COPPER COINS

Chapter 14: Empty Millstone (V)

The sighing noise was giving Xue Xian goosebumps.
Of course, a paper man couldn't actually get goosebumps. And it wasn’t because he was afraid: he was aghast that anyone would trap their own mother underneath their home, just to earn themselves a bit of extra luck. Some people really took ‘disgusting’ to new levels.
What a son Liu-shiye turned out to be! Liu-lao-taitai might as well have raised a millstone!

With a wave of his hand, Xuanmin levitated the tiny millstone from its niche in the flooring, setting it beside him. He peeled the talisman away from the chain and lit another small flame to destroy it.
As the talisman burned, Xue Xian, from his position on Xuanmin's hip, thought he heard a faint quake, as though someone were lugging a heavy hammer that knocked against the ground as they walked. It was an uncomfortable noise.

This millstone had been buried beneath the flooring for about three years, during which time it had absorbed great amounts of the resentful yin energy that blew in from south to north. As the talisman burned, the resentful yin energy bound to it also finally escaped, so it was normal for those nearby to feel abnormal when this occurred. But for Xue Xian, a piece of paper hanging out of a pouch that could barely count as a living being, to feel this uncomfortable, then the bald donkey had to feel even worse. He’d been the one to actually burn the talisman, after all.
Xue Xian looked over Xuanmin, but found that the monk wore the same immovable [a] expression as always –– as though he were not in the middle of meddling with enormous amounts of yin energy!
It suddenly occurred to Xue Xian that this bald donkey seemed different from all the other monks he had met. But just in what way he differed, Xue Xian wasn't sure.
He was probably... even more deserving of getting beat up!

While Xue Xian grumbled to himself, Xuanmin finished burning the talisman. As the ash fluttered to the ground, the chain on the millstone snapped with a kacha sound, its pieces clattering to the ground.
Gradually, a silhouette holding onto the millstone handle solidified in front of Xue Xian and Xuanmin’s eyes. What looked at first to be a dead grass stalk curled up on the floor grew larger and materialised into a hunchbacked old woman.

The old woman's thinning white hair was tied into a tiny bun. Her face was crisscrossed with deep wrinkles, and her eyes seemed to brim with tears.
It was possible to guess that this was Liu-lao-taitai based on the appearance, but compared to the cane-holding apparition they’d seen inside the array, this ghost version of Liu-lao-taitai seemed even more worn and old, as though she might succumb and fall to the ground at any moment.
Without her cane, her hunched form appeared painfully deformed. The left side of her body was far more twisted than her right side, and it was all due to the direction in which she had been pushing the millstone. She was only able to stay upright by leaning against the millstone.

"What kind of sin..." [b] Xue Xian muttered.
Xue Xian had no father nor mother: he had been born of the heavens and raised by the earth, so he had never had first-hand experience of a blood bond. But after having spent half a year among humans, he had learned a bit about what family meant.
This Liu-shiye now opened his eyes further. How much do you have to hate your mother to do something like this?

Hearing Xue Xian, Xuanmin glanced at him and saw that Xue Xian appeared to be in emotional turmoil. Xue Xian jutted out his chin and glowered back at Xuanmin, but no matter how hard he tried, he simply did not look threatening.
This zuzong’s eyes began darting around. He seemed to have come up with another idea-–
Let’s! Climb! Onto! The! Head!

Xue Xian was the kind who acted on all his impulses. [c] Gleefully, he used his claws to grab onto Xuanmin's robes. Because he'd made the journey before, this time he climbed much more nimbly. Within the blink of an eye, he had arrived at Xuanmin’s chest.
Just as he reached out with a claw to climb up another level, Xue Xian was interrupted by a sudden tragic cry coming from the shack’s doorway.

"Aaaaaahh––– Don't touch me! Someone help me! Help me!"
The sound was chilling, as though someone had seen a ghost.

The noise was piercingly loud, and deeply unpleasant. Shocked, Xue Xian stumbled and fell gently from Xuanmin's chest, landing onto the ground in a very inelegant position –– face down.
Ashamed, Xue Xian didn’t want to show his face to anyone anymore. His four limbs became stiff and he refused to move, acting as though he had died.

Xuanmin turned a deaf ear to the wailing noise that came from outside the shack. He knelt down to face the paper man pretending to be dead, and asked, "Not getting up?"
Xue Xian continued pretending to be dead.
Xuanmin reached out with a finger and scratched the back of the paper man's head. "Alright, then I shall burn you."
He lit a match and brought the wispy flame over. Xue Xian could feel the heat of the fire against his frail paper body.
“...” Finally, Xue Xian mumbled, “What happened to the kindness and mercy that the Buddha supposedly gifted you –– did you throw that to the dogs?"

