COPPER COINS

Chapter 36: Theatre Troupe (I)

Act III: No Horizon

Anqing Prefecture and Wolong County were only a river apart: on a clear and bright day, someone in Wolong County standing on the banks of the river would be able to see the layered mountain range across the water. On a quiet, calm day, the two regions were only a few hours apart by boat.
But as the snowstorm worsened, the river quickly became a blanket of white, and it felt as though the only thing left in that lonely and melancholy world was their one small boat. It became impossible to tell where they were going, and so the boat slowed.
   
The old boatman was a veteran professional. When Xue Xian and the others had needed to go to Gravestone Island, it had been his boat that they'd rented. He had a kindly disposition, and seemed to feel bad about having taken all that money from Xuanmin the other day. This time, seeing that they again wanted to cross the water, he had only hesitated for a moment before agreeing to bring the boat out into the blizzard.
"I have two flasks of hot wine in my bundle. If you want, you may drink some and warm yourselves up!" the boatman said as he rowed.
   
"Many thanks."
Although everyone rushed to thank the boatman, only Xue Xian actually made a move.
Xuanmin did not drink, nor did he fear the cold. Jiang Shining was a ghost and could not ingest anything. Lu Nianqi had zoned out as soon as they'd gotten onto the boat, and did not seem to be in the mood. Stone Zhang was trembling all over from the cold, and seemed desperate to drink the wine, but his mung-bean-like eyes only darted back and forth, and he did not dare to reach out.
   
Stone Zhang had not expected the group to take him along. He’d assumed that, after interrogating him and making him carve the wooden tiles, they would simply kick him onto the curb. To his surprise, they actually wanted him to cross the river with them –– they probably wanted him to lead them to exactly where he had been taken by the mysterious patron.
   
This was not necessarily a bad thing for Stone Zhang, as, if he'd stayed in Wolong, he would have just gone back to cowering in fear inside his compound. Who knew how long he'd been hiding there, clutching his bone sword, before Xue Xian and Xuanmin had barged in. Now, Stone Zhang took a surreptitious glance at Xue Xian and thought: Though this fearsome zuzong sent thunder rumbling down on me, he does not seem intent on killing me. So although Stone Zhang remained in a permanent state of terrified stupor when in Xue Xian’s company, there was no other real downside to coming along with the group.   
   
Xue Xian cradled the wine flask in his lap, but did not make a move to drink it. In reality, he was feeling hot again, and did not need to warm himself up from the winter chill at all. He was not holding the flask for warmth: instead, he was using it to dispel some of the heat from inside him. Although the flask had been well-wrapped inside the boatman's cloth bundle, by the time he took it out, they had already rowed halfway to Anqing and the wine was mostly cold.
But after some time in Xue Xian's hands, the wine began to emit a slight gurgling noise.
   
Apart from the ever-silent Lu Nianqi, everyone on the boat turned to stare at the flask in Xue Xian's lap.
That wasn't warm wine anymore –– it was boiled wine!
Stone Zhang gazed longingly at the flask as his hands trembled and his neck quivered; he looked as though he wanted to crawl inside the flask and let himself be boiled in the wine.
   
As the wine heated up, its fragrant smell also rose into the air, and Stone Zhang's eyes seemed about to pop out of his head. He rubbed his palms together like a fly rubbing its legs and said, "Ah... That wine does smell lovely. When I'm carving stone, I like to take a sip every once in a while. With a warmth in my stomach and the rush of tipsiness, my inspiration surges forward too."
This was as good as hugging Xue Xian's legs and crying, Give me some!
   
Jiang Shining couldn't bear to watch anymore. He nudged Xue Xian and said, "Stop teasing him, zuzong. He's about to shake himself off the boat."
Xue Xian shrugged and handed Stone Zhang the now furiously boiling flask of wine. He then immediately took up the second flask and began cradling that one instead.
   
Stone Zhang greedily wrapped his sleeves around the flask and pressed it to his stomach. He seemed to finally come back to life. He sputtered, "I'm finally feeling warmer. These winter chills are no joke, especially on the river."
Xue Xian peeled the second flask away from his overheated body and handed it to Stone Zhang.
“Both for me?" Stone Zhang was shocked by the kindness.   
"Are you dreaming?" Xue Xian snapped.
Before Stone Zhang could speak again, Xuanmin, who sat by the awning, took the flask and handed it to the boatman.
   
