A small mountain range lay between Guanyin Port and the nearest town, to the north. Because of the slippery snow, those mountain paths were extremely difficult to maneuver. Some routes had even been completely blocked out by the snowfall, and required travellers to make detours.

Such was the situation that the scarred man had encountered today––

The first carriage had stopped in an extremely dangerous position. Only one zhang ahead of them was a drastic cliff. Normally, there were two bridges on the cliff that could bring them to the two mountain paths ahead –– one east and one west –– which allowed them to avoid the massive, unscalable peak in the middle.

"What's wrong?" Having cooled himself down temporarily on Xuanmin's neck, Xue Xian was in a better mood. Pretending that nothing was wrong inside the carriage, he pushed open the door and stuck his head out, calling to the troupe. "Do you need a hand?"

From afar, the scarred man called back, "It's fine. The bridge that we'd planned to cross has snapped. We have to take the other path..."

The horse at the front of the train continued to whinny and seemed extremely agitated. If it hadn't been for the scarred man stopping them at just the right time, that horse would long have tumbled down the side of the cliff.

"How could a bridge just snap?" An old man said as he descended from one of the carriages ahead. "Did we take the right turn? What did I say? We still need these old horses of mine to show us the way."

"Lao-Li, stop wheedling me. I do know the way," the scarred man said. "Get back into the carriage. Don't get out for no reason, or you'll freeze your throat and lose your singing voice."

Xue Xian saw that the old man surnamed Li did not obey the scarred man and return to the carriage. Instead, he walked through the snow toward that first horse. He took a look at the cliff, then cried out, "What the hell? How could it snap so cleanly?... Huh. So now we have to take the eastern path?"

But unlike the scarred man, this Lao-Li seemed extremely reluctant to take the detour, as though to take that other path would curse his family with eight hundred years of bad luck.

Xue Xian's hearing was far sharper than humans', so he could hear every word of the men's exchange. He asked, "Is the eastern route bad?"

He had not tried to project his voice, but nonetheless, his words –– along with the snowflakes around him –– were carried by the eddies of wind into the ears of the men at the front.

The two men were stunned. Then they turned to Xue Xian and shouted, "It's fine, don't worry. It's just that the eastern route is longer, and rocks fall onto it often. But if we're careful, we can still get through."

"Is it really fine?" Jiang Shining asked from inside the carriage, his face gaunt.

Xue Xian strained his eyes past the thick snow to study the men's expressions. Squinting, he shook his head and said, "They don't seem too bothered, but... Oh, I don't know how to say it. Let's just go."

The always silent Xuanmin stirred next to him and pushed the curtain aside. "No worries. Let me see."

His serene tone helped everyone in the carriage relax. Even Xue Xian, who had constantly been bothering Xuanmin in the past few days, had to admit that –– never mind anything else –– this bald donkey was handy for solving problems.

Then, just as the thought flashed through this daye’s mind, he stopped himself again.?...Why would I randomly describe the bald donkey as 'handy'...

It just seemed like the way you'd describe something dear to you, something you kept near you at all times –– for something to be 'handy', you had to have it in your hand...

Still leaning out of the door, Xue Xian pondered this for a moment. Then he chastised himself. He decided that he must have ingested rat poison, to suddenly have had such a weird thought.

But the bald donkey was a simple mortal. Once Xue Xian returned to his ordinary form, he'd be a divine dragon, and would easily be able to pick up Xuanmin with his claw. So...

Never mind holding Xuanmin in his hand: even dangling Xuanmin from his teeth was as simple as opening his mouth. So there!

This made the shameless zuzong feel better about himself again. He felt majestic.

As he concocted an elaborate fantasy of a battle between man and dragon, Xue Xian couldn't help but sneak a peek at Xuanmin inside the carriage.

Xuanmin noticed this. As he had no idea what was going through Xue Xian’s mind, he felt intrigued.

With his detached disposition, Xuanmin never usually thought too much about whether or not others were staring at him. Thus, he decided that this zuzong was simply overheating and in a bad mood, and did not want to add oil to the fire, so Xuanmin only glanced at Xue Xian, then went back to peering out the window.

But in a way, that brief look of curiosity had, in fact, been oil to the fire.

