COPPER COINS

Chapter 51: 'Ride the Air' Design (II)

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Jiang Shijing fell silent.
Her hand that clutched Xingzi's sleeve trembled. Just that word ‘jie’ had sent a thick layer of tears brimming in Jiang Shijing's eyes and clouding her vision. Her mind was so confused that, for a second, she couldn't understand why her vision had suddenly gone blurry, instead only trying to open her eyes wider and slowly looking around the room, searching for the source of that voice.
   
“A-Ning? Is that you, A-Ning?" As Jiang Shijing's eyes swivelled, two round tears came tumbling down her face. "S-stop hiding, jie can't see you..."
Now more tears were springing forth, and she still could not see.
   
"I was afraid that if I appeared directly before you, I would scare you," Jiang Shining said. After having quietly entered the room behind the others, he had hidden himself away in a dark corner by the bed.
"How..." Jiang Shijing's tears were flowing freely now, and that single word broke into a sob. She took a deep breath. "How could you scare me? No matter what you look like now, you could never scare me. Jiejie is not afraid. Please come out, stop hiding..."
Before she could finish speaking, she felt her vision clouded with endless tears and her body brought into a hug.
   
The person hugging her was thin and wiry, and the chest against which her face was now buried was weak and frail –– but it was a familiar feeling, one Jiang Shijing knew from childhood. Ever since she was young, whenever she was upset, her little brother who was three years younger than her would come and console her by telling her funny things he'd read in books and embarrassing things he'd done in the past, until she couldn't help but burst into laughter. He did this every time, from when he was a toddler who could only wrap both his arms around one of hers, to when he had grown a head taller than her and could fold her into a loving hug.
But before, Jiang Shining's hugs had been full of warmth. Now, there was no warmth at all –– only a coldness that seeped right into her heart.
   
Jiang Shining held on to his sister tightly, but it was only when he felt that she had begun to tremble that he realised that he no longer had the body temperature of a living person. Of course his hugs would be freezing cold to others. So he awkwardly let go and stepped away, in case his cold aura affected his sister, too.
   
"Why are you so cold?" Jiang Shijing sobbed as she grabbed onto Jiang Shining’s hand, forbidding him from moving away. As she gripped his hands in hers, she breathed hot air onto his fingers so as to warm them. But seeing that this did nothing, she began to cry even harder.
Jiang Shining raised his head to the ceiling and blinked hard, trying to get himself together. Then he looked down at his sister again and said, "Jie, you can stop now. I don't feel cold."
   
Jiang Shijing's tears seemed to have no end. They were now dripping all over Jiang Shining's hands, and she grasped his fingers tightly, moving to brush her tears away. But before she could do so, the moisture was already seeping right into Jiang Shining’s skin.
   
When one is experiencing turbulent emotions, naturally it becomes difficult to control the strength in one's hands.
Having been soaked wet by his sister's tears, Jiang Shining's paper hands were already vulnerable. Now, as she furiously scrubbed at his skin to dry away her tears, his fingers began to show clear signs of ripping in half. But Jiang Shining didn't want to take his hands away. He wanted to let his sister cry out all the sadness that she'd been keeping inside her all these years, even if he had to give up parts of his fingers.
   
But if his fingers really fell off, he worried he would shock his sister. So he reluctantly gazed at Jiang Shijing and waited for the moisture in his own eyes to clear, then looked up at Fang Cheng. "Jiefu, [a] jie has cried enough to wash my robes for me. Can you help me?"

When he had first seen Jiang Shining, Fang Cheng had had a nasty fright, and then had settled into a turmoil of emotions. Although Fang Cheng had not watched Jiang Shining grow up day by day like his wife had, he had spent some time with him during their childhoods. When they'd been young, they would go together to the mountains to collect medicinal herbs, and, when Fang Cheng had gotten married, it was Jiang Shining who had carried A-Ying into the palanquin...
Fang Cheng had never thought their next meeting would have been on the border of the countries of yin and yang.
   
Of course Fang Cheng understood how his wife felt, so he had stood there silently, not wanting to disturb. It was only when Jiang Shining spoke to him that, red-eyed, Fang Cheng nodded and came to hug his wife. "If you keep crying all over him, he won't even be able to speak," he said softly.

"That's right. Jie, the reason I'm here today is all thanks to the generous help of distinguished people," [b] Jiang Shining said. He was afraid that Jiang Shijing would ruin her eyes from crying, so he shot Fang Cheng a look and changed the subject.
This was exactly how the two had learned to partner up to console Jiang Shijing when she was upset, a long time ago now.
   
"Distinguished people?" Fang Cheng asked as he lightly rocked his sobbing wife back and forth. "Where are the distinguished people you mean, A-Ning? Your sister and I need to offer our deepest thanks."
From the corner, Xue Xian laughed dryly and said, "No need to thank me, but it would be great if you could take this damn paper off my forehead."
Jiang Shining: “...” Right. He had forgotten that the 'distinguished person' was being made to face the wall.
   
Fang Cheng and Jiang Shijing looked at Xue Xian sitting in the corner, then looked back, perplexed, at Jiang Shining, unable to make head nor tail of the situation.
"What have you done to piss off dashi now..." Jiang Shining said as he walked over to Xue Xian. "Will I be punished too if I take the talisman off?"
   
Xue Xian laughed drily again. "I can't say I know what the bald donkey will do if you take it off. But I promise you, if you just stand there and watch me suffer without helping me, after I get out of here, I will make you kneel down by my feet and beg me for forgiveness for the next eight generations of your family."
Jiang Shijing and Fang Cheng: “...”
They had never seen a 'distinguished person' act like that before...
   
