Chapter 40- lord Seventh

Zhang Chengling felt dizzy and knew that it must be from the Scorpion's poison. Rumbling noises echoed in his ears like thunder whilst the sounds from his surroundings seemed to reach him through a veil of muslin — he could hear, but nothing sounded real.

He turned his face in the direction the arrow came from and saw two men.

The fellow who held a small crossbow in his hand wore a long robe of a navy blue color, his large sleeves billowing on the breeze. A belt that was the width of a palm cinched his waist, a xiao flute made of white jade attached to it. He didn't look like a jianghu dweller or a scholar. More like some land-owning noble who bathed in luxuries. At first glance, his pair of "peach-blossom eyes" seemed to retain the hint of a smile, but on a closer peek, his gaze that was directed at the last standing Scorpion gleamed with a cold light.

In a daze, Zhang Chengling thought that this individual... was the best-looking person he had ever seen.

Another man dressed in black stood by his side with a small marten perched on his shoulder. His face looked as cold as ice.

The remaining Scorpion seemed to hesitate for a moment before he darted like an arrow toward the man holding the crossbow.

Zhang Chengling felt an indescribable icy breeze streak by his ear, and before he knew what happened, the Scorpion had turned into a dead Scorpion.

The man dressed in black, who was still a distance away from a mere blink ago, materialized beside him. He stooped to lift up his injured hand and examined it before he reached out to seal his acupoints. Then, he pressed a medicine pill to his lips and said, "Ingest it. You've been poisoned with scorpion venom."

Without care for anything else, Zhang Chengling struggled to grab the man's sleeve. "Sister... Gu... Xiang... Please save..."

The words he used all his strength to utter had transformed into a garbled hodgepodge when they left his mouth. But the fellow in the long robe still gave a start, appearing as if he had understood.

"Are you asking us to help you save someone?" he asked in a gentle voice. "Where?" Zhang Chengling reached out a finger and pointed in the direction he came from. "Sister... Gu... Please save... her, please... save..."

The man dressed in black raised his head to glance at his companion.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" the latter said.

The man in black picked up the marten from his shoulder and threw it to the fellow in long robes.

"Be careful. I won't be long," he said before he turned around and seemed to vanish.

With anxious eyes, Zhang Chengling stared fixedly in the direction his silhouette had disappeared whilst the man who had remained behind helped him sit up.

"Close your eyes and concentrate," he instructed. "Don't let your imagination get carried away. Salvage your own little life first, before thinking about anything else."

Zhang Chengling knew his worries were ultimately useless, so he obeyed the man and shut his eyes. The small marten wriggled out from the man's grasp and curled up into a ball, sniffing the air here and there. The iron-tinged smell of blood was mixed in with a faint aroma of incense that clung to the man's robe.

Zhang Chengling gradually lost consciousness while breathing in those scents.

It was already dark when Zhang Chengling regained consciousness again. The numbness he had felt earlier had left his body along with the poison. In sluggish moves, he crawled up from the ground.

He was still hazy and unsure of what had befallen him when he heard a girl's voice call out. "Ha! You've woken up at last!"

Joy submerged Zhang Chengling as he twisted his head and saw Gu Xiang. She looked the worse for wear but seemed to have all her limbs. Her wounds had also been cleanly dressed up, and she was at that moment warming herself by a bonfire.

A hand covered in calluses reached out from beside him then and grabbed his wrist to check the pulse there. After a minute, the hand released him and somebody said, "The poison has cleared."

The person who took his pulse was none other than the man dressed in black.

Under Zhang Chengling's inquisitive gaze, the man, whose distant features seemed to be carved from stone when viewed in profile, merely gave him a small nod of the head before he went to sit under a tree, his back as straight as a calligraphy brush.

Zhang Chengling noticed then with some astonishment that Gu Xiang was looking at that man with eyes full of reverence. It even seemed that she was restraining her innate raucous and talkative nature.

"Many thanks... Many thanks to these two brave sirs for saving our lives," Zhang Chengling mumbled clumsily.

The man in black gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"No need," he said before looking away.

Zhang Chengling followed the direction of his gaze to the fellow who, during the day, had wielded the crossbow, and who was at present coming back with an armful of firewood.

The man in black made to get up, but Gu Xiang plodded over first.