When Xue Xian saw the frosty way in which Xuanmin had dismissed him, he felt an itch in his hand –– a strong urge to go ahead and fight Xuanmin then and there. Although Xue Xian knew that this made no sense –– this was not his first day with Xuanmin, and he had long gotten used to the neither cold nor warm way in which Xuanmin treated those around him –– Xue Xian just... didn't feel good.

It was as though the qi that had been happily swimming around his body had suddenly gotten blocked somewhere –– it wasn't a big deal, nor was it painful, but it was just uncomfortable.

Another mass of hot air swelled inside Xue Xian's body, lapping up at him like incessant waves. He could not keep it at bay for long at all, and it seemed that it would never go away.

Annoying.

At the front of the train, the scarred man was gripping the rope binding the horses to the carriages, trying to move the animals toward the eastern bridge. But the leading horse was even fussier than Xue Xian. It snorted and whinnied, pounding its hooves on the ground, and refused to budge.

"We've tried the whip, we've tried the carrot, and we've tried calming it. Why won't it take a single step forward? It never used to be like this. How strange," Lao-Li mumbled angrily.

"It just won't cooperate with us today. They all say that horses are innately attuned to spiritual things.?[a]?Perhaps it was startled earlier and now senses danger ahead, and doesn't want to go," the scarred man said. But he began to pat the horse's neck. He alternated with harder and softer pats, and, finally, the horse grunted and reluctantly took a few steps forward.

Slowly, the wheels of the carriages began to turn again. Lao-Li hurried back into his carriage, but his expression seemed still to be one of panic and worry. Before he disappeared into the carriage, he happened to meet eyes with Xue Xian and forced himself to replace his anxious look with a placating one. "It's fine. The horse didn't want to go, so we had a delay. But we're moving again now."

The small incident on the road seemed to have been solved. It was troublesome, but it was far from what Jiang Shining had feared.

Xue Xian nodded at Lao-Li as a word of thanks and shut their own carriage door, but remained sitting at the doorway with his arms wrapped around himself. He seemed no longer intent on using Xuanmin to cool himself off, and did not speak, either. He seemed unusually idle.

The bridge that the scarred man was now taking was slightly wider than the other one. The horses and mule carried them gently across the ravine, and there was even extra room on the sides of the train. Nothing seemed to be wrong.

Then they got onto the path on the other side, and the horse's behavior changed again –– it kept starting and stopping.

Each time, they could hear the men ahead trying to persuade the horse to go on, at times coaxing, at times scolding. The sound of the wheels crunching against the snow and the horse's irritated whinnies were pierced, every so often, by the cracks of a whip. As they headed deeper into the mountain range, the feeling became increasingly unsettling.

"Has it really been resolved? Why do I feel so nervous?" Jiang Shining asked, his face full of worry. He sat as rigidly as a pin on a pincushion, and seemed a completely different person compared to his normally sluggish self.

After another bout of fretting, Jiang Shining seemed also to realise how unusual his behavior was. Finally, he said, "Why have I been so anxious ever since we entered the mountain range?"

Xue Xian's voice didn't betray any hint of emotion when he said, "Lots of yin energy."

Normally, there was always a specific and lively tone to his voice. Sometimes he sneered and other times he mocked, but he always displayed a wide range of complicated, interlocking emotions, and was obviously the kind of person who could never stay still.

So the dull and mild tone he employed now was too different from his normal demeanor, making Jiang Shining wonder if something was wrong.

But Jiang Shining decided that it was best not to say anything, in case he provoked the zuzong. Still, he couldn't ignore the rising sense of panic derived from the four words Xue Xian had uttered.

What did 'lots of yin energy' mean?

Xue Xian didn’t elaborate. It was Lu Nianqi who clutched his bundle of sticks and said, "If I remember correctly, that boatman said there had been a landslide in Anqing Prefecture."

"Mn?" Jiang Shining turned to the boy.

Blank-faced, Lu Nianqi stared back at him and said in a dull voice, "Do you think there are dead people from the landslide on this mountain?"

Jiang Shining: “...”

Was this kid doing it on purpose? Why did he sound like he was telling a ghost story?

Stone Zhang looked like he was about to cry again. "How old are you, child? Stop trying to scare people for no reason!"

Lu Nianqi rolled his eyes and tapped at his sticks.

Xue Xian felt that his palms were burning up again, but sat unmoving in the corner with those passive, half-closed eyes. He seemed not to be planning any further mischief, yet his unusual demeanor only made the others in the carriage feel an even stronger sense of foreboding.

