Plants and Trees, Part Eight 9

Xiao Xingchen's smile froze.

Those two words, 'Xue Yang,' struck him a blow too heavy to bear. There had never been much color in his face, and at that name what little remained drained away in an instant, leaving his lips nearly the pale pink of bloodlessness.

As if he could not be certain, Xiao Xingchen murmured, '...Xue Yang?'

Then he started awake. 'A-Qing, how do you know that name?'

A-Qing said, 'This Xue Yang, he's the one right here beside us! He's that wicked thing!'

Dazedly Xiao Xingchen said, 'The one beside us? ...The one beside us...'

He shook his head, as though dizzy, and said, 'How do you know?'

A-Qing said, 'I heard him kill someone!'

Xiao Xingchen said, 'He killed someone? Killed who?'

A-Qing said, 'A woman! Her voice was young, she must have carried a sword, and this Xue Yang had a sword hidden too, because I heard them fight, the clash of it ringing out. The woman called him Xue Yang, and said he had razed a temple, killed and burned, that everyone alive had the right to put him to death. Heaven help us, this man is a murdering madman! Hidden beside us all this while, and who knows what he means to do!'

A-Qing had not slept the whole night, spinning lies in her belly till dawn. First, the daozhang must never learn he had cut down living people as walking corpses, and still less that he had slain Song Lan with his own hand. So however it wronged Daozhang Song, she could never give up the truth of his death. Best of all would be for Xiao Xingchen to discover Xue Yang's identity and flee at once, flee far, far away.

But the news was too hard to take in, and on first hearing too absurd, and Xiao Xingchen could only think it past belief. 'But the voice is wrong. And besides...'

A-Qing, frantic, jabbed her bamboo pole against the ground. 'The voice is wrong because he made it so on purpose! Just so you wouldn't know him!' Then a thought struck her, and she sprang up. 'Oh, that's right! That's right, that's right! He has nine fingers! Daozhang, did you know? Does Xue Yang have nine fingers? You must have seen him before!'

All at once Xiao Xingchen could not keep his feet.

A-Qing caught him quickly and steadied him to the table, easing him down. A long while passed before Xiao Xingchen spoke. 'But, A-Qing, how do you know he has nine fingers? Did you touch his hand? Yet if he truly were Xue Yang, how would he ever let you touch his left hand and find the maiming there?'

A-Qing set her teeth. '...Daozhang! I'll tell you the truth. I'm not blind, I can see! I didn't touch it, I saw it!'

Each thunderclap rolled louder than the last, until even Xiao Xingchen was faintly lost. 'What are you saying? You can see?'

A-Qing was afraid in her heart, but she could hide it no longer, and she apologized over and over. 'I'm sorry, Daozhang, I never meant to deceive you! I was scared that once you knew I wasn't blind you wouldn't let me follow, I was scared you'd send me away! But don't blame me now, let's run together. He'll be back once he's bought the food!'

Then, suddenly, she fell silent.

The bandage wound across Xiao Xingchen's eyes had been snow-white, but now two blooms of blood seeped through it, thread by thread, spreading wider until they soaked clean through and ran down from the hollows of his eyes.

A-Qing shrieked, 'Daozhang, you're bleeding!'

As if only now aware, Xiao Xingchen gave a soft 'ah,' lifted a hand to his face, and found it covered in fresh blood. A-Qing's trembling hands helped wipe it away, and the more she wiped the more there was. Xiao Xingchen raised a hand. 'I'm all right... I'm all right.'

In the past the wound at his eyes would bleed whenever he thought too hard or felt too deeply, but it had not broken open in a long time, and Wei Wuxian had supposed it healed. Yet today it had broken and bled again.

Xiao Xingchen murmured, 'But... but if it truly is Xue Yang, why would it be like this? Why not kill me at the start, instead of staying beside me for years? How could this be Xue Yang?'

