Chen Ping'an sprinted through the darkened alleys with Ning Yao draped over his shoulder, moving faster than he had when scrambling up the mountain earlier — looking for all the world like some flower-stealing bandit who had snatched a young maiden. Ning Yao had sustained serious internal injuries, and the jostling made her feel wretched, but vanity was the least of her concerns. If the old ape landed a single fist upon them now, they would both be dead — a pair of lovers martyred together, no less.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. "How did you survive? Were you not hit by a single stone? And how did you know the old ape's follow-up strike was aimed at you, not me?"
Before she could press further, she caught herself. "Never mind — while the old ape needs to catch his breath, run as far as you can! I sent the flying sword to harry him as long as possible, but it cannot hold out much longer."
The straw-sandaled boy nodded faintly and wove through the labyrinth of lanes with the ease of a fish gliding along a streambed. Once they had put the western street of the town well behind them, he finally allowed himself to whisper an explanation: "Back at Mud Vase Lane, I lured the old ape onto the roof of a ruined house and he fell right into the trap. After that, I quietly tossed a broken tile onto the roof beside the hole — sure enough, the ape thought I had accidentally given away my position. He smashed a tile straight through the wall and the neighbor's roof, and I nearly died of fright."
"Just now I was crouching on that very roof. I did not dare show myself — partly for fear you would lose focus, and partly to see if I might put an arrow into him. When I saw him hurl that stone after you, blazing across the sky like a fire serpent, anyone who looked up would have spotted it. So I thought one step further: if I were the ape, I would use you as bait — strike the hidden one first, then finish off the exposed one. One lure, two fish. I threw Liu Xianyang's coat out to test the idea before I dared come rescue you."
Ning Yao's eyes brightened with admiration. Then, for no apparent reason, she turned prosecutorial: "Chen Ping'an — where did you learn such devious thinking? You look so prim and proper, but you are not half as innocent as you seem. Tell me! That time when Cultivator Lu saved me at the ancestral house in Mud Vase Lane — after you removed my gauze veil, did you take advantage of the situation?"
Chen Ping'an looked utterly bewildered, much as he had as a child when a cow's tail had flicked him across the face. "What?"
The girl did not pursue the matter. Instead she laughed to herself.
Chen Ping'an was a miser, not a lecher. Of this Ning Yao was as certain as she was of her own destiny to become the greatest sword immortal — not one among the rare and few, but the one and only.
"Put me down," she murmured.
"Can you walk?"
"Not yet. But if you keep running like this, my liver and spleen are going to shake loose. Imagine surviving the old ape's fists only to die on your shoulder like a slab of pork — he would laugh himself to death."
Chen Ping'an slowed his pace, troubled. "Then what do we do? Hide somewhere nearby? My plan was to leave the town altogether — a place nobody would think to search."
Ning Yao suddenly recalled something. "That wooden-porcelain armor you made yourself — why are you not wearing it?"
He smiled ruefully. "It would not have helped much against the old ape, and it would only slow me down, so I took it off. Just as well — otherwise I would not have known how to carry you out of there. I could not haul you on my back, hold you in my arms — it would have been a nightmare."
Ning Yao sighed, then steeled herself. "Set me down first, then carry me on your back to that place of yours."
Without objection, Chen Ping'an eased her down and hoisted her onto his back, resuming his run. "Miss Ning — your blade. Why do you only have the scabbard?"
The girl, her arms wrapped around his neck, replied with a huff: "I buried it in the dirt."
He asked no more, and they made their way toward a desolate stretch beyond the town.
The wasteland was ringed by mounds of graves with no descendants left to tend them. Weeds grew thick upon every mound, lush as a kitchen garden, and the occasional cry of a night owl rose and fell in the darkness — an eerie sound, to be sure. Yet Chen Ping'an harbored feelings for this place that none of his peers shared, and he felt no unease. After roughly the time it took a stick of incense to burn, he carried the girl through a forest of toppled, broken-bodied divine statues and circled behind a massive figure lying on its side. It was a clay god, missing its head, its body more than twenty feet long — one could imagine the majestic presence it had once commanded, seated in full within a temple hall.
Chen Ping'an crouched to set Ning Yao down. When she did not stir for a moment, his heart lurched — he feared she had died on his back. Frozen in place, unable to utter a word, he was nearly in tears when the girl, who had slept soundly the entire way, finally opened her eyes. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and murmured groggily: "Are we there?"
Crouching on the ground, the boy felt something he could not explain — tears nearly spilled from his eyes.
He drew a deep breath, steadied himself, and gently released her legs. Turning with a smile, he said: "This is a little shelter I put together last autumn. Gu Can and I used to come here to play. He was always clamoring to do something, so we chopped some branches with a hatchet, built a frame, and covered it with leaves and grass. Surprisingly sturdy — it did not collapse even under those two heavy snowfalls last winter."
