Hearing an answer that was unexpected and yet not entirely unexpected, Ding Songyan felt both that it was absurd and that something didn't add up, and a layer of cold sweat suddenly broke out across his back.
Should he be glad he didn't have to change his name, or should he suspect that some enormous terror lay hidden in such a coincidence? Or perhaps... dying at the same moment, with the same name and surname, was the core element of a successful transmigration? Would the original Ding Songyan have transmigrated into his world? Hiss—could they swap again? Thoughts came crowding into Ding Songyan's mind as he rapidly ran through the opening chapters of all the transmigration novels he had read.
He had already decided that this body had originally been dead, and that he was, in some sense, a soul returned to a corpse—which was why he couldn't find a single fragment of memory, didn't recognize a single person around him, and understood none of what had happened.
Ding Songyan raised his head again toward the roof beams and rafters, thick with cobwebs and dust, and studied the walls riddled with holes and the broken idol around him, trying to find a hidden camera, to drag out the mastermind behind it all and make him tell him that this was a "Truman Show."
That was the answer he wanted most.
It was also his last hope.
Yet he found nothing.
"Second Brother, let's... let's go home first?" Having confirmed that her brother really had forgotten everything, Ding Qingyan's spirits sank low.
"All right." Ding Songyan answered in a low voice.
One after the other, the two of them left through the collapsed gate. Ding Qingyan stopped, and in the open ground before the temple she lifted her head, cupped her hands to her mouth, and called out at the top of her voice:
"Found him! Found him!"
Who was she calling to? Ding Songyan followed her gaze to the sky, where a few scattered clouds, shaped like grey dogs, were tinged with the red glow of the setting sun, making the grey-blue sky seem strangely vast and empty.
No sooner had that thought flashed through his mind than a great shadow spread over them from behind, quickly blotting out the last radiance of the setting sun.
The next moment, an extraordinary giant bird descended from the sky, landing before Ding Songyan and Ding Qingyan and stirring the dust on the ground into a mist.
Ding Songyan's eyes widened:
Wood—a wooden bird?
It had just been flying up in the sky?
There wasn't a drone tucked inside it, was there?
Or was it something like those "flying swords" he'd come across while scrolling through videos online?
What astonished Ding Songyan so was a bird made entirely of wood. It was rather large, comparable to a big helicopter from his old world. On its back sat an uncovered cockpit where he could make out a round helm, control levers, and the like; some gleamed with a metallic sheen, others showed bare wood. The giant bird's head tapered to a sharp beak, and set with two painted red eyes, it gave off a strange air of imposing majesty.
Once those wooden wings stopped beating and the dust settled, a figure clambered out of the cockpit and jumped down from the giant bird.
Ding Qingyan had already, from the moment the strange flying craft began to descend, covered her eyes with one hand and pinched her nose with the other, so smoothly it was as if she had rehearsed it a thousand times.
Now she turned her head to glance at Ding Songyan and said, in a voice muffled by her pinched nose:
"This is the Qigu people's wooden kite flying carriage."
"Qu Sanlang from Baoping Lane heard you'd gone missing and came on his own to help look for you."
The Qigu people... they seemed like something he'd heard of somewhere... Ding Songyan studied Qu Sanlang, who came over hopping.
The figure in the blue short jacket truly was different from an ordinary person. He had three eyes on his face—the extra one set at the center of his brow, also lying crosswise like the others, though it was shut for the moment—and below he had only a single leg, right in the middle, so he had to get about by hopping.
Around Qu Sanlang's waist were wound two leather belts, hung with a saber, a small hammer, and all sorts of tools, some crude and some finely made.
Apart from that, there was no great difference between him and a normal man; his features were decent enough, and his skin was a bronzed color.
After a glance at Ding Songyan, Qu Sanlang turned to Ding Qingyan and said with an ingratiating smile:
"Sister Qingyan, you've found Er-lang?"
"Shall I fly you back in my wooden kite flying carriage?"
I really don't want to ride it. It doesn't feel safe... Ding Songyan declined inwardly, and began thinking up an excuse.
Ding Qingyan shook her head and, glancing at the sun that had sunk a little lower, said:
"Brother Zhongheng, we're grateful for your kindness, but home isn't far from here. My second brother and I can just walk back."
Before Qu Sanlang could press further, she added in a soft voice:
"Would you mind going to tell my father, my mother, and my eldest brother that my second brother has come home, and that there's no need to keep searching outside? We can't handle something like that ourselves—we'd have to rely on your wooden kite flying carriage."
