Ha, He Really Dared to Come
Three days later Zheng Nanlou came down from Yujing Peak early in the morning, and by the time he reached the mountain gate the disciples bound for the Thousand Peaks secret realm had more or less all gathered.
The moment he showed himself, before he had even come close, the crowd ahead, noisy until then, suddenly went quiet.
More than twenty pairs of eyes turned to look at him at once, each gaze different, and yet the feeling behind them came down to the same few things. Contempt, disdain, derision……
He had seen it often enough, and had long since grown used to it.
The mountain wind swept broken leaves past the ends of his hair, and all that was left at his ears was the sound of his boots on the ground and a few deliberately muffled coughs.
Zheng Nanlou neither stopped nor spoke, but walked over with his usual expression, made the assembly a bow in which not the least fault could be found, and then stood in silence at the end of the line.
The Thousand Peaks realm, however, could hardly be counted a high-tier secret realm, and most of the disciples going this time were still short on experience. Those able to enter the Hidden Snow Sect were mostly sons of great houses with talent beyond the ordinary, and were long accustomed to their own pride.
Faced with someone like Zheng Nanlou, who had climbed up by what they called “crooked byways,” they saw no reason to spare his master’s face.
“Ha. He really dared to come.”
Someone sneered, at a volume neither loud nor soft, exactly enough for everyone to hear.
The silence shattered at that, as though once one person had made the first sound, all the talk and cold words that followed were no longer wrong, but merely agreement.
The murmuring spread, and even the eyes turned his way began to grow unrestrained.
Amid all that plainly ill-meant whispering, Zheng Nanlou did not raise his head, but only stood there quietly.
Today he had changed back into white, and at his waist hung an iron beginner’s sword as ordinary as a sword could be. It had likely seen long use, for most of the pattern on the scabbard had been rubbed faint. Set against the artifacts on the other disciples, glimmering with light, it looked shabby in the extreme.
He always seemed to be the one who did not fit.
“Is everyone here?”
A warm but somewhat unfamiliar voice spoke up. Zheng Nanlou raised his head without thinking and saw Lu Zhuobai standing at the head of the line.
As though he had noticed the look, Lu Zhuobai smiled at him.
When he smiled the outer corners of his eyes curved a little, and his eyes were like two pieces of dark jade steeped in green water, clear and soft, carrying an approachable warmth, familiar enough to leave a person dazed.
But Zheng Nanlou looked only once and lowered his head again.
Lu Zhuobai, first disciple under the sect leader, had been born with extraordinary talent and a peerless constitution, and though young, his cultivation already stood foremost among all the disciples. He was modest with others and never made his gifts a matter of pride; in his every gesture he might be called a model of the immortal sects.
Even though he had not been in the sect the longest, every disciple of the Hidden Snow Sect called him “eldest senior brother.”
But beyond all that, what he was best known for was a face that resembled Wangyu’s by more than half.
No one could explain how it had come about. Perhaps it was only a rare coincidence; perhaps it sprang from some deliberate arrangement by the way of heaven.
The same peerless brows and eyes, the same noble self-possession, and even the trace of a smile habitually resting at the corner of the mouth was much the same.
Everyone said this one took after the Immortal Lord and would certainly accomplish great things; there was no telling but that he might become the next Wangyu.
Zheng Nanlou deliberately avoided his gaze, but the man came straight over to stand in front of him:
“Junior brother Zheng, the road is long. Come stand up front with me.”
At those words everything around them went quiet again.
Zheng Nanlou frowned without letting it show, and when he lifted his head he met Lu Zhuobai’s smiling eyes, gentle as water in precisely the way Wangyu’s were, and yet subtly as though something were missing.
Like an uninspired painter copying a master’s work: the form was alike, but in the end that faint breath of spirit was absent.
“Thank you, senior brother,” he answered, his voice deferential, though his body shifted half a step back without leaving a trace of the movement. “My cultivation is low. So as not to hold the other disciples back, it is better that I follow at the rear.”
Lu Zhuobai did not appear to notice, and only nodded to him; but neither did he return to the front. He stood beside him instead and addressed the group:
“We have a spirit boat for the journey to the Thousand Peaks realm, but part of the way we must cross the Sunken Sword Abyss on foot. There may be demonic beasts along the road, so all of you keep close to the party.”
When he had finished, his gaze swept over Zheng Nanlou with some meaning in it.
Zheng Nanlou pressed the corner of his mouth and said nothing more.
They rode the spirit boat across the sea of clouds, and then all at once the daylight dimmed; a deep ravine lay across their path, and they had come to the Sunken Sword Abyss.
