Chapter 44- Shuzhong

As soon as he spotted Ye Baiyi, Wen Kexing's face fell. When he saw Ye Baiyi peer at Zhou Zishu's face unblinkingly, it hit the floor.

Zhou Zishu, however, was rather surprised.

"Mister Ye," he greeted while cupping his fist from afar. Ye Baiyi stared at him for a while longer before he spoke.

"Is that you? Well, don't you look decently human after all. Why cake yourself up into that ghastly sight all the time? The old wisdom goes 'be proud of your action, and stand by your name'2, and the heavens and your parents gave that face to you. Have you never heard of the phrase 'being honest as the day is long'3?"

Zhou Zishu raised his head to peruse the azure sky, as if it may quell his desire to smack Ye Baiyi flat. It took him quite a while to lower his head again.

"My elder is right to berate me," he said with an indecently humble smile and a likewise gentle and modest voice. Ye Baiyi nodded, a matter of course, and said to them:

"You will come with me."

Wen Kexing found the old guy beyond preposterous. He sneered.

"Who are you again? Do we know each other?"

Ye Baiyi turned around with an impassive face that showed no emotion. No sorrow, nor gaiety. He remained silent for another moment before asking, "Do you not want to know what happened thirty years ago? Do you not want

the truth about Rong Xuan and his wife Yue Feng'er*, as well as the whole messy business about the Crystal Armour?"

Wen Kexing had already turned to leave; his strides came to an abrupt halt at that. He looked at the ground, making it hard to distinguish his expression.

Seconds stretched with everyone present frozen in place, until Wen Kexing twisted around and spoke in a strange tone.

"Why would I... want to know the truth about Rong Xuan and his wife?" Ye Baiyi heaved an abrupt sigh.

"When you've lived to my age, you'll understand that figuring out what someone wants is oftentimes not as hard as you would think."

The guy was lording over his advanced age again; it only grated Wen Kexing further.

Zhou Zishu exchanged a look with him before he asked, "Venerable elder, does it mean that you know something?"

Ye Baiyi's lips curled up, although it was impossible to differentiate a genuine smile from a hypocritical grimace on that stiff face of his.

"How could I possibly know?" he said. "I am but a mere fool who's been living in seclusion within Everbright Mountain for a very many years, how could I know anything?" He turned around and marched ahead. "But it's my understanding," he went on with his back to them, "that there is a person who should have information about what happened back then."

"Keep up," Zhou Zishu instructed Zhang Chengling before he went after the man in white without further ado. Wen Kexing's curiosity was stirred as well.

"And who may that all-resourceful person be, pray tell?"

Ye Baiyi didn't deign to glance back as a few succinct words floated from his mouth:

"Long Que*, from the Marionettes Manor." Zhou Zishu's brows knitted at that.

"I have heard of such a 'Marionettes Manor' in Shuzhong," he couldn't refrain from saying. "But its location is concealed deep in the mountains. Long Que, the lord of the Manor, is moreover proficient in all sorts of

mechanisms as well as cosmic calculation4, and the place is said to move around. Back then, I sent men to map the region on several expeditions. Each time, upon their return, the cartographer would swear to me that their revision was exact, but when my scouts went back, the Manor would have vanished..."

"That's because you're garbage," Ye Baiyi replied.

— As the saying went, "a dog's mouth won't spit out ivory".5

Zhou Zishu closed his eyes to inhale a deep breath. He unclenched his fists, before balling them up again while, without a word, he stared at the back of Ye Baiyi's head. The more he looked at it, the more he felt that the shape of the guy's cranium was exceptionally suited to a good cudgelling.

By his side, Zhang Chengling tugged on his robes and opened his mouth a few times, as if wanting to say something. Zhou Zishu glared at him and yanked back the flap of his clothes.

"You're no longer a ten-year-old kid," he snapped. "If you have something to say, then out with it. What's with the shilly-shally as if you were some little girl?"

He was of course taking it out on the boy.

Zhang Chengling shrunk in his neck, frightened into silence, only for Zhou Zishu to throw him another glower. "What do you want to say? Speak!"

" Shi... shifu , are we going to go all the way to Shuzhong?"

Zhou Zishu gave a start. That's right , he thought. The road ahead is a long one.

And thus, having brought calamity upon himself, Zhang Chengling suffered the consequences of his one superfluous sentence thereafter as his evil shifu tormented him all the way to Shuzhong.

One moment Zhang Chengling would be told to practice reversing the flow of his qi , the next he'd be ordered to journey by walking on his hands. And then, from time to time, Zhou Zishu would reach out to press his palm on his shoulder, and he would have to traipse ahead with what felt like a small mountain weighing down on him... it was a fate little better than death.