A-Qing said, 'At the start, how he wanted to kill you! I saw the look in his eyes, so cruel, so terrible! But he was hurt and couldn't move, he needed someone to care for him! I didn't know him, and if I had, if I'd known he was a murdering madman, I'd have run him through with my bamboo pole while he lay there in the grass! Daozhang, let's run, please?'

But Wei Wuxian sighed within himself. 'It's hopeless now. If she does not tell Xiao Xingchen, he will go on living beside Xue Yang like this. If she does tell him, he will never simply flee; he must confront Xue Yang to his face. There is no way out of this.'

And indeed, once Xiao Xingchen had forced his mind to some calm, he said, 'A-Qing, go.'

His voice was faintly hoarse. A little afraid, A-Qing said, 'I go? Daozhang, we go together!'

Xiao Xingchen shook his head. 'I cannot go. I have to learn what he truly means to do; he must have a purpose, and most likely these years of disguising himself to stay at my side were all to reach it. If I leave him here alone, I fear all the people of Yi City will fall to his poison. Xue Yang has always been so.'

This time A-Qing's weeping was no longer a pretense. She flung the bamboo pole aside and threw her arms around Xiao Xingchen's leg. 'I go? Daozhang, how can I go alone? I want to be with you, and if you won't go, I won't go either, even if it means dying with you. Out there on my own I'll only end up dying friendless and alone sooner or later. If you don't want that for me, then let's flee together!'

But with the secret out that she was no blind girl, the old trick of playing pitiful no longer served. Xiao Xingchen said, 'A-Qing, you can see, and you are clever. I believe you can make a good life. You have no idea how terrible a man Xue Yang is. You cannot stay, and you must never go near him again.'

The cry inside A-Qing's heart reached even Wei Wuxian. 'I know! I know how terrible he is!'

But she could not bring herself to speak the whole of the truth!

Then, from far off, came a light and cheerful sound of footsteps.

Xue Yang was back!

Xiao Xingchen lifted his head in sudden alarm, his old night-hunt keenness returning, and pulled A-Qing close. Low and quick he said, 'When he comes in, I'll deal with him. You seize the moment and run at once. Mind me!'

Frightened, A-Qing nodded blindly through her tears. Xue Yang kicked at the door. 'What are you two up to? I'm back already, and you still haven't left? If you're not going, lift the bar and let me in. I'm worn out.'

To hear only that voice and that easy tone, what a lively boy next door, what a sprightly little shidi. Yet who could have imagined that the one standing outside the door at this moment was a fiend stripped of all humanity, a demon wearing a handsome man's skin, walking like a man and speaking with a man's words!

The door was not locked, but it had been barred from inside, and if it stayed shut Xue Yang would surely grow suspicious. Then, coming in, he would be on his guard. A-Qing wiped her face and scolded, 'Worn out, my foot! What's a few more steps to buy some food, you walk a little and you're worn out? A girl takes a moment to change her clothes and it costs you a pound of flesh?'

Xue Yang said scornfully, 'How many sets of clothes do you even own? Change all you like, they all look the same. Open up, open up.'

A-Qing's calves were shaking, yet her voice rang out hard and clear. 'Bah! I won't open it. Kick it down if you've got the nerve!'

Xue Yang laughed aloud. 'You said it yourself. Daozhang, you'll be mending the door later, so don't blame me.'

With that he kicked once and burst the wooden door open, stepped over the high threshold, and came into the room, a brimming basket of vegetables in one hand and in the other a bright red apple dripping ripe, into which he had just bitten with a crisp crunch. Then, lowering his head, he saw the blade of Shuanghua buried in his own belly.

The basket dropped to the floor, and the greens, radishes, apples, and steamed buns came tumbling out across the ground.

Xiao Xingchen ordered in a low voice, 'A-Qing, run!'

A-Qing took to her heels and bolted out the gate of the Coffin Home. She ran wildly along the road a while, then doubled back at once, crept on tiptoe around to the Coffin Home, and climbed to that hidden spot she knew best and had eavesdropped from so often. This time she even craned out half her head to peer inside.

Coldly Xiao Xingchen said, 'Is it amusing?'

