Encountering a Snake C5

Chapter 5: The Gentleman

This year the rain was plentiful. In years past, at this season, rain in the mountains had never fallen so often. This year was a little strange. In half a month there had been only two clear days.

Shen Qingxuan had long since learned how to pass the time. Shut in the room he did not grow restless. Day after day he leaned by the window with great patience and listened to the rain.

The sound of water striking leaves, striking the eaves, dripping into the earthen jars in the courtyard… He caught each one with his ear and distinguished the small differences. It was interesting in its way.

There were also the bright flowers in the courtyard, trembling in his sight with rain on them, no longer dignified, yet with a charm of their own. When the mood took him he spread painting paper and washed the rain-soaked scene onto it, amusing himself.

In the evening, after the meal, he soaked in warm water faintly scented with medicine until his eyelids would not lift. Then he rang the bell for a servant to help him into bed.

That night the rain poured again.

Shen Qingxuan told himself Yi Mo would not come and went to bed early. He did not sleep. He only leaned against the headboard. On a small square table in front of him a chessboard was set. He held an old book of unfinished games and placed the pieces according to the page.

Black and white stones, scattered at first, suddenly joined under his hand into tight formations—now like a thousand horses and men closing in to kill, now like a tiger bursting from its cage and driving straight at the center.

While he was absorbed in the placement, the bed curtains seemed to stir as if a wind had passed, lifting one corner faintly.

Shen Qingxuan raised his head and looked through the green gauze, startled.

There was no one in the room. But he knew the other had come. He quickly lifted the curtain and beckoned toward the empty place.

A thread of cold air drew near. He hurried to gather the pieces on the table, took paper and brush from the wooden cabinet by the bed, and wrote: The wind is strong and the rain is urgent. Come up and sit a while.

A moment later the great bed shook slightly. A mark appeared on the thin quilt pressed under the chess table.

Outside, the rain struck and crackled. He had thought the other would not come, so he wore only a snow-white inner robe, the collar askew. The hairpin had long been taken down; dark hair lay rather tangled before and behind him. He looked lazy and unguarded.

Only when Yi Mo sat down opposite the board did he notice his own lack of propriety. He wrote quickly: I thought you would not come. Then he looked at the empty space across from him. Unexpectedly there was no movement at all.

He was rather surprised. In the months they had known each other, Yi Mo had been extremely indifferent, but never rude. He always answered when asked.

What was it today?

While he was still turning it over, the paper on the table was taken up. The brush in his hand was drawn away by an outside force and moved to the other side.

Then characters appeared on the page. It was a farewell.

Yi Mo was leaving the mountains for another place.

At the news Shen Qingxuan’s heart gave a jump. His composure vanished. Panic rose so fast he could not hold it. He snatched the floating brush, seized the paper, and asked in a hurried, careless scrawl where the other was going and when he would return. All dignity was gone.

A moment later the paper and ink were taken from him again. The characters that formed, neither slow nor hurried, were still perfectly regular. This thousand-year-old snake demon had been seeking a certain object for two hundred years. Only recently had there been a clue. Of course he would go down the mountain to fetch it.

Shen Qingxuan settled a little.

He was quiet for a while, then could not restrain his curiosity. He asked what the object was, that it should be so precious Yi Mo could not wait to go after it.

The brush paused a moment, then two characters appeared: Snake slough.

Shen Qingxuan stared, speechless.

Perhaps because the thing he had sought so bitterly for years finally had a lead, Yi Mo’s mood was quite pleasant. He spread paper again and told the story at length. More than two hundred years ago, after successfully passing a tribulation, Yi Mo had hidden in the mountains to shed his skin. Unexpectedly the slough had vanished without cause.

The thin slough was nothing in his own eyes, but he was a thousand-year-old demon after all. The skin he shed was no ordinary thing. If someone took it, trouble would surely follow. So he had been searching all these years.

Only today had there been a clue.

Shen Qingxuan asked in more detail. Yi Mo hid nothing and answered one by one. In the talk, old matters inevitably surfaced and a little of his origin showed. Yi Mo did not mind being known. Shen Qingxuan, because he cared, remembered it carefully.

Until now he had known only that the other was a snake demon. He had not known this demon’s history. Today he learned that Yi Mo had become a demon because a man had pointed the way for him, and that Yi Mo’s homeland lay ten thousand li away.

Shen Qingxuan wrote: Why did you leave your homeland?

Yi Mo thought a moment and answered with one character: Noise.

To a person, a homeland is the root of the soul. To a snake it is only the place of birth. At first he had been only a muddled little snake—eat and sleep, wake in spring, sleep in winter. He lived in a mountain cave and knew nothing of the world.