Wen Kexing tagged along without piping up. He looked pensive and kept snacking on walnuts, producing loud cracking sounds that sickened Zhou Zishu.

When We Kexing noticed that Zhou Zishu no longer paid attention to the old mule Ye Baiyi, he made a rare attempt at striking a conversation:

"Who was... Rong Xuan to you?" he asked the man wearing white. "Why do you want to know what happened thirty years ago?"

Ye Baiyi glanced at him and appeared to mutter under his breath. Just when Wen Kexing thought the guy was about to divulge something, he got heckled instead:

"Are you a nosy old woman to be such a gossip? It's none of your business."

Wen Kexing clenched his fingers and the shell of the walnut between them disintegrated. A piece flew out over ten feet away, carried on a blast of air imbued with internal energy like it were some concealed weapon.

Zhang Chengling immediately gave those two a wide berth, to prevent an accidental claim to collateral damage.

Fully intent on needling the guy some more, Wen Kexing was about to make an undoubtedly brilliant retort when something caught his eye. He looked closer and spotted it — there was a silvery strand in Ye Baiyi's hair.

"Huh? Ye, you've got white hair," he said in astonishment.

He didn't know whether he imagined it, but Ye Baiyi's eyes seemed to glint at that. It was so quick, Wen Kexing couldn't identify the underlying emotion.

The guy raised his hand to touch his hair but stopped mid-movement.

"Have you never seen white hair before?" he said in a tone of indifference. "Out of all the things to make a fuss about. Twit."

Wen Kexing had no rejoinder. True , he reflected, the old freak's ancient. Anyone else, and their corpse would have already turned cold by now. What was a strand of white hair?

With that, Wen Kexing's attempt at chit chat came to its conclusion. Ye Baiyi had that skill: he knew how to make people leave him alone. All the way from Dongting to Shuzhong, the man in white acted not dissimilar from a mannequin that could walk. The only times he looked like a living person were during meals when he would descend upon the food like a natural cataclysm that could bring total annihilation to an army of thousands as easily

as flipping over a bamboo mat.6

Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing were bored out of their minds. With nothing to do, they resorted to sniping at each other in an endless hubbub. Ye Baiyi listened on dispassionately at first, until he could take the outlandish bickering no longer.

"Go find a room, you two, why don't you? If you are so tough, prove it in bed, what's with all the prattles? You sound like two crickets. Are you incapable of getting it up down there, or are you in actuality a pair of girls in men's clothes to be playing hard to get with each other? The corniest flirting I've ever heard and you find it amusing — shut up already!"

Zhang Chengling was walking on his hands nearby while reversing the flow of his qi as instructed. It was a tough enough exercise already. Upon hearing that, he gave a start. Then, the teenager who wasn't exactly a child appeared to understand something. His face reddened, the circulation of his internal energy got jumbled up, and he took a nosedive, sprawling himself flat on the ground.

"Ouch! Oww!" he cried out as he clutched his neck with his face red.

For their part, Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu glanced at each other with identical evil glints in their eyes. If Ye Baiyi hadn't declared that he could find the "Marionettes Manor", they would have teamed up to give the old freak a good walloping for sure. But then, for some reason, Wen Kexing got distracted.

As he peered at his companion's features which he found handsome even though Zhou Zishu was repressing homicidal intent at the moment, Wen Kexing's gaze wandered downward on its own. He ogled at Zhou Zishu's figure as if he could see through his robes.

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down while his imagination ran wild. True again , he reflected. I could do with some of what the old freak suggests.

With their last source of entertainment gone, the pair tacitly agreed to join forces in torturing Zhang Chengling.

Zhou Zishu told him: "Gather your qi and let it flow into your limbs and bones like rivers into the sea, to clear up your meridians. That way, you may reverse its circulation and dispose of it freely."

Wen Kexing secretly advised him: "Your internal energy is unstable and your kung-fu still weak, which is why your qi disperses so easily and it's hard for you to gather it. You should let nature take its course and concentrate on feeling the flow of energy in your body instead. That way, you'll make steady progress step by step."

Both sounded reasonable, and Zhang Chengling didn't know whose instruction he should follow. Overwhelmed, he would gather his qi one moment, only to let it disperse the next minute; let it flow naturally, then reverse its circulation. And then, he still had to endure Zhou Zishu's special training method — no matter how hard he tried, the hand on his shoulder felt as if it weighed about a thousand pounds.