Xue Yang took a bite from the apple still in his hand, chewed slowly a while, and swallowed the flesh of it before he answered. 'Amusing. Why wouldn't it be.'

He had gone back to his own true voice.

Xiao Xingchen said, 'These years beside me, what was it you wanted?'

Xue Yang said, 'Who knows. Boredom, maybe.'

Xiao Xingchen drew Shuanghua free and made to thrust again, and Xue Yang spoke. 'Daozhang Xiao Xingchen, that story of mine I never finished. You don't want to hear the second half now, do you?'

Xiao Xingchen said, 'No.'

He refused, yet his head turned faintly aside and the stroke held still. Xue Yang said, 'But I mean to tell it anyway. And once I've finished, if you still think the fault is mine, do whatever you like.'

He swiped carelessly at the wound in his belly and pressed it, to keep it from bleeding too freely, and said, 'That little boy, when he found the man who'd tricked him into carrying the letter, felt much wronged and yet glad too, and threw himself forward bawling to tell him: the letter's delivered, but the pastries are gone, and I got beaten too, won't you give me another plate.'

'And that man, who'd just been caught by the great hulking brute and given a beating, his face cut and bruised, saw this filthy little child clinging to his leg and, vexed past bearing, kicked him away.'

'He climbed onto the ox-cart and told the driver to go at once. The boy picked himself up off the ground and ran chasing after the cart. He wanted that plate of sweet pastry so badly, and when at last he caught up he waved at the front of the cart to make them stop. The man, his temper frayed by the crying, snatched the whip from the driver's hand and lashed it across the boy's head, knocking him to the ground.'

Word by word he said, 'And then the cartwheel rolled over this child's hand, finger by finger!'

Whether or not Xiao Xingchen could see, Xue Yang raised his left hand toward him. 'Seven years old! The bones of one whole left hand crushed, one finger ground there and then into a smear of pulp! That man was Chang Ping's father.'

'Daozhang Xiao Xingchen, when you hauled me up to Koi Tower, how righteous and grave you sounded! Denouncing me, why over some small grudge I'd wiped out a whole family. Is it that, the fingers not being yours, you don't know the pain? Don't know what it is for that heart-rending scream to tear from your own mouth! Why did I kill his whole family? Why don't you ask him why, hale and whole, he came to toy with me for his idle sport? The Xue Yang of today is the gift of the Chang Ci'an of yesterday! The Liyang Chang Clan merely tasted the fruit of their own sowing!'

In disbelief Xiao Xingchen said, 'Chang Ci'an broke one of your fingers that year; even if you wanted revenge, you could have broken one of his. If the hatred ran too deep to bear, break two of his, ten! Or even cut off one of his arms! Why must you slaughter a whole family? Are you saying your one finger takes more than fifty lives to repay?'

Xue Yang actually seemed to think it over in earnest, as though he found the question strange. 'Of course. The finger is mine, the lives are others'; kill as many as you like and it never repays. Just fifty-odd people, how could they ever measure against one finger of mine?'

Xiao Xingchen, his face going whiter still at this brazen self-righteousness, demanded, 'And the others? Then why did you raze Baixue Temple? Why did you blind the eyes of Daozhang Song Zichen?'

Xue Yang threw it back at him. 'And why did you stand in my way? Why obstruct me? Why champion that pack of Chang Clan trash? Were you helping Chang Ci'an? Or Chang Ping? Hahahaha, how grateful and tearful Chang Ping was at first. And how he later begged you to stop helping him. Daozhang Xiao Xingchen, from the very beginning the fault in this was yours; you should never have meddled in others' rights and wrongs. Who is right, who is wrong, where the kindness runs deep and the grievance deeper, can an outsider ever tell? Or you should never have left the mountain at all. How clever your master Baoshan Sanren is, why didn't you heed her and stay on the mountain to cultivate and seek the Dao? If you can't make sense of the things of this world, then don't enter it!'

Past all endurance, Xiao Xingchen said, '...Xue Yang, you truly are... too sickening...'

