Xu Yao

Summer. Afternoon. A clear sky. The wind rose without warning, like a keen blade sweeping across the sky, shaving away the day's heat. A thousand mountains bowed their heads; ten thousand ravines wailed like ghosts. Black clouds churned and billowed at the sky's edge, riding the long wind, gathering and closing in with a roar, and in an instant blotted out the heavens. It was as if a demon's hand had abruptly pressed down over mountains and rivers, snatching away every scrap of light. Heaven and earth went dark. Electric arcs prowled high above, fine gossamer threads running soundlessly on and on—then suddenly a bolt of lightning burst into brilliance, lighting up mountains and rivers, winding down out of the clouds and splitting the sky in two. Distant mountains and dense forests, range upon range, showed their outlines—there and not there, real and unreal. Slap, slap, slap... The sun-scorched rooftops and ground smoked where the fat raindrops smashed down. Thunder cracked. The earth shuddered. Cold striking against heat, the ground seethed with steam and smoke, as if ten thousand vengeful ghosts were oozing up out of it; heaven and earth clashed together, and silver serpents danced mad through the air, like countless demons arriving with savage faces. ... The Mountain Guard Compound. Brigade captain Chen Chong stood beneath the eaves, his burly frame planted like an iron tower that would not be moved. Bronze-cast and iron-forged from head to toe, with a full beard whose every strand bristled like a steel needle. His features were rugged. Above his left eye ran a scar, level with the brow and trailing off into the temple. At a glance he seemed to have three eyebrows—hence one nickname: Three Brows. And for the same reason he'd earned an even louder nickname, one nobody dared say out loud. When he frowned, the scar twisted, and he looked vicious beyond measure; the menace rolled off him like a wave. Watching the rain in the courtyard flicker and swirl and dance like a frenzy of butterflies, Chen Chong asked in a deep voice: "Xu Yao went out with the mission team again?" "He begged and kicked up a fuss till they took him along—said he was off to catch a mountain ghost." A crowd of big men filled the doorway, craning their necks at the rain. One bear of a fellow answered, shifting his thick waist; the stool beneath him let out a creaking groan. He turned and chuckled: "If my eyes don't deceive me, boss, the kid's gone mad." The whole crowd burst out laughing. Chen Chong rubbed his steel-needle whiskers with one hand, rasping scrape after scrape, and sighed, brow knotted: "Who's saying otherwise? The way he used to be grated on everyone, but at least it was safe. And now, just look—a clerk running out on missions? What the hell for? Dammit!" The other big men chimed in with sighs of their own, all for show: "True enough. What's a clerk going out there for?" The 'Xu Yao' they spoke of was the inspection team's clerk, a young fellow whose job was registration and writing of that sort, and everyone knew he'd been taken on through the back door by brigade captain Chen Chong himself. Xu Yao's father, Physician Xu, had once saved Chen Chong's life when Chen lay gravely wounded, and a bond had formed between them. Then Physician Xu's son Xu Yao grew up—no good at letters, no good at arms, unable even to tell one medicinal herb from another—and the old physician, out of options, came knocking at his door. Chen Chong simply stood up to the pressure and set Xu Yao down right under his own eye: a job settled, and an old friend repaid. Only after taking him in did everyone discover they had taken in a genuine live treasure. This tall, thin, rather delicate-looking young man carried about him a peculiar air of detachment. What left the deepest impression was this: the kid had a pair of eyes in which black and white were strikingly distinct. Not lazy, not slippery. Honest, steady, a little quiet—his defining trait was an extreme self-knowledge and a crystal-clear sense of his own place. Work that is mine, I do every bit of it, and do it with the utmost care. Work that is not mine, I don't do one bit! His whole deal: want nothing, ask nothing—the one clear-headed man in a muddled world. Only brigade captain Chen Chong could order him into extra work. No one else even needed to dream of it. As the saying goes: My own work, I do myself—I never make trouble for anyone. Your business is yours to answer for—I neither help out nor carry the load. But a man's change always arrives without warning. A week ago—just as Xu Yao notched three full months