In those days the realm was at war. Five continents, ten kingdoms, beacon fires across the land. In the chaos the hundred schools contended. Scholars and sages, heroes and warriors rose one after another. For a time no one could say how many outstanding men shared the age with gods and demons. There were also cultivators of the immortal way, alchemists, disciples of Maitreya—every school gathered in that disordered world, and it was dazzling.

He was only a small snake. He did not understand the human world’s chaos and was content in his corner. He had not expected the war to roll over him in the end.

Wolf-smoke and beacon fire reached that small green mountain.

At the foot of the mountain drums thundered, killing shouts shook the sky, blades flashed, blood ran in rivers. Young men came home wrapped in horsehide.

Many more left their bodies on that ground—severed limbs, heads parted from trunks.

Too much blood and the resentment of ambitions unfulfilled finally forged demons. For a time the small green mountain was filled day and night with yin wind.

He was still only a muddled little snake.

Where demons multiply, sages and immortals appear.

One day two Daoists came to the foot of the mountain. One of them was a Daoist boy, come with his master.

It was the Waking of Insects. The little snake Yi Mo had poked his head from the cave and was gliding through the grass looking for food. Just out of hibernation, his body was stiff and clumsy. He ran straight into the side of a Daoist’s shoe.

The boy cried out and lifted his foot to kick. His master stopped him.

Seeing that the two did not mean to trouble him, Yi Mo could not be bothered to trouble them either. Even though his belly was empty, he knew he could not swallow these two. He turned to leave.

The older Daoist called him back.

“That snake,” the Daoist said.

Knowing he was a snake, Yi Mo stopped, turned his head, and looked at him with cold black-bean eyes, as if waiting for him to go on.

“You are an interesting snake. Quite a bit of spiritual nature.”

At that time he was not yet called Yi Mo—only a nameless legless long worm. There were many birds and beasts in the mountains, and some that had cultivated into spirits and liked to chatter. Even if he was not interested, he knew a little about immortals, demons, and spirits. He had never thought of cultivating into a spirit or a demon. He felt the present state was good enough.

That peaceful state of being a snake was broken by this Daoist.

The man took a wine gourd from his waist, smiling. “I see you have just woken. Your belly must be empty and cold. Shall I invite you to drink?” He opened the gourd as he spoke.

Whatever the wine was brewed from, its fragrance rose clear. Yi Mo knew the man meant no good, but he was truly hungry. After a moment’s hesitation he drank what was in the gourd.

When he lifted his head again, the world before him was different.

In the woods that had looked only green, a thick ink-black qi now coiled. Mixed in it were threads of red and green. The world he had been used to had changed its face.

The Daoist was still smiling. He crouched and explained which was demonic qi, which was yaoguai qi, which was resentment. He explained the difference between yaoguai and demons. At last, quite pleased, he put away the empty gourd and said, “Drink my wine, and you have already become a yaoguai. You are no longer a long worm people catch, skin, bone, and stew into soup.”

Yi Mo stood frozen for a long time, wordless.

The Daoist also gave him a name. Only then did he rise, satisfied, and leave lightly, without even attending to the business he had come for, and without caring how great an effect he had had on a snake’s life.

After that, the snake demon Yi Mo, who had never cultivated a single day, had no choice but to draw on the essence of sun and moon and begin to learn.

Accepting that he had become a demon was not hard. The difficulty was that only after becoming one did he discover how many demons there were in the mountain. When he had been an ordinary little snake, those demons had not deigned to notice him. Now that an immortal had pointed the way for him, he was no ordinary thing in their eyes, and they often clung to him.

Yi Mo’s nature loved quiet. He found it tiresome.

On top of that, the birds and beasts he had known in the mountain, who had been diligently cultivating, gradually fell into the demonic path, polluted by love, hate, greed, anger, and obsession, and lost their true nature. That displeased him still more.

At last even the oriole spirit that used to perch on his back and chatter vanished overnight.

The arrogant noise and laughter of the demons finally forced Yi Mo to act. He destroyed the demon head formed from the resentment of the dead soldiers at the foot of the mountain, cleaned away the lesser demons that had clamored in his ears day and night, and left his native soil.

As the things he lived through multiplied, Yi Mo came to understand that the Daoist who had pointed the way for him had known the mountain’s demonic qi was too heavy to subdue easily. That was why he had chosen this little snake of few desires and given him power for nothing—so that he might use the snake’s hand to kill the demon chief.

Yaoguai against demon: the strengths were even.

If it had been a man, a body of mortal flesh, even with equal power he would have suffered some silent loss.

Yi Mo knew he had been used. He showed neither joy nor anger. He only calmly found another sacred mountain and cultivated another hundred years, then took human form and went down the mountain. After much searching he found that Daoist’s reincarnation. He toyed with the man who had made trouble in a former life until the man nearly hanged himself, then stopped and returned to the mountain to cultivate.

