COPPER COINS

Chapter 34: Stone Zhang (II)

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Xuanmin had spent all day with a tiny dragon coiled around his wrist, the creature so small that he had been able to pinch its tail with two of his fingers. In one instant, that dragon had turned into this. Anyone would need some time to process.
As Xuanmin took in the enormous dragon's head, which alone was half as tall as him, then peered behind the head at the body that filled the entire courtyard outside, his already blank face turned fully slack.
   
Xue Xian's head did not move. He stared at Xuanmin and saw that Xuanmin’s usually composed face was now displaying a complex, unreadable expression.
Xue Xian squinted at him, then sneered. "You’re only pretending to be calm, aren’t you?"
Xuanmin glared back. This zuzong may have changed form, but he still spoke in that same voice.
"Are your knees buckling from fear?" Xue Xian lifted a sharp claw and jabbed Xuanmin in the back.
As though jabbing him would persuade Xuanmin’s knees to genuinely buckle.
   
"You do not seem to have fully awoken from your slumber," Xuanmin replied mildly.
Of course there had been that brief moment of astonishment, and there had been a sense of unfamiliarity as well, but to say that Xuanmin had been stupefied, or dumbfounded, or flabbergasted would be nonsense. In all the years Xuanmin had been alive, he had still never experienced such a thing as stupefaction.
   
As Xue Xian studied Xuanmin, he realised that he really could not find any trace of surprise on Xuanmin’s face. Soon, Xue Xian's huge head fell upon his claw with a dong–– sound, and, spiritless, he complained, "Bald donkey, you're so boring. I've never met anyone like you."
Having failed in scaring the person he had wanted to scare, he still hadn’t discovered what Xuanmin looked like when taken aback; the zuzong suddenly felt dejected. Even the joy and rage from finding another of his bones had been significantly dulled.
Idly, Xue Xian moved his claw to tap the unconscious short man. The white sword in the man's hands seemed to feel Xue Xian approach, and fell out of the man's hand. Xue Xian nudged it back to him.
   
When he discovered what had been carved onto the sword, he felt his anger return.
What the hell is this? Who would dare?! [a]

Xue Xian was too furious to even look at the sword anymore. His claw flashed with heat and the bone sword looked as though it had suddenly been melted by fire. It slid upwards into the palm of Xue Xian’s claw and disappeared into the flesh, leaving only a cloud of steam that billowed slowly into the room.
But once he'd absorbed the sword, Xue Xian felt a tinge of regret––
That heat followed his veins and slithered all the way back to his spine. The feeling was extremely uncomfortable, and, with it, the unbearable bloatedness that had temporarily abated returned with a vengeance.
   
But this time, Xue Xian’s head was far too large. He could neither toss nor turn, nor could he edge closer to Xuanmin's hand to cool himself down.
He tried to fight it, then gave up wordlessly and began to squirm his upper body.
   
In the blink of an eye, Xuanmin suddenly felt that every conceivable part of his body was being compressed against this zuzong's –– Xue Xian was folding himself around Xuanmin, bringing Xuanmin into the fold.
"Why are you rubbing against me?" Xuanmin asked.
   
Condescendingly, Xue Xian glanced at Xuanmin, then turned his face away again. "Help me cool down. If I burn up, I'll be taking you with me too."
It had been tolerable when Xue Xian had only been a small creature, since the scorching pain had only affected Xuanmin's hand, but now that the zuzong was as big as a house and twisted tightly around his whole body, Xuanmin felt as though he were wearing seven or eight layers of overcoats, and surrounded by fireplaces, and with a mattress pressing down on top of it all...
Basically, the feeling was unbearable.
Xuanmin's gaze fell upon the wrapped clothes that he still clutched in his hand, and Xue Xian happened to notice them too.
Xuanmin: “...”
Xue Xian: “...”

Being naked is great!
Xue Xian rested his sprawling head and thought about it happily. Before, he had been too confused to pay much attention –– all he'd wanted had been to feel something cold against his skin, and the respite had felt like grasping just the right straw. [b] He hadn't had the energy to worry about whether or not he'd been wearing clothes –– in any case, he hadn’t been in human form. But now...
   
Who gives a fuck? It's hot, and I'm not human, Xue Xian thought to himself. No longer bothered, he nuzzled up against Xuanmin again.
Xuanmin: “...”
Just because Xue Xian had spent six months hanging out among humankind did not mean that he had learned how to be human. Dragons may be divine, but they are ultimately still beasts. Xue Xian thus had an innate, very straightforward sense of self-indulgence –– if he was hot, then he needed to get cool. Everything else came after.
   
