The world amounts to little; we scramble and strive — gold and jade pillows beneath a Golden Millet Dream.
How could Fang Miaocheng be here?
Under lantern light and moonlight, ghost-shadows flickering, Fang Miaocheng too wore a fox-and-ghost mask, standing with another person beneath a festival lantern. They wore similar masks and similar styles of dress — plainly a matched pair.
“Eh? Who’s the other one?” Geng Ying craned her neck, and Qingluan yanked her back and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Not so loud!”
“I’m not loud!” Geng Ying protested — but lowered her voice all the same. “We’re this far away, and it’s the Ghost Market — spiritual power and voices all scattered. She can’t hear. So this is Fang Miaocheng and her… little lover? Little sweetheart? Ah — it’s a woman too!” Geng Ying squealed. “Who is it? One of the Zhou Family again?…”
Geng Ying rattled on, but You Fusang noticed only Fang Miaocheng’s expression.
The moonlight washed all around, tender and ambiguous — just like the way Fang Miaocheng looked at the other person.
You Fusang knew exactly what that was.
That is the look one gives the person of one’s heart.
So that’s how it looks, from the outside… Lost in the thought, she was pulled back by Geng Ying tugging her sleeve. “Hey, Venerable Lord, ever heard the rumors about this Fang Miaocheng?”
It was Yan Rushi who asked instead: “What rumors?”
“I heard that before she entered Solitary Mountain, this Fang Miaocheng first had some unmentionable arrangement with the Eldest Lady Zhou, then a whole romance with Zhou Ling, deceiving her near to ruin…”
“Stop spouting nonsense.” You Fusang swatted her. “The year Fang Miaocheng entered Solitary Mountain, Zhou Ling was eight or nine years old.”
“Eh? Really?” Geng Ying started counting on her fingers, playing the fool and changing the subject. “Oh my, oh my — look, look, who’s the person beside Fang Miaocheng? It shouldn’t be Zhou Ling — Zhou Ling’s about my height, both of us half a head shorter than Fang Miaocheng, but this person’s even taller than the Fang one…”
Though they were far away, Geng Ying’s read wasn’t off by an inch. The person standing shoulder to shoulder with Fang Miaocheng had ink-black hair to the waist, a tall, slender figure — absolutely not Zhou Ling’s childish stature.
Geng Ying guessed again: “Could it be the Eldest Lady Zhou, Zhou Yun?”
You Fusang sank into thought for a while.
Zhou Yun’s medical arts were exceptionally brilliant; she was called the Medical Immortal of Solitary Mountain. The first half of her life she’d lived in seclusion, ignoring the world’s affairs; in the latter half she’d carried a single gardenia-oil lamp and practiced medicine for all under heaven. Unlike the Medical Ghost who “Refuses to Treat the Living” — who was also the previous City Lord of Pagoda City — Zhou Yun treated rich and poor alike, and held no prejudice against Demon Cultivators or Devil Cultivators either.
You Fusang had never seen her, only heard that she saw patients behind a veil of white gauze, ethereal as an Immortal; the name of Divine Physician was no empty honor.
And the figure beside Fang Miaocheng now, ink-black hair and robes whiter than snow, carried a certain immortal grace even beneath an Evil Ghost mask.
“So the street rumors were true after all? Fang Miaocheng and Zhou Yun really…”
“True or false, what’s it to me.” You Fusang cut her off with a yawn and made to leave — but Yan Rushi’s feet wouldn’t move, her eyes glued to Fang Miaocheng. “Venerable Lord, don’t you think… between them…” Yan Rushi lowered her voice. “They don’t seem like lovers? The way Fang Miaocheng looks at her — that’s plainly desolation…”
Greed, wrath, obsession, the meeting of the resentful — of the world’s lovers, none ever escapes the three words: “cannot obtain.”
Cannot obtain the beloved. Cannot obtain forever. Cannot obtain a beginning and end both good.
Solitary Mountain’s line was originally Zhou. Inheritance passed within the clan — even the most hopeless of the lot had to be chosen from among the short to lead. Fang Miaocheng, of a different surname, had more like fought her way through five passes and slain six generals, pushed through layers upon layers of prejudice, before she saw the clouds part and the sun.
