A Lease at Life

When Xie Qing awoke, he was looking into a mirror, but for one discrepancy: the reflection's gaze was stuck in place, staring into a fixed point in space.

Qing waved his arm but found no change in the reflection. Still dizzy, he brought his hand up to his face. A misty see-through palm reflected in his shocked eyes. This was no mirror! It was his flesh and face that lay before him. He shook his head to see what form he occupied now, for it had to be something, considering he could move a hand before. From drenched and torn scholar's robes, to dripping hair weighing on his shoulders, this misty form matched his body in appearance, floating above it like a cloud. Just, when he tried to close the wide-open eyes, his hand went through the head.

He couldn't figure out what to make of it, almost too afraid to study his own flesh, lest he arrive at a woeful result.

"That is a corpse," an unknown man said from behind him, hastening the conclusion Qing was beginning to arrive at. The voice had been hoarse.

"Who is it? The spirit of the reincarnation cycle? Or the Heaven Emperor?" Qing asked, uncaring of whether the other found his question impudent. Dying made one lose the fear of consequences.

"Neither would appear at the demise of one so insignificant."

Qing followed up, unshaken. "Then why have you?

Footsteps began and ended closer behind him. A withered hand entered Xie Qing's vision and shut the corpse's eyelids, before grabbing his shoulder without passing through it, straightening him so his feet floated an inch above the stone ground.

Qing studied the old man who owned the decrepit hand. The bright yellow dragon robes caught his eyes first. On it were painted two brown puppets, one adorned with a crown and the other holding an alms bowl, with limbs bound in red embroidery threads. These red threads extended to the robe's shoulders and then to the forearms before disappearing into the sleeves.

The old man wore a mask of wrinkles with hair white as snow tied into a bun. Qing peered into his dark eyes, averting his gaze a moment later, as though by the will of some natural law, before trying again with the same result.

"Right now, the planet's laws are trying to break in so they can escort your soul to the reincarnation cycle," the old man said, motioning above with a finger.

Xie Qing looked up to the cave's ceiling where a silent battle was taking place. A green jade disk was rotating and warding off smoke-like strands extending out from the rock. Visible beneath the disk's surface was a symbol resembling two archery bows facing each other.

"Don't feel wronged. It is their righteous duty to take your soul, as you could not be more dead. But I've come with an opportunity. With my strength, your soul can be returned to the body. Two hundred years later, I will collect this debt, and your claim on life will be renounced. Do you accept?"

"I have a million doubts in my head. But I've learned not long ago that people don't have to say the truth to answer your questions."

For the first time, the old man's thin lips changed their angle to what resembled a smile. A network of wrinkles on his cheek shifted with the movement.

"Mortals say that a lesson learned in time for death is one learned too late. Now you know better."

Qing smiled back. "What do you want me to do in exchange for this time?"

The old man sighed and turned somber. "Your infant eyes can't see the ocean of impossibilities all life is submerged in. Betting against the everchanging net of fate, even I am a gambler. It is better to let things take their course."

Qing tilted his head in wonder, keeping the words in his mind to ponder another time.

"You met me as a soul, and so this memory will be locked until you're a man of spiritual prowess. Now, be my audience."

Finished speaking, the old man raised his left hand. The blink of an eye later, it held an ax with a silver head and a wooden handle. His empty right hand moved above the corpse's head. For a moment the palm glowed silver light upon the bloodless face, before seven rotten stems of seaweed began to rise from its forehead. Upon growing to eight inches of height, the yellow-robed old man gripped the seven stems, and the ax chopped off six. The left hand then fell, empty once again.

"Let's put this here for now," the old man said, raising the bundle of seaweed to cracked lips, blowing them toward Qing's soul. These six rotten stems flew into places where his organs would be: heart, liver, lungs, spleen, and gallbladder. The kidney's location shined for a moment, but soon returned to being inconspicuous upon receiving nothing.

The old man's hand receded into his sleeves, returning with two bronze goblets held in them. Faint tiger roars came from one, and a living impression of a clever-eyed monkey frolicked around the surface of the other.

"Drink from this one. It is the first gift."

Upon the mention of a gift, Qing's movements hastened.

Bowing to receive the goblet, he caught the reflection of the old man's face in the shimmering gray liquid. Neither eye had pupils, and instead, the left glowed a cool silver while the right held an intense golden light. The reflection lasted for a moment during which his hands paused. They continued onwards, shaking a little now.

Qing downed the contents. His soul body was incorporeal, yet the gray liquid permeated it. Once empty, even the goblet melted away into his being.

"A soul of metal surpasses jade talent; hardships are the blacksmith's hammer."

Qing gaped as his divine sense seemed to turn heavier, perhaps imprinted with the old man's words. However insane that sounded, he didn't find the idea impossible. And while he could tell the effects of the old man's words, the goblet changed him in subtler ways.

He reached for the other goblet, his hands now steady. But the old man turned and poured the contents onto the one rotten seaweed still growing on the corpse's forehead. The gray liquid covered the rotten green strand, encasing it in molten silver, and it disappeared back into the forehead. The empty goblet shrank into a tiny bronze bead and embedded itself between the body's eyebrows.

Turning back to Qing, the old man said, "Courage is a pretense to hide fear, but to bury this sense deep is folly. Learn cleverness from a monkey, and also learn to heed fear without letting fear take over."

The sentences he spoke held an inherent meaning, as if just stringing the words together represented a law that couldn't be foiled. And once again, Qing's divine sense gained weight, incorporeal although it was.

"Fate, ah fate… Your cultivation is of earth, which is fitting of the second gift I'm about to give you, and surprising. So half a gift of one fate thread will be yours too," the man said, flicking a sleeve and causing a long embroidery thread to break off and drill into his real body. When the thread's length disappeared under the bloodless skin, a thin red line became visible from where the robe was torn, a tattoo running around the hip.

"For each of the other ten, I gave out a single gift. But you're getting two and a half."

His words that had been quiet, and his figure that had been wizened, all disappeared, replaced by a Majesty that seemed to command everything around them.

"Look into my eyes."

Qing's gaze followed on its own accord, his mind unable to refuse. In place of the sun and the moon from before, the old man's eyes contained a vast emptiness. Hypnotized, Qing forgot the existence of anything else. The cave's walls, the corpse, the green jade disk, and the smoked formed by natural laws disappeared. Compared to the vastness in those eyes, everything else may as well had not existed.

The old man disappeared as well, and only the pair of eyes were left. An image appeared in them, tiny at first, but growing larger fast, like a cultivator flying into a mountain. From a rough needle, the image became an earthen spear. A sharp moment later, the spear was a mountain. For nothing else in his life would Qing use the word "colossal".

While Qing stood perceiving the ever-expanding illusion, the old man turned to face the dead body, clasping its cold hands together into the shape of a mountain. Horrible crunches like bone in a meat grinder began to echo in the stone chamber.

"You won't suffer from the Man-Mountain Incantation, but the birth of those two… Still, a simple test for a candidate of great feats," the old man said.

Once the nightmarish musical died down, the old man grabbed the still hypnotized Xie Qing by the arm. In a swift motion, he threw the soul body into the flesh.

"Two hundred years of time will mark our reunion, child."

Qing heard the old man's farewell inside the illusion, before the world turned dark for him.

"This child's death will put his goals at odds with the planet's governance. Fate has brought me a good candidate," the old man said, pausing for a moment before adding, "Meng Tian, ten thousand years of fate will mark our reunion. The Heaven Void cannot be sustained forever..."