Xue Xian felt highly self-satisfied. But then he caught a glimpse of Xuanmin again.
There it was again! If Xue Xian was not hallucinating, there was another flash of that unnatural expression across Xuanmin's face, so fast that Xue Xian would have missed it if he'd blinked. Next, Xuanmin frowned...
   
Frown...
The bald donkey didn't have a very wide range of expressions. If he touched something dirty, he frowned; and if he encountered an annoying person or an inconvenient situation, he also liked to frown...
Basically, anything short of absolute abhorrence was met with a frown.
   
Suddenly, Xue Xian felt woozy again. The feeling was akin to a string of tiny spiders scuttling out of his chest in a neat queue, sinking their prickly legs into him.

And with it, that raging, boiling heat seemed to quickly die down –– it was no longer as unbearable as it had been just a second ago. Xue Xian loosened his grip on Xuanmin, giving Xuanmin some space to breathe again.   
   
Xue Xian’s unexpected act of magnanimity and self-consciousness was intriguing to Xuanmin, who wasn’t used to it, but then he discovered that the zuzong had begun to take notice of the unconscious short man on the floor.
Perhaps it was because this body’s immense size bestowed a natural sense of oppressiveness, or perhaps it was because dragons' faces could not show emotions as well, but now that Xue Xian presented himself seriously, instead of coiling himself around people’s ands, he emanated an alienating aura, one that repelled others.
He did now look far more like a dragon.
   
“Not hot anymore?" Xuanmin asked mildly. Then, as he hated to speak, he immediately brought the topic back to the matter at hand: "There is no other movement in the room. I think he is the only one here. But he fainted, so we cannot speak to him."
“Mn,” Xue Xian said. Without another word, he summoned another rumble of intense thunder, which he sent to land on the patch of floor between the man's legs. The entire ground shook, then split open, sending cracks running all across the floor.
   
With that, the man spasmed, then woke up screaming. "Mercy, mercy! –– I'm only a common stonemason, I already did everything you asked me to do, I won't tell anyone, but please don't kill me, I––"
   
The short man was none other than Stone Zhang.
He hadn’t even opened his eyes before he’d begun to beg, his words erupting out of him like firecrackers –– it seemed that he had prepared the speech a long time ago.
But when he came back to his senses and saw that a real live black dragon was staring down at him, he suddenly trailed off and forced himself to come to a stop. His face turned green from the effort of swallowing down his words.
   
"Don't stop. Keep talking." Xue Xian's tone was as cold as a winter river. [c]
As he spoke, yet another bolt of thunder came down from the heavens. The white lightning stopped in its tracks halfway down, hovering directly above Stone Zhang's head.
   
Terror-stricken, the short man knew not to delay anymore. "I, I, I was speaking nonsense, none of that was directed at you! I was simply being chased by moneylenders to repay debts for several months I had no choice but to lock myself in my house and I learned how to activate a simple array from a Daoist I only wanted to avoid a terrible disaster and buy myself some more time I only hope that this daxian [d] will show some mercy and let me go!"
   
“Do you take me for a fool?" Xue Xian sneered. "Who uses an array to avoid moneylenders?"
Stone Zhang quivered all over, afraid to respond.
   
"Let me ask you this. The dragon bone that you had been using as a sword. Where did it come from?" Xuanmin suddenly asked, reminding Xue Xian of the topic at hand.  

"Dragon bone?" Stone Zhang appeared genuinely shocked. He repeated, "Dragon bone?"
He met Xue Xian's eyes, and seemed to want to piss again.
   
To think that I had somehow, in all ignorance, managed to take a real piece of dragon bone home, and had even worked on it, had shaved it down into the shape of a sword and carved designs on it...
Oh ancestors... I’m going to die for this!
   
As Stone Zhang's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he felt himself become faint again, he heard a cold word of warning: "If you close your eyes now, don't assume you'll ever open them again."
Stone Zhang: “...”
   
His face contorted tragically as he whimpered, "I didn't know that was... I –– I've always been a bit different from the norm, sometimes I can see things others can't. That day I saw a glint of light in the mud, so –– so I couldn't help but dig, and dug up that bone. I thought it looked special and was probably some kind of magical item, so I took it home. They say that good weapons can ward evil, so I... so I turned it into a sword to buy myself some peace..."
   
As Xue Xian glared at him, Stone Zhang trembled harder and his voice trailed off to nothing again.
"Where did you find it?"
Stone Zhang said, "A –– a mountain by the river."
   
"Do we have to squeeze it out of you sentence by sentence?" Xue Xian was about to lose his temper. "Do you want me to help trigger your memory?"
   