Zhang Chengling couldn't refrain from worrying in secret. With his shifu crushing him like that, what if it stunted his development and he didn't get to grow taller? The image of Feng Xiaofeng and his fiendish mien flashed in his

mind, making him shudder.7

Zhou Zishu, however, was oblivious to the boy's trepidations. He only found that the kid, although diligent, just didn't get it. Back then, while he was teaching him, he had looked down on Liang Jiuxiao for being inept and frequently had to reign in his temper to deal with him. He never would have imagined that, in hindsight, his junior was a downright little genius compared to that disciple of his.

It was fortunate for Zhang Chengling that his years at the Imperial Court had grounded patience into him because Zhou Zishu sometimes felt like he could have thwacked the hopeless dolt to death.

But then, Zhang Chengling could have laid qualms as well. Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu didn't share the same approach to kung-fu in the first place. If only one of them had taught him, he may have made some progress yet, but not with both giving him instructions.

A duo utterly bereft of pedagogy, one would tell him this, before the other told him that, without a care as to whether or not he understood. And as they ordered him around, they'd get into squabbles all by themselves until the situation became untenable. With the atmosphere charged with truculence, they'd storm off to have a go at it; the ultimate outcome being the both of them coming back with their faces flushed red.

Ye Baiyi would then comment that it was only a pretence, that the two were "using comparing notes as an excuse to go off and to do the nasty".

Zhang Chengling was left with his imagination as to what that could mean, as embarrassed as he was uncomprehending.

Days went by, and Zhang Chengling felt that not only had he failed to improve, but his kung-fu actually seemed to get worse. His shifu's hand on his shoulder was getting heavier and heavier, to the point he couldn't breathe.

The way Zhang Chengling was practising kung-fu under the Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu's dual torture was in fact extremely dangerous. Had it not been for Zhou Zishu helping him regulate his qi without his knowledge via the hand he kept affixed on him, Zhang Chengling would have incurred negative consequences a long time ago.

The three of them journeyed briskly; they left raucous Dongting behind and arrived in Shuzhong in no time.

But Zhang Chengling was also drained; he could not walk a step further. Gritting his teeth, he made it three miles more when he felt palpitations at his temple. He gasped for air while his heart thundered like it wanted to leap out of his chest, every step took an effort that exhausted all of his strength. He stopped.

Zhou Zishu's stern voice echoed in his ear:

"What's this? Are you already giving up? Keep going!"

Wen Kexing glanced at them from nearby and arched his brow. Finding the boy pitiable, he cut in. "Hey, A-Xu..."

"You, shut up."

Zhou Zishu's face remained inhumanly stern as he ordered further, "Brat, I told you to keep going."

Zhang Chengling's vision blurred and darkened around the edges. He wanted to speak, but couldn't. If he opened his mouth and his qi leaked out, Zhou Zishu's hand that was skeletal only in looks was sure to bury him into the ground like a carrot.

Shuzhong was a mountainous region, its topography rising hither and yon. A sudden sense of despair engulfed Zhang Chengling — this journey will never end. The trembling in his legs turned into quakes and he raised his head with effort to look at his shifu.

The man's expression was an icy mask, as uncaring as that of a stone effigy; he didn't glance back once.

"Breathe and guide your qi through the Ren and Du meridians, like a river that flows into the sea and leaves no trace behind —"

"Let your inner qi coalesce as agile as a water snake, unending, unbroken, and circulating freely —"

In that instant, as Zhang Chengling faced Shuzhong's mountain ranges and was forced into desperate straits, a thought fleeted through his mind in a sudden epiphany.

Coalesced but shapeless, dispersed but unending!

Suddenly, his chest brimmed with energy. With his vision a blur, he sensed the transformations in his body all the more acutely: the qi that was stored in his limbs and bones had always been there, he simply wasn't gathering it in the right way! Now that he got it, a gush of incredible strength surged within him. It jolted him and shook off Zhou Zishu's hand on the spot.

The last thing Zhang Chengling saw was Zhou Zishu's expression of amazement. Then, everything went dark, and he collapsed.

Notes

1. refers to the Kingdom of Shu (a.k.a Shu Han) from the Three Kingdoms period. Located around nowadays Sichuan.

2. "don't change your first name when acting, don't change your last name when doing".

3. idiom lit. "bright as the day, straightforward as the fall of rocks".

4. Another reference to Qimen Dunjia

5.idiom translated literally.

6. is a quote from Mao Zedong's (Against the Second Encirclement)

7. Feng Xiaofeng is described with the idiom"with open mouth and dancing fangs".

*names:

Rong Xuan's wife is Roor "high mountain phoenix"

The master of the Marionettes Manor is "dragon sparrow".