A Matter of Expedience
Zheng Nanlou ran away.
While the men guarding him were not paying attention, he bit through the ropes binding him strand by strand and climbed out of the narrow window of the inn’s woodshed.
That night was very dark; the heavy cloud hung like a dull grey cloth and shut out most of the light.
He did not know the roads and could only run blindly and without aim over unfamiliar wasteland, until somehow he found himself at the edge of a cliff.
He looked back in a panic, and saw the torches of his “pursuers” joined into one line in all that dark, like a scarlet sea rolling steadily toward him.
Wind swept up from below the cliff and stirred the filthy hem of his robe. It suddenly occurred to him that jumping might not be so bad.
To die was a sort of release.
But in that instant a great many things came back to him for no clear reason: how he had crawled out of rubble full of blood and shredded flesh, and how he had gone on living through hunger and cold day after day.
So he asked himself: on what grounds?
On what grounds should he be the one to die?
He had eaten so much bitterness and swallowed so many tears to live to this day.
His life, Zheng Nanlou’s life, ought to be worth rather more than other people’s.
So he drew back the foot that hung over the edge and turned to face those figures closing in.
The torchlight shone into his eyes, and it was as though the brightest and hottest fire in the world had been kindled there.
Zheng Nanlou woke once more on the couch in the rear hall of Yujing Peak.
The nights after feeding the gu were always full of dreams.
The worm inside him, sated with blood, lay quiet and content, and yet it bred countless strange and lurid visions. Some he had truly lived through; others were only groundless fancies.
This last one had happened on the road, back when the people of the Zheng family were sending him to the Hidden Snow Sect.
After he was caught at that cliff, he had finally met the man the Zheng clan called the “Old Ancestor.”
The flickering firelight hid whatever was on his face. All Zheng Nanlou remembered was the way the man looked at him, cold and pitiless, like a merchant weighing up the worth of a piece of goods.
Which was hardly strange, since they had indeed traded him for what they wanted.
The gauze at the bedside stirred slowly in the morning breeze, opening layer upon layer of soft ripples, and Zheng Nanlou came fully awake at last out of those disordered dreams.
In the instant his five senses returned, the first thing he smelled was the familiar scent coming off his own body. Every time after feeding the gu he took on this smell whether he would or not, a smell that belonged to Wangyu alone.
Nightbloom Sleet.
Wangyu had probably been steeped in that fragrance so long that it had worked into his very blood and bone, and so Zheng Nanlou too was made to carry a scent that was like a brand.
He loathed the smell exactly as much as he resisted the feeding.
He would have to go back and wash himself thoroughly, and these clothes would probably have to be thrown out.
Thinking so, he got up from the bed.
When he came out to the outer room, he found Wangyu sitting at the table just as he had the night before, unhurriedly turning the pages of the book in his hands.
That face, clear and smooth as jade, came into view without warning and brought Zheng Nanlou’s steps to an abrupt halt. The loathing for Nightbloom Sleet that had filled him a moment before receded at once, and in its place rose something else entirely, a kind of dependence.
Wangyu must have heard him, but he did not look up, and asked only, slowly, “Awake?”
Zheng Nanlou hurried to bow, his voice quickening without his meaning it to:
“Last night…… Master went to trouble on my account. This disciple thanks you.”
As he straightened he deliberately kept his gaze low, not daring to look at Wangyu’s face again. His eyes could only wander about as though by accident, and drifted at last to the bookshelf behind him.
In one of the upper compartments on the left side of the shelf sat a wholly unremarkable box.
Its outside was truly ordinary; even the carving on it was the most common of key patterns.
Perhaps his gaze had been too obvious, for as Wangyu raised a hand to turn to the next page, the box gave a small “click” and lifted open a crack.
The gap was not wide, but it was enough to see what lay inside.
On a red brocade lining rested a single white wax pellet.
Zheng Nanlou knew perfectly well what it was.
After the love gu was planted in him, Zheng Nanlou had appeared to fall unconscious. In fact his mind had not gone under at once, and had stayed clear for a while.
So he had heard what the gu master said afterward.
Those words were of course not addressed to him, but to a third person who had come in after he passed out.
Few people knew that the Hidden Snow Sect’s Immortal Lord Wangyu, bright as the moon in clear weather, in truth cultivated the Path of No Feeling, which cuts every tie to the dust of the world and casts away desire.
The immortal road is vast, and he had already cultivated to its summit, no more than a hand’s breadth from tribulation and ascension; and then, for reasons no one knew, at this last juncture a crack had appeared in a dao heart that should have been as firm as bedrock.
Wangyu kept his mouth shut on the subject, and no one knew where that crack had come from.
He might not care, but the foundations of the Hidden Snow Sect could not be shaken. A thousand years of the sect’s glory hung upon him; how could such a flaw be allowed to ruin his road to heaven?
And since ancient times there had been another shortcut for ascending by the Path of No Feeling.