"No, no, no, thank you for the offer..." Stone Zhang stammered, close to tears. "I was led there by some people, and was blindfolded all the way. They only took it off when we arrived. The mountain didn't have a sign, so I really don't know where it is. I only remember that I could see the river from it. The stream was narrow and coarse, and the sound of the current was scarily loud."
   
Furious, Xue Xian tilted his head, and the bolt of lightning hanging above Stone Zhang's head came cascading down, striking the ground beneath his feet.
Shaken, Stone Zhang stood as stiff as a board as tears began to stream down his face.
"What were you brought there to do?" Xuanmin asked.
   
The blood drained from Stone Zhang's face. "They made me carve seven stone locks and two tomb guardians."
Xuanmin nodded understandingly. From his pouch, he extracted a thin sheet of paper and shook it out in front of the man. "You carved this design?"
   
"Yes yes! That's what they made me carve. As I was carving, I felt that this design seemed to have some magic [e] to it. I asked about it and they said it was a good-fortune design, and that it was extraordinarily effective. But, dashi, where did you get it from?"
"Your stone lock," Xuanmin said. "At the bottom of the river. Do you know who the corpses attached were?"
   
"Corpses?" Stone Zhang seemed to have no idea what the stone locks he'd made had to do with corpses. Panicked, he shook his head. "I –– I don't know. I only carved some stuff. When that man came to see me, he only said that my carvings are the most effective conduits for spells. [e] I thought some laoye from outside the prefecture wanted me to make him something decorative. I had no idea..."
   
Stone Zhang paused, then added, "Overall, my life has not been peaceful recently. I think someone is trying to kill me. I've never done anything to harm anyone in my life, but I recalled that one strange commission. So... so that's why I'm hiding."   
   
Xue Xian stared at Stone Zhang until he began shivering again, then coldly said, "Did the person who took you to the mountain leave you with anything?"
   
"Thing? What thing?"
"Any object. As long as that person touched it," Xue Xian said.
   
Stone Zhang was about to shake his head when he suddenly slapped his thigh. "Oh, right! Yes!"
“What?"
“The black cloth they used to blindfold me. I still have it! I didn't dare to throw it out.." Stone Zhang said.
Xue Xian scoffed. "Good."
   
Stone Zhang stumbled into the inner room and returned with a piece of black cloth that had been put away for who knew how long, and never washed.
   
Xuanmin scowled with disgust. He planned to find something to wrap his hand with so that he could take the cloth.
Seeing him frown, Xue Xian reached out matter-of-factly with his claw and grabbed the cloth himself.
   
Stunned, Xuanmin stared back at him.
Xue Xian did not return his gaze. Instead, he simply said, "Let's go."
   
“...” Xuanmin paused. "Where?"
"Heaven," Xue Xian snapped. Then he turned to Stone Zhang. "Stop shaking. Come with me for a bit."
   
Xuanmin said, "If I'm guessing correctly, you plan to return to the Lu compound? Is this how you will go?"
His gaze scanned Xue Xian's enormous dragon body.
   
Xue Xian: “...”
He had been so furious that he really had been about to go out like this.
   
But he was unable to turn back into a small dragon again –– his muscles and bones were still too bloated, and he could not maintain the shrunken form for long. His only other option was his human form.
Xuanmin lifted his hand, showing Xue Xian the package of robes he’d bought.
Xue Xian yanked the package over. But then his face dropped –– now this was the problem: his massive body wouldn't fit into a private room, so how the fuck was he supposed to get changed?
The heavens must be jealous of how handsome he was, or else why would they constantly do this to him…

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[a] Musuli uses the phrase “ate a bear’s heart, got a leopard’s/panther’s courage”.
[b] The exact phrasing Musuli uses here is “caught a life-saving stalk of grass” (i.e. when falling off a cliff), but it was too long in English. Here, I played on the idiom “grasping at straws”, which works because the ‘grass’ in the Chinese phrasing is actually 稻草 (dao4 cao3), straw grass.
[c] Musuli phrases this as “a river during 三九天” (san1 jiu3 tian1). Literally “three nine days”, this refers to a system of time measurement based on Dongzhi (the winter solstice). The first nine days after Dongzhi are “one nine”, the nine days after that are “two nine”, and so on. After “nine nine” days (81 days), spring begins. Usually “three nine” and “four nine” are seen as the coldest 18 days of the winter.
[d] Daxian: see glossary. Here, Stone Zhang is using the extremely deferential term of address to flatter Xue Xian.
[e] Musuli uses 灵气 (ling2 qi4) here, literally “magical/mystical qi”, another way of saying “magic vibes”.