“The great different-surname Sect Master of Solitary Mountain, and even she has something she cannot obtain yet swallows with a smile” — that was the mockery You Fusang had meant to make, until it occurred to her: she was the Devil Venerable whom all Devil Cultivators admired to distraction, and yet she seemed… no better off.
The world’s affairs amount to little, just this and nothing more — all of them mayflies. Mayflies born at dawn and dead by dusk.
What were they clinging to? What was there that could not be obtained and yet had to be craved? What was there that could not be seen through and yet had to be longed for?
Pose these questions to her cold, and You Fusang would surely answer with a scornful smile. But the player cannot see the board — she stood within the game, blind to her own error, blind to the way back.
A Nether River lantern blew apart and scattered; Fang Miaocheng’s figure melted into the ghost-shadows and human figures.
Seeing Yan Rushi still staring after that direction, Geng Ying teased: “I thought you’d say a few words against her — you two do have a Blood Feud, after all. Something like: ugh, so vicious when she trampled me, and now she plays the tender, devoted lover — a two-faced vixen, through and through… that sort of thing.”
Yan Rushi shook her head and said nothing.
Under her Ghost Mask, Geng Ying pulled a face. “Come on, trust me — a good cursing takes ten years off your age!”
“No. That’s just flattering your own tongue.”
“Too scared even to curse — useless!”
“That would be sinning with the mouth.”
“Hmph, boring! Prissy little righteous thing. No fun at all.”
Yan Rushi didn’t answer that either.
Geng Ying pulled a face as if she’d kicked an iron wall.
She wasn’t cursing, but she plainly cared enormously. If the Path of Rebirth hadn’t been crowded with ghosts and Ghost Emissaries coming and going — if Yan Rushi hadn’t needed to mind her movements — she probably would have chased after them directly. Her gaze was nailed to the direction Fang Miaocheng had vanished, and in her heart still echoed those words from months ago, after the Qingming Banquet—
“Your dear mother begged me like a dog to spare your life.”
She had stepped on her shoulder, bending her body down inch by inch, and asked with a jeer: “And if I insist you make a choice?”
After the Qingming Banquet she had fallen gravely ill; once recovered, she had practiced sword and drawn bow like one possessed, the calluses on her wrists and fingertips worn white, stained fresh red.
“And if I insist you make a choice?”
The sentence kept floating up in her mind.
She didn’t want to abandon her mother, nor to betray You Fusang. If it could be chosen, she would rather burn together with Fang Miaocheng, jade and stone alike — but she couldn’t. Even dying together was beyond her.
That would not be jade striking stone. That would be an egg against a rock.
So this is what weakness costs, she thought. All those years nested in the Yan Sect had been too comfortable; her mother had shielded her too well — she’d nearly forgotten this world was, first and last, the strong devouring the weak. Leaning on the Yan Sect, she had been one of the “strong,” able to live at ease ignoring the world’s affairs. Adrift here now, she was the “weak” — fish on the chopping block, carved up at another’s whim.
The Devil Cultivator’s path: staking one’s own allotted lifespan for a single moment of explosive surging spiritual power. That was exactly what Yan Rushi wanted. And You Fusang hadn’t lied — every Devil Cultivator anyone laid eyes on was one of a rare handful of survivors; of those who fell into Devilhood, the dead and the suddenly perished were beyond counting.
And yet a voice in her heart said: try it, try it. No matter what — fall into Devilhood, and you can have your revenge.
Very dazedly, when Yan Rushi’s eyes once more caught the hem of Fang Miaocheng’s robes in the crowd, she paused — and suddenly turned back to ask You Fusang, “Here, whether human or ghost, Devil Cultivator or righteous, all fall under the Ghost Emissaries’ jurisdiction? And in the state of Soul Departure, things outside the body — like cultivation — can’t match what they are outside the Ghost Market, yes?”
“That is so…” You Fusang faintly sensed something wrong. “Hey — Yan Rushi, what are you planning?”
Yan Rushi gave no answer. In a flash of lightning she plucked the Golden Hairpin from her hair, raised it in a few strides as a blade, and stabbed at the back of Fang Miaocheng’s skull—