At those words the cruel light in Xue Yang's eyes, long absent, returned.

He gave a few cold, sinister laughs. 'Xiao Xingchen, this is exactly why I loathe you. What I loathe most, most, most of all is your kind who style themselves righteous, who fancy their natures pure and lofty, your kind of great fool who always believes that doing a few good deeds will make the world beautiful, idiot, naïve, blockhead! You find me sickening? Good. Do you think I fear being found sickening? But are you fit to find me sickening?'

Xiao Xingchen was faintly startled. 'What do you mean.'

A-Qing's heart, and Wei Wuxian's, all but leapt out of their breasts!

Intimately Xue Yang said, 'These nights we haven't gone out to kill walking corpses anymore, have we? But a couple of years back, didn't we go out every few days to kill a whole batch?'

Xiao Xingchen's lips moved, as if with a faint unease. 'What do you mean, bringing this up now?'

Xue Yang said, 'Nothing at all. Just a pity you're blind, both eyeballs gouged out by your own hand, so you couldn't see those walking corpses you killed, how frightened and how anguished they were when you ran your sword through their hearts. And those who knelt and wept and kowtowed, begging you to spare their families young and old, if I hadn't cut out their tongues, they'd surely have wailed aloud, crying Daozhang, spare my life.'

Xiao Xingchen began to shake from head to foot.

A long while passed before he forced out, 'You're lying. You want to lie to me.'

Xue Yang said, 'Yes, I'm lying to you. I've been lying to you all along. Who'd have thought the lies you'd believe, and the truth you wouldn't?'

Xiao Xingchen staggered and hacked his sword toward him, shouting, 'Be quiet! Be quiet!'

Xue Yang pressed his belly, snapped the fingers of his left hand, and withdrew with composure. The look on his face was no longer that of a man; his two eyes glinted green, and the little tiger-teeth that showed when he smiled made him look for all the world like a vengeful ghost. He cried, 'Fine! I'll be quiet! If you don't believe me, then cross blades with that one behind you, and let him tell you whether I've lied!'

A gust of sword-wind came, and Xiao Xingchen instinctively swept Shuanghua up backhanded to parry. The two blades met, and he went rigid.

Not merely rigid; in that instant his whole self turned to a stone statue, withered in spirit and form.

Very, very carefully Xiao Xingchen asked, '...Is it Zichen?'

No answer came.

Song Lan's corpse stood behind him, seeming to gaze at Xiao Xingchen, yet its eyes held no pupils, and in its hand a long sword crossed Shuanghua.

The two of them must often have sparred in the old days, for from the meeting of the blades, from the force alone, each could tell the other's hand. But Xiao Xingchen seemed afraid to be certain, and turned slowly, reaching out a trembling hand to feel the edge of Song Lan's blade.

Song Lan did not move. He felt his way up along the blade, and at last, bit by bit, traced out the two characters carved on the hilt: Fuxue.

Xiao Xingchen's face grew whiter and whiter.

At his wits' end, he stroked the edge of Fuxue, not even knowing when the blade cut open his palm, his whole body shaking so that his voice nearly scattered across the floor. '...Zichen... Daozhang Song... Daozhang Song... is it you...'

Song Lan watched him quietly, saying nothing.

The bandage across Xiao Xingchen's eyes had been steeped by the ceaseless blood into two ghastly red holes. He wanted to reach out and touch the one who held the sword, but dared not at all, his hand stretching forth and shrinking back. A tearing pain came again and again from A-Qing's breast, so sharp that she and Wei Wuxian both struggled to breathe, and tears welled and broke from their eyes like a spring.

At a loss, Xiao Xingchen stood where he was. '...What is happening... say something...'

He broke down utterly. 'Won't someone say something?'

As he wished, Xue Yang spoke. 'Do you need me to tell you, too, who that walking corpse was that you killed yesterday?'

A clang.

Shuanghua fell to the floor.

Xue Yang burst into great laughter.

