Chapter 20: 20 A Single Thought to Live

◎What memory, I wonder, was Young Sect Master Yan willing to endure such agony to hide?◎

She woke with no idea of the hour; dream scenery spun past her eyes like a lantern-wheel—somewhat inauspicious.

You Fusang’s eyes stayed muddled for a while; just as she made to rise, her sash was tugged by an unconscious hand. Yan Rushi’s fingertip rubbed once against the sash, a few drowsy murmurs behind closed eyes—then the hand loosened and dropped. Faint dawn light lit her snow-white cheek, still heavy with sleep, lashes trembling with wandering dreams. She slept deeply on You Fusang’s couch.

The scene looked for all the world like true dew-lovers.

Though nothing of substance had actually happened.

You Fusang drew out her sash and tied it; in the instant she gathered up her long hair she heard voices outside the hall—very faint, but she caught them all the same. Sure enough, a few breaths later came a knock. “City Lord, Lady Qingluan requests an audience.”

“So she’s come out of the Pagoda Tower…” You Fusang murmured, and left the palace.

Three thousand courtyard trees, a delicate spring, the chess game beneath the pavilion still in its unresolved pattern. Passing through the hall into the grounds: the palace doors stood wide, the attendants gone—only Qingluan half-knelt before the hall in an attitude of waiting.

Looking at her, You Fusang abruptly recalled the first time she had seen Qingluan shapeshift: the small Azure Bird taken human form, cupping two handfuls of clear water to scrub her dusty face—and when she raised her eyes, those pupils truly held the spirit of a Penglai Azure Bird.

She had knelt like this to Zhuang Xuan too. “If the City Lord has need, command freely. Qingluan is not clever, but she will do her utmost.”

Long after, when Zhuang Xuan departed, Qingluan knelt. “Qingluan’s life was given by the City Lord; the City Lord’s affairs are Qingluan’s affairs.”

Zhuang Xuan patted her head. “From now on, you must learn to call Little Fusang ‘City Lord.'”

Qingluan froze a moment, then said quietly, “Yes.” Calm by nature, she was utterly incapable of coyness—she couldn’t even force out a “Have you no more use for me?”

She only asked: “Where are you going?”

Zhuang Xuan did not answer. “Qingluan, look after Fusang. Though she is strong, she is young at heart… Her interior is nothing like the listless indifference she wears outside.”

“And Qingluan—you must take care of yourself as well.”

The little Azure Bird’s heart held only City Lord Zhuang Xuan; yet when Zhuang Xuan left, everything she entrusted concerned You Fusang. Anyone else would have chafed bitterly at the imbalance—but for Qingluan, even a single “take care” could sweeten her for a long while.

The relationships between them were delicate—paper wrapped over gauze, a mountain standing before the door: until the mountain came to them, no one moved.

Times had changed. Now, before the Pagoda Palace, You Fusang looked down at Qingluan. “What is it?”

“Venerable Lord, I still believe you should be wary of Young Sect Master Yan.”

“…”

You Fusang was silent a long while. “You come out of the Pagoda Tower, and it is still that?”

They stood at a height, overlooking Pagoda City’s clear morning light, the occasional chirping of birds.

Nearby stood lush, splendid pavilions; the far mountains wore brows of rosy mist—magnificent, resplendent.

You Fusang stared at the view a moment, thoughts flying who knew where, until Qingluan spoke again. “Yes, Venerable Lord. I come out of the Pagoda Tower, and it is still that.”

“Within the Pagoda Tower lies the Pagoda Realm. I never cultivated the Pagoda Art; I should have seen nothing. But by some cause I cannot name, I glimpsed there some of your pain—and that of the successive City Lords… unspeakable suffering. And so I also came to understand the hidden reason City Lord Zhuang Xuan left.”

Qingluan had entered the Pagoda Tower. Within, devil qi wrapped rotting flesh and maggots; the hiss of venom-tongued crawling things was ceaseless in the ear—corpses, wronged souls, ghosts clinging to life. The Pagoda Tower’s stair was more dreadful than the Yellow Springs Road. Qingluan knew her martial skill was poor; she could not fight her way through, nor endure her way through. Fortunately she knew it was all illusion—or rather, that it could be illusion. Panic and screaming were exactly how they took you. Only by walking unblinking to the tower’s peak did she have any chance of living.