It was said that a great power who could pierce heaven and earth had once shed his body by the sword in this place, and that the ten thousand blade energies left behind had sunk to the bottom of the abyss and become a formless interdiction. Whatever a man’s cultivation, once he set foot here the spiritual energy in his body was like a clay ox walking into the sea, and not a fraction of it could be roused again.
For that reason they could only go on foot.
Lu Zhuobai put away the spirit boat at the front and saw to a few small matters, then for some reason came back to the rear, as though he meant to walk with Zheng Nanlou on purpose.
When he came close, Zheng Nanlou caught the smell that hung about him, which was rather different from Wangyu’s; set beside Nightbloom Sleet it was distinctly heavier and more brooding, and had less of the chill.
“Junior brother Zheng.” He spoke suddenly, his voice mild. “Before we set out, my martial uncle asked me particularly to look after you.”
Something stirred in Zheng Nanlou, though nothing showed on his face; he only lowered his brows and said, “Then I must trouble senior brother.”
Lu Zhuobai smiled and put out his hand, and in an instant a small white porcelain jar lay on his palm.
“These are heart-clearing pills. Take one and hold it under your tongue, and it will ward off the miasma at the entrance to the realm.”
As the jar was held out in front of him, Zheng Nanlou’s breath caught in spite of himself.
But a closer look showed that only the shape of the vessel was somewhat similar; the glaze and everything else were clearly different.
He quietly let out a breath. He had meant to refuse, and yet he also knew how fierce the miasma at the entrance was, and with the little cultivation he had he truly might not last through it, so he thanked him and raised a hand to take it.
His fingertips could not help touching Lu Zhuobai’s hand, and as though something had startled him his back went suddenly taut; in the end he managed to check himself, and did not give too much away.
Whether Lu Zhuobai noticed or not there was no telling. He went on describing the arrangements for the journey in the same soft, gentle voice, and Zheng Nanlou listened and nodded, while out of the corner of his eye he caught Xie Heng ahead and off to one side of the line, talking about something with several disciples in low voices, his gaze flicking over this way now and then as he spoke.
The wind carried a dried maple leaf down onto his shoulder, a patch of dark red that from a distance looked like a dried streak of blood.
The night was like ink, and the dense wood of the Sunken Sword Abyss lay under heavy fog. What light the campfire gave reached only a small space around it.
They had only just entered this wood when the sky darkened, so they rested where they were and would go on with the trek early the next morning.
Zheng Nanlou sat by himself against a tree root at the very edge of the camp.
Some way off, Lu Zhuobai was speaking with several disciples. The firelight flickering over his face blurred its outline and made those features look more and more familiar.
Zheng Nanlou watched in silence for a while, then lowered his head and shut his eyes to rest.
Suddenly a cold hand covered his mouth from behind.
He resisted on instinct, but several more hands reached in from the sides and clamped his limbs like iron hoops.
Before he could struggle free he was dragged bodily into the darkness beside him.
His back struck the uneven, stony ground hard, and the pain forced a muffled grunt out of him.
A few threads of moonlight leaked through the gaps in the leaves and barely lit the faces in front of him. Xie Heng stood foremost, several inner disciples behind him, all of them the ones he was usually friendly with.
“Junior brother Zheng.”
He drew the words out darkly, the trace of a smile at his mouth given a grim cast by the dim light.
He raised a foot and pressed the sole unhurriedly onto Zheng Nanlou’s chest, adding weight to it bit by bit.
“You put on quite an act in front of senior brother Lu today.”
He bent slightly at the waist, looking down from above at the man beneath his foot, malice all but spilling out of his voice.
“Is it that anyone with a face like that can have you throwing yourself at them, whatever the cost?”
“You really are a……”
“Traitor.”
The weight on his chest hurt, and Zheng Nanlou could not fight it off at all; he could only grip the man’s ankle uselessly.
His hair was in disorder, several strands lying across his face and hiding what was in his eyes; only his breathing grew quicker and quicker, as though he really were afraid.
In truth, the eyes hidden behind those long lashes had gone frighteningly dark. A congealed coldness lay over pupils black as ink, staring straight at Xie Heng’s ankle, as though he were turning something over in his mind.
Some thought flashed through his head and was pressed down again. When he raised his eyes once more, every dark current in them had subsided, leaving only a brimming wetness and a fright he could not conceal.
His voice shook, as though he had truly been driven to a dead end, and in the end he could only beg his tormentor for mercy, pitiful and pathetic:
“Senior brother Xie.”
“I told you a few days ago. I truly do not know where I offended you, that you should treat me like this……”
“Surely you do not really believe that it was I who ambushed you and left you covered in wounds.”