As the carriage fell into silence, Jiang Shining couldn't tell if it was just his paranoia, but he had the feeling that the peaceful silence was a pot of soup, in which they were all stewing...

They were taking forever to traverse this mountain path, and the leading horse was still acting off. It would run for a couple of steps, then slow down to a walk, and then slow down more to a shuffle...

An hour passed before they'd even made it halfway across.

Xuanmin was still using a hand to hold the curtain open, staring out of the window in contemplation. Because he said nothing, Jiang Shining took this as a reassuring sign.

By this point, Xue Xian's palms were becoming extremely uncomfortable –– he could not even accurately describe them as ‘burning’ anymore. He languished and gave up trying to find something with which to direct the heat away.

Now that he had lost interest in making mischief, he found that nothing seemed fun at all anymore.

The heat isn't completely unbearable yet. Let it burn,?he muttered inside.

Just as that scorching heat began to clamber up his wrist and spread across the rest of his body, a slender hand suddenly appeared before Xue Xian's eyes.

Stunned, Xue Xian rubbed his eyes and looked around. He saw that Xuanmin was still sitting by the window with one hand against the curtain, staring out peacefully –– but his left hand was now hovering in front of Xue Xian's face, palm up.

For some reason, Xue Xian's heartbeat quickened.?[b]?But he quickly came back to his senses and said in an instinctively cold tone, "Why are you suddenly showing off your hand to me?"

Finally, Xuanmin temporarily tore his gaze away from the window and glanced at Xue Xian, whose hands were still clinging tightly to his own shoulders. "Do you not need something to cool you down?" he asked.

Then, he went back to looking outside. His hand continued to hover in front of Xue Xian. He had not taken it away.

All the anger Xue Xian had been keeping inside of him suddenly evaporated.

But Xue Xian still had a shred of that untouchable pride in him. As he gazed down at Xuanmin's hand, he bit down on the tip of his tongue and frowned, thinking. Finally, he wiggled his chin and said in a demurring voice, "Fine. For once, since you're making sense... Don't mind if I do."

Eagerly now, he reached out with those two claws and wrapped one tightly around the cool hand that Xuanmin had given him. The other of Xue Xian's hands crept slowly in the direction of Xuanmin's face, trying to lock itself there.

Xuanmin pushed that hand away.

As Xue Xian felt the heat settle a bit, he relaxed and sighed a happy sigh. But then Xuanmin suddenly frowned.

"What is it?" Seeing Xuanmin's expression, Xue Xian followed the monk's gaze and peered out of the gap in the curtain too.

As the path curved around the side of the mountain, they could see some of the route far ahead. Part of it was completely covered in a massive pile of fallen rocks. The rocks blocked a large part of the road, and were in complete disarray, but Xue Xian could see something crushed beneath them.

"Is that... a horse-drawn carriage crushed beneath the boulders? Are there still people inside?!" Jiang Shining exclaimed as he also stuck his head out. He could not see much from his perspective, so he strained his neck to get a good view.

"It is a carriage..." Xue Xian said. Then, gloomily, he added, "Keep looking. Don't you think that carriage looks awfully familiar?"

Jiang Shining froze in shock. He suddenly understood why Xue Xian had told him not to get too close to the scarred man and his troupe...

"You mean... they.... they're all..."

"Shhh," Xue Xian interrupted. "When you encounter such people, a certain word is taboo. If you say it out loud, they'll wake up."

He paused. Then he added, "We can't let them see..."

He paused again, and gestured outside with his chin. "Or else, the peace will be broken."

But the horses were trotting that way, and there was only one narrow path on the mountain. There was no way to turn back.

"How in the world can we avoid it?" Jiang Shining asked, a cold feeling settling into his chest.

----

The author has something to say:

Four high-speed trains in seven days: achievement unlocked! (Nothing left to live for.jpg)

I typed all this up while on the journey. I hope there aren’t too many typos orz.

----

[a] Musuli uses 灵性 (ling2 xing4) here, “magical/mystical characteristics/personality”.

[b] Note from my original TL that I stand by: “I'm not gonna lie... I see why slow burns are so appealing now. Every single action is filled with so much YEARNING. i YEARN!!!!!!!!!!!! it's so painful and yet so good!!!!”