"Sure, sure, sure—I'll go right now!" Delighted that Ding Qingyan was willing to let him help with something, Qu Zhongheng beamed, hopped back onto the wooden kite flying carriage, crawled into the shallow-bowl-shaped cockpit, strapped himself in, pulled up the lift lever, and turned the round helm.
Seeing this, Ding Songyan and Ding Qingyan both retreated a few steps at once, steadied themselves, and each pinched their nose with one hand and covered their eyes with the other.
"Sister Qingyan, I'll be as quick as I can!" Waving his hand, Qu Zhongheng rose little by little amid the great gusts stirred up by the beating wooden wings, then soared off into the distance.
Once the dust had settled again, Ding Songyan turned his head toward Ding Qingyan and asked tentatively:
"You don't dare ride it either?"
Ding Qingyan looked embarrassed and, wrinkling her nose, said:
"So you really don't remember. Oh—it's because there was word going around the city that the wooden automaton drivers and wooden horse carriages from Qu Sanlang's family, for all their intricate mechanisms, are utterly unreliable, and that his mother fell into the river and died because of one."
No wonder—one really ought to be careful with these mechanical contraptions... Ding Songyan felt he more or less understood what Ding Qingyan meant.
If even the wooden horse carriages and automaton drivers that ran on the ground carried such high risks, then the safety of a wooden kite flying carriage up in the air was even harder to guarantee!
Just then, Ding Qingyan added:
"I went and asked Qu Sanlang whether there was any truth to it. He got very angry and said it was a rumor those cart drivers were spreading on purpose, afraid of losing their livelihood—'Cart drivers, boatmen, innkeepers, porters, brokers: every last one of them deserves to die!'"
"He also said his mother's death had nothing at all to do with the wooden horse carriages or automaton drivers—she fell into the water while riding the wooden kite flying carriage out to Wangtianmen Island in the middle of the river."
"Second Brother, tell me—would I dare ride it?"
Ding Songyan wiped at a cold sweat that wasn't there:
"Qu Sanlang really has some nerve."
"He spent a fortune on a strange umbrella that lets him drift slowly down from midair; as long as he doesn't drown and it isn't too high up, he won't fall to his death." Ding Qingyan seemed rather taken with that umbrella. "Besides, his family's wooden kite flying carriages have been improved a great deal. They used to need a favorable tailwind to fly like birds; now, as long as they don't run into rough winds or fly too far, they're fine."
As she spoke, Ding Qingyan put on the veiled hat she had been holding in her left hand all this while, letting the white gauze fall to cover her face:
"Let's go, Second Brother. It'll be dark soon."
Ding Songyan gave a slight nod and followed Ding Qingyan along the rammed-earth road, through the shade of the dense trees, toward the city not far away. Now and then fine horses galloped past beside them, most carrying people with sabers and swords slung on their backs.
Putting the wooden kite flying carriage from earlier together with the scene before him now, the "Truman Show" possibility could be tentatively ruled out... This world was rather different from an ordinary ancient era, too... Holding to the notion of saying less, looking more, and observing closely, Ding Songyan silently studied everything around him, including his "cheap" little sister, Ding Qingyan.
The girl wasn't short—over 1.6 meters but under 1.7; exactly how tall, Ding Songyan couldn't tell, for his eyes weren't a ruler. And there was something bouncy in the way she walked, her bearing more that of a child than of a young woman; she was clearly still quite doted on at home, evidently having never been made to shoulder too heavy a share of life's burdens too early.
Rounding a densely wooded stretch, the view suddenly opened up before Ding Songyan.
In the distance flowed a mighty river, so broad that the far bank could not be seen. Along the old channels and tributaries beside it stood waterwheel after waterwheel, each a different shape, built of wood and iron together. Around these waterwheels clustered a great many houses, and wisps of smoke drifted out from among them, streaming up into the clouds.
Faintly, Ding Songyan caught the sound of rhythmic blows, metal ringing on metal, coming from over there.
The unbroken rows of houses ended at a tall grey-white stone wall, as if crowding around the wooden-and-stone tower within the city that might have been dozens of meters tall.
The setting sun sank slowly toward the river. Amid the surging heat of summer, men and women in short coarse cloth, their narrow sleeves rolled up, their bronzed muscles streaked with sweat, left those houses that seemed to be workshops one after another and streamed toward the city gate in an unending flow.
