The Eighth: Grass and Trees

The country of Eastern Shu is threaded with river valleys and walled in by high mountains, its terrain broken and uneven, its winds feeble; and for these reasons many places lie smothered in fog the year round.

The two of them pressed straight on in the direction the left hand pointed, and came at length to a small village.

A few rings of fencing enclosed earthen houses thatched with straw; a flock of mottled hens and chicks wandered in and out of the yard pecking at scattered grain, while a great rooster with glossy plumage stood upon a rooftop, shook out its comb, balanced on one leg, and turned its neck warily, surveying every quarter with lordly disdain. Mercifully no household kept a dog. These villagers, one guessed, hardly tasted meat enough in a whole year to leave a bone to spare for one.

Before the village lay a fork where the road split three ways. Two of the paths were bare and well-trodden, marked with many footprints, plainly often walked. The last had long since run wild with weeds that had crept over its surface, and a square stone slab leaned crookedly at its head. Old beyond reckoning and weathered by frost and rain, the slab was split by one great crack from crown to foot, and from the seam withered grass had wormed its way out.

Two large characters were carved upon the slab, seeming to name the place this road led to. The lower could just be made out as the character for 'city'; the upper had many strokes and an intricate shape, and the crack ran clean through it, flaking away a scatter of small stone fragments. Wei Wuxian bent and brushed aside the tangled grass, and stared a long while, yet still could not make out what character it was.

And of course it was precisely this road that the left arm pointed toward.

Wei Wuxian said: 'Why not ask these villagers?'

Lan Wangji gave a nod. Wei Wuxian could hardly expect him to do the asking, and at once, all smiles, he made his way toward the farmwomen scattering grain for the chickens.

The women were young and old, and at the approach of a strange young man they stiffened, as though half-minded to drop their winnowing baskets and flee indoors. Only after Wei Wuxian had spoken a few warm, smiling words did they slowly settle, and answer him with a touch of shyness.

He pointed at the stone tablet and put a question, and at first their faces all changed as one; they hesitated a good while before, haltingly, with gestures here and there, they began to talk with him — and not one of them dared spare more than a glance at Lan Wangji standing beside the tablet. Wei Wuxian listened with care for a time, the corners of his mouth tilting up throughout, and at the last he seemed to turn the subject, which smoothed the farmwomen's looks, eased them by degrees, and drew from them unpracticed smiles.

Lan Wangji watched from a distance, and waited, and waited, and saw no sign that Wei Wuxian meant to come back. He lowered his head slowly and nudged a small pebble by his foot.

He rolled the innocent pebble back and forth and ground it about for a good long while. When he raised his head again, Wei Wuxian had, of all things, drawn something from inside his robes and handed it to the farmwoman who had spoken the most.

Lan Wangji stood rooted where he was, and could bear it no longer. Just as he made to step across, Wei Wuxian at last came strolling back, hands clasped behind him, unhurried.

He took his place again at Lan Wangji's side and said: 'Hanguang-jun, you should have come over. They keep rabbits in that yard.'

But Lan Wangji gave no answer to the teasing, and said, with a show of coolness: 'What did you learn.'

Wei Wuxian said: 'This road leads to Yi City. The first character on the tablet is yi.'

Lan Wangji said: 'The yi of chivalry?'

Wei Wuxian said: 'Right, and not right.'

Lan Wangji said: 'Explain.'

Wei Wuxian said: 'The character is indeed that one, but the meaning is not. Not the yi of righteousness — the yi of the Coffin Home.'

They trod over the tangled weeds and onto the forking road, leaving the stone tablet behind them. Wei Wuxian went on: 'These girls say that since ancient times, six or seven in every ten who lived in that city were short-lived — dying young, or dying violently — so the city holds a great many coffin homes for the keeping of the dead. Add to that the local trade in coffins and joss paper and all the funereal wares of the underworld, with craftsmen masterful at making coffins and binding paper figures alike, and that is how it came by the name.'

The road held not only withered grass and loose stone but ditches hard to spot. Lan Wangji kept his eyes always on where Wei Wuxian set his feet, and Wei Wuxian spoke as he walked: 'They say the folk hereabouts seldom go to Yi City, and those inside seldom leave save to bring out goods. These past few years scarcely a soul has been seen. This road has lain abandoned for years now, untrodden. No wonder it's such hard going.'

Lan Wangji: 'And the rest.'

Wei Wuxian: 'The rest of what?'

Lan Wangji said: 'What did you give them.'

Wei Wuxian said: 'Oh. That? It was rouge.'

Back in Qinghe Town he had bought a small box of rouge from that wandering quack and false priest he had questioned about Xinglu Ridge, and had carried it on him ever since. Wei Wuxian said: 'When you ask folk for word of things you ought to give some thanks. I meant to give silver, but it frightened them so they wouldn't take it. They seemed to love the scent of that rouge — looked as though they'd never used anything of the kind — so I gave it away.'

