The Little Wild Goose

Li Yuanyu was curled up at the foot of the bed, half-asleep and dazed, when loud cries rang out by his ears. Voices wept in grief; voices shrieked. Startled awake, he found mist curling before the bed and beneath it, hazy and obscuring everything. "Mother!" Li Yuanyu turned his head, but Jiang Yunu was nowhere to be seen beside him. Glancing about, he discovered the sky was shockingly dark. He could only scramble up and walk to the window, where a bright, gleaming moon floated before his eyes. "How strange." He took a few steps forward and stepped out through the doorway, only for his feet to meet nothing. Finding no solid ground beneath him, he plummeted through empty air. "Ah!" His collar tightened, and Li Yuanyu flailed his hands and feet as he was hoisted up. Looking up, he saw the city walls towering before him. He had landed squarely in a basket, already outside the commandery, while the middle-aged man he had seen earlier was smiling down at him. The middle-aged man's face was deathly pale, his lips red as blood, and his eyes terrifyingly dark as he stared straight at him. "Seems I haven't slacked off too much with this art of mine. Can't steal anything else, but I'm handy enough at snatching a kid!" "You!" The middle-aged man reached into the boy's robes to pull out the copper coin, tucked it carefully into his own, and said solemnly, "Having taken my life-buying coin, you must come with me." Li Yuanyu took a startled breath, gritted his teeth, and asked in his childish voice, "Why did you bring me out here... Are you an immortal?!" "I am not." Hearing this, the middle-aged man's face twisted into an ugly grimace, and he snapped indignantly, "Those so-called immortals slaughtered your mother! Yet here you are, babbling about immortals, immortals!" Li Yuanyu was struck like a bolt from the blue. His eyes widened, and he cried, "You... what are you talking about?!" The middle-aged man gave a chuckle, stepped forward, and wiped a hand across the city gate. Ripples like water spread out at once, revealing the scene in the courtyard. Li Yuanyu caught just one glimpse, and the sight of the butchered, bloody carnage choked him up. He nearly fainted, crying out, "Ah!" Li Yuanyu's little face turned pale as ash, and he wailed and thrashed. But the middle-aged man paid his protests no mind, chuckling softly. "My name is Jiang Boqing. From now on, you'll follow me and cultivate the curse arts! What's your name?" Naturally, Li Yuanyu did not believe him and had no wish to go with him, crying out at the top of his lungs. Seeing that Li Yuanyu continued to wail without stopping, Jiang Boqing looked pleased with himself. Scooping the boy up, he smiled and said, "Then take my surname and be called Jiang Yan!" *** Li Xuanfeng rode the wind along Guli Road, but when he saw five-colored radiance shifting atop Guanyun Peak—as if a formation had been activated—his heart gave a sudden thud. *Could someone dare make trouble for the Xiao family? What is going on?* Though doubts swarmed in his mind, Li Xuanfeng did not stop. Looking down, he saw the road by the city gates was desolate. Overturned carts littered the ground, alongside scattered clothing and various foods strewn everywhere, left to be chewed on by stray cattle and horses. Now truly unnerved, Li Xuanfeng wore a grim expression as he cleared the walls of Lixia Commandery. He caught sight of bloody handprints covering the stone—hundreds, thousands of them plastered across the surface, as if people had tried to climb the wall over slick blood, only to fall back again and again, bursting their bellies and splashing the ground below with excrement and urine mingled with gore. The small courtyard was nestled in an alley, not difficult to find. In the vast city, not a soul was in sight. Li Xuanfeng descended before the courtyard and saw a crookedly embroidered little wild goose hanging before the door, spotted with blood, swaying in the wind as if trying to spread its wings and fly away. *Creak...