Don’t Like You
Zheng Nanlou looked down at the hand held out in front of him.
From the long wrist to the slight rise of the wristbone, and the bones of palm and finger joined to it, every line ran so smoothly that it might have been carefully carved, without any of the soft curves an ordinary hand ought to have, or those small living flaws that come of years of use.
Exactly like Wangyu himself, carrying an inhuman quality that had cast off everything of the mortal world, hard and cold and flawless.
And still Zheng Nanlou found it beautiful, more beautiful than anything he knew of.
Like a shaft of unreal moonlight fallen into the muddy swamp where he stood, with no telling whether it was real or not.
Who, in his hardest and most desperate days, has not longed for a hand held out to him like that?
Zheng Nanlou could not help wondering what things might have looked like if this hand had come earlier, and earlier still.
Unfortunately he could not picture it.
Because he had never known such a thing.
So, as though to make up for it, he took the hand without the least hesitation, as though gripping that shaft of moonlight.
In the instant their palms met, everything around them melted away like a burning candle and went past like a streak of flying light.
In the blink of an eye the two of them had gone from the solemn great hall of the Hidden Snow Sect to the door of Zheng Nanlou’s quarters on Yujing Peak.
Wangyu had not given those people the slightest chance to stop them.
The abruptness of the spell left Zheng Nanlou’s chest tight for a moment; not until the “rustling” of trembling leaves fell into his ears again could he manage to breathe out, and because he did it too fast he could not help coughing twice.
By the time he came back to himself, Wangyu had let go of his hand.
“Pay all that no mind. I will tell my senior, the sect leader, that it was I who had you practice ‘The Clear Snow Reflection Art.’”
Zheng Nanlou took a while to get his ragged breathing in order. He did not lift his head, but looked down at the blood on his own hands, long since dried to brown, and then said, for no clear reason:
“Master should not have come today.”
The wind lifted a few strands of hair clotted at his forehead and brushed the corner of his mouth, pressed thin and gone slightly pale.
Wangyu showed nothing at the words, and only asked back:
“And if I had not come, what would you have done?”
“There would…… there would have been some way……”
Zheng Nanlou mumbled it without much conviction.
But he knew perfectly well that he had no way at all, and that he needed Wangyu’s help.
He was only being difficult, it seemed.
“Nanlou.” Wangyu said it without any rise or fall in his voice, and yet that gaze seemed to pass straight through his lowered head and see, beneath the calm shell he strained to hold up, a soul cowering in a great emptiness.
“What is it that you are afraid of?”
Zheng Nanlou had never thought himself capable of fear.
In the mud-soaked life he had lived until now, “fear” was something he had thrown away very early on, and he had believed he had long forgotten the feeling.
And then, in a moment of “gladness” that felt like surviving a disaster, he had picked it back up again.
“Many years ago, in Huaizhou, on a street not far from the lane where I lived, there was a stray dog.”
“It was the fiercest dog I have ever seen. If anyone came near, it would bark itself wild at them. If someone beat it with a stick or threw stones at it, it would not run; it would bite back savagely, as though it had no fear of dying.”
“After a time no one on the whole street dared provoke it.”
“Until a new hand came to work at the bun shop across the way. For whatever reason, that man was very fond of the stray. He would shield it whenever anyone meant to beat it, and he fed it meat buns on the sly.”
“At first the dog was careful. It would only eat the buns he set out on the ground after he had walked away.”
“But as time went on it stopped minding when he came close, and even grew close to him. Every time it saw him, it would wag its tail for all it was worth.”
At that point Zheng Nanlou stopped, his head sinking lower, thinking who knew what.
But Wangyu made no sound and did not press him, only stood before him in silence, as though waiting for him to go on.
It was some time before Zheng Nanlou’s voice came again.
“Then one day the dog disappeared from the street.”
“But it had always been so fierce that no one nearby liked it, so no one cared where it had gone.”
“But I knew.”
“I saw it under the eaves of the kitchen in the bun shop’s back courtyard.”
“That man even pointed it out to me on purpose, and told me how good meat cured that way would taste.”
Silence again, with nothing at the ear but the small sounds of the wind.
Zheng Nanlou did not dare raise his head. He knew that once he had looked at Wangyu, none of this could be said at all.
He waited a long while before Wangyu asked him:
“Are you afraid of becoming that dog?”
It took Zheng Nanlou a long effort to force out any sound at all:
“I…… I only feel…… feel that it makes no sense. There is no need whatsoever for Master to…… to do this…… when you……”
Wangyu cut off the words, which had turned suddenly halting, and sighed lightly.