He paused, then added: 'Hanguang-jun, why do you look at me like that. That box of rouge isn't anything fine, I grant you. But the me of now isn't the me of before, going about all day with a heap of flowers and grasses and hairpins and trinkets to hand out to the girls. I'd nothing else to give. Something is better than nothing.'

As though some most unpleasant memory had been stirred awake, Lan Wangji's brow gave a twitch, and slowly he turned his head away.

On along this hard road they pressed, and the weeds thinned by degrees, drawing back and creeping aside, and the way grew gradually broader. But the fog only thickened.

As the left arm curled into a fist, a ruined city gate appeared at the end of the long road.

The corner tower upon the wall had lost tiles and paint and shed one whole corner, ruined and ugly beyond telling. The wall was covered over with graffiti scrawled by who knew whom. The red of the gate had near faded to white, the door-studs rusted one by one to black, and the two leaves hung half-shut, as though someone had just now pushed a crack open and slipped inside.

Even before one entered, it gave the sense of being, beyond all doubt, a haunted place where demons danced.

Wei Wuxian had been glancing about him all the way along the road, and at the gate he pronounced: 'Wretched fengshui.'

Lan Wangji nodded slowly: 'Spent mountains, foul waters.'

This Yi City was hemmed on all four sides by high cliffs, the slopes leaning gravely inward toward the center in a posture of crushing menace, as though they might collapse at any moment. Ringed on every side by such black, looming masses of rock, set in that ghastly white fog, the place was more monstrous than any monster. Merely to stand here pressed at the chest and unsteadied the heart and stole the breath, so heavy was the sense of threat.

There has always been the saying that 'a great land breeds great souls'; and there is a saying for the reverse as well. Certain places, by their lie of land and their situation, have foul fengshui and a natural pall of ill fortune wound about them, so that those who dwell there are apt to die young and to find all things go awry. And where generation upon generation has rooted itself in such a spot, the curse is bred into the very bone. Such places, moreover, breed strange phenomena, and the chances of corpse-transformations and the return of a Fierce Ghost and the like are many times those elsewhere. Plainly, Yi City was just such a place.

Places like this lie, as a rule, in remote spots beyond the reach of the Cultivation Clans. And, to be sure, beyond their wish to reach — for it is a great deal of trouble. More trouble than the Water Abyss. The Water Abyss at least can be driven off, but fengshui is hard to alter. So long as no one comes weeping and begging at their doors, each clan turns a blind eye and feigns to know nothing of it.

To leave one's native soil is the surest escape for the city's people, yet where the folk of a place have been rooted in that remote ground for generations, it is very hard to steel oneself to go. Even if six or seven in ten of one's home country die young, one might, after all, be among the other three or four — and so it seems a thing that may be borne a little longer.

The two reached the gate and exchanged a glance.

With a long 'creak,' the over-burdened axle, bearing two unaligned gate-leaves, swung slowly open.

Before their eyes there was no bustle of carts and crowds, nor any Fierce Corpse lunging at the face. Only white, vast and overwhelming.

The fog hung thick, many times denser than the mist beyond the walls, and one could just make out ahead a long, straight street with no figure upon it, lined on either side by standing houses.

As though by nature the two drew a few steps closer to one another, and entered the city together.

It was still broad day, yet within the city all was hushed and soundless — not only no human voice, but not the faintest crow of cock or bark of dog — eerie in the extreme.

Then again, this being the very place that left arm had marked out, it would be far stranger were it not eerie.

They followed the long street a while, and the deeper they went the heavier the white fog grew, as if a demonic air were spilling out on every side. At first one could still make out faintly what lay ten paces off; later the outline of a thing five paces off could not be told; and later still one could scarcely see a hand before the face. The further they walked, the closer Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji drew together, until only shoulder against shoulder could they barely make out each other's faces. A thought rose unbidden in Wei Wuxian's mind: 'If someone took the cover of this fog to slip quietly in between us, so that two became three, I daresay we might not even know.'

Just then his foot struck something underfoot, and he looked down, yet could not tell what it was. Wei Wuxian caught hold of Lan Wangji's hand, to keep him from straying off alone, and bent and narrowed his eyes to look. A head with eyes glaring round in fury broke through the mist and crashed into his sight.

The head bore the face of a man, with heavy brows and great eyes, and on its cheeks two blots of rouge oddly out of place.

Wei Wuxian had only just kicked this head, near sending it flying, and so knew its measure. Anything so light could be no true man's head. He lifted it and gave it a pinch, and a great patch of the man's cheek caved in, smearing off a swath of the rouge.

It was, in fact, a head bound out of paper.