Slay the beloved to prove the dao.
But for “slaying the beloved to prove the dao,” what mattered most was the “feeling” the cultivator held toward the one he killed.
The cultivator had to bear the deepest and truest affection for the person by whom he proved his dao. Only if the feeling existed first could the severing of it at the end prove his freedom from feeling before the way of heaven.
But Wangyu, gentle and refined as he seemed, was in truth cold of heart; of the ten thousand threads of feeling in this world, not one could be tied to him, and he appeared fated never to be moved by anyone.
So the gu master used another method.
From the remains of the red worms left over from the raising, aided by his own secret art and matched to the love gu inside Zheng Nanlou, he refined a mother gu.
The mother gu’s purpose was not to create feeling, but to……
Reflect it.
It was like an invisible mirror, able to receive and cast back the love of the one who bore the gu. Whenever that man’s heart surged and the fire of feeling burned him, the mad devotion the love gu had bred would be projected clearly onto the keeper, so that he could experience the same emotions as though they were his own.
And the mother gu’s effect on the keeper was slighter. It would not damage the foundation of his cultivation, nor obstruct his own will, and by the same token it would never make him truly love the one who bore the gu.
In the end the keeper had only to kill the bearer with his own hands, and the mother gu would perish along with him.
As for “slaying the beloved to prove the dao,” what he severed would be a “feeling” he had genuinely felt, so that too would naturally succeed.
What lay in that box was the mother gu prepared for Wangyu.
And Wangyu had never planted it in himself.
There was no telling how long Zheng Nanlou stared at that wooden box; not until Wangyu said his name did he come back to himself.
Wangyu did not seem surprised that he knew of all this; the gaze he turned on him was as clear and level as ever.
“Nanlou.” He said the name again, without a ripple in it. “You need not worry.”
“Planting the gu in you was not my wish, and the feeding is only a matter of expedience.”
“I will certainly find a way to take the love gu out of you.”
Both of Zheng Nanlou’s hands, hidden in his sleeves, clenched at those words, and then slowly opened again, as though something had occurred to him.
He looked up into Wangyu’s eyes and thought that perhaps he…… could try.
He spoke, a tremor in his voice that was hard to catch:
“Is Master truly willing to help me?”
A slight curve appeared at the corner of Wangyu’s mouth, the smile like cold ice just beginning to split, as mild and moving as ever:
“Of course.”
Zheng Nanlou chose his words with care. “There is indeed one matter on which this disciple would ask Master’s guidance.”
Wangyu said nothing, and only nodded slightly for him to go on.
Zheng Nanlou drew a deep breath, and as though making up his mind, took a book out of the storage pouch at his waist.
“This disciple came upon this by chance in the Sunken Sword Abyss. It is called 《The Clear Snow Reflection Art》……”
Then he gave Wangyu a brief account of how he had come by the manual, though he still left out certain key details, saying only that while he was tending Xie Heng’s wounds he had noticed something odd about the deep pool, and so had come upon this opportunity by accident.
“This disciple only saw that the art might undo the trouble of the love gu inside me, and for a moment my mind was clouded, so I did not tell Master at once.”
Wangyu listened in silence throughout, not a trace of expression changing on his face; only those deep eyes rested quietly on the man before him, and it made what little confidence Zheng Nanlou had gathered drain quickly away, so that the more he said the guiltier he felt.
When he had finished he waited a long while before Wangyu’s voice came.
“It seems I was wrong,” he said suddenly. “You appear to have some connection with the Sunken Sword Abyss, or rather, with the Xie clan.”
“Since this manual appeared in your hands of itself, that counts as the will of heaven, and it should naturally be yours.”
At those words Zheng Nanlou looked up in delight:
“Master……”
Wangyu inclined his head slightly, as though in answer:
“If it can truly help you cultivate again and set foot on the path once more, then so much the better.”
With that, Zheng Nanlou grew bolder. Holding 《The Clear Snow Reflection Art》, which only now seemed truly to be his, he pressed eagerly up to the table and asked one question after another, pointing at the obscure passages.
Wangyu answered each of them patiently, and always put his finger exactly on the crux.
With his guidance, the places that had racked Zheng Nanlou’s brains came apart cleanly one after another.
In no more than four hours Zheng Nanlou could use the art to condense a crystal of ice in his palm.
“Master! I did it!”
He cried it out in excitement, his eyes stinging, close to spilling over again.
He cupped that momentous crystal and held it out before Wangyu like a treasure being presented.
Wangyu took in the whole picture of him, and reached out to stroke the top of his head.
In those eyes that always held cool snow, something passed like a trick of the light, the very faintest gentle glimmer.
He smiled, and the smile soaked into his voice, low and unhurried, like a stretch of early sun in winter, carrying a steady warmth that set a person at ease, and it fell clearly into Zheng Nanlou’s ears.
“You have already done very well,” he said.