"Lord Seventh, please sit! Please sit!" she said as she hurried to take the kindling from his arm. "Tasks like those, you should let me handle them. Why put yourself up to the trouble personally? My job is being a maid in the first place..."

The fellow she had called "Lord Seventh" gave her a smile that curved his peach-blossom eyes. He let Gu Xiang take the firewood and went to sit beside his companion.

From who knew where the man in black pulled out a small and fine hand-warmer and thrust it into Lord Seventh's hands. Then, he deftly picked off the withered leaves sticking to his sleeves.

Zhang Chengling didn't know whether he was imagining it, but in that instant, the man in black whose gloomy face bore little difference to a block of stone, appeared as if he had turned into a person of flesh and blood. Even the expression in his eyes became gentler.

The pair talked little, but the way they moved around each other gave off an indescribable air of intimacy. Lord Seventh glanced over at Zhang Chengling.

"Are you better?" he asked.

He hadn't spoken loudly, but his voice was extremely pleasant. For reasons unbeknownst to him, Zhang Chengling felt himself blush, and he lowered his head. Without a word, he gave a nod, before, wanting to look at that man a little longer, he sneaked another peek from beneath his lashes.

The woman who had come to the drinker the other day had been beautiful, but Zhang Chengling thought that, compared to this person, the woman's face had looked like a painting on a sheet of paper — a mere mask that had been as artificial as it was flimsy.

"What's your name?" Lord Seventh asked him. "And the people after y..."

Before he could even react, Gu Xiang, who was adding wood to the fire, answered for him in a pitter-patter of words.

"He's my little bro, so his name's also Gu, of course. The two of us, we're servants who run small errands for our Master. I'm a maid, and he's a valet. But then our Master's family got into some sort of trouble, and a bunch of people from who knows where decided that they'd kill everyone, even us lowly servants. Say, how despicable is that? Even if they have kids in the future, I'm sure they'll be born without bumholes. It's lucky you two..."

The man in black raised his head to cast a look at her, and Gu Xiang stopped mid-sentence, unable to continue. Her wide-open, large eyes shifted all around.

Although she'd been making up rubbish, Lord Seventh didn't argue the point.

"You've both been wounded," he said in a voice that remained amicable. "We ought to have taken you to an inn, but the young lady told us that people were waiting to capture you in town and that it wasn't safe. So we'll have to make do with spending the night here and figure out another plan when morning comes. Tell me, do you two have someplace else to which you can go?"

He spoke in an unhurried and gentle tone as if he were coaxing two small kids. As he listened to that voice, Zhang Chengling felt self-pity overcome him.

Was there any place to which he could go? His dad had died, and his entire family had been exterminated. At the moment, bad and good people alike were trying to capture him. He felt like a preyed-upon bird that had already been startled by countless arrows, with wings on the verge of snapping from exhaustion. As vast as the world was, he couldn't find a single place to rest.

The rims of his eyes reddened while he fell into silence.

Gu Xiang thought it over and piped up again.

"We were meant to meet with my Master and the little brat's Shifu before that bunch showed up to kill us. That's why we ran without knowing where we were headed. I wonder if they'll ever manage to find us..."

Reminded of Cao Weining, Zhang Chengling intervened with what he thought was à propos. "And there's also Brother Cao," he said. "He's been caught by a bunch of weird people."

Gu Xiang immediately glared daggers at him, to warn the little idiot not to speak carelessly. But Zhang Chengling didn't get the message as he was in his little world, busy being sad and at a loss.

"What weird people?" Lord Seventh questioned.

"A dwarf and a giant," Zhang Chengling answered guilelessly. "And there was also a grandpa and a grandma dressed in flowery colors."

Gu Xiang rolled her eyes toward the starry sky, a second from punching Zhang Chengling so he'd pass out again.

Lord Seventh, however, didn't seem familiar with wulin personalities.

"Who would that be?" he asked with a start.

"The Dirt Duke, Feng Xiaofeng and The Mountain," the man in black answered from beside him. "And the people in flowery colors... should be the Pink Matron and Green Gent."

He glowered at Zhang Chengling then, his eyes flashing like lightning. "Those people are questionable characters, but they'd still be mindful of their reputations. They would never get mixed up with the Scorpions. What did you do to have them hunt you?"

Zhang Chengling choked up under that glare, feeling as if his chest had been laden with a block of ice. But then Lord Seventh chuckled.

"Little Poison1, stop intimidating children."