“Nanlou, why must you be so stubborn.”
He reached out, set his fingertips against Zheng Nanlou’s jaw and made him lift his head.
A face like a bright moon among clouds forced its way into his sight, and every word knotted in his chest that he had so badly wanted out melted silently away inside him the moment he saw the man clearly.
He could not bring out another word.
He could only hear Wangyu’s voice, as though it fell from somewhere very high:
“You know perfectly well that you carry the love gu, and that so long as you see me, so long as you look at this face, you cannot even get out the words ‘I don’t like you.’ Is that not so?”
“Something that could let you live a little better. Why will you not take hold of it?”
“You will have to learn to accept these things.”
Why indeed?
Zheng Nanlou asked himself the same, and the reasons that had hung on the tip of his tongue a moment ago were now entirely forgotten.
The hand traveled along the side of his face to the shell of his ear, as though soothing him, or as though…… warning him.
“So, Nanlou, how is it that you want me to treat you now?”
Zheng Nanlou looked into those eyes like morning mist, and the heart in his chest beat louder and louder, nearly splitting his eardrums.
“I want Master to be good to me, the way you were just now,” he said blankly.
The hand resting at his ear finally stroked, once, very lightly and very slowly.
As Zheng Nanlou was walking toward his quarters, Wangyu called him back.
“If the sect leader summons you again, you need not go, nor need you take part in the sect tournament as he wishes.”
Zheng Nanlou’s step halted, and he turned to look at him:
“But……”
“Nanlou.” Wangyu stopped the hesitation before it was fully spoken. “Whether you believe it or not, the planting of the love gu in you……”
He paused, his gaze resting on Zheng Nanlou’s rather blank face.
“Was truly not my wish.”
“That day in the rear hall…… when we first met, I too was only then learning that they had come up with such a method.”
He turned his head and looked off at the dim darkness of the night sky in the distance, as though his gaze had settled on some point in nothingness.
“So I sincerely do want to find a way of taking the love gu out of you.”
“After all, ascension is my own affair, and the damage to my dao heart has…… nothing to do with you.”
“I will not kill you.”
The evening wind scattered the last of his words and left a wordless silence.
“That jar of salve I gave you works on old injuries as well. You should use it.”
Zheng Nanlou went on searching the top floor of the library pavilion for another four or five days, and did in fact turn up, in a yellowed and battered old text, what might be a way of suppressing the worm.
He hurriedly set that page down by an art and went straight back to Yujing Peak to see Wangyu.
Since that conversation outside his quarters he had deliberately kept out of his master’s way these past days. Only for this slender thread of a clue, on which his life hung, did he steel himself and set foot in the main hall again.
The main hall was as empty and cold as ever. Wangyu sat upright within it and raised his eyes at the sound, still wearing that mild, faint, accommodating smile that seemed able to contain all things, and his eyes were still and unrippled, with nothing left in them of the man who had forced Zheng Nanlou’s head up that day.
“This disciple greets his master.”
Zheng Nanlou bowed low, respectful in posture, pressing down whatever lay at the bottom of his heart and leaving only calm on the surface.
“This disciple begs Master’s leave to go to Linzhou.”
That said, he condensed the page he had copied out of his spiritual sense and sent it into Wangyu’s hand.
And at the same time he added:
“This old text records that in the mountains of Linzhou there is an eyeless people who have always lived apart from others, and who open a market along the river only on the fourteenth of each month, which is called the ‘blind market.’”
“They are born without eyes, their sense of smell far exceeds an ordinary person’s, and they excel above all at the making of incense.”
“The incense they make called ‘Formless’ is said to have a remarkable power to suppress the gu of the southern frontier.”
As he spoke he grew uneasy, and his voice dropped along with it.
“I do not know whether such incense has any effect on the love gu, but this disciple would still like to go to that blind market and inquire.”
“At least…… to try.”
Wangyu’s gaze rested on the page a long time without moving, as though he were studying what was written there word by word, his expression so intent that it was almost severe.
In the hall there was nothing left but Zheng Nanlou’s breathing, still somewhat quick from having only just settled.
At length Wangyu raised his head from the page and looked again at the disciple standing below with his head bowed.
His voice was as level as ever, and after that long silence it sounded especially clear and steady.
“Linzhou……”
He paused slightly, drawing the last of it out, and Zheng Nanlou’s heart hung upon the sound; he could not help biting his lower lip.
“I will go with you,” he said.