Encountering a Snake C8

Chapter 8: The Hot Spring

Far off, the sky grew faintly bright.

The spring sat on the mountain peak, so the first thread of light from the horizon fell straight into the water.

Shen Qingxuan felt a force holding him up so that he floated and did not sink.

Soaking in a natural spring was nothing like a cramped wooden tub. Immersed in the water, he only wanted to sigh with comfort.

A little later Yi Mo also shed his robe and stepped in.

The water rippled. Shen Qingxuan opened his eyes a little and watched the long-haired man walk through the water, drawing slowly near. The sulfur air gained a cold, clean scent. It was close enough to touch.

He opened his mouth to speak, then remembered he had no voice. There was no brush or ink around them. They could not even talk. Half his good mood collapsed at once. After so long apart they could finally face each other, and yet they could not converse. It was a thorough spoiling of the moment. His expression darkened.

Yi Mo soaked in the water, looked at him a while, and at last lifted a hand. His cold fingers flickered with a faint green light and settled on Shen Qingxuan’s throat.

Watching the motion, Shen Qingxuan felt as if mint juice had been poured through his throat from inside out. He could not tell whether it burned or froze. The feeling was so sharp that tears spilled over.

When Yi Mo took his hand away, gold flashed before Shen Qingxuan’s eyes. A choking misery made him clutch his throat and cough with all his strength.

At first the coughs were soundless. Then a hoarse, strange noise rose in his throat, grew heavier, and at last every cough rang out no different from an ordinary man’s.

He—had coughed aloud. Realizing this, he could not say whether he was startled or glad. He only knew wet tracks wound down from the corners of his eyes, and the sound of coughing, one after another, filled the lonely peak above the misted spring.

It seemed he would cough his lungs out. His eyes went red. He bent so far he nearly drank the spring water several times, then collapsed against a jutting stone, all strength gone, gasping in great gulps.

Yi Mo leaned on the rock opposite, arms thrown out at either side, and watched him with indifferent eyes for a while. Then he closed them to rest, leaving Shen Qingxuan to cough and wheeze himself half to death across the water.

In the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, the coughing stopped. After a pause Shen Qingxuan covered his throat and looked back. This was the scene he saw.

In the misted spring Yi Mo leaned on a jutting rock, arms spread as if making the character for “great,” face tipped up, expression easy, as if nothing outside himself had anything to do with him.

Only his loose hair floated on the water before him, stirring now and then with the ripples.

Otherwise he might have been a statue: cold, indifferent, unmoved.

Shen Qingxuan watched, and an unaccountable ache rose in his chest.

Because of that ache he could not name, he knew his voice had returned, yet he still did not speak. He only stared, unblinking.

They were not far apart, only a few steps. Steam rose like thin gauze, half hiding, half revealing the space between them. Behind the gauze was Yi Mo’s face.

As on the first time he had seen that face, Shen Qingxuan could not look away. He thought there could not be a second person in this world of such unmatched bearing.

While he watched, Yi Mo’s closed lashes trembled, then his eyes opened. The pupils were dark and deep, still as a cold pool a thousand feet down, without a ripple.

Yi Mo asked mildly, “Why are you unhappy?”

Shen Qingxuan thought, how do you know I am unhappy?—but he did not say it. He looked at him a good while, then answered, “I am happy, of course.”

After nearly twenty years, the first sound from his mouth was rough and rusty, strange even to himself. He had to listen sideways and carefully recall the child’s voice of his boyhood before he dared be sure the sound had truly come from him.

“I…” He tried again, startled by the voice that rose from his own throat. A moment later he told himself to speak more familiarly, and said slowly, “I thought you would need two more months before you came back.”

“The matter was finished. Of course I came back,” Yi Mo said.

Shen Qingxuan made a small sound, lowered his head, thought a moment, and spoke again. “I don’t know why. I don’t want people to know I can talk yet…”

Yi Mo nodded, to show he understood.

“If they ask how I recovered, I am not very good at lying.” He chose his words carefully, practicing the sounds as he went. “So I don’t mean to say it for now.”

He paused. “Did you get the snake slough back?”

Yi Mo said, “Mm.”

“That’s good,” Shen Qingxuan said.

After that he did not know what to say, and fell silent with his head down.

Yi Mo drew his arms back into the water. He was silent a while too, then asked, “How did you fall ill this time?”

Shen Qingxuan had not expected the question. He hesitated, then told the process in detail, leaving out the spring dream, of course. He put the accident on the wine: he had drunk himself drunk, fallen asleep while bathing, and not known the water had gone cold. That was how he fell ill.

Yi Mo listened, lifted his eyes, and regarded him for a moment. Whatever he thought, he said, “A young lady in the inner chambers would be no more delicate than this.”

The remark came from nowhere, yet Shen Qingxuan grasped the mockery at once. Shame and anger rose together. The man had compared him to a tender girl shut in the women’s rooms.

The hateful thing was that his own tongue was no match, and he had only just found his voice. Against a great snake who had lived a thousand years, one was heaven and one was earth. He could only take the bullying.

After a long think he answered resentfully, “Naturally I cannot compare with your thick scales and heavy armor.”