Ning Yao straightened and looked back. The flying sword had not returned in disarray — a good sign, meaning the old ape had not located their hiding place.
Chen Ping'an asked her to wait while he ducked inside the brush-and-branch shelter, tidied up, and opened the door for his guest.
Ning Yao settled into the small but not cramped interior and felt a wave of relief wash over her.
Chen Ping'an did not close the rough little door. He sat at the threshold with his back to the girl.
"Why not close it?" she asked.
"If the old ape finds us, it will make no difference."
Ning Yao sat cross-legged and nodded. "Fair enough."
After a silence, she asked: "Do you not have anything you want to ask?"
"Did the old ape use up all three breaths?" he asked.
She hummed in affirmation. "But here is some ill news — the old ape can still break the rules at least once more. Against two invalids like us, that would be more than sufficient."
Chen Ping'an pressed further: "Miss Ning, how much do you think the old ape has paid in doing all this?"
The shelter was suffused with the fragrance of the surrounding grass, soothing and sweet. Though the ground was faintly damp, the girl felt she could not ask for more.
Ning Yao considered carefully. "The old ape struck three times. The first — from your house in Mud Vase Lane to the far west of town — was restrained, mainly to test whether you had a hidden protector. He feared someone was scheming behind the scenes, targeting the young miss of Zhengyang Mountain he had been charged to guard. The cost was perhaps three to five years of life. The second, when he confronted me by the stream, cost roughly twenty years. The third — at least fifty. A fourth strike would cost him a minimum of one hundred years."
Chen Ping'an's eyes gleamed. He bent down, plucked a blade of grass, flicked off the dirt, and chewed it. "Even at a hundred and eighty years — I made out like a bandit! Setting aside the scheming of that woman Cai from Cloud Mist Mountain, an ordinary person lives about sixty years. That means I earned two extra lifetimes. Besides, the old ape trades nearly two hundred years of his life for three of mine — just imagine how furious that must make him."
Ning Yao frowned. "Chen Ping'an — do you truly think your life is worth so little?"
Without hesitation he replied: "Compared to a thousand-year-old creature like the old ape, a commoner born in a small-town kiln — of course my life is worth less. There is no shame in admitting the truth."
Ning Yao was struck speechless by his crooked logic.
He turned to grin. "Of course, admitting it does not mean I do not feel wronged about it. Think about it — why should my life be worth less just because that is how the world works? Did I do too few good deeds in a past life? But I have not had time to do any good deeds in this one either. So in the next life I will be no better off. What am I supposed to do about that?"
Ning Yao tapped his back lightly with the tip of her empty green scabbard.
The straw-sandaled boy grimaced and turned to give her a look that said he dared not protest.
Ning Yao glared. "This life is not over yet — stop worrying about the next one!"
He quickly raised a finger to his lips, signaling her to keep her voice down.
The girl clamped her mouth shut.
He shifted his weight further from her and the scabbard.
Ning Yao hesitated, then decided to tell him the truth. Her voice was hoarse: "Chen Ping'an — have you considered that although the old ape has burned through a hundred and eighty years of life, how long could he originally have lived?"
The boy, gazing at the distant sky with his back to her, simply shook his head.
Such mystical matters were beyond him. He could have strained his brain until it cracked and still not guessed the answer.
Some things were like the flagstone streets of Fulu Street and Peach-Leaf Lane — had he not taken up the job of delivering letters, he would have gone his whole life never knowing that not all roads in the world were made of mud.
Ning Yao sighed. "Creatures born of the world's anomalous energies — beings like this mountain-moving ape — have far fewer spiritual apertures than humans. Because of that, cultivation is extremely difficult for them. But the advantage is that their vital energy drains far more slowly, granting them extraordinary longevity. Five hundred years at the minimum, five thousand at the most. Mountain-moving apes are restless by nature and loathe stillness, so without cultivation their lives are shorter than, say, a tortoise or a flood dragon. But the mountain-moving ape was once a dominion unto itself, and its lifespan still reaches about two thousand years. And this particular guardian ape has clearly mastered Daoist arts and divine abilities. Should he ascend to the Upper Five Realms, combined with his ninth-realm physique — forget two thousand years. Three thousand, even four thousand, is not out of the question."
She looked at his thin silhouette. "So do not assume you have lived long enough."
Chen Ping'an said nothing.
Ning Yao felt a pang of sorrow.
In the silence that followed, the girl who had just laid bare a cosmic truth felt guilt creeping in. She searched her mind for words of comfort. But by the time she had finally worked something out, she heard the faint sound of the straw-sandaled boy's breathing slow into a soft snore.
Ning Yao was dumbfounded.