In the tower Qingluan saw the children who had once tormented her; she knew it was illusion. She saw the scattered clear rains of distant Penglai; she knew it was illusion. She saw the innocent lives she had wrongly slain after falling to the Heretic Path clutching her hem and pleading; she knew it was illusion. She knew all of it was illusion—the floating world’s three thousand things, like lightning, like dew, born at dawn and dead by dusk…

Illusion. All of it illusion.

Until she reached the tower’s peak—where she saw someone gazing at her from afar, words begun and checked, features impossible to make out. But the clothes were the black gauze robes Zhuang Xuan always wore. That figure gazed at Qingluan: “I have come to tell you… the reason Zhuang Xuan left.”

Qingluan knew it was illusion.

But she could not refuse to answer.

“Venerable Lord, I saw City Lord Zhuang Xuan in the Pagoda Realm,” Qingluan said quietly. “The world knows City Lord Zhuang Xuan was skilled in medicine, and that the one she most wished to heal was herself—yet physicians cannot heal themselves. Medical Ghost Zhuang Xuan failed only once in her life, and the patient was herself.

“In truth, by the time she saved you, she had long since left Pagoda City behind. The Pagoda Art is wondrous—miraculous even—able to snatch life back in the direst moment, to aid cultivation. But it is also domineering and savage, feeding on the emotions, the consciousness, the very essence of others until they die. One who cultivates the Pagoda Token must continually harm, must continually kill—or the backlash falls upon herself. The cultivator may wish to cut it off, but cannot; she can only sink into the lust to kill until her hands run red. An art this cruel cannot be tolerated by the Heavenly Dao—perhaps a Heavenly Punishment, perhaps the so-called ‘backlash of a heretic art.’ Every former City Lord of Pagoda died on the Yellow Springs midway through their cultivation, without exception. That is why no one knows the names of the final stages—because they all died before ever reaching the last layer.

“City Lord Zhuang Xuan departed the same way. She had known these secrets for a long time, and tried to excise the Pagoda Art from her own body. Through her hundred years outside Pagoda City, she searched ceaselessly for a method. Within Pagoda City are thousands of evil ghosts and devil cultivators—how many are bloodthirsty wicked hands, and how many are pitiable souls with no other choice? The world spits on them, but City Lord Zhuang Xuan lived beside them day and night; she could not simply cast them all aside. Perhaps what she sought was not only how to excise the Pagoda devil qi, but also… how to guide those pitiable ones with no other choice back onto the right road.” Qingluan paused. “Of course, this is only my speculation. The Zhuang Xuan I choose to believe in was that kind.

“When she saved you, it was the only time she broke her vow never to touch the Pagoda Token again—and the last time in her life she used Pagoda. Only the dying may enter the Pagoda’s first form—like you, then; like her, once. The extreme despair of near death, and devil qi vast enough to erode soul and bone—these two are the necessary causes and conditions for cultivating the Pagoda’s first form.”

Seventeen City Lords of Pagoda City—not one of them was not a soul fated to suffer.

“You had always cultivated the Righteous Path and knew nothing of restraining a devil tribulation, and the devil qi in your body rampaged abnormally. By then your life-channels had already been shattered by it; only the Pagoda Token could save you. City Lord Zhuang Xuan saved you—and at the same time led you… into the Pagoda Token’s road of slaughter. The road of kill-or-be-killed. She always felt guilty.”

You Fusang stayed silent throughout.

Qingluan went on. “The Pagoda devil qi is overpowering. Though you cultivate, you remain flesh and blood; one slip is backlash. So it is with all the world’s cause and effect: a person borrows force, and the force lodges in the person—exceed the load, and everything collapses. At your very zenith, you are at your very weakest. You share a bed with Young Sect Master Yan. Were she to kill you, it would cost her no effort at all.”