Xiao Xingchen knelt before the dully standing Song Lan, clutched his head, and wept aloud in heart-rending grief.

Xue Yang laughed until tears glittered in his eyes, and said with savage glee, 'What's this! Two good friends meet again, so moved they're both in tears! Why not throw your arms around each other!'

A-Qing clamped her mouth shut, letting not a thread of her sobbing escape. Inside the Coffin Home, Xue Yang paced back and forth, cursing in a voice at once frenzied with rage and frenzied with joy. 'Save the world! It's killing me, you can't even save yourself!'

Wave upon wave of sharp pain came through Wei Wuxian's mind. Yet this pain did not come from the side of A-Qing's soul.

Xiao Xingchen knelt in wretched ruin upon the ground, slumped at Song Lan's feet. He had drawn himself small, so small, as though shrunk to a frail little knot of nothing, wishing he could vanish from this world; the once spotless white of his daoist robe was now fouled with blood and dust. Xue Yang shouted at him, 'You accomplished nothing, you're routed and undone, you brought it on yourself, you asked for it!'

In that moment, in Xiao Xingchen, Wei Wuxian saw himself.

A self routed and undone, covered in blood, having accomplished nothing, reviled and raged at, powerless to turn back the tide, able only to weep aloud!

The white bandage had been dyed wholly red, and Xiao Xingchen's whole face was bloodied; without eyeballs he could shed no tears, and could only bleed. Deceived for years, taking his enemy for a dear friend, his kindness trampled, believing himself to be vanquishing demons and subduing fiends while his two hands ran with the blood of the innocent, slaying his own friend with his own hand!

He could only whimper in anguish, 'Let me go.'

Xue Yang said, 'Weren't you just trying to run me through with your sword? How is it you're begging for mercy now?'

He knew full well that with Song Lan's fierce corpse standing guard over him, Xiao Xingchen could never lift a sword again.

Once more he had won. A total victory.

Then, suddenly, Xiao Xingchen snatched up the fallen Shuanghua, turned the blade, and laid its edge against his throat. A clear stream of silver light flashed across Xue Yang's lightless black eyes, and Xiao Xingchen let go, the crimson blood sliding down the blade of Shuanghua.

With the clear ring of the long sword rolling to the floor, Xue Yang's laughter and his motion stopped short.

After a silence he walked to the unmoving body of Xiao Xingchen, lowered his head, and slowly the twisted arc at the corner of his mouth fell away while a dense web of red threads crept up into his eyes. Whether or not it was a trick of the light, the rims of Xue Yang's eyes seemed to have reddened faintly.

Then, savagely, he ground out through his teeth, 'You forced me to it!'

With that he gave a cold laugh and muttered to himself, 'Better dead. The dead are the ones who obey.'

Xue Yang felt for Xiao Xingchen's breath, pinched his wrist, and seeming to think the death not thorough enough, not stiff enough, rose, went into the lodging room to one side, and brought out a basin of water. With a clean Blindfold Cloth he wiped the blood from his face until it was clean, then changed it for a fresh bandage and wound it carefully about Xiao Xingchen.

He drew out the array on the ground, laid out the needed materials, and gathered up Xiao Xingchen's body to set it in place within. Only when all this was done did he remember to bind the wound at his own belly.

He must have believed that in a little while the two of them could meet again, and his mood grew lighter and lighter; he picked up all the vegetables and fruit that had rolled across the floor and stacked them neatly back in the basket, and in a great fit of diligence even tidied the whole room, laying a thick bed of fresh straw in the coffin where A-Qing slept. At last he took from his sleeve the piece of candy Xiao Xingchen had given him the night before.

Just as he was about to put it in his mouth, he thought better of it, held back, and put it away again, sitting at the table with his chin propped on one hand, waiting in idle restlessness for Xiao Xingchen to sit up.

But that moment never came.

The sky grew darker and darker, and Xue Yang's face grew darker with it, his fingers tapping out an impatient drip-drip on the table.