This paper head was made true to life, its makeup exaggerated yet its features rather delicate. Yi City's trade was in funeral goods of the underworld, so its craft in binding paper figures was naturally fine. Among such figures there are surrogate effigies — folk believe that to burn these for the dead lets them suffer in the underworld in the ancestor's stead, climbing the mountain of knives, descending into the cauldron of oil; there are maidservants and beauties, to wait upon the ancestor below, kneading his waist and beating his legs. All of which, of course, is only the living seeking comfort for themselves. This paper head, though, must belong to a Yin Strongman.

A Yin Strongman, as the name implies, is a bruiser, said to go down and guard the ancestor from the bullying of other vengeful ghosts and crooked judges of the dead, so that the Joss Paper the descendants burn is not snatched away by petty imps. This paper head must once have had a tall, sturdy paper body to go with it, hauled off by someone or other and flung into the street.

The paper head's topknot was glossy and jet-black, strand on strand and richly sheened; Wei Wuxian reached out and felt it, and it clung fast to the scalp, as though it were truly hair the thing had grown. He mused: 'The craft really is fine. Could they have taken a true man's hair and pasted it on?'

Suddenly a thin, slight black shape brushed past him at speed.

The shape came uncannily, grazing close along his side as it ran, and in an instant was gone into the thick fog. Bichen leapt of itself from its sheath and gave chase after that figure, then flashed back at once and folded home into the scabbard.

That thing that had just slipped past, pressed against him — it ran too fast, at a speed no human could ever reach.

Lan Wangji said: 'Careful. Be on guard.'

It had only brushed by this time, true, but there was no telling that the next time it would not try something else.

Wei Wuxian rose and said: 'Did you hear that just now?'

Lan Wangji said: 'Footsteps. A Bamboo Pole.'

Just so. In that brief instant, besides the hurried footsteps, they had heard another strange sound — a crisp tak-tak-tak, like a bamboo pole rapping swiftly along the ground. Why such a sound should be there, none could say.

Just then, out of the mist ahead, came another set of footsteps.

These footsteps were soft, and slow, and many, and confused. As though a crowd were warily making its way toward them, and yet, of all things, not one of them spoke a word. Wei Wuxian turned his hand and flicked out a Yin-Burning Talisman, casting it lightly ahead. Were there anything ahead spilling over with grievance, it would catch fire, and the flame might at least light a patch of ground.

Those coming from the other side sensed too that someone here had thrown something, and at once struck back — a sudden assault.

Several sword-beams of differing hues came murderously at his face; Bichen slid calmly from its sheath, swam a circuit before Wei Wuxian, and beat every last beam back. From the far side rose a clatter of toppling men and floundering hands. Hearing the shouting, Lan Wangji at once drew Bichen back, while Wei Wuxian said: 'Jin Ling? Sizhui!'

He had not misheard. Jin Ling's voice rang out through the white fog: 'How is it you again?!'

Wei Wuxian said: 'I was about to ask how it's you again!'

Lan Sizhui held himself in as best he could, yet his voice brimmed with joy: 'Young Master Mo, you are here too? Then does that mean Hanguang-jun has come as well?'

At the thought that Lan Wangji might have come, Jin Ling shut his mouth at once, as though struck silent again, dreading to be caught out in some fault and disciplined for it. Lan Jingyi too called out: 'He's surely come! That was Bichen just now, wasn't it! It was Bichen, wasn't it?!'

Wei Wuxian said: 'Mm, he's come, he's right at my side this very moment. All of you, come over, quick.'

Learning that those before them were friends and not foes, the band of youths swarmed over as if granted a reprieve. Besides Jin Ling and the cluster of young Lans, there were seven or eight more youths in the dress of other clans, the wariness not yet fully gone from their faces — sons of Cultivation Clans, surely, of no mean standing. Wei Wuxian said: 'How is it you're all here? Striking so hard at the first move — lucky for me Hanguang-jun was at hand, or what if you'd wounded an ordinary person?'

Jin Ling shot back: 'There are no ordinary people here at all. There are no people in this city at all!'

Lan Sizhui nodded: 'Broad daylight, demonic fog everywhere, and not a single shop with its doors open.'

Wei Wuxian said: 'That can wait. How did you all come to be together? Don't tell me you arranged to go out on a Night Hunt as a party.' With Jin Ling's contrary temper — finding fault with everyone, ready to brawl with anyone — and the friction he'd had with these young Lans before, how could they ever go hunting together as a party? Lan Sizhui, who answered every question put to him, explained: 'That's a long story. We were originally—'

At that very moment, out of the mist came a kak-kak-kak, a tak-tak-tak, the piercing, jarring sound of a bamboo pole rapping against the ground.

The faces of the youths all changed as one: 'It's coming again!'