Encountering a Snake C11

Chapter 11: Fate

The night was extremely still. Even the candle flame hardly swayed. In the small room Shen Qingxuan’s voice was not loud, yet every word was clear. His expression was serious—even grave.

With that look he said: You and I—different paths, same destination. Will that do?

Yi Mo was rather surprised.

How could he not be?

He had been a snake. Only because his nature was cold and quiet had someone chosen him and pointed the way. The one who pointed the way was now a star among the immortals of heaven. Yi Mo had cultivated a thousand years. After this tribulation, and one more binding tribulation, he too could shed his old bones and take a place among the immortals. It was only another two or three hundred years. And now here was the mortal Shen Qingxuan, saying with utter certainty: You and I will arrive at the same place.

Arrive where? Heaven, or the human world?

Yi Mo could see that Shen Qingxuan had no root-bone for the Dao. That was a matter of fate. Shen Qingxuan’s fate-pattern was vigorous, noble beyond words, but it was suited only to turning in the red dust. Though the Shen Qingxuan of great destined wealth was now fallen and wretched, that was only a stretch of misfortune.

The first time they met, Yi Mo had known this was the karmic chance between him and Shen Qingxuan. To meet was the chance. Otherwise he would have stayed hidden in the mountains. Why, on that day, would a sudden impulse have taken him into the Shen family’s side courtyard, and why would he have shown his snake form, coiled on the railing in the sun, and let Shen Qingxuan soak him with a cup of hot tea?

So he helped him only to follow Heaven’s will. In the speech of the human world, he was the noble person in Shen Qingxuan’s fate, helping him through calamity, and he himself would gain merit.

Once the misfortune was crossed, Shen Qingxuan would of course drift with his fate. In time he would flourish to the extreme, be made marquis, take a minister’s seat—and that would have nothing more to do with Yi Mo. Human rank and profit Yi Mo did not put in his eyes. Shen Qingxuan’s fate, however, was already set. He could not leap free of it.

And a mortal life is only a hundred years. A hundred years, to Yi Mo, was a grain of millet in the blue sea. One day Shen Qingxuan would die of old age, his bones rot clean, and Yi Mo would still look as he did now, walking in the world. Where was the same destination?

Yi Mo walked over slowly, stood before Shen Qingxuan, lowered his head, and looked at him steadily for a good while before he said, “I truly underestimated you.”

Shen Qingxuan knew his earlier words had been rash, even offensive, but he did not understand why Yi Mo would say something so headless and tailless. Yi Mo’s face was its usual cold plain; nothing showed. Shen Qingxuan took the sentence as praise. He had not expected Yi Mo to pause, then say mildly, “Though you are so thin a wind would knock you down, your lustful heart is extremely large.”

Struck by that judgment, Shen Qingxuan could not react at first. He still held his face up, staring in a daze. When he did understand, clouds of color flared across his face with a roar. Even speech would not come out smoothly. He scolded in a low voice, “You—what nonsense are you talking!”

Yi Mo still stood with his hands behind his back, not a ripple on his face, and said at an unhurried pace, “I saved your life and promised you recovery like an ordinary man. For you to offer your body in repayment is only proper. Only I have not yet raised a lustful heart, and you are already so urgent. I find it quite unexpected.”

The speech was orderly, the thought clear. It blasted the thoughts in Shen Qingxuan’s head to slag. He could not speak.

Yi Mo saw that he had lost his order, his face so red it seemed it would catch fire in the next second, his tongue knotted in panic. After a moment’s thought he lifted a hand. His fingers curled slightly. The tips touched that unreasonably hot face—like a test, and very like a liberty.

Heat passed from the fingertips. The skin was smooth. Yi Mo opened his palm, turned his wrist, and let his icy hand cover that source of heat completely. Extremely warm.