When dusk had fallen complete, he kicked the table, cursed, and with a sweep of his robe rose, half-kneeling beside Xiao Xingchen's body to inspect the array and incantations he had drawn. He checked them over and over; nothing seemed wrong, yet, frowning in thought, he wiped them all away and drew them once more.

This time Xue Yang sat down straight on the ground and watched Xiao Xingchen with great patience, waiting another good while. A-Qing's legs had gone numb through three rounds, aching and itching as though ten thousand ants were gnawing densely at them, and her eyes were swollen with weeping so that everything blurred a little.

After yet another hour, Xue Yang finally found that things had slipped beyond his control.

He laid a hand on Xiao Xingchen's brow and probed with closed eyes, and after a long while his eyes snapped open.

Wei Wuxian knew that what he had probed was, in all likelihood, no more than a few faint, lingering shreds of a shattered soul.

And a soul broken to such pieces could never be used to forge a fierce corpse.

Xue Yang seemed never to have imagined such a mischance could arise, and on that face forever brimming with mirth there appeared, for the first time, an utter blankness.

Without thinking, belatedly, he pressed his hand to the wound at Xiao Xingchen's throat. But the blood had long since drained away, Xiao Xingchen's face was pale as paper, and great swaths of it, turned dark red, had dried at his throat. To stop the wound now was of no use at all.

Xiao Xingchen was dead, thoroughly and utterly dead.

Even his soul was shattered.

In Xue Yang's story, that boy bawling over the pastry he could not have was too far removed from the man he now was; it was hard to join them in the mind. Yet at this very moment, on Xue Yang's face, Wei Wuxian at last saw a trace of that bewildered, uncomprehending child.

In an instant Xue Yang's eyes flooded with blood. He shot to his feet, both hands clenched tight into fists, and went rampaging through the Coffin Home, smashing and hurling, crash after thunderous crash, until the room he had just tidied with his own hands lay in scattered ruin.

At this moment his expression, and the sounds he made, came nearer to the word demented than all his earlier wickedness put together.

Having wrecked the room, he calmed again, crouched back in his place, and called softly, 'Xiao Xingchen.'

He said, 'If you don't get up, I'll have your good friend Song Lan go out and kill.'

'I'll kill every last soul in this whole Yi City and make them all into living corpses. You've lived here so long; can you really not care?'

'I'll strangle that little blind A-Qing to death and leave her corpse in the wilds for the wild dogs to gnaw, gnaw her to shreds.'

A-Qing gave a soundless shudder.

No one answered, and Xue Yang suddenly roared in fury, 'Xiao Xingchen!'

In vain he seized the collar of Xiao Xingchen's robe, shook it a few times, and stared at the dead man's face in his grip.

Then, abruptly, he grabbed Xiao Xingchen's arm and hoisted him onto his back.

Xue Yang carried Xiao Xingchen's body out the door, muttering like a madman, 'A Spirit-Locking Pouch, a Spirit-Locking Pouch. That's right, a Spirit-Locking Pouch, I need a Spirit-Locking Pouch, a Spirit-Locking Pouch, a Spirit-Locking Pouch...'

Only when he had gone a good way off did A-Qing dare to stir, the smallest movement.

She could not keep her feet and rolled to the ground, squirming a long while before she crawled up, and walked two laboring steps until her stiff limbs loosened; faster and faster she went, faster and faster, until at last she broke into a run.

She ran a long way, leaving Yi City far behind her, before she dared loose the great weeping she had held pent in her belly. 'Daozhang! Daozhang! Daozhang!...'

The vision shifted, the scene turning all at once to another place.

By this time A-Qing must have been fleeing for some while. She walked through an unfamiliar town with her bamboo pole, playing blind again, asking whomever she met: 'Excuse me, are there any great old families nearby?' 'Excuse me, are there any powerful adepts nearby? Cultivators of great skill.'

Wei Wuxian thought, 'She's searching for someone who can avenge Xiao Xingchen.'