on the job—he missed two days of duty. Word was he had run a fever and passed out. On the third day he came back to work, and out of nowhere he was asking to go out on missions. What's more, for the sake of those missions his tongue turned sweet and his legs turned quick. The salted fish's sudden transformation left the crowd of rough, hearty men frankly a little spooked... "Take me with you. I want to catch demons too—catch ghosts." "You couldn't catch a fart!" "Catching a fart would be fine!" "If you go, who does the clerk's work?" "I can put in overtime at night." "..." He stuck to them like chewy candy. In the end Third Squad captain Liu Zhen had no choice but to take him out for a turn, and he made a point of drawing a task to catch a mountain demon. The road was long and brutal, and everyone understood: this was purely about wearing the poor fool out. The whole idea was to work the kid until he was scared off once and for all, and then everyone could have some peace. Instead, the fellow turned out to have a ferocious grit from who knows where. His body nearly shook itself apart; both legs swelled up thicker than his waist; he fell more times than anyone could count—nose bruised, face swollen, teeth clenched till his mouth filled with blood—and he held on to the end. After they beat down the mountain demon, he insisted on touching it. And as he stroked it, he smiled like a flower in bloom, big white teeth on full display. When they came back, everyone assumed the soft-skinned kid had finally eaten his fill of suffering and would never follow again. Then, five days ago, on the second mission, the kid tagged along once more. This time was worse. The mountain trail was steep; he fell three times and nearly fell to his death—yet he lasted until Third Squad caught a wood demon and brought it back. And the medicine pouch he carried along saved a squadmate's life. Oh-ho! So people began to look at him in a new light. Today's mission was already his fourth. Two hundred li out this time, four hundred li there and back, and in a downpour like this he would most likely come home the same sorry sight as before—more breath going out of him than coming in. "Tell me this: how does a salted fish like that suddenly start fighting for his life?" Brigade captain Chen Chong watched the rain outside, already fallen together into a single curtain, stroked the steel-needle whiskers on his chin, thought about how Xu Yao used to be—and turned it over a hundred ways without an answer. The deeper the puzzlement, the tighter his three eyebrows knitted, until that topmost one began to twitch and twist. The others marveled along: "Exactly. A salted fish—how does it change its nature?" They agreed while sneaking glances at the captain's eyebrows, and privately every one of them was delighted. It was a one-of-a-kind spectacle; you couldn't find it anywhere else. ... Xu Yao hurried along in silence in the middle of the column, straw rain cape and bamboo hat, a saber slung at his hip. The raindrops struck his body with a bruising weight. The mountain path had become a running river, and the eight men walked up through it, against the flood pouring down. Heaven and earth were one gray blur. Xu Yao's sharp eyes swept everything around him. In the mountain forest, gray shadows seemed to sway and twist, hideous misshapen faces flashing past one after another. Those were wandering souls. Ordinary eyes could not see such souls—but Xu Yao could. He had even worked out the pattern by now: pay them no mind, and after a while they fade away. Xu Yao had a very clear sense of who he was—he knew exactly what he was made of. That self-knowledge had come to him piece by piece, out of his physician father's reactions. Xu Yao: surname Xu, given name Yao. The story went that on the eve of his birth, his mother dreamed of seven stars hanging high in the sky. When the father heard of it, he was beside himself with joy, and concluded his son had the talent to bring glory to the ancestors: My son has the makings of a chief minister! So he named the boy Yao. The old physician was actually rather skilled at naming. Yao, by its very nature, carries the sun and the moon, metal, wood, water, fire, and earth within it—a wish that his son should want for nothing all his life. The family was comfortably off, nourishment ample, the child in the womb sturdy, and at birth he weighed a full nine jin. So his milk name was Nine Jin, and his nickname Big Fatty. After all, a fat baby boy weighing nine jin at birth was a genuine rarity. Xu Yao had his ideals as a child too. Back then he didn't