You Are Very Clever, Nanlou
Zheng Nanlou had never imagined that Wangyu would appear here.
He had dared to act as he did today precisely because he had counted on Xie Heng coming to this spot every day to breathe out and draw in spiritual energy. Used as he was to throwing his weight around, Xie Heng never permitted anyone else to be present during his own hour there, and so he had been alone.
With no one to see it, even if Xie Heng did not fear the disgrace and wanted to drag him down along with himself, shouting the matter abroad, there was no proof, and nothing could be done to him.
What was more, who would believe that a waste who could not even get through a beginner’s sword form was capable of such methods?
And yet all these seemingly airtight calculations, in the instant he turned his head and saw Wangyu, became a trickle of cold sweat that ran from the roots of his hair down the back of his neck and dampened his collar.
He gripped the hem of his robe in his nervousness.
This was not the first time Zheng Nanlou had done such a thing, nor the first time he had been caught at it.
But Wangyu was the first person able to leave him standing there at a loss, ransacking his mind for a few words of explanation.
In the past he would certainly have put on a meek, uncomprehending face, looking as though, unable to defend himself, he would swallow his grievance and accept the groundless charge.
People always soften toward the weak without knowing why, and he should have been the best there was at playing weak.
But standing here now, with those eyes he had traced countless times in his own mind turned upon him, he could feel quite clearly the place in his chest going cold by degrees.
Why, Zheng Nanlou asked himself. Why should it be like this.
He hated becoming like this.
He opened his mouth hesitantly, but before any sound came out, several loud crashes went up from the wood not far off, startling a great flock of birds into the air.
Listening closely, one could also make out Xie Heng cursing in a fury.
He grew more uneasy still, and then found that Wangyu had not so much as glanced that way.
As though he had heard nothing at all.
“Nanlou.” The tail of the name as he called it carried a clarity like spring water, and the crowding tree shadows of the whole mountain were reflected in his ash-grey eyes. “It is late. Why are you still out here?”
He was smiling as he said it, for all the world a gentle, understanding teacher showing concern for a junior.
“This disciple……”
Before Zheng Nanlou could look closely at the odd thing rising in him, his body had already moved first. His knees bent to kneel, only for a clear wind to blow in from the side and catch him, holding the motion where it was.
“No matter.”
Wangyu tossed away the leaf at his fingertips, and that trace of green crumbled to powder before it reached the ground.
“Just be more careful next time.”
As to what exactly he should be careful of, he did not say.
“The Thousand Peaks secret realm in Yizhou opens in a month’s time.”
Wangyu led Zheng Nanlou off in the direction of Yujing Peak, and Zheng Nanlou followed behind him with his head down.
“You will go with your fellow disciples from the other peaks.”
Zheng Nanlou’s steps faltered, and he could not stop himself from speaking:
“This disciple’s cultivation is slight. I fear I would only hold them……”
“Nanlou.” Wangyu suddenly said his name again, cutting off what he meant to say, though his own steps went on without pausing for a moment.
“A first-tier spirit-binding formation, aided by soul-parting grass, can briefly block the flow of spiritual energy through a cultivator’s meridians while he is off his guard. At the same time, singing luan bells were set through the wood, their ringing used to disturb the five senses of whoever stands inside. Every one of these is no more than a beginner’s implement, and yet put together, they can produce quite a different effect.”
“The method carries some risk, but so long as it takes the other by surprise, the odds of winning are good.”
“You are very clever, Nanlou.”
In a tone of perfect calm, and as lightly as if he were sketching it, he set out exactly how Zheng Nanlou had contrived against Xie Heng.
The more Zheng Nanlou heard, the stiffer and colder he grew. The Hidden Snow Sect’s main peak was springlike in all four seasons, and yet in his daze he felt he had gone back to that ice pit in Huaizhou, frozen until his teeth chattered.
To his own mind this had plainly been nothing more than a simple case of “a tooth for a tooth,” nothing worth making anything of.
And still he heard his own voice, as though forced up out of his throat: “Master……”
Wangyu stopped abruptly and turned to look at him, the hem of his robe swaying slightly with the movement, like a bank of cloud right before his eyes that could never be reached.
He put out a hand and brushed a fallen leaf from his shoulder, the gesture practiced, even carrying a touch of intimacy.
“Your martial uncle says there is a three-hundred-year green serpent grass in the realm. It may benefit your cultivation.”
Dusk had by now spread up from the foot of the mountain, and the dimming light of the sky swallowed half of Wangyu’s face.
Watching the unchanging curve at the corner of that mouth, his heart going “thump, thump” all the while, Zheng Nanlou thought of the day three years ago.
He had believed he had finally escaped that wolf’s den of the Zheng family, which ate people and did not spit out the bones. In truth he had fallen into another abyss.
Now, facing this man, looking into those eyes, he could not bring out a single hard word.
Let him come only a little closer, and he would truly become the “waste” others called him, agreeing to any demand without a will of his own.
He did not want to, and yet what came out of his mouth was:
“This disciple obeys.”
It was just the hour of the dog when Zheng Nanlou got back to his quarters, and a clear bell rang out from the direction of the main hall.
As though something had occurred to him, he stopped and looked back, and saw half a cold moon floating up from the sea of clouds among the distant peaks.
A broken arc, half there and half not, set alone in the deep grey of the night sky. Its clear light was steeped in mist, and gave off instead an indifferent blue-white.
Only now was he able to let out a slow breath, and with it a cold laugh, stopped up for a long time, escaped from between his teeth.