The man in black obeyed and lowered his eyes like a monk entering meditation. He stopped paying attention to Zhang Chengling.

For a while, Lord Seventh trailed his gaze on Gu Xiang who was visibly on tenterhooks. Then, he turned to Zhang Chengling again.

"Child, let me ask you, would Zhou be your shifu's surname?" he said all of a sudden. Fearing that Zhang Chengling may babble out yet more information, Gu Xiang cut in glibly.

"Nope, that's not it. His shifu surname isn't 'Zhou', but 'Tang'. And he's a top-grade dirty old pervert!"2 She hadn't counted, however, on her pig-brained comrade-in-arms.

"You're lying! My Shifu isn't a dirty old pervert at all!" Zhang Chengling exclaimed in a grave tone and whilst scowling at her.

Gu Xiang's finger twitched with the desire to strangle the little brat. Lord Seventh let out a chuckle and shook his head.

"Where did that impish little girl come from?" he remarked. "Come on, you can give it a rest. We aren't some villains. You could even say that your Shifu is an old friend of mine."

Gu Xiang's eyes shifted around calculatingly.

"All right. Can you tell us his Shifu's given name, then?" she asked. "And what does he look like?"

"His Shifu's surname is Zhou, and his given name is..." Lord Seventh trailed off, squinting his eyes whilst he pondered.

Zhou Zishu, the old fraud, wouldn't have used his real name, he reflected. But then, what alias could he have come up with?

When he looked up, he met Gu Xiang's large eyes that were staring at him unblinkingly. Finding the sight quite amusing, he remarked on how he'd been stumped by that little girl's question. But then a sudden flash of inspiration hit him.

"He calls himself Zhou Xu, doesn't he? ' Xu ' for willow catkin, as in ' Body like the transient Yun-cloud enshroud;

heart as the willow's xu-catkin sowed '3. And he has a brother who's called Zhou Yun. As for what he looks like... Well, I couldn't say what he looks like nowadays because he's made a habit of disguising himself. Although, he never makes much progress. No matter how many times he swaps faces, he always ends up with some variation of a wretched-looking, sallow-skinned guy. Am I right?"

He was bluffing. Although he couldn't be certain whether Zhou Zishu would have used the alias "Zhou Yun" or "Zhou Xu", he could guess that it would be the one or the other. Because the man had just about that much imagination.

And it worked.

"Huh?" Gu Xiang uttered, still half-doubting. "Zhou Xu has a brother?"

In all the time she had known Zhou Zishu, the man was still a mystery to her. Besides her Master telling her he might be the former leader of Skylight, she had no idea whence he came from, and where he was going, nor to what school or clan he belonged. She had certainly never heard that he had a brother.

She changed tack then.

Indeed, she reflected that, even though the man wearing blue robes was still an unknown quantity, the man in black was one of the most skilled people she had seen in her life. Even compared to her Master, he'd be at least on par. For these two, doing away with her and Zhang Chengling would be as easy as squashing bugs, so they really had no reason to lie. Consequently, she came to believe them.

When he saw that his bluff had caught out the two little imps, Lord Seventh lowered his gaze toward the flickering fire.

Soundlessly, he laughed.

And thus, on the next morning, Gu Xiang and Zhang Chengling left with the two men.

Careful to avoid detection, Lord Seventh led them to a counting-house. As soon as they stepped into the shop, the shopkeeper, along with a man whose face resembled a ball of dough, came forth to greet them. They called the two men "Master" and "Great Shaman" with much reverence.

Lord Seventh settled them in and called for dim-sum4 to be served for them to eat. Then, he sat by their side and started a game of Go with the man in black.

With both men enthralled in their game, they idled their time away till noon, at which time the manager of the counting-house irrupted into the room.

"We've found Sir Zhou. He is here," he said.

Lord Seventh tossed aside the Go stone in his hand and stood up. With a grin, he withdrew his pale hands into his sleeves before saying, "Meeting an old friend when far away from home is one of life's greatest blessings. Ping'an, quick, invite him in."

Notes

1. lit. "small poisonous object". Lord 7th longstanding pet name for the Great Shaman.

2. Pun. The word "zhou" is a homophone of (porridge). And "tang" means "soup".

3. from poem about discovering the torment of pining.

4.could be also translated as cake/pasties as the dims-sum usage is more Cantonese, but since they are in the south and I was hungry, they got dims-sum.