Xue Xian glanced at Xuanmin and said nothing.
To Xue Xian, that glance was to show that he agreed with what Xuanmin had done. But...
   
Silently, Jiang Shining looked over at Xue Xian, then at Xuanmin. Maybe it was just him, but in the past couple of days, Jiang Shining felt that he’d begun detecting something strange between the two. [a] Or, more specifically, Xue Xian was acting strange toward Xuanmin, constantly targeting him, as though angry at him for something –– at the same time, he seemed to be giving Xuanmin the cold shoulder.
Of course, this zuzong was always looking for ways to annoy Xuanmin, and sometimes did conspicuously ignore him. And yet...
   
Jiang Shining stared at the two for a while, then averted his gaze again and retreated into himself. These two were both powerful, and technically both were his zuzong –– he could not afford to anger either of them, so he decided to mind his own business.
With that, he silently shuffled away from them, closer to the edge of the boat.   
Dong––
As the boat suddenly shook, Stone Zhang, who had been mid-sip, lost his balance and rammed his elbow into the awning.
   
"Look at how thin these bamboo strips are, and how heavy you are. You're rocking the whole boat," Xue Xian said, glaring at Jiang Shining.
"That wasn't the young laoye," [b] the boatman said. He had taken a small break to drink some of the hot wine, and now seemed much more energetic. "This patch of river is just like that –– bumpy. Each winter and summer, there are quite a few boats that capsize here. It's not the current, but the wind that can blow the boats apart. These past couple of years, it's gotten better. I haven't encountered the freak wind on my trips recently, and the boat is much easier to row. But today is weird –– it's that damn wind again."
   
Hearing the boatman's words, Stone Zhang jolted. This cowardly one leant closer to the boatman and said, "But... but this boat won't flip, will it?"
Annoyed, the boatman glared at him. "The boat is running fine. How could you say such an inauspicious thing? Of course it won't flip. I was just saying that this is a dangerous part of the river, not that a wave was going to come up right this minute."
   
But then the boatman sighed and added, "Laoyes, I don't mean to complain, but I have to be honest. The next part of the river is particularly tricky, and you might want to keep this boatman's advice in mind. No one likes to go out on the river in this weather –– you don't live around here, so you don't know how temperamental the river can be. Whereas we spend all day out here, and practically live on our boats. We can tell how dangerous the water is just by the ripples. And it's like I said, every couple of days, the river fusses. Besides––"
The boatman slowed his speech and, squinting at them, he jostled the flask in his hand. "Why would you choose to go to Anqing Prefecture now? It's not very peaceful over there."
"Not peaceful? What do you mean?" Jiang Shining asked. His married sister lived in Anqing, so he frowned anxiously.
   
"I heard another boatman talk about it the other day. He usually works on the other side of the river." The boatman lowered his voice. "He said that, a few days ago, there was an earthquake in Anqing, and the entire prefecture shook. Worst part is, the earthquake triggered a landslide in the mountain, and someone said that, as their home shook, they heard a dragon coo underground."
A dragon coo...
What an unscary description. The boatman made it sound like the squeaks of a rat in someone's walls.
   
"It's called a dragon's roar!" Xue Xian angrily corrected. He sat up stiffly. "But hold up. A dragon? That person told you they heard a dragon's roar in Anqing?"
"Yeah!" The boatman nodded vigorously, as though it had been him, personally, who had heard the roar. "Apparently, it was terrifying. They knelt down right then and there and started kowtowing. But strangely enough, after a few kowtows, the house stopped shaking and the landslide ended. A few people still died. But here's the weirdest part... the weirdest part is that after the tremors, cracks appeared across town, and something crawled out. I don't know if it was insects or something. I didn't really get that part. Basically, it's crazy over there."

Hearing this, the blood drained from Jiang Shining's face. Although, to be fair, he was a ghost, and had never looked that lively in the first place.

After that, everyone on the boat fell into silent thought.   
Another half hour later, the boatman finally docked his boat at the river port of a tiny, palm-sized town in an unknown part of Anqing Prefecture named Wangjiang County.
   