* The small door stood ajar. A gentle push from Li Xuanfeng swung it open, revealing a tender, fair little foot lying on the steps, severed cleanly a fist's breadth above a jade-smooth ankle, the cut neat and sharp. Yet in a single glance, he recognized it: that was one of the little feet he had caught and stroked countless times beneath the quilts. A foot that, whenever he tickled it, made Jiang Yunu glare at him with flushed cheeks. Back when he was a boy newly awakened to romance, he had held her foot and asked, "How could there be something so wonderful in this world?" Jiang Yunu's cute, round face had turned her almond eyes upon him, then looked away in shy embarrassment. Li Xuanfeng felt as though struck across the face. His eyes flinched away, and as if scalded by fire, he recoiled from that little foot—only to catch sight of two bloody lengths of intestine draped over the top of the wall. With a thud, he collapsed to the ground, howling silently in his throat for a long while before picking up the foot like a wretched cur, crying: "You!" Tears burst forth like a broken dam. Li Xuanfeng staggered forward and picked up two snow-white, jade-like arms, only for the little foot to slip foolishly back to the ground. In a frantic scramble, he picked it up and walked forward. A rounded jade hip, long black hair, two fallen breasts. Finally, he found half a face, bearing Jiang Yunu's round, endearing almond eye. That almond eye had once gazed straight at him, filled with hope countless times; now it was extinguished into dead stillness, like the eye of a dead fish. The limbs gathered in his arms fell to the ground all at once. Half-kneeling on the earth, Li Xuanfeng felt the world before him sway indistinctly. His father Li Xiangping, the old man Xu San, and countless figures drifted near and far before his eyes. In a corner, Li Xuanfeng found the lower half of her face. Trembling, he pieced her back together, poured the shattered teeth into her mouth, and closed her eyes. His face a ghastly, pale blue, he spoke softly: "Little woman... wait for me." Blood seeped from his lips. Li Xuanfeng had never spoken in such a tender voice before. He kissed her and whispered gently: "This was all my fault. I was a fool. But I still have my life, and I swear I'll send that person on his way down to you... little woman..." "Whoever it was... whether a young master of an immortal sect or a demonic fiend... I'll slaughter him for you to see. Just wait! You wait for me!" He rose shakily to his feet. His eyes burned like raging fire, terrifying and searing to look upon, as if he had downed two vats of fiery liquor, burning him from the crown of his head to the tip of his toes. Looking down at the two halves of the woman's head on the ground, he said softly: "It's not that I won't bury you. I'm afraid... afraid that he'll get away. Let me go ask, and then I'll come back for you." With that, he turned and stepped out of the courtyard. Taking down the crookedly stitched little wild goose from the wall, he held it carefully in his palm, rode the wind into the air, and flew past the mountains of corpses and seas of blood beneath him toward Guanyun Peak. *** Xiao Ruyu stood blankly on the mountain summit, his heart hollow and grief-stricken, when an icy voice reached him: "Li Xuanfeng comes to pay his respects... I ask Senior to open the mountain gate." Before Xiao Yongling could speak, Xiao Ruyu jumped in fright, muttering repeatedly, "Disaster! There were Li clansmen in the commandery..." Seeing Xiao Yongling's tight-lipped, stern silence, Xiao Ruyu's mind raced. He thought to himself: *Li Xuanfeng must be consumed by rage. By no means can I let him meet Clan Uncle. If he says something rash in defiance, it will drive a wedge between our two families.* Stepping forward voluntarily, he said in a low voice, "Clan Uncle! Leave it to me..." Stroking his chin, Xiao Yongling nodded slightly, clearly having weighed many things as well. Xiao Ruyu then rode the wind, flying out beyond the formation. With sorrow written across his face, he mourned: "Brother Xuanfeng!" Li Xuanfeng appeared calm enough, devoid of expression as he spoke softly: "What happened down below?" "The Tangjin Sect invaded... and slaughtered my Lixia Commandery. Our clan dared not resist." "I understand." Li Xuanfeng raised his brow, and the sight left Xiao Ruyu dazed for a moment. Gone from those eyes was his past unruly wildness, replaced instead by an unfamiliar, chilling ferocity. Had Chen Donghe been here, he would have stared in disbelief. This look had surfaced a thousand, ten thousand times on Li Xiangping's face, and now it had finally appeared on Li Xuanfeng's. Those grayish-black, sinister, and ruthless eyes seemed to have been grafted onto his very face, striking panic into the heart. "Which way did they go?" "East..." Xiao Ruyu had barely called out when he saw Li Xuanfeng take flight on the wind, hurtling eastward. He hurriedly shouted: "Brother Xuanfeng! Don't be rash!" Gritting his teeth, Xiao Ruyu lingered on the spot for a moment, then rode the wind after all, chasing eastward after Li Xuanfeng.