Then his palm stroked slowly over that face, from the temple to the cheekbone, rubbing down to the cheek, and at last rested on Shen Qingxuan’s sharp, thin jaw. After a while under that cold palm the heat on Shen Qingxuan’s face did not fall. It grew hotter still.

Paying no mind to Shen Qingxuan’s widened, stunned eyes, Yi Mo stroked a while for his own sake, then withdrew his hand at leisure and said, “A little thinner. Still smooth, though.”

Shen Qingxuan made a small sound and only then instinctively shrank back. Coming to himself, he snapped, “Do you take this for a merchant’s bargain? Must it still be inspected on delivery?”

Yi Mo lifted his eyes and looked straight at him. “Since you mean to offer your body, will you not allow me to test the quality?”

Shen Qingxuan’s face was still red, but most of his mind had returned. Seeing the other speak so frankly, without shame, and with only the two of them in the room, standing so close that breath mixed and made the air more ambiguous, he simply dropped his sense of shame as well and said in a low voice, “By your account, I am doing this to repay a kindness. Have you ever seen a man offer his body to repay a kindness? In those books, there is no such record.”

While he was still speaking, Yi Mo put out a hand again and undid the sash at his waist.

The waist went loose. Shen Qingxuan pressed his lips tight and swallowed the rest of his words. He understood at once: Yi Mo was not failing to understand. He was deliberately pushing this feeling onto the matter of repayment. That way it would be far easier to settle, without so many tangles.

Seeing this, Shen Qingxuan felt as if ice water had been poured over his heart. Cold spread in all directions. He had some experience, though. In an instant he recovered without showing it. He thought he was no match for this well-traveled old demon—and yet he did not move at all, and let Yi Mo loosen his clothes.

Silence returned to the room of a sudden. There was only the faint rustle of sashes coming undone.

Shen Qingxuan lowered his eyes and watched the front of his outer robe fall open, showing the snow-white inner garment. He watched those thin, hard, long fingers work deftly, loosening the fine tie at the side of the inner robe, then the next. Now and then Yi Mo’s cold fingers brushed his skin. Shen Qingxuan felt the cold; small bumps rose in a rustle over his body.

Noticing the reaction, Yi Mo stopped. After a stillness he asked, “Like this—are you still willing to offer your body?”

Shen Qingxuan was still a moment too. Then he gave a low laugh, lifted a hand, and undid the crown that bound his hair. The long hair poured down, strand after strand covering half his face.

“If it is repayment, it should be done with a true heart.” He lifted the corners of his mouth, set the crown aside, turned his face, and smiled with composure. “Never mind that you are a snake and cannot freeze me to death. Even if you were a thousand years of cold ice, I would permit it.”

Yi Mo said nothing when he heard this. He put out his hand again, passed through the loosened hem, and slowly stroked the thinnest curve of Shen Qingxuan’s waist.

Shen Qingxuan shuddered on that hand, then let his body slacken. As if unwilling to look at the scene, he closed his eyes and gave his whole mind to the hand at his waist, gliding light and heavy along that curve, sometimes pausing to rub slowly, sometimes adding force and locking the waist tight.

Perhaps because the difference in body heat kept reminding him that the one touching him was not of his kind—and was of the same sex—a place that should not have been so keen became extremely sensitive. He felt the skin of his waist catch fire from inside out under that rubbing. Waves of numbness passed from the waist muscle through half his body and connected to the channel in his lower belly, pulled and kneaded until the part of him covered only by inner trousers, with no long robe to hide it, gradually lifted its head.

Breath uneven, he opened his eyes and met a pair of eyes cold and still as a winter pool. In that instant the heartbeat that had already been losing its rhythm collapsed completely.

He did not know where the courage came from. He seized Yi Mo’s lapel, pulled him face to face, nose to nose, mouth to mouth, and said, “Put me on the bed.”

Hearing his own slightly weak voice at his ear, he flushed at once, yet still said, “My legs are inconvenient. My body is frail. You will have to bear with me.”

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