---
In a large house deep within Apricot Blossom Lane, everything from the inner rooms to the gate was kept scrupulously clean — even the road before the entrance was tidier than most.
An old woman whose face bore no trace of gentle benevolence adjusted the lamp wick, brightening the room, then turned a gaze of doting affection upon her grandson and launched into the same weary refrain she had delivered year after year, day after day: "Creeping out onto the rooftops in the dead of night again? The old saying goes, bundle up in spring and endure the cold in autumn — you never listen. You are at the age when a body grows. If you freeze yourself sick, how is your grandmother supposed to live?"
The dull-witted boy simply grinned.
The old woman sat down and sighed, beginning the recitation of her own bitter scripture: "You have no idea, grandson. Today that white-eyed wolf of a son showed up at our door carrying bundles of gifts — some scent of meat must have drawn him. You were not home, so you missed the sight of his face. A filial son, a loving father — nearly brought your grandmother to tears!"
Her face twisted with mockery. She spat a glob of phlegm on the floor, then regretted it and ground it away with her toe. Looking up at her grandson's indifferent expression, her anger flared — but she could not bring herself to strike him. She could only fume: "A heartless, thick-headed boy — you do not even feel for your grandmother. Your birth name is Ma Xuan, but since you were born of a father and raised by no one but me, is that not hardship enough? I added the word 'bitter' to your name. If you find it unlucky, change it back when you grow up — it makes no difference to me. Your grandmother is nothing but an old country hag, a frog in a rice paddy, with nothing but a narrow little view of the world. I deserve every bit of suffering I have endured..."
The old woman began wiping away tears.
The boy Ma Kuxuan placed his hand over his grandmother's withered, bony hand.
She glanced at him — there was finally a flicker of feeling in his eyes — and smiled with relief, patting his hand in return. "Your grandmother is an unfortunate soul. Your grandfather had a conscience but no ability — no use relying on him. Your father has ability but no conscience — also no use. So you are all I have left. If you amount to nothing, then every bit of suffering I have endured will have been for nothing. Suffering is not the worst thing — just do not end up like me. You must make something of yourself, a great something. Anyone who ever bullied you, you bully them right back tenfold. Never be a good man. A bad man? Every now and then, that is fine. But do not go around scheming to hurt people just because you have nothing better to do — care for retribution. The heavens may doze off most of the year, but they do open their eyes now and then. If they catch you in the act — oh my..."
The boy had heard these old chestnuts since childhood — his ears had not merely grown calluses but gone through several generations of them. Still, he did not withdraw his hand, letting his grandmother hold it gently.
The old woman suddenly asked: "Why do you like that little wench Zhigui?"
The boy smiled. "She is pretty."
The old woman slapped his hand a little harder, cursing: "Heartless little maggot! You will not even tell your grandmother the truth?"
The boy chuckled. "Do not worry, Grandmother. It is a good thing."
The old woman regarded him with suspicion but let it go, changing the subject: "Do you know why your parents abandoned you?"
The boy smiled. "We were poor back then. They could not afford to raise me."
The old woman's voice shot up to a shriek: "Poor? Our Ma family has not been poor for seven or eight generations! We have simply grown so accustomed to playing the grandson that we forgot how to play the master. The truth is, our ancestors left behind a rule: no matter how wealthy, never settle on Fulu Street — not Peach-Leaf Lane, either. Your worthless parents — if they were truly poor, would they have adorned themselves in gold and jade every day? Eaten and drunk like royalty at every meal? Short of moving into the territory of the four surnames and ten clans to flaunt their wealth, what good thing in this world did they ever miss?"
Every time she spoke of her son and daughter-in-law, the old woman's teeth ground together. She sneered: "Those ancestral rules — just rot in the ground. What are they worth after all these years? Grandson, when you have made something of yourself, do not take them too seriously. Your grandmother has lived long enough to see both rich and poor. In the end, only the incompetent bother being honest!"
Ma Kuxuan's smile was brilliant — whether he found her words wise or simply absurd, it was impossible to tell.
The boy had been like this his whole life: he could endure any loss, swallow any insult. But on certain matters he was so stubborn that even his grandmother could not sway him.
The old woman rose, scurried to check that the gate was bolted, returned to her seat, and lowered her voice: "Grandson, do not think your grandmother has spent all these years playing at spirits and potions just as a midwife and dispenser of talisman water. Or going door to door to collect old junk on shameless pretense. Let me tell you — those old objects I have gathered are priceless treasures..."
The boy lapsed back into his languid manner. It was clear he had no interest in his grandmother's great trunk of "antiques."
The old woman continued boasting about the various swindles and schemes of her youth, puffing with pride.
Ma Kuxuan asked suddenly: "Grandmother — did the father of Chen Ping'an from Mud Vase Lane die at..."