"Okay," Jiang Shining said neutrally. "If you put it that way, then I really don't dare to remove the talisman. If I do, then you'll be able to move."
“…Bookworm, are you rebelling?" Xue Xian growled.

Of course, ultimately all that was just talk. Jiang Shining was a soft man, and could never look on while someone else was in trouble. He walked slowly around the wheelchair and admired how obedient and quiet the zuzong looked sitting there, then finally reached out to pinch the talisman on Xue Xian's forehead.
   
But he had accidentally used the hand that his sister had drenched in tears. And Xuanmin's talisman wasn't like normal paper –– it was hard to pull out.
So, as Jiang Shining tugged hard at the talisman––
That damp hand... ripped in half.
   
Xue Xian: “...”
Jiang Shining: “...”
   
"A-Ning, why are you just standing there immobile?" Jiang Shijing asked.
^Panicked, Jiang Shining forced his agonised expression down and turned back around to face his sister, quickly hiding his torn hand behind his back. His face green with pain, he smiled at Jiang Shijing and said, "Nothing, I'm just––"
   
He was interrupted by an aggressive guangdang noise as the door was slammed open.
The room fell silent and everyone –– except for Xue Xian who could only face the wall –– looked up at the large group now streaming in. The first man was tall and broad, with three scars on his face, and looked more like a bandit than that group of beggars.
   
The newcomers were none other than the theatre troupe.
The last person to enter was Xuanmin. As he stepped inside, he closed the door behind him, so that Xu-da-shanren and the other guests could not get in.
   
As the din of laughter and conversation from the main hall streamed into the room, it all felt strangely far away, as though separated by layers of thick fog, or as though the lively noise was coming from several streets away. The atmosphere was highly unnatural and unsettling.
   
Clearly, Xuanmin had gathered everyone in this one room because he had questions he wanted to ask. But before Xuanmin could speak, the scarred man boomed angrily, "Don't you know what kind of place this is? Are you stupid? Why are you still here?"
His gaze fell upon the beggars' pot of soup and he frowned and said, "There are countless other places to shelter from the weather. These days, the mountains are full of abandoned temples. You could have gone to any of them, but you chose to come here. Do you want to die?"
"Ai..." one of the beggars sighed. "We have old people and children, and they're all gravely ill. We can barely walk at all, let alone climb a mountain."
   
"Are you not locals? Have you never heard of Wen Village?" the scarred man replied, though he had now lowered his voice. "Don't you know that this village has been abandoned for many years now? Not a single living soul lives here, and you all have the gall to rest your feet here! Besides, you had to come at exactly this moment! Don't you know? No one sitting in that room out there is human!"
Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi both wore complicated expressions on their faces as they thought, How funny –– one ghost telling you to beware of the other ghost.
   
But only a few of them knew the truth about the troupe. No one else did, so they went along with what the scarred man was saying.
"Of course we know. We've heard many rumors about how there's always noise around the end of the winter months, with people coughing and talking, and even theatre––" The beggar trailed off as he noticed that the scarred man was holding costumes in his arms, as well as a long prosthetic beard–– "Performers..." the beggar finished, suddenly pale.
   
Seeing the beggar's face, the scarred man shook his head and said, "We do perform here, but it's different..."
He glanced at the door, as if seeing the guests gathered in the hall beyond it. Sighing, he continued, "Our troupe are all from this village. We grew up eating the rice here and drinking the water here, and we owe everything to Xu-da-shanren. If it weren't for him, the members of our troupe would probably have long been reborn into another life and died there.
   
"We want to find ways to repay him, but he doesn't lack anything –– he just loves to listen to theatre,” the scarred man continued. “Our troupe spends all year travelling far and wide, but each winter, we will make our way back here and perform for Xu-da-shanren on his birthday. To make him happy is the least we can do. It's been about ten years..."
   
"Ten years?" an older beggar asked. "Of course you can sing when this da-shanren was still alive, but he's dead now. Why do you still come back here year after year?"
"We promised," an old woman from the troupe said gently, smiling. "We promised him, all those years ago, that as long as he was there to listen, we would sing for him. Year after year, he's still here, so how could we not come?"
   
"We're used to it. After all, we do this every year and fully know the risks. But you're all different. The people here don't know you, and we can't predict what'll happen if you stay too long. We're talking about the border between yin and yang here. Some of you could die," the scarred man said, frowning at the group. "I'm going to go talk to Xu-da-shanren and convince him that you all came in by accident and have matters to tend to elsewhere, and for him to let you go willingly."
   
As the scarred man was speaking, Xuanmin had walked over to the window and was looking out into the village from the broken window panes. Now, Xuanmin frowned and said, "This Wen Village is surrounded by mountains on three sides and leaves one side to gather wind and welcome the sun. This is a feng shui design known as ‘Ride the Air’, [c] so how could there be dead souls trapped here..."
Plus, the whole village's souls were tied to the land. Normally, when so many dead souls were involved, a village like Wen Village would only be able to sustain them all for two or three years. But neither Xu-da-shanren nor his neighbors seemed about to disappear –– instead, they looked like they had only recently died. There was only one explanation... Something, someone, had secretly modified the geomantic design.
   
Xuanmin glanced at Xue Xian in his wheelchair from the corner of his eye, then turned to the scarred man. "You were born here. Have you ever seen anything strange around the village?"
Then, Xuanmin thought for a while, and decided that it was best to let Xue Xian explain. He walked to the corner, intending to temporarily remove the talisman from Xue Xian’s forehead.
   
But as he looked down, he came face to face with Xue Xian's blank, numb expression ––
Now the niezhang had not only a talisman on his forehead, but a severed hand as well.
Xuanmin: “...” Even making Xue Xian face the wall hadn't prevented him from getting into trouble.
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