Two groups guarded the city gate. One wore battle jackets, mostly red but mixed with green, yellow, white, and black, equipped with waist sabers and holding long spears. The other—men and women alike—wore black, close-fitting martial garb, the left cuff embroidered with scattered specks of starlight and the right with clusters of little candle flames, with long swords as their main weapons.
They stood arrayed to the left and right of the gate. They did not trouble those entering the city, only keeping order with practiced ease and now and then questioning anyone who looked suspicious.
Ding Songyan and Ding Qingyan passed through the city gate without incident and crossed the barbican.
The clamor suddenly rang out clear, and the colors before his eyes turned in an instant more varied and vivid.
At a single glance, Ding Songyan saw the passersby dressed in every style imaginable: some in straight-hemmed long robes, some in a short jacket with a skirt, some wrapped up as tightly as his sister Ding Qingyan, some with the collars of their shirts and coats left open to reveal a chest band or a dudou belly-wrap, as though it were part of the outfit, and some in skirt-and-top sets drawn up over the chest, leaving broad swathes of pale skin bare—and the men were just as varied, in loose robes with wide sleeves, in dark-collared scholars' gowns, in deep-colored robes, in round-collared long gowns...
Though Ding Songyan knew next to nothing about hanfu, he had at least watched his share of films and dramas with decent costumes, sets, and props. It felt to him as though the people here had gathered together the clothing styles of every dynasty, as jumbled as when he used to visit an old town and see tourists from all over wearing hanfu of every cut, taking photographs everywhere.
What was more, apart from Ding Qingyan at his side, hardly any women wore veils; they showed their faces openly and without a trace of shyness.
Ding Songyan couldn't help turning to glance at Ding Qingyan:
Was it because she was too pretty, and afraid of catching some lecher's eye and inviting trouble?
Truly, in an ancient setting like this, where the technology wasn't advanced enough to keep things well in hand, a woman of kingdom-toppling beauty would actually be in danger without a fairly powerful family behind her.
It was only that his little sister was young and not yet fully grown into her looks; otherwise, just as in the novels and TV dramas, the suitors coming to propose would have worn the family's threshold right through.
Suddenly, from the wooden-and-stone tower standing in the very center of the city came three drumbeats in succession:
"Dong!" "Dong!" "Dong!"
What's going on? Ding Songyan's gaze whipped toward it.
In less than a breath, a streak of fire shot up from the top of the tower with a whoosh.
The flame was like a long serpent, racing forward fiercely, and in the blink of an eye it plunged into a spot somewhere in the city, leaving only faint points of radiance still lighting the air—a truly spectacular sight.
Right after that, Ding Songyan saw a squad in red garments marked with black patterns—the very men who had been patrolling the streets and were most likely constables—whip around and, fast as galloping horses and slick as darting fish, cut through the crowd toward the place where the fire had struck.
The crowd paused for a few breaths, and once it had confirmed all was well, went back to normal.
Seeing Ding Songyan frozen stiff, Ding Qingyan pursed her lips, her expression clouding:
"That's Uncle Yi's 'Nine Sun-Shooting Arrows.'"
Ding Songyan made no attempt to hide his confusion and bewilderment, staring blankly at his sister in her veiled hat.
"Ai..." Ding Qingyan sighed. "Uncle Yi is the county lieutenant of Linjiang County, in our Dingjiang Prefecture. His martial arts are said to be handed down from the great Hou Yi, who shot down the nine suns, so his whole clan takes 'Yi' for a surname. Today he's on watch at the watchtower."
"The watchtower..." Ding Songyan repeated the word from his sister's speech.
Ding Qingyan raised her arm and pointed at the wooden-and-stone tower:
"There—that's the watchtower. Every city has them, and more than one; there are some on the city walls, too, but not as tall as this."
"Every day the county office, the prefectural office, and the Xiaoming Sect all send experts whose techniques excel at far-seeing to take turns on watch in the watchtowers, keeping an eye on anyone in the city who uses martial force to defy the prohibitions, and on any enemies who might come attacking from outside."
A human surveillance system—no, a martial-arts version of one... That arrow just now seemed awfully formidable, clearly beyond the limits of an ordinary human... And he's only the county lieutenant of a single county... Ding Songyan marveled inwardly as he listened.
Chapter 2