The place where they'd landed was called Guanyin Port. Scattered by the riverbank were some old-looking inns, teahouses, and wine halls. With the fierce snowstorm, they couldn't continue deeper into Anqing –– and the group also had Xue Xian with them, who could not walk.
Jiang Shining got off the boat first and hurried to the nearest teahouse. "Is there somewhere here where we can hire a carriage?" he asked.
   
"Not these days," replied a man who sat holding a cup of tea and sheltering from the snow. "With that landslide a few days ago, the homes mostly held together, but the barns collapsed and killed a number of horses and mules. Without them, there are of course no carriages. Besides, no one in these parts is even hiring out their mules. Don't bother."
The man had three long, frightening scars on his face, perhaps from being attacked by some animal. He squinted as he took a sip of hot tea, then looked back at Jiang Shining and said, "Where are you headed?"
"Qingping County, to the north," Jiang Shining said.
   
The scarred man studied him, then asked, "Scholar? Are you here to visit relatives?"
Jiang Shining nodded.
   
The man put his tea down on the table and jutted his chin out. "And those others are with you?"
Jiang Shining turned and saw that Xuanmin was walking over, carrying the handicapped zuzong in his arms. Back at Wolong County, Xue Xian had struggled and fidgeted the whole time, trying to find a position where he didn't look so weak, but had been unable to find one. Now, he seemed to have totally given up...
And beside them walked Stone Zhang — cringing into his coat — and Lu Nianqi, who was still in a daze.
   
The group had an old guy, a little guy, and a yaoguai, and they all looked exhausted, like refugees stealing away in the night. Poor dashi, Jiang Shining thought. Then he turned and clasped his hands together in thanks to the scarred man. Jiang Shining needed to talk to Xuanmin: he wanted to suggest that they stay at an inn for the time being, and wait out the snowstorm.
"Don't hold out hope for the snow to stop," the scarred man said, as though reading Jiang Shining’s mind. He wiped his mouth and picked up a long cloth bundle that he'd been resting against the table, and said, "Come with us. We're passing through Qingping County too."
   
We?
Jiang Shining was stunned. Then, as the scarred man stood up, Jiang Shining watched several other customers in the teahouse stand up too –– there were eight of nine of them, men and women, old and young.
   
Xuanmin had been about to cross the teahouse threshold when he overheard the scarred man's words and asked Jiang Shining, "What is it?"
"This kind da-ge [c] says he can give us a ride," Jiang Shining explained.
The scarred man had been walking to the doorway when he noticed the black bundle in Xuanmin's arms. He stopped and pointed. "What's underneath this cloth?"
Xuanmin said, "A person."
   
"Dead?" The scarred man studied that draped head and frowned. "That's an issue. We have elderly people and children. If they see this––"
But before he could finish, Xue Xian, suddenly regretting his death act, lifted the black cloth and said in a singsong voice, "I'm not dead. I'm alive and well."
The scarred man: “...”
Silently, Jiang Shining turned his face away. He's going to think we're insane, and then he won't let us onboard either.
But that scarred man seemed actually to have a high tolerance for nonsense. He met Xue Xian's eyes, then scanned Xue Xian’s pale skin and looked at Xuanmin's expressionless face. Probably thinking that such a duo was unlikely to make any trouble, he nodded and said, "Alright, let's stop hanging around. The snow is going to get worse soon, and then we really won't be able to go."
   
The scarred man's group had three horse-drawn carriages and one mule-drawn carriage.   
The horse-drawn carriages were tiny, and could only fit four people at once. The mule-drawn carriage was for their belongings.

Jiang Shining observed the carriage train. He wanted to ask the scarred man what his group did for a living, but before he could speak, he felt a slightly warm hand land on his shoulder.
Startled, he turned to see Xuanmin standing beside him. Xue Xian was the one gripping Jiang Shining’s shoulder.
   
Jiang Shining watched as the zuzong lifted the black cloth from his head to reveal a single eye staring back. Xue Xian lifted a finger to his lips and hushed Jiang Shining. In a low voice, he said, "Don't ask, and don't alert them. Get onto the carriage, but don't get too close to them."
Perhaps it was how hoarse Xue Xian's tone was –– close to a whisper –– but Jiang Shining somehow felt himself begin to sweat.