You Fusang did not answer, her thoughts drifting thousands of li away.

“Venerable Lord!” Qingluan looked her straight in the eye, raising her voice. “What if she is, at root, Righteous Path on Standby?”

Righteous Path on Standby.

The implication: a Righteous Path spy, bearing shame beneath a heavy burden.

But were the righteous and the heretic truly so irreconcilable? You Fusang felt lost—irreconcilable to the point of… casting aside ten thousand threads of old affection, sweet-talking and dissembling, lying in wait at her side.

You Fusang leaned lightly against the long pavilion. On either side of the pillars ran small, graceful characters: on the right, “Spring winds cannot exhaust this many sorrows”; on the left, “Mountains high, waters far—let us not meet.” All in Zhuang Xuan’s old hand. You Fusang had always thought Zhuang Xuan overly given to laments of spring and griefs of autumn; now, astonishingly, she felt some glimmer of comprehension—like these lines themselves: bleak and bitter, autumn and winter—it was precisely her fate to arrive and never meet the spring.

You Fusang was silent a long, long time. When she spoke again, her voice was wrapped into the far-traveling autumn wind. “Righteous Path on Standby, then?…”

“I would far rather she stay a carefree little immortal forever.”

Righteous Path on Standby. What high-sounding words.

But in Yan Rushi’s heart, it was rather: tigers and leopards make poor mounts, and another’s belly hides its heart. She was a sparrow that had stolen into the devils’ den disguised as harmless—all for the greater righteous cause.

But was she truly righteous?

She only felt like a petty villain wearing human skin over a heart of snake and scorpion.

In the dense forest Yan Rushi drew her bow and drilled her arrows, every one striking the drifting leaves. She never tired, never slackened her practice.

In her year in Pagoda City, Yan Rushi often forgot who she was.

Forgot what she had originally looked like.

“A ghost walking alone in the mortal world always forgets what it once looked like… forgets it ever came from the Yellow Springs Ferry.”

Elder Cheng Jianyue had said that of You Fusang—but it spoke of Yan Rushi too.

In memory, it was her mother asking, composure failing: “What is to be done? How can the Pagoda devil qi ever be rooted out?”

“Devil qi is the malice of humankind. As with heaven and earth: where there is good there is evil, where the pure, the turbid—completing, begetting, checking, and overcoming one another. In other words, without evil no good takes form; without the turbid, no clear. Sect Master Yan—mankind’s wicked thoughts…” Cheng Jianyue smiled bitterly. “How could they ever be rooted out?”

Yan Qingjue knew she had misspoken, gave a self-mocking laugh, and said, “True—about all one can do is divert it or dissolve it. Then what if I made my own body the vessel, bearing the devil qi, and after fully merging with it, sealed myself away and ended my own life?”

Bear the devil qi… then end herself after merging? Yan Rushi looked at her mother, her eyes full of incomprehension.

Why would Mother go to such lengths?

The world teems with suffering, and the righteous pity it, compelled to save. But Mother—my senior sister was one of your world’s people too.

Cheng Jianyue said, “It might be tried. But the Pagoda devil qi devours its host even as it protects its host; only when the previous host is fully dead can it pass to a second.”

“You mean…”

“If you wish to disperse the Pagoda devil qi, the first step is to kill You Fusang.”

Here the memory broke off.

In the forest a long arrow skimmed past a branch and arced toward the sky, its sound like tearing silk—cutting off Yan Rushi’s recollection too. Watching the arrow vanish who knew where, Yan Rushi felt utterly hollow.

In the world of the Righteous Path, driving out devils is the righteous act—who cares about the reason one fell into devilhood?

But it shouldn’t be this way.

Yan Rushi went after the arrow, toe to ground, weaving through forest and leaf—yet the instant she finally caught up with it, she watched it snap clean in two before her eyes.

Bow and arrows alike were vessels of deep spirit, turning sharp or supple, straight or bent, with their master’s heart. Now, snapping in two for no reason—what her Heart Realm held went without saying.

