"So Miss Xiaoqing's already gone?" Ding Songyan gazed at Xu Chang'an wistfully and asked offhandedly.
"When did she leave that letter with you?"
In Ding Songyan's mind, Miss Xiaoqing and Ren Youyang were, for now, better friends to him than Xu Chang'an or Zheng Zhuxi. It would be no exaggeration to call it a friendship that stakes lives on each other—Brother Youyang had truly paid with a life.
Xu Chang'an spoke with unconcealed envy.
"About two cups of tea ago. She knocked on my door, borrowed paper and brush to leave this letter, and said she was heading straight for the east-side dock."
"You were clearly at home. Why didn't she come straight to you?"
Two cups of tea ago? By then I should have just swallowed Hundun's remains... Miss Xiaoqing had come all the way to Chengyu Lane, so why didn't she come see me? The words "quell demons and dispel evil" suddenly came back to Ding Songyan.
While he was still thinking, another figure came walking along Chengyu Lane.
It was Ren Youyang, dog ears standing erect, an illusory green snake for ornament.
Sacred majesty and a touch of something sinister coexisted in Ren Youyang, and the body beneath his feather robe seemed to show definite signs of beast transformation.
He was carrying two small jars of wine tied together with hemp cord. He had only just reached the gate of the Ding family's courtyard when he abruptly narrowed his eyes, as though he meant to raise his right palm and block out some of the blazing sunlight.
"Brother Youyang, what's this?" Ding Songyan asked with a smile.
Xu Chang'an looked at Ren Youyang—so visibly altered, so unmistakably a master—then looked back at Ding Songyan, utterly lost.
Was this still the Second Brother Ding he knew?
When had Ding Songyan's circle grown so wide?
Besides Zheng Zhuxi of the Xiaoming Sect and that girl beautiful as a celestial, he had even befriended a master like this?
Ren Youyang gave Ding Songyan a long look, then raised the two dark brown jars with a smile.
"I'm returning to Danzhou tomorrow. I came to drink with you."
The Zhenling Sect lay in Danzhou, in the southeast of Great Zhao.
Inspiration struck, and Ding Songyan laughed heartily.
"Then let's go drink somewhere better!"
............
At the east-side dock, back to normal, the Tianyang trading house's tower ship was weighing anchor to set out.
Su Chongxiao came to a room at the base of the top deck and knocked on the door left ajar.
"Come in." Su Qingli's sullen voice came from inside.
Su Chongxiao pushed the door open and, amid the fragrance filling the room, looked at his young niece sitting by the window, sunk in gloom.
"Didn't you go say goodbye to Ding Erlang? Why do you look like this?"
Su Qingli, now changed into plain clothes and a white skirt, fresh and unadorned, glanced up at her Second Uncle.
"It's just—I'm a little melancholy."
Her eyes shifted, and she asked as if idly:
"Second Uncle, suppose someone has a trait that counters yours. How could you ever get close to him?"
Su Chongxiao's brows moved slightly, and he studied Su Qingli closely.
Only when the girl began to shift a little uneasily under his gaze did he put his hands behind his back and say:
"Either the other person reaches the Heaven-Man Realm and becomes a great grandmaster, so every trait can be released or withdrawn at will—or you cultivate until you're at least a minor realm above him. Then at the very worst you could still trade a few blows. If you're a whole major realm above him, you can press the effect of that countering down very low."
"And if we're in the same minor realm?" Su Qingli pressed.
Su Chongxiao suddenly smiled.
"You'd still have the spirit left to curse him a few times while being countered."
"So I still can't get close normally..." Su Qingli lowered her head and looked at her own feet.
Just then a shout came from far away:
"Miss Xiaoqing!"
"Here!" Su Qingli pushed the window open at once, leaned half her body out, and gazed off toward the voice.