But no one took her questions seriously; for the most part they fobbed her off with a word or two and went on. A-Qing did not lose heart, asking and asking, tireless, and being waved away again and again. Seeing there was nothing to learn here, she left and took a small road.

She walked a whole day and asked a whole day, worn to exhaustion, dragging heavy steps, until she came to a little stream, cupped up the water and drank a few mouthfuls to soothe a throat dry enough to spark fire. Looking into the water she saw the wooden hairpin in her hair, and reached up to take it out.

This wooden hairpin had once been very rough, like an uneven chopstick. Xiao Xingchen had whittled the shaft smooth and slender for her, and carved a little fox at its end. The little fox had a pointed face and a pair of great eyes, and it was smiling. When A-Qing received the hairpin she had felt it over and said gladly, 'Oh! It looks like me!'

Looking at the hairpin, A-Qing's mouth puckered and she wanted to cry again. Her belly was growling, and she fished from her bosom a small white purse, the very one she had stolen from Xiao Xingchen, and pried out of it one tiny piece of candy, licked it carefully, and when the tip of her tongue tasted the sweetness, tucked the candy back inside.

This was the last piece of candy Xiao Xingchen had left her.

A-Qing lowered her head to put the purse away, and as her glance swept across the water she suddenly saw, behind her own reflection, the shadow of another person.

In the reflection Xue Yang was watching her, smiling.

A-Qing shrieked in terror and scrambled away on hands and knees.

Xue Yang had, at some unknown moment, come to stand behind her. In his hand he held Shuanghua, and he spread his arms in the shape of an embrace and said happily, 'A-Qing, why are you running? It's been so long, don't you miss me?'

A-Qing shrieked, 'Help!'

But this was already a remote mountain path in the wilds, and no one would come to save her.

Xue Yang arched a brow. 'I come back from handling business over in Liyang and happen to run right into you asking your questions all over town. Truly a fate there's no stopping. And speaking of it, you really can put on a show, that you fooled even me for so long. Remarkable.'

A-Qing knew she could not escape, that her death was certain; once the worst of her terror had passed, she thought that since she was bound to die anyway she might as well curse to her heart's content first, and a flood of reckless spirit rose in her. She sprang up and spat, 'You beast! You ungrateful wolf! You worthless thing lower than pigs and dogs! Your mother and father must have made their bridal bed in a pigsty to spawn a bastard like you! You rotten seed raised on dung!'

Having knocked about the streets in her time, she had heard more than enough filthy slanging matches, and out poured every foul word after. Xue Yang listened with a smile. 'You really can curse. How is it I never heard you raise such a ruckus in front of Xiao Xingchen? Any more?'

A-Qing cursed, 'To hell with your shameless self! You still dare speak of Daozhang? That is Daozhang's sword! As if you're fit to hold it? You're fouling what was his!'

Xue Yang raised the Shuanghua in his left hand. 'Oh, you mean this? It's mine now. You think your daozhang was so very clean? In time he'll be mine all the same...'

A-Qing said, 'Like hell! Dream on! As if you're fit to say whether Daozhang was clean, you're nothing but a gob of spit, and Daozhang had the rotten luck of eight lifetimes to be touched by you. The only filthy thing is you! You sickening gob of spit!'

At last Xue Yang's face fell dark.

A-Qing had fled so long in fear and dread, and now that this moment had finally come, her heart instead grew suddenly light.

Sinisterly Xue Yang said, 'Since you're so fond of playing blind, then let's make you a real blind girl.'

He flung out his hand and scattered something, some powder she could not name that came rushing at her face and flew into her eyes; her sight went blood-red in an instant, then turned to darkness.

A burning, searing pain spread through her eyeballs, and A-Qing screamed aloud. Xue Yang's voice came again. 'Such a chattering, prattling tongue. No need to keep that either.'

Something ice-cold and sharp bored into A-Qing's mouth. No sooner had Wei Wuxian felt the stab from the root of her tongue than he was wrenched abruptly out.