Hearing this, Xuanmin’s hand hesitated, as though he’d suddenly recalled something. Then he gathered up his expression and shook his head. He shook the match until the flame died and picked up the paper man by one of his little legs and asked, "Are you still thinking of climbing?"
Still humiliated, Xue Xian covered his face even as he dangled upside down. Despite this, he didn’t forget to shoot back, "Fuck you!" [d]

As soon as the niezhang was placed back into the pouch, a clumsy shuffling noise was heard as someone stepped out from the inner room.
Xue Xian took his hands away from his face and got a good look: it was Liu Chong. [e] Liu Chong wore a clueless expression as he stood in the doorway, looking into the outer room. He had just escaped from the array, and whatever it was he’d experienced in there, it hadn’t been pretty: his bluish-grey overcoat was ripped all over, and some of the cotton stuffing was spilling out.

Liu Chong was stricken face and his eyes were swollen red. He turned to Xuanmin and opened his mouth as though wanting to speak, but before he did, his gaze suddenly fell upon the tiny old woman by the millstone and his whole body froze.
"G-grandmother?" Liu Chong whimpered in disbelief. Something must have happened back in the array with the ghost version of the old woman –– there was a hint of suspicion to the way Liu Chong shrank back, afraid to come closer.

The old woman lifted her lifeless eyes to look at Liu Chong and tears immediately fell from her eyes. She sighed a distant sigh and waved at Liu Chong from her millstone. "Chong-er, why are your clothes in such a sorry state?"
As soon as Liu Chong heard her voice, he forgot everything he’d seen in the array and rushed over. Tearfully, he knelt on the floor and tried to grasp the old woman's hands. "Grandmother, how did you become so short... Wh-why can't I touch you?"
The old woman had been utterly consumed by the work at the millstone. She had shrunk to half the size of ordinary old women, and looked extremely pitiful.
But she said nothing of it to Liu Chong. Instead, she smiled and said, "Grandmother is old now, and has shrunk. If you can't touch me, then don't try..."
"Grandmother, why don't you... why don't you ever come and see me? Look at how many gold ingots I folded. Didn't you tell me that if I wrote your name on the ingots and burned them, you would come collect them? I... I folded them every day, and burned them every day, but nobody came to see me. Why didn't you come even a s-single time? I just want you to come speak to me. And I want to speak to you. But I never got to see you, and now I've forgotten what it was I wanted to say..."
Liu Chong still had the heart of a child. As soon as he came face to face with his beloved grandmother, and forced out the words he'd wanted to say, he began to sob. Unlike adults, he did not feel the need to hide his sorrow –– he wailed as though he were letting out all the things he’d wanted to say but had forgotten.
"Grandmother is listening. Chong-er doesn't need to say it all out loud. Grandmother knows." The old lady wiped her tears. "I... Every day and every night, I'm watching over you..."

As grandmother and grandson wept, someone erupted into the shack from outside, screaming, "Help me! Help me! Don't –– Get away!"

The newcomer had messy hair and ragged clothing. He looked like he’d been rolling around in dirt, and was covered in filth; he looked like a madman.
Xue Xian stared. "Isn't that Liu-shiye?"

Liu Chong seemed to have been the lucky one. It seemed that Liu-shiye had gone through a traumatic experience in the array. Although he had previously refused to take a single step into this shack, he had now willingly burst in.
Xuanmin frowned at the sight of the dirt all over the man’s robes and backed away. With nobody to catch him, Liu-shiye crashed into the ground and sat there on his ass, stupefied.
With that, he came face to face with Liu-lao-taitai.

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[a] Musuli uses the phrase “doesn’t move even when being blown by eight winds” or “cannot be knocked down by the force of eight winds” –– which she used in Chapter 11 to describe Xue Xian.
[b] Here, the Chinese phrasing is 作孽 (zuo4 nie4), meaning to do evil –– but ‘evil’ is the ‘nie’ in ‘niezhang’.
[c] Musuli uses the idiom “say wind at first, but end up bringing rain” which is used to describe when something is taken to a whole other level.
[d] The literal translation of what Xue Xian says here is “Climb? Your great-grandfather!” where “your great-grandfather” is an insult. This sounds very natural and snappy in Chinese but not in English.
[e] Musuli uses 傻子 (sha3 zi), which means “idiot”. Sometimes when I use this footnote, she is using 傻 by itself, which is an adjective rather than a noun, meaning “idiotic”.