understand what "getting ahead" meant, but steeped in what the grown-ups around him said and did, he knew this much: I'm going to amount to something! I'm going to live a life worth the name! At three he began his letters. Ten years, no success. Father said: if my son cannot be a great official, let him forge a strong body and become a general. So he switched to martial arts. Three years, and he never even found the gate. Father said: if he cannot be a great general, let him study medicine with me and carry on the family trade. So he obeyed his father and took up medicine. Another three years, and Old Master Xu, contemplating a son who still mistook balloon-flower root for ginseng and isatis root for astragalus, pronounced once more: "I'll put this old face of mine on the line and find you a post on the imperial grain. You just live your life safe and sound, and that will be enough." And so he arrived at his current post, the Black Mountain Inspection Office. Father was deeply satisfied. "It's a government office that protects the mountain forests—easy work. And you'll be a clerk; no climbing mountains or fording rivers for you. Safe. You'll be eating the imperial grain. You won't count as an official, but a clerkship is an iron rice bowl: your pay comes in flood or drought alike, and you'll never want for food or drink." "Big Fatty, I leaned on plenty of people and spent plenty of silver to get you this place. You work hard at it—and don't you go getting huffy and tossing it aside." Father spoke those words heavy with worry. The old hope that his son would glorify the ancestors had long since become a wisp of smoke, scattered on the wind. Sometimes he even wondered whether he had chosen too grand a character for his son's name. Yao—the sun, the moon, metal, wood, water, fire, earth, lacking nothing. But to lack nothing is, well... to end up lacking everything. As his father's expectations sank again and again, Xu Yao came to understand himself along the way. Ten years of letters, and he knew he was not made for books. Three years of martial arts, and he knew he had no gift for them. Three years of medicine, and he knew that he was, in truth, an utterly ordinary man. It truly was not for lack of effort—but what isn't your stuff simply isn't your stuff. His father never pressured him. Disappointment surely sat somewhere in his heart, yet he accepted his son's ordinariness with extraordinary calm. How much silver this job had cost, Xu Yao never learned—his father never said. He knew only that his mother's savings box must be empty by now. Because he had seen his mother hide the savings box away. Xu Yao blamed himself too. He was adrift. Why couldn't I catch on? What stuff am I actually made of? He wandered in that daze, feeling only that his life had fog ahead of it. For now, all he wanted was to do his own job well: stir up no trouble, take no risks, come home often, save plenty—and manage to fill his mother's savings box up again. Then find a wife, have a child, and fulfill his father's wish to see the family line carried on. Live safe and sound, hide away those boyhood dreams, and act as though they had never been. Born a human being, who doesn't want to stand above the crowd? But of all the teeming masses, how many ever shine with blinding light? Only after entering the Mountain Guard Compound did Xu Yao learn the full name. Great Qin Empire, Mountain and River Prison, Demon Suppression Bureau, Ninth Demon Suppression Court, Southeast Circuit Demon Suppression Hall, Qi'an Prefecture Demon Suppression Office, Taining Department Demon Suppression Agency, Black Mountain County Demon Suppression Inspection Office, First Mountain Guard Brigade. The workplace was far from the county town: a large compound at the foot of Black Mountain, adjoining Peach Blossom Valley where his family lived—a place human feet had all but abandoned. The Inspection Office's compound had stood there for more years than anyone could say. In truth it was precisely because the Inspection Office's Mountain Guard Compound was here that villagers gradually began to gather and live nearby, slowly growing into a scattering of small hamlets. After three months on the job, he came home one afternoon and browsed the Herb Classic for a while. No one knew what the book was made of. He had traded a single flatbread for it a year before, to a wandering Daoist who was close to starving. The Daoist said it was a book of herbs. Xu Yao took it home to show his physician father, and Physician Xu was simply stunned: a lifelong physician, and he had never seen a single one of the herbs