Seeking Passage Across the Wuchuan
Linzhou was a place of both mountains and water.
A river called the “Wuchuan” cut across the whole province from west to east, and its water was not the clear green of ordinary rivers but a heavier blue-black. Toward evening especially, as the light of the sky failed, it looked deeper and more like thick ink, as though what flowed there were not water at all, but the night itself spreading down from the ninth heaven.
The name “Wuchuan” came from the local dialect, and meant “the river at dusk.”
The spirit boat flew over several ranges of mountains, and from far off one could see a ribbon of inky jade unrolling among the clouds and mist.
Once at the Wuchuan, one had reached the country of mortals.
Wangyu put the spirit boat away at once and came down from the clouds with Zheng Nanlou onto the soil of Linzhou.
The two of them first used an art to draw in their presence and dressed as ordinary travelers before walking on foot toward the city.
The whole way Zheng Nanlou stayed obediently at Wangyu’s side, exactly half a step behind, playing the attendant and not daring to overstep in the smallest thing.
Even now he did not know why his master had insisted on coming to Linzhou with him. The blind market was mysterious, but hardly dangerous, and surely he had not come out expressly to sightsee with him.
Presumably his master had reasons of his own.
When they first came into the city, Zheng Nanlou could still keep his attention fixed on the drifting white corner of the robe ahead of him; but the further they went into the crowds, the more his eyes came alive beyond his control.
Since entering the Hidden Snow Sect he had not been anywhere so full of human life in a very long time.
The Hidden Snow Sect was full of people too, of course, but ever since they took up cultivation these people seemed to have been thrown into a furnace and cast anew, so that they could no longer speak like human beings; day after day it was “senior brother” from one and “junior brother” from another, everything weighed for what was true and what was false and what was meant underneath. Where was the human life in that?
There was a small market town at the foot of the sect’s mountain, but the place existed only because of the Hidden Snow Sect; most of those who came and went were merchants doing business with cultivators, hawking artifacts and spirit fruits, nothing amusing and nothing good to eat. It was extremely dull.
How could it compare with a place where mortals truly gathered?
Having lost his parents young, Zheng Nanlou was steadier and more grown than others of his age; but in the end he was only a young man of about twenty. Coming here for the first time, with the customs of Linzhou so different, everything before his eyes was elegant white walls and dark tiles, the glittering stretch of river running through the city, delicate stone bridges carved with orchids and flowers…… there was nothing that was not new and interesting, and a thin brightness rose in his eyes without his meaning it to.
But he did not dare turn his head and look openly at any of it, and only glanced from the corner of his eye, keeping an expressionless, indifferent face, while his heart had long since run off with the little tabby cat that darted along under the eaves beside them, to who knew where.
Then, as they came to a lane beside the water, a thread of sweet grain fragrance mixed suddenly into the faint damp smell of leaf and grass all around them.
The moment it appeared, Zheng Nanlou’s eyes turned toward it.
Under a willow on the riverbank stood a little stall selling rice cakes.
That fine thread of fragrance was coming from the stall.
Zheng Nanlou had long since given up grain, but his cultivation was shallow, and he had never cut off worldly desires as thoroughly as his master had. He had not tasted food in a long while, and two breaths of that smell drew the greed straight out of him. He could not help looking that way a few more times.
Probably because he had never had enough to eat as a child, he had always been especially partial to sweets made of rice. He did not even need to taste them; from the smell alone he could imagine how soft and fine they would be in the mouth.
But he also knew that the sect never stopped impressing on its juniors that a cultivator should keep his heart clear and his desires few, and that being moved so easily by the coarse things of the mortal world would do his progress on the path harm. So he forced the wish down, pressed his lips together, put on a look of indifference and walked on behind Wangyu with his head lowered.
But before he had gone many steps, the cloud-like white ahead of him stopped.
Caught unprepared, Zheng Nanlou pulled up short and nearly walked straight into him.