The crisp ring of a silver bell, ding-ding, ding-ding, sounded close at hand. Wei Wuxian was still steeped in A-Qing's emotions, unable for a long while to come back to himself, the world before his eyes spinning. Lan Jingyi waved a hand in front of his face. 'No reaction? Don't tell me he's gone simple!'

Jin Ling said, 'I told you, Empathy is dangerous!'

Lan Jingyi said, 'It's all because you were off somewhere in your head and didn't ring the bell in time!'

Jin Ling's face stiffened. 'I...'

Luckily, at that moment Wei Wuxian came round at last and pushed himself up against the coffin. A-Qing had already slipped free of his body and was clinging to the coffin's edge too. The pack of youths surged up like a litter of piglets, ringing him round and chattering all at once: 'He's up, he's up!' 'Wonderful, he's not simple.' 'Wasn't he simple to begin with?' 'Don't talk nonsense!'

With the twittering in his ears, Wei Wuxian said, 'Quiet, my head's spinning.'

They hushed at once. Wei Wuxian lowered his head, reached into the coffin, and parted the neat collar of Xiao Xingchen's daoist robe a little. Sure enough, at the fatal place on the throat he saw a fine, thin scar.

Wei Wuxian sighed in his heart and said to A-Qing, 'You've had a hard road.'

The reason A-Qing's ghost was blind yet moved without the slow, careful caution of an ordinary blind person was that she had become truly blind only in the last moment before her death. Before that she had always been such a quick and nimble girl, swift as the wind in her every move.

All these years, alone in the demon-fog-shrouded Yi City, dodging and hiding, working against Xue Yang like an apparition, frightening off the living who entered the city, guiding them out, warning them away. What courage, what fixity of will that must have taken.

A-Qing lay against the coffin's edge, pressed her palms together, and bowed again and again to Wei Wuxian, then took up her bamboo pole as a sword and made the 'kill, kill, kill' motions she used to make at play. Wei Wuxian said, 'Rest easy.'

He said to the assembled young men of the great families, 'Stay here. The walking corpses in the city won't come to this Coffin Home. I'll be back soon.'

Lan Jingyi could not help asking, 'What on earth did you see during the Empathy?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Too long to tell. I'll lay it out another day.'

Jin Ling said, 'Can't you give the short of it? Don't keep us hanging!'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Easily told: Xue Yang must die.'

Through the demon-fog that blinded the whole sky, A-Qing's bamboo pole went tap-tap, leading the way ahead for him. Man and ghost moved at a flying pace, swiftly back to the place of the fierce fight.

Lan Wangji and Xue Yang had already taken the battle outside, and the sword-light of Bichen and Jiangzai was clashing at its keenest. Bichen was calm and composed, holding firmly the upper hand, while Jiangzai raged like a mad dog, yet just managed to hold its ground. The white fog, though, was fearsome, and Lan Wangji could not see clearly, whereas Xue Yang had lived in this Yi City for many years and, like A-Qing, knew its roads so well he could walk them with his eyes shut; thus they were locked in stalemate. From time to time the furious cry of the guqin pealed up to the heavens, driving back the swarms of walking corpses that pressed to surround them. No sooner had Wei Wuxian drawn out his flute than two black figures, like a pair of iron towers, came crashing down heavily before him. Wen Ning had pinned Song Lan to the ground, the two fierce corpses each gripping the other's throat, their joints cracking. Wei Wuxian said, 'Hold him down!'

He bent down and quickly found, in Song Lan's hair, the tails of those two Skull-Piercing Nails, and his heart eased: these two Skull-Piercing Nails were far finer than the one driven into Wen Ning's skull, and of a different material, so for Song Lan to recover his true nature should not be hard. At once he pinched the points and drew them slowly outward. As the foreign things stirred within his brain, Song Lan's eyes flew wide, and he gave a low, hissing roar; Wen Ning bore down harder, and only so was he kept from breaking free. When the Skull-Piercing Nails were drawn out, Song Lan went limp at once like a puppet with its strings cut, slumping to the ground and moving no more.

At this moment a furious roar came across the field: 'Give him back to me!'