Later the Daoist passed through three more lives and took a place among the immortals. All of that was smoke of the past.

Shen Qingxuan listened to the old story with close attention. At the end he could not help lowering his head and laughing quietly to himself. A Daoist and a snake—beginning and end, after all.

With that thought he wrote: This time you leave—when will you return?

Yi Mo answered: Quickly, two months. Slowly, half a year.

When Shen Qingxuan saw it might be as long as half a year, he no longer hid the reluctance in his heart. He was not one to grow intimate with people, so the brush, though not stiff, only asked: Must it be so long?

The snake wrote: There are quite a few spirits in this mountain. If you feel lonely, burn incense and invite them.

The words were polite, not without concern, yet still indifferent. Shen Qingxuan was displeased. He thought: knowing this one snake demon is already enough. Why would I need to invite ghosts and monsters to keep me company?

He turned his face aside. The long hair helped, screening the look on his face.

The Yi Mo sitting opposite was silent for a while as well. Then he took up paper and ink again and wrote: Farewell.

Shen Qingxuan did not move, but the corner of his eye watched that side. When he saw the characters on the white paper, his heart gave a violent jump. At that exact moment the lamp-wick at the head of the bed popped. The hand resting on the silk quilt clenched tight; the fingertips went white.

The bed curtain lifted again. Though he could not see the form, Shen Qingxuan knew the other was leaving through it, and a sudden misery rose.

Dependence is human nature. Shen Qingxuan was no exception. He disliked his own dependence on this demon thing, but he had no time to think it through. Nearly twenty years of loneliness had, in these few months, taken on a welcome change. A black-and-white life had, because of this uncommon encounter, gained another kind of color. Trust in this being of another kind seemed to have formed of itself, together with the dependence.

And now he was to let go, and part for half a year.

The gentlemen’s friendship he had imagined no longer seemed able to go forward.

Shen Qingxuan turned his face sharply, took up brush and ink, and wrote on the paper that had waited so long: You have shown me kindness and treated me well. Parted for months, I will naturally worry. Since you came specially to say goodbye, why not let me look at you once. Then when I wake at midnight and remember talking by candlelight, it will not be only my own shadow.

He set the brush down and gazed at the place opposite, quiet for a long while.

He understood in his heart that their relationship, pale as water between gentlemen, might because of this request change beyond recognition.

Yi Mo never showed his form. It was clearly not affectation. The only explanation was that it had already been a habit of several hundred years. To change that habit—when had their friendship grown this close?

If Yi Mo refused…

A sudden cold sweat broke over Shen Qingxuan, from the base of his spine to his scalp, every hair standing. If Yi Mo refused…

He did not dare think further.

Even a friendship pale as water was better than a rupture. He was no longer a reckless youth. How was it that, meeting this one, he miscalculated every time?

While he was still angry with himself, suspicious, panicked, searching for a way to mend it, the lifted corner of the curtain began to sway lightly, as if someone had taken it up and let it fall.

Then, on the brocade quilt that had been empty, a corner of black robe appeared. Shen Qingxuan held his breath. His mind was a chaos.

The thing he had wanted seemed about to appear before him. Whether from excitement or something else, he did not dare draw a full breath. His pale cheeks flushed from the holding of it; a dizziness even began to rise.

Yi Mo dropped the concealment technique very quickly. In Shen Qingxuan’s eyes it seemed extremely slow. When at last that face—as regular and cold as his handwriting—appeared in his sight, Shen Qingxuan blinked and went stiff all over.

He saw a small cluster of blue flame appear at Yi Mo’s fingertip and flick toward his own chest. Only then did he gasp, as if struck by a pebble.

Realizing he had forgotten to breathe and had nearly suffocated himself, he flushed to the ears.

Red-faced, he looked a while longer at that face, cold and sharp as if cut by knife and chisel. Then he wrote: Beauty held inward. Unmatched in this age.

Yi Mo’s brows lifted slightly. Using a finger as a brush, he added a line beside the eight characters: Clear antiquity and smelted brilliance. Grace born of itself.

Seeing the words, Shen Qingxuan reached toward his own cheek with instinctive suspicion. He looked up and caught a flash of light in the other’s dark eyes that vanished at once. He understood he had been teased. He had praised in earnest. Yi Mo had only been mocking. And he had fallen for it.

His face turned so red it seemed it might drip blood. He opened his mouth and cursed: You wretched snake.

Though there was no sound, the shape of the words was perfectly clear.

Yi Mo showed neither pleasure nor anger. He only left two more characters on the paper: Likewise.

Then the bed curtain lifted, and he was gone.