanlou lowered his head, his voice slightly muffled:
“This disciple…… could not think that far ahead. If I could kill one, then one was killed.”
“That is how I have always lived.”
He could not help tightening his grip on the sword, and yet the cold coming off it did not abate in the least; more blood welled out of his palm, and still he stubbornly refused to let go.
Wangyu’s gaze moved slowly downward and settled on the blade, nearly steeped red with blood.
He saw what Zheng Nanlou was thinking, and spoke nonetheless:
“This sword does not belong to you.”
Zheng Nanlou shuddered all over, and still would not lift his head:
“Was it not said that only the Xie bloodline could go in? But it was I. I walked in, I brought it out, and so it ought to be mine.”
“And the mechanism in that passage did not harm me either. Perhaps……”
“Nanlou.”
Wangyu cut him off.
“You were able to enter because that outer robe you are wearing was made specially by the Xie family; it is steeped in Xie Heng’s presence and stained with his blood. The mechanisms of the Sunken Sword Abyss are old, after all. It merely mistook you for Xie Heng.”
“If it truly took you for its master, why would it have cut open your hand?”
Zheng Nanlou raised his head and looked into Wangyu’s eyes at last. There was plainly not a trace of feeling to be found in them, and even so, as though he had been scalded, his heart clenched.
“This disciple…… was wrong,” he said in a daze.
But deep down a faint voice objected stubbornly:
You were not wrong.
Only the voice was as thin as a mosquito’s whine, and it was snuffed out before it could say anything more.
By the time Zheng Nanlou came back to himself, he had already raised his arms and was holding the long sword out before Wangyu.
“Then I ask Master to give this sword…… to its true owner.”
Even as he said it, a tear rolled from his eye without warning and struck the blade with the faintest “tap,” then split in two along the ridge of the sword and vanished at last into the dust beneath his feet.
Perhaps Wangyu did not see that tear; perhaps he saw it and simply did not care. He did not move. A flash of spirit light passed, and the sword lifted from Zheng Nanlou’s palm, turned into a streak of light and disappeared into his sleeve.
“Now come with me and find the others.”
His voice was as level as ever, as though nothing of what had just passed had happened at all.
Zheng Nanlou did not answer, only rose in silence with his head down; and then the light before him dimmed, and something warm brushed lightly against his cheek.
It took him a moment to realize what it was: the pad of Wangyu’s finger, wiping away the tear that had not yet dried on his face.
Through the rich epiphyllum fragrance spreading slowly around them, he heard Wangyu’s voice, like a sigh.
“What is there to cry about,” he said.
“You will have better.”