She saw Ding Songyan, in a moon-white lanhan robe with his hair simply tied up, a small jar of wine in his hand, standing at the corner of the East Gate wall closest to the river, with Ren Youyang beside him in feather robe and tall cap.
"I'm here!" Su Qingli broke into a beaming smile and stretched out an arm, waving gently.
From the corner of the wall, Ding Songyan, seeing that Miss Xiaoqing had not gone far, laughed loudly, raised the jar, and called out:
"A good friend is returning home—how could I not come see her off?"
Su Qingli's eyes lit up. She spun around and told her maid Yuyao:
"Bring me a jar of wine!"
Yuyao hesitated and looked to Su Chongxiao.
Su Chongxiao sighed.
"Get her a small jar of rice wine."
"Yes." Yuyao turned and ran out of the room.
"Hurry, hurry." Su Qingli urged her while climbing out the window; using the gaps between the planks outside the cabin and whatever protruded, she scrambled swiftly upward, graceful all the while, and in five or six breaths reached the very top of the tower ship.
"Wait for us!" Su Qingli cupped her hands around her mouth and called back toward the wall.
A gust of wind swept over the river, sending her white skirt fluttering, as though the Lady of Guye had descended into the world.
The tower ship was moving slowly toward midstream. Su Qingli saw that Ding Songyan and Ren Youyang had already sat down cross-legged, so she followed their example, smoothed her skirt, and sat down on the deck freely, without a care for manners.
She looked at the rolling water, so wide its edges nearly vanished, and suddenly felt her heart and chest open up.
Moments later, Su Chongxiao tossed the small jar of rice wine Yuyao had fetched straight up, and it landed steadily before Su Qingli.
The girl knocked off the clay seal and lifted the jar.
Seeing this, Ding Songyan wanted to quote a couple lines of verse, but he had been out of school a long while, and most of what he had memorized had faded—he could recall only the dozen or twenty most famous poems in full, and remembering even a single line of the rest would have been good.
Unable to come up with anything suitable, he simply cobbled together his own version, paying no mind to parallelism, tonal patterns, or rhyme, and shouted:
"Miss Xiaoqing—grand ambition amid easy laughter, and nothing beats a night of drinking with a true friend!"
With that he raised the small jar of fine wine and drank deeply.
Hearing the voice carried over by the wind on the river, Su Qingli shouted too:
"Good!"
She raised the rice wine as well and gulped it down, finding it sweet with a bite to it, mellow and never harsh.
Ding Songyan glanced at Ren Youyang, sitting there blankly beside him.
"Brother Youyang, aren't you drinking?"
Ren Youyang looked at the soldiers patrolling the wall, at the Xiaoming Sect disciples and yamen constables below, at the crowds on the docks in the distance, then sighed and raised his own jar, tipping his head back to drink.
After wiping his mouth, Ding Songyan laughed loudly again:
"We are no men of the weeds—one turn of the wind, and we become dragons!"
"Good! We are no men of the weeds!" Su Qingli lifted the jar in her hands, echoing him across the water, and clinked it in the air with Ding Songyan and Ren Youyang.
The three tipped their heads back at once and drank with abandon.
Wiping his mouth with his hand, Ding Songyan stood, lifted his jar high, and laughed out:
"Miss Xiaoqing, may we have long life—and meet again another day!"
He had meant to go straight with "May we live long, sharing the same moon across a thousand li," but felt that was far too intimate, and forced himself to change the second half.
"May we have long life—and meet again another day!" Su Qingli rose too, echoing him from afar.
Ren Youyang said nothing and only kept drinking.
Before the tower ship reached midstream, the three had at the same moment turned their jars upside down to show they had drained them.
With the three "cups" emptied, it was time to part.
Su Qingli felt that for jianghu folk like them, this was enough; there was no need for more sentiment. She waved a hand and, empty jar in hand, leaped straight down from the top of the ship, touched a foot lightly against her own open wooden window, and returned to her cabin as easily as a wheeling bird.