The gu worm stirred restlessly at his heart meridian, bringing a strange sensation half pain and half itch that set his blood rising a little; he forced it back down again.
The love gu planted in his body by force could make the one who bore it take root in love for another beyond all restraint. Even if he had hated that person to the bone before, a single smile from them would haunt his soul and his dreams, and he would be faithful until death.
He had known all along. He was nothing more than a condemned prisoner kept by the Hidden Snow Sect, and this thing was a cangue of guilt he could not shake off.
One day Wangyu would prove his dao and ascend, and one day he himself would die beneath that man’s sword.
How could that not make him hate?
And yet now, not even his hatred was free.
A fog rose over Yujing Peak that evening. Zheng Nanlou could not be bothered to light a lamp, and sat in the courtyard taking apart his wrist guards by what little bitterly cold moonlight there was.
His hands stopped all at once. When he raised his head, someone was already standing in the fogged darkness in front of him.
The sharpness particular to a young man was softened by the night, giving him a boyishness he had not had by day; only in those upturned phoenix eyes a heavy violence was still gathered.
“It was you who ambushed me in the wood.”
Xie Heng lifted a hand to touch the scabbed cut on the side of his neck, so angry that he laughed instead.
“Third-rate tricks are all you’re good for.”
Zheng Nanlou looked at him with nothing much on his face and did not take up his words, only asked him calmly:
“Senior brother Xie comes up to Yujing Peak at this hour. Did you request my master’s leave? And if not, where did the token come from?”
The heavy dark hid most of what was in his eyes, so he did not put on his usual look of someone waiting to be trodden on; only his voice was still deliberately softened.
Had Xie Heng come a few steps closer, he would have seen that the Zheng Nanlou standing there now was nothing at all like the “waste” he had seen and carried in his mind.
His looks were as fine and clean as ever, but the timidity at the bottom of his eyes had scattered, replaced by a still, quiet cold. When his long lashes lowered, the light in his eyes was like water at rest in a deep pool, without a ripple, and without reflecting the least brightness either.
Naturally Xie Heng could not answer his question. That he could come up Yujing Peak at this hour was thanks to a token he had wrung by threat out of a disciple who managed such things. He had meant to keep it for later use, but today he had thrashed about inside that formation for the better part of a day before getting out, and had been angry enough to cast everything aside and come straight to Zheng Nanlou.
“Don’t play the innocent with me. Every day you look so honest, and who would have thought you had this sort of scheming behind it.”
Xie Heng struck the scabbard in his hand hard against the ground; it gave a dull sound, and shook up a great cloud of dust besides.
“If you want revenge, then fight me again openly and fairly. Tomorrow at the hour of the snake, the pine wood west of the Sword Testing Terrace. Do you dare come or not!”
Standing in the dust as it slowly spread, Zheng Nanlou could not help frowning.
There is probably something wrong with this man’s head, he thought.
It was precisely because he could not beat him that he had taken his revenge this way today. Why should there be a match at all? Did the man imagine he was as defective as himself, and would come trotting eagerly to the door for a beating?
He sighed silently, telling himself that this time he really had been too impulsive. How could one take issue with a fool?
He could only stand up and make the gesture for “seeing a guest out” toward Xie Heng.
“Since senior brother Xie came up the mountain on his own without reporting it, you had best go back quickly. I will say nothing to my master about tonight.”
Then he deliberately added:
“I truly do not know why senior brother is so angry today. There has never been any enmity between us. I ask that senior brother not take his anger out on me.”
This last sentence came out timidly, as though it had taken enormous courage to get it out at all, and as though he feared carelessly displeasing the man in front of him; there was a tremble in his voice he could not hide.
It only made Xie Heng angrier to hear it:
“You……”
“Senior brother, I really have no time tomorrow. If you want to…… how about waiting until I come back from the Thousand Peaks secret realm?” Zheng Nanlou said suddenly.
Xie Heng was taken aback. “The Thousand Peaks realm? You’re going to the Thousand Peaks realm as well?”
Then he laughed coldly and said in mockery:
“A waste like you wants to enter the Thousand Peaks realm? You probably couldn’t even withstand the miasma at the entrance.”
Zheng Nanlou pressed his lips together, as if the words had truly wounded him, the corner of his mouth drawn into a line of restraint:
“It is not that I want to go. It is…… it is…… Master.”
His voice dropped lower the more he said, and the last word all but scattered into the night wind, but Xie Heng heard it all the same.
Then, as though something had occurred to him, he hurried to explain:
“It is because martial uncle said there is a green serpent grass in the illusory realm of the Thousand Peaks that could help me advance, so Master told me to go. Rest assured, I certainly will not hold senior brother back……”
Xie Heng’s face grew darker and darker, and the few traces of a sneer he had been holding vanished entirely from his stiffened features as Zheng Nanlou spoke.
He did not wait for Zheng Nanlou to finish, but gave a cold snort, flung his sleeve and walked off; whether that match of his still counted for anything, there was no telling.
Once his figure had vanished completely from sight, Zheng Nanlou at last slowly straightened his slightly bowed back, and what little feeling was on his face receded like a tide, turning once more into that bottomless pool of still water.
He did not look after him any longer, but turned and went back into the house.
As he pushed open the door, he saw, on the table in the middle of the room, a small white porcelain jar.
Its lustrous glaze lay half hidden among the few threads of moonlight leaking in through the window, giving off a familiar cold light, like a handful of new snow he had not seen in a long time in the eternally springlike Hidden Snow Sect.
And his heart, following that trace of white, sank all the way down.