in this book of herbs! Physician Xu slapped the book, looked at his son, and sighed from the depths of his chest: "Big Fatty, you never did learn the trade, but you did spend three years with me learning medicine and simples. Have you ever seen a single herb in these pages?" Xu Yao's face filled with shame: he had never seen a single one either. Herbs a physician of a whole lifetime had never seen... you could imagine how it was. However fine the book looked, it had to be a charlatan's prop. So he threw it into the fire—where it refused to burn. So he simply dusted it off, fished it back out, and made it his pillow. In his idle hours he'd flip through it, the way you'd gawk at a curiosity; heaven knew how many times he'd read it. And would you believe it—once the book became his pillow, his sleep turned uncannily good. The moment his head touched down, he was snoring away. That day, home from work, he happened to flip through it; drowsiness came rolling in, and he fell asleep with the book draped upside down over his face. When he woke, the book was gone. That part was a small matter. The trouble was the fever. He burned from head to toe, hot enough to talk nonsense, bleeding from eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Physician Xu and his wife were terrified out of their wits; they threw every kind of medicine at it, and after two days his body finally came back to itself. But from then on, Xu Yao noticed something wrong with him: he was starving! Not my stomach! My eyes! Strange to say, his eyesight had improved beyond all reason, and the hungrier they grew, the blacker the black and the whiter the white—quite handsome, honestly. But... how can eyes go hungry? Then, out and about, Xu Yao discovered something else: I can see wandering souls! And other things too, things no one else could see! Eyes hungry or not, a man still has to show up for work. The day he got back to the squad, Third Squad captain Liu Zhen was just leading his men in to turn in a mission, handing a fully-formed wood demon over to brigade captain Chen Chong—and Xu Yao felt his eyes grow hungrier still! Hungry past all bearing. Without meaning to, he fixed a look on the slain wood demon—by then nothing more than a tree root. That single glance seemed harmless enough. But the instant his eyes met the wood demon, Xu Yao felt a current of coolness travel along his gaze and into his eyes. The hunger in my eyes—it's cured! In that instant it was as if a sky full of stars had exploded in Xu Yao's mind. After one night, Xu Yao found that his body and spirit had grown much stronger besides! Ears keen, eyes bright, thought nimble, limbs strong—vigorous as a dragon, fierce as a tiger. "!!!" This salted fish—who had only just learned to accept his own mediocrity and had already lain himself flat—suddenly felt a heartfelt surge of spirit. From this moment on, Xu Yao found that he... wanted to strive. Xu Yao remembered a night, after it was settled that he was no good at letters, no good at arms, and not made for medicine either, when his father, seeing him dashed and drooping, had said a few words. "Big Fatty, people like us only ever need one chance in this life. Seize that chance, and you find your road—and you know what you're aiming at. Your father was once just like you: when I was young I hadn't the least idea what I was meant to do. Not until I was twenty-one did I go apprentice under your mother's father. And it's only now that I understand—that was when I seized a chance." "And became an honored village physician." Those words of his father's came ringing back out of nowhere. His eyes had changed. Didn't that mean that the chance belonging to his life had arrived? He didn't know why his eyes were like this, didn't know whether it was calamity or blessing, didn't know what the future would hold—but Xu Yao wanted to seize this chance now. At the very least... he could come close to what his father had, couldn't he? Xu Yao had made his peace with being mediocre. But now life seemed to hold something to run toward, and that very something was enough to lift a man's spirits. Xu Yao's hopes were not high. After so many years of mediocrity, all he wanted was a place to plant his feet in this mortal world of turbid, surging waves... and that would be enough. And for that, he could stake his life. Feeling the strangeness in his eyes, his heart brimming with hope and dread, a humble plea sprouted from the depths of his heart like a tender seedling, looking set to grow, slowly, into a great tree: "Maybe... I, too, could live a life that isn't so mediocre...?"