Her pretty face touched with a faint flush, she handed the empty jar to Yuyao and said, the corners of her eyes and brows all smiles:
"This is the jianghu I have in my heart."
As she spoke, her eyes shone as she glanced about, as if two pools of fine wine were hidden in them, and even the little maid Yuyao felt as though she herself had grown drunk.
............
At the corner of the city wall.
Ding Songyan turned toward Ren Youyang and asked, amused:
"Brother Youyang, you don't seem in very high spirits?"
Ren Youyang swept a glance along the foot of the wall and said, choosing his words:
"Songyan, you were just shouting to drink with them where every boatman, helmsman, porter, warehouse hand, gate soldier, Xiaoming Sect disciple, county and prefectural constable, peddler, traveling merchant, and passerby could hear you and see you. Aren't you afraid they'll laugh at you behind your back or gossip?"
Ah, so you're embarrassed and afraid of losing face... Ding Songyan laughed and said, a little drunk:
"Outside Chengyu Lane and the area around Dangkang Temple, fewer than one in a thousand people in the prefectural city of Dingjiang Prefecture know me. Why should that matter?
"You, on the other hand, Brother Youyang—you were already famous throughout the jianghu. If not for you, I couldn't even have climbed this wall, and now your divine might is even more extraordinary. Truly, who under heaven doesn't know you?"
Ding Songyan was teasing Ren Youyang: since almost no one knew him, Ren Youyang was the one losing face, not him.
Ren Youyang's expression froze, and for a moment he simply did not know how to respond.
By then Ding Songyan's dark true qi had made several rounds through his body and dissolved most of the wine in him.
That made Ding Songyan marvel inwardly. He judged that Zhen Qianfan most likely had been feeding Yan Changqing some rare poison every day—but Zhen Qianfan had no idea that Yan's stomach had mutated long ago, with Dijiang's remains attached beside it, so whatever rare poison went in probably just merged into Hundun. Yan Changqing's state, affected by the thing inside him, had made Zhen Qianfan believe the poison was working, and he had never suspected anything else.
I can't do that yet; drugs would probably still affect me. But my true qi has the trait "return all things to one," and it is at Dharma Realm consummation in strength, so one full circulation should dissolve most poisons or drug effects within a very short time... Ding Songyan took the moment to examine himself again.
He patted Ren Youyang's shoulder with a smile.
"We're out of wine. Come on, Brother Youyang, let me take you to drink and visit the courtesans!"
Brother Youyang was so loyal to me before—I have to treat him!
Ren Youyang's dog ears twitched, and he sighed.
"Alas, I no longer have such worldly desires."
Ah... so this is the price of becoming a god after death? No wonder Brother Youyang went to the pleasure quarters every day while he was alive—wasn't he afraid of draining his own root origin? Ding Songyan asked, his face full of regret:
"Then what do you still desire?"
Ren Youyang looked at the great river rolling past and said with a sigh:
"Though 'loyalty and righteousness' have weakened somewhat, they still remain in my heart. And that desire hasn't entirely vanished either—it just has to begin with feeling. Stronger than that is the principle I myself want to uphold. Mm—wine, blood offerings, well-prepared three sacrificial animals and chickens, ducks, and geese, those I still crave. Watching zaju plays and listening to storytelling, I can still take pleasure in those."
"That's not so bad, then." Ding Songyan was glad for Brother Youyang.
Ren Youyang withdrew his gaze, looked at him, and asked seriously:
"Songyan, did you eat something?"
Mm... Ding Songyan did not answer at once.
Ren Youyang touched the illusory green-snake ornament at his ear and said with a smile:
"What I became is a ghost god, a corpse god—I have the side of ghosts and the side of corpses, and can pass in and out of the Netherworld. I count as half a creature of yin and evil; how could I fail to sense something off about you? Just now I had to hold it down with the god side alone, or I would have kept well clear of you."
Chapter 62