The old woman's face drained of color. She clapped a hand over his mouth, her expression fierce: "Some things can be done — but never spoken!"
The boy smiled and nodded, asking no more.
The old woman lost her appetite for reminiscing. She sat listlessly, her spirits heavy, gazing out the window at the night now and then.
Ma Kuxuan smiled and said: "Grandmother — you have served as the town's spirit medium for so many years. Everyone in Apricot Blossom Lane says you can cross the barrier between life and death, guiding departed souls back to the world of the living..."
The old woman rolled her eyes. "If other people believe in such nonsense, do you? Your grandmother is a woman who is afraid even of thunder — if I actually saw a ghost, I would scare myself to death!"
"Do not be afraid, Grandmother."
The boy Ma Kuxuan smiled softly. "The living and the dead walk different paths. Immortals and mortals stand apart. The great dao stretches toward the sky — each walks its own way."
---
At dawn, Ning Yao slowly opened her eyes inside the brush-and-branch shelter.
The boy was nowhere in sight.
She rose swiftly, bent to step outside, and with a light leap alighted upon the great shoulder of a toppled deity statue.
In the distance, the straw-sandaled boy was jogging toward her, his pace neither hurried nor slow — not the gait of a man being pursued. Spotting the girl in dark green, he waved urgently for her to come down.
Ning Yao leapt from the statue's shoulder and stood before him.
"The old ape did not find us."
After speaking, Chen Ping'an turned to face the headless statue, pressed his palms together, bowed his head, and muttered something. Ning Yao caught fragments — he was asking the deity not to hold her intrusion against them. She rolled her eyes but said nothing.
Then the boy lowered his voice conspiratorially: "Let me take you to see two more statues — very interesting!"
"Have the gods and bodhisattvas manifested, willing to appear for you? Does that not mean sincerity brings results?"
Chen Ping'an looked abashed. "Miss Ning, when you put it that way..."
She raised an eyebrow.
In a flash he continued: " — one can tell you are a person of education!"
Ning Yao transformed in an instant, coughing lightly and silently repeating to herself: composed, composed.
The boy led the way; the girl followed in silence.
Ning Yao absently touched her fingertip to the space between her brows.
That had truly been a brush with death.
After an inner battle that lasted a good while, she took a deep breath and managed two small words: "Thank you."
The boy, who had been watching and listening in every direction, heard the sudden gratitude. In his heart, he did not feel she owed him thanks — if anything, he owed her. But Chen Ping'an had no idea how to say as much, so he simply let the moment pass.
He stopped abruptly and stared southward, speaking more to himself than to her: "What if the old ape has already been driven out by Master Qi — and that is why he did not chase us?"
The girl had no answer.
Chen Ping'an walked on, showing no change in his expression.
Ning Yao quickened her pace to walk beside him and could not help asking: "Chen Ping'an — are you all right?"
"I am fine." He shook his head. "I know that some things are simply the way they are. When there is nothing to be done, there is nothing to be done."
The boy had never been to school, so he did not know that in the words of the ancients there was a phrase for this: even human effort has its limits.
Ning Yao stopped in her tracks. When the boy turned back in puzzlement, she pointed to the crimson mark between her brows. "I know you have been curious but too polite to ask. Let me tell you the truth — this is my trump card. The old ape of Zhengyang Mountain is formidable, is he not? He chased us around like stray dogs. But within the acupoint between my eyebrows rests a gift my mother gave me for my tenth birthday — my life-bound treasure. Once it appears, forget the old ape — even..."
She broke off there, skipping ahead. "The reason I tell you this is to let you know — the world is vast. Do not sell yourself short, and do not lose heart. You have already begun martial training, have you not? Why not take up swordsmanship as well?"
"Would you teach me?"
Ning Yao declared with perfect self-assurance: "My talent is too great. I learned the sword very early, and my realm advanced with extraordinary speed. But teaching someone else swordsmanship? I do not know the first thing about it."
Chen Ping'an scratched his head.
Ning Yao considered, then spoke seriously: "Even if I wanted to give you the flying sword, it would not agree. And I would not insult it so — in my homeland, we believe that any sentient sword in this world is a fellow traveler of our kind."
She finally unfastened the snow-white scabbard from her waist. "But I can give you this sword scabbard."
Chen Ping'an stared blankly. "Why?"
Ning Yao clapped him firmly on the shoulder and spoke with great solemnity: "Now that you have the scabbard, how far can you be from becoming a sword immortal?"
The boy took the empty scabbard in a daze, mouth agape. "What did you say?"
Ning Yao strode ahead.
In that moment, the girl felt she had done something remarkably dashing — and nothing more.
Chen Ping'an held the scabbard carefully and wondered where on earth he would find a sword to put in it.