Leave by the west gate of Fenglin City, follow the main road for some seven or eight li, then turn left onto a narrow path, and within less than the time it takes an incense stick to burn down, you will come upon the Green Willow River, its banks laced with weeping willows.
The evening breeze brushed against their faces. The bright moon lay mirrored in the rippling water, scattered into a thousand trembling shards of light.
When Jiang Wang stepped out from the path, the first thing he saw was Ling He's thin, lonely back, planted at the river's edge like a tree that had chosen silence.
"Oh, let me look, let me look!" Zhao Rucheng darted in front of him, craning his neck. "You've been hiding here crying, haven't you?"
Ling He was a little helpless. "How did you lot even find me?"
"Your voice is hoarse. You definitely cried!"
Just then a rough voice crawled out of the riverside grass. "Zhao, do you know you sometimes really need a beating?"
"Brother Hu, you're here too?" Zhao Rucheng shrank his neck. Du Yehu, that barbarian of a man, would strike first and talk never; and he would not spare a thought for Zhao Rucheng's handsome face.
"I was drinking here to begin with," Du Yehu muttered, the smell of wine drifting off him into the evening wind. "Didn't expect he'd haul that bastard over too. Bad luck."
"Exactly!" Zhao Rucheng picked up the thread. "Why bother burying him at all? Something wolf-hearted and dog-lunged like that should've just been thrown in the river, let him drift downstream, feed the fish and shrimp."
Jiang Wang glanced toward where Du Yehu had emerged. "He's buried there?"
"Third Brother." Mindful of Jiang Wang's mood, Ling He explained, "I haven't forgotten Pengju's wrongs, but I still remember his kindness too. My family was poor; there were often days I went hungry. Pengju always made the excuse of asking me to instruct him in martial arts, holding me there and not letting me go until it was time to eat. His death was what he deserved, but I couldn't watch him left exposed in the wilderness... of course you were good to me as well. That year we wiped out the Green Ox Stronghold, you risked yourself to save me—"
"Why say any of this?" Jiang Wang cut him off. "My father told me, while he was alive, that adults are not like children. The first thing an adult must learn is to seek common ground while setting differences aside. That business of 'if I won't play with him, then you can't either' — that's a child. You, Pengju, and me — we each keep our own accounts. I won't interfere with the deep loyalty you bear him, and you won't interfere with my cutting all ties to him."
"That is the principle of it," Ling He said.
He looked out at the Green Willow River beneath the night. "There's an illusion that it was only yesterday. This place has changed little, and yet we are all different now."
"Nothing stays unchanged. The only constant in this world is that everything is always changing." Zhao Rucheng delivered the line with great meaning, then leaned shamelessly toward Ling He again. "Burying a man wouldn't take this late. You two were weeping in each other's arms, weren't you?"
No sooner had the words left his mouth than he leapt up, neatly dodging the leg Du Yehu had flung at him.
"Tsk, tsk — ashamed and enraged..." His taunt was only half out before he hastily cupped his hands and bowed. "My mistake, my mistake, Brother Hu."
Du Yehu was already rolling up his sleeves and giving chase. "You're not wrong. I was just about to weep in your arms myself."
Watching the two of them tussle, Ling He said quietly, "But I believe there are some things that will never be changed."
"Your words, I agree with half," Jiang Wang said.
Somehow Du Yehu and Zhao Rucheng's "sparring" turned into a four-man brawl. Fists and feet flew, everyone tripping everyone else. By the end they were all gasping for breath, then burst out laughing together, then threw their arms around one another and wept.
If anyone had passed near the Green Willow River that night, they would surely have spread some new tale of water-ghosts before long.
The four brothers finally left the Green Willow River side by side, leaving behind the place that had recorded their youth and their friendship.
None of them spoke again.
Only Zhao Rucheng, at the very last, looked back and muttered, "On the other side, don't go harming friends again. You dead ghost."
***
Moonlight poured across the shimmering Green Willow River, and it also spilled down through the broken roof of the Huánzhēn Temple.
Perhaps because of the moonlight, the two people speaking inside that ruined temple looked extraordinarily pale.