He raised his head in some surprise, just as Wangyu turned back to him; and in those eyes hidden in the shadow of long lashes a small light seemed to pass, very quick and very faint, like a pebble entering a lake, raising one ring of ripples and vanishing into it again too fast to be certain of.
He spoke without warning, his voice like a drop of water falling onto a jade dish, reaching Zheng Nanlou’s ears with perfect clarity:
“If you want some, go and buy them.”
For a moment Zheng Nanlou thought he had misheard, and said uncertainly, “Master……”
Wangyu smiled at him and said, as though to set his mind at rest:
“This journey of ours is a private matter to begin with. Eating a little of such things does not matter.”
The eyes that had dimmed a little brightened again at those words, a smile opening quietly at their outer corners before he lowered his brows to press it down, which only made it plainer.
In truth his face had already turned bright and alive with the gladness rising in him, and no amount of restraint could put it away.
“Thank you, Master!”
Even the thanks came out clearer and brighter, colored with a young man’s irrepressible delight, pure and endearing.
With that he turned at once and walked toward the stall; his steps were not fast, but they were plainly lighter.
Seeing him come, the stallholder rose quickly and asked:
“Would the young gentleman like to buy some?”
Zheng Nanlou nodded, his gaze already moving quickly over the several kinds of cake on the table.
He looked for a long while. He wanted all of them and could give up none of them, and was afraid that buying too many would look greedy. While he hesitated, he thought again of his master’s “it does not matter,” and a little courage rose in him out of nowhere.
“If you would…… give me some of every kind.” He paused, then added quickly, “Yes, and wrap up a few extra!”
The stallholder agreed cheerfully, took up the oiled paper briskly, put in several pieces of each, wrapped the bundle plump and full, handed it to Zheng Nanlou, and warned him:
“Careful, it’s a bit heavy.”
Zheng Nanlou took the heavy parcel in both hands, and the warmth coming off the cakes pressed into his palms, seeming to pass through his skin and travel up his arms to settle right in his heart.
He paid and started back, and halfway there could not hold out; he pushed one into his mouth first. The rich smell of rice and exactly the right touch of sweetness spread over his tongue, and he could not help thinking:
Just as good as it looks.
He chewed twice, found it not enough, and ate another, so that by the time he got back to Wangyu his mouth was nearly full and his usually thin cheeks were rounded out a little, and he could not speak clearly:
“Master…… this disciple…… has bought them.”
Then, as though something had occurred to him, he bent his head at once, picked out the most finely made one from the paper and, as if presenting some rare treasure, held it right up to Wangyu’s mouth with shining eyes:
“Master…… would you like to try one?”
Wangyu had not moved since Zheng Nanlou turned away to buy the cakes; his eyes had rested the whole time on that face, grown livelier merely because it had gotten the thing it wanted to eat. Only now, hearing him, did his gaze fall on the cake held out before him.
It was a sweet made in the shape of a lotus.
Something moved faintly in his eyes, as though he had thought of something. He was about to open his mouth when Zheng Nanlou drew his hand back.
The lotus cake left Wangyu’s lips and went into his own mouth instead, and while chewing he apologized to Wangyu in all seriousness:
“I forgot that Master keeps his heart clear and his desires few and certainly does not eat such things. This disciple was thoughtless.”
For an instant Wangyu went stiff; the lips that had just parted a crack closed again, and the smile on his face thinned. Zheng Nanlou, busy with the lotus cake in his hand, did not notice.
He looked away and said in a low voice, as though to himself:
“Since I gave up grain, I have not eaten anything of the sort.”
That much Zheng Nanlou did hear, and it startled him so that he asked as though he had learned something scarcely believable:
“Then hasn’t Master gone a thousand years and more without eating anything?”
At that, the very air seemed to freeze for a moment.
Wangyu’s calm, which had looked until then without a flaw, showed a rare crack at Zheng Nanlou’s question.
The face he had deliberately turned aside came back around, slowly and stiffly, on account of that sentence.
His brows drew slightly together, and his voice was as level as ever, and yet so measured that Zheng Nanlou somehow sensed in it a certain…… grievance?