Meaning: he had no such thick skin, proof against a hundred poisons.

They wrangled in words while they soaked, and did not find it dull. Night withdrew by degrees. The light grew clearer. A red sun rose in full force and lit both faces in the water.

Shen Qingxuan’s speech grew more fluent. Pleased with talking, he used the water’s lift to move himself toward Yi Mo, wanting, as usual, to converse close by.

Only when he drew nearer did he notice that the sun was bright and the water clear. Both of them were bare. Everything under the water showed in that clarity, down to the last hair.

His face went red at once. He was ashamed of his ruined body. Beside Yi Mo’s solid frame he looked more like a boy not yet twenty: thin hands, thin legs, truly ugly. He lowered his head quickly and, bracing on the rock, used the buoyancy to ease back two parts. In the fluster of coming and going his fingertips slipped on stone made slick by the spring. He failed to catch hold. His unbalanced body plunged. Hot water closed over his head.

Yi Mo had watched him shuffle back and forth in the water and already guessed a little of those thoughts. Seeing him sink and flounder, he found it funny. Mischief rose, so he did not save him at once. He would not drown.

Under the water Shen Qingxuan grabbed wildly and grew frantic that Yi Mo still did not put out a hand. In the confusion he even opened his eyes.

What met them was a pair of agile legs, long and strong, the calves faintly tensed, the line distinct.

His gaze traveled up the calves. Between the solid thighs a dark cluster of hair stirred like water-weed. Among it the sex lay quietly curled. Even unaroused, in the broken light of the water the thing looked unusually large.

The full mushroom head showing from the soft skin could be seen in outline; even the small slit in the center was perfectly clear.

He did not know where the strength came from. One hand found the stone wall. With a splash he heaved himself up out of the water.

His face was scarlet. His heart hammered.

He could not tell whether it was from choking or from something else.

One hand on the wall, the other wiping water from his face, he met a pair of eyes that seemed to smile and not to smile.

His heartbeat was almost past holding. He had swallowed a few mouthfuls of water as well. He lowered his head at once and coughed dully, using it to steady himself.

Then Yi Mo’s cold voice, rather mocking, asked at his ear, “Shen Gongzi, does this spring water compare with your Mid-Autumn vintage?”

By now he knew this snake liked to tease him. The question meant nothing more; it was only mockery. His mind, unbidden, flashed to the icy limbs that had twined him in the cold bath that night. And to what he had just seen.

The corner of his eye glanced into the water of itself. Because of the commotion they had drawn extremely close without noticing. That one glance showed the huge thing in the water with perfect clarity again.

Four characters rose abruptly in his mind: a snake’s nature is lust.

The four characters were like a gu-worm. They bored into his heart at once and dragged up a thought from he knew not where. Desire sprang up, fierce and sudden.

He felt the heartbeat he had been calming lose its rhythm again, chaotic as mountain rain hammering on tiles, the sound growing louder, more urgent.

He could no longer hold. He could only watch the years of a clear, desireless heart be washed away.

He turned sharply, drew a cold breath, and hurriedly put his back to Yi Mo, lying against the rock outside the water, hiding what had lifted between his legs in the dark sheen of the spring. He claimed his body felt unwell and that he would lie there a while. Then he buried his head in the crook of his arm and panted in fine, rapid breaths, fighting down the rushing want.

Yi Mo did not move. His gaze was deep as he looked at the thin body lying on the rock. The body was pale and wasted, trembling faintly as if greatly frightened. Ripples spread from the tremor, like invisible threads guiding Yi Mo to take in every slight motion in the water, every rush of desire, every sudden panic.

As a god looks down on living beings.

After a long silence Shen Qingxuan slowly lifted his head from his arm. He still dared not look at Yi Mo. His lids stayed lowered. He said in a low voice, “Take me back.”

Yi Mo did not answer for a long time.

Shen Qingxuan’s mind was already scattered. Suddenly his shoulder went cold. Yi Mo had, he did not know when, come around behind him. A chilly hand fixed on his shoulder and turned him so they faced each other. As if that were not enough, he pressed closer still.

In an instant their cheeks were a breath apart. Breath struck the other’s face. Shen Qingxuan flushed to the ears again.

“Shen Gongzi.” Yi Mo’s voice was still cold, with no feeling showing, as if he were speaking of someone else’s affair. He said, neither slow nor hurried, “Man and yaoguai have walked different roads since ancient times. You had better think it through.”

Shen Qingxuan’s face went red, then white.

Before he could react further, the scene before his eyes blurred. Wind roared at his ears.

In the blink of an eye he was back in the mountain villa, lying on his own bed.

As if he had been thrown there. The flush left his face at once and turned iron-blue.

—

Time to drink a cup of tea : Roughly a quarter of an hour.

Snake slough : The shed skin of a snake; an old demon’s slough is a rare, dangerous object.

Inner chambers : The women’s rooms of a household; used here to call someone overly delicate.

A snake’s nature is lust : An old saying that snakes (and snake demons) are inherently wanton.

Gu-worm : A legendary parasitic charm that burrows in and takes over the mind.

Man and yaoguai walk different roads : The idea that humans and demons must not mix; a warning, not only a fact.