One was a striking woman. She wore a robe of vivid red, her figure exquisite, every curve in its place. Especially at the slightly open collar, a dazzling stretch of white made it impossible to look away.
Her face was too pale; by rights it should have seemed frail, even sickly. Yet she gave instead a stunning, almost dangerous beauty. Perhaps it was because of those lips, too brightly red?
She sat there without the slightest self-consciousness upon the dusty offering table, so beautiful and yet so utterly at ease.
She wiped her red lips with the tip of her little finger. "The beggars in this temple are all dead. Truly a bother — what are we to use to invite the divine decree?"
Her voice seemed to circle the cobwebs at the eaves once before arriving where it belonged, and so sounded hollow.
"One cultivator's soul-spirit would be enough."
The speaker stood in the doorway. Unlike the woman in red, he seemed unwilling to set even half a foot inside this filthy ruin, and he covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief embroidered with plum blossoms.
"Aiya, easy for you to say." The woman in red said, "We have to creep about even to kill a few mortals. Kill a cultivator? Are you not afraid the Zhuang Kingdom Dao Academy will come knocking?"
"Everyone in this city, every last one of them, will be dead sooner or later." The man frowned as he spoke. "Must we hold this conversation in a place like this?"
The woman in red laughed softly. "Zuo Guanglie, famed across the world, fell right here. The people of Zhuang turned this place inside out no fewer than ten times. There is nowhere nearby cleaner than this."
At the mention of Zuo Guanglie she actually closed her eyes, a look of rapture on her face, and even that pale cheek quickly flushed red. "I seem to still catch the scent of his magnificent aura~"
"Back to the matter at hand." The man cut off her reverie without emotion. "Wei Quji is no one to trifle with, and now there is Dong A besides. We must find the Daozi as soon as may be. Those Qin and Chu barbarians are fighting their brawls here and have thrown the sacrifices at the Huánzhēn Temple into disorder. I say — rather than snatch mortals one by one in the dark, we may as well sacrifice a cultivator outright. Simpler, and cleaner."
"There is more than one way to seek death. Why fixate on this one? Draw the sword and cut the throat — is that not fine? Or summon the lightning to devour your own body?"
Perhaps displeased at the interruption, the woman in red opened her beautiful eyes and let the smile fade. "Before the Daozi manifests, you would do well to learn what 'keeping a low profile' means!"
The man, too, seemed a little angered. Covering his nose, he said, "Miaoyu! As if the attack on the Fenglin Dao Academy was not your idea! Now the whole city is in an uproar, and one misstep and our great undertaking collapses in failure!"
"What do you know? The world is too vast, and there are too many accidents! Who could have expected Zuo Guanglie to simply die? And to fall just in time to ruin our sacrifice. At the bottom of the River of Forgetfulness, the white bones have lain silent too long! There can be no more accidents. In Fenglin City as it stands, Dong A is crucial — we must make clear his strength and his bottom line. A certain sacrifice is unavoidable. Furthermore..."
The woman in red, who was called Miaoyu, licked her lips. "Do you know that the beggars in this broken temple are not all dead? I caught a familiar scent, inside the Fenglin City Dao Academy..."
This squalid surroundings made the man only more impatient. "Whether some beggar lives or dies — is that worth my concern?"
Miaoyu this time only stretched, languid and careless, her lovely shape fully revealed. "Fool."
The man narrowed his eyes, hiding the flicker of desire that passed through them. "Do not think that because you are, in name, the Daozi's woman, you may be so unrestrained. The cult has had saintesses for thousands of years. When the Daozi appears, whether he wants you, whether he acknowledges you — that remains to be seen."
"Fair face, white bone; empty and illusory. Can you not see through it?"
"Heh heh heh." The man turned and walked out of the temple. "Whether I see through it or not — what does it matter? It is simply as it is."
A long while later, within that quiet and ruined old temple, a voice of tempting softness rose at last, spreading gently open like the moonlight itself.
"How could he not love me? How could he not want me? I have guarded him all these years, waited all these years..."