“I am, this year, no more than a hundred years old.”
Word by word, as though stating a matter of the utmost gravity.
But Zheng Nanlou had perhaps eaten too many cakes and gummed up his brain, for though he did sense the hidden “undercurrent” in it, he blurted out what he was thinking without stopping to consider:
“What? I thought Master had to be several hundred at the very least.”
Before he had finished, Wangyu had already turned and walked off, looking as light and unbothered as before, but with his steps growing faster and faster, so that in a moment he would be lost in the crowd and impossible to find.
Zheng Nanlou nearly failed to react. He gathered the still-warm parcel against his chest and hurried after him:
“Wait, Master, wait for me……”
Nearly being left behind by his master did nothing to interfere with Zheng Nanlou’s eating; by the time they finally found the incense shop recorded on that page, he had finished every cake in the paper.
Wangyu came back to himself, and his gaze seemed to pause a moment on those empty hands, though he said nothing.
Zheng Nanlou wiped the crumbs from the corner of his mouth and looked at the incense shop said to be kept by the eyeless people. The frontage was small and out of the way, with hardly anyone coming or going, and there was really nothing remarkable about it.
He went in with some doubt. The inside was as unremarkable as the outside; behind an old counter there was only a shop hand of indeterminate age, dozing with his head down.
Zheng Nanlou could see nothing out of the ordinary. He glanced back at Wangyu, and at his look went up and rapped on the counter, waking the man, and said to him what the page had prescribed:
“I seek passage across the Wuchuan.”
The hand did not, as he had expected, leap up and call for anyone. Bleary-eyed, and with no telling whether he had heard properly, he only mumbled something vague by way of answer, then reached out and fiddled with something beside him.
At that movement, a hidden door swung open in the wall beside the counter.
As it opened, a thick and complicated fragrance escaped from behind it, seemingly blended of who knew how many kinds of incense, so that not even a basic sweetness or astringency could be picked out of it.
The scented air stirred Wangyu’s snow-white robes a few times, and still he did not pause, but stepped straight through the hidden door, with Zheng Nanlou close behind him.
Behind the door was indeed another world.
What met the eye was a very spacious inner room with no windows at all, and yet bright enough that everything in it could be seen clearly.
All four walls were fitted tightly with neat rows of small wooden drawers; at first glance one might have walked into a well-stocked apothecary.
In the middle of the room stood a plain, old-fashioned rosewood table, and on it an incense burner whose lid was cast in an intricate openwork pattern, with a few threads of grey smoke curling out of it.
That strange fragrance seemed to come from the burner.
Before Zheng Nanlou had even settled on his feet, a woman came out of the corner directly opposite him.
He had not even seen how she appeared; it was as though she had risen out of thin air.
She wore a loose dark robe so wide that her figure could hardly be made out, and over her pale face lay a smooth, soft black band without a single crease, covering exactly where her eyes should have been.
Her eyes were covered, and yet she seemed able to see; she walked straight to the table and stood facing the burner.
Then a voice so calm that it had almost no rise or fall spread slowly through the silent room:
“To enter the blind market, one strand of hair is required from the one who seeks.”
At that, Zheng Nanlou turned his head almost without thinking to look at Wangyu beside him.
Something moved slightly in Wangyu’s expression, but he made no sound, and only gave him a small nod.
Only then did he raise a hand, pick out a strand of hair at his temple, and pull it free.
The moment the hair left him it seemed to be lifted by some invisible wind; it flew from his fingertips and drifted down into the burner.
Zheng Nanlou noticed all at once that the fragrance filling the room had changed.
As though out of all those countless smells, tangled and knotted together, one thread had broken free and quickly pressed the rest of them down.
The smell was light and far off, with a clean bitterness in it that could not be ignored, like the scent of wild grass sprouting quietly under ice and snow in a crack between stones in early spring, cold and stubborn.
As it thickened, there came a “clack,” and in a bank of drawers some way to Zheng Nanlou’s right, one of them slid open with no warning at all.
Revealing what lay inside: a small, ancient bronze bell.