The taut string in her chest snapped with it. Yan Rushi let her strength go, half-kneeling on the ground in defeat. Senior Sister—what is the “Righteous Path”? What is “righteousness”? Teacher-Mother never taught me. You never told me. And from the mouths of those lecturers at the Yan Sect… I never learned it either.

What on earth am I supposed to do?

“—Junior Sister Yan, you were hard to find.”

At the forest’s end lay a pool of clear springwater; descending with the dawn-dusk light came one person’s contented laugh.

Not far off, You Fusang sat leaning by the spring, gold robes worn carelessly, her high ponytail crisp and keen—and Yan Rushi blinked, and it was the past again.

The past where nothing had yet happened.

But plainly it was not.

You Fusang lifted her face and smiled at her. “Young Sect Master Yan, fine weather today.” She tossed over a long sword. “While the day is long yet, dance me another round of Teacher-Mother’s Startled Swan Sword Art.”

Yan Rushi caught the sword, not understanding her intent—and yet the blade was already drawn from its sheath.

It was You Fusang rising, snapping off a branch at random to wield in the sword’s place, closing in slowly. The branch scraped along the blade with a single sharp ring.

That ring struck the very bone of Yan Rushi’s ear; she nearly lost her grip on the sword.

“Junior Sister Yan. Steady your heart. No need to be nervous.”

You Fusang’s breath brushed Yan Rushi’s ear, achingly intimate—yet her expression was utterly serious.

You Fusang had not held a sword in an age, and she had never formally learned the Yan Sect’s Startled Swan Sword Art; her stolen knowledge went no deeper than the surface. Yet now her brows were gathered in focus, the gold in her eyes limpid—blowing across Yan Rushi’s heart like a tide that mirrored the moon.

Yan Rushi’s heart was unsteady, but she had practiced the Startled Swan Sword Art millions upon millions of times; the forms were carved into her very breathing, every move made on instinct.

Yan Rushi’s sword flashed crisp and clean; You Fusang followed her every step.

Like the old days, when she had led her through the forms.

The Young Sect Master Yan of those days, secure in her sword talent, had most relished Senior Sister Fusang’s envious gaze upon her, her soft-spoken praise.

Fellow disciples praised her skill; Mother praised her skill; everyone she met praised how skilled she was. But Senior Sister’s praise had always been different.

Senior Sister was different.

She had decided—she would never, ever hurt her Senior Sister.

In the instant of that resolve, the long sword broke through a hesitation in her heart, her strikes turning sharper. You Fusang followed her through the forms—and then, suddenly, asked: “Does Young Sect Master Yan remember Little Mi?”

An abrupt question, asked in the tone of small talk—yet Yan Rushi’s breath caught.

Her sword wind turned suddenly clumsy.

You Fusang continued slowly. “In early spring, Little Mi infiltrated Pagoda, intending to use my blood in a Blood Sacrifice for her kin. She had resolved to die, wounding me at the cost of her own life. I struck back hard in turn. And lately, I’ve had a premonition—as if someone means to copy her example.”

Sword and branch both tightened; sword qi slashed outward. Yan Rushi suddenly saw that not far off, every sunset-touched leaf had fallen—like camellias on the ground, red heads dotting the earth.

You Fusang was watching her too. “Yesterday Geng Ying complained to me that a great many Silver Needles have gone missing lately. She insists I seek justice for her—find the thief, skin them alive and crack them joint from joint, then feed them to the Gu.”

“And the Silver Needle most recently lost has a singular effect: it bars the divine consciousness and the meridians—to conceal portions of memory.”

All at once, the long day drew in its every last gleam of light; the forest plunged into darkness.

In the darkness, You Fusang’s fingertip traced Yan Rushi’s cheek, brushing aside the hair at her temple, a faint smile in the depths of her eyes, every line of her brow unspeakably tender. “Flaying and cracking is another matter—I don’t do such bloody work.” Her hand came to rest in Yan Rushi’s fine parting of hair, where the Silver Needle had left its mark. “I am only terribly curious, Young Sect Master Yan. The memory you stole a Silver Needle for—enduring such agony rather than let it show… what memory, exactly, was it?”