COPPER COINS

Chapter 57: Bone Threads (II)

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Xuanmin's half-open eyes seemed to merge with the dim light of the lantern, so that it was impossible to tell exactly where his gaze fell –– if it was on Xue Xian's own panicked eyes, or the tip of Xue Xian’s nose beaded with sweat, or lower...
   
A massive, invisible screen seemed to come down between the two of them. It made all other noises in the world appear faint and faraway, leaving only the entwined sounds of their breathing; inhale, exhale... Their breathing filled the room, so that suddenly the room and everything in it seemed to become narrow and cramped, too small for either of them to make any movement at all.
   
Immediately, Xuanmin’s wrist — the one that Xue Xian had been holding — moved. Xuanmin flipped his hand over and grabbed Xue Xian's fingers in return; he bluntly twisted them around, so that Xuanmin's hand was now clamped tightly over Xue Xian's. Perhaps it was because the strange heat in Xuanmin’s body had affected him, causing him an inability to control his strength, but his grip on Xue Xian's hand felt extraordinarily tight.
   
Xue Xian's mind finally cleared a little. He realised that Xuanmin's sweat was not only coming from the crook of his neck, but was all over his body. Xuanmin’s hands were damp with sweat too, and in the instant that he grabbed onto Xue Xian's hand, his fingers slipped between Xue Xian's fingers; when he tightened his grip, the skin of their fingers could not help but rub up against each other... Now the feeling was more than intimate –– it could be called affectionate, or even devoted. [a]
   
As Xuanmin drowsily closed his eyes then opened them again, a bead of sweat happened to roll down his face and off his chin. It fell onto the tip of Xue Xian's chin below, then streamed down Xue Xian’s neck and disappeared into his collar.
Suddenly, Xue Xian's breathing grew heavier, and a flash of alertness crossed his mind.
   
In the streets outside the compound, a cat yowled, its cry echoing across the night and sounding unusually close, as though it were right there in the room, beside the bed.
The cat's yowl was enough to thoroughly awaken Xuanmin. He brusquely took his hand away and shut his eyes once more.
   
Xue Xian's eyelid twitched as he, too, automatically retracted his hand and sat up stiff as a board. As Xue Xian wheeled his chair away, putting some distance between them, he saw that Xuanmin was sitting in his original position again: his eyes still closed, his face still set, and the hand that had grasped Xue Xian's so tightly was now relaxed and resting, again, on his knee.
   
After some time, Xuanmin opened his eyes again. He looked calmly at Xue Xian and said, "Sit farther away."
His tone was as neutral as ever, but something in his voice was slightly lower than usual, with a slight hoarseness.
   
Xue Xian had already moved away a little; now, the overwhelmingly strong heartbeat that he'd previously managed to repress seemed to suddenly burst forth again. His heart began to thump hysterically, as though about to explode, the pulse as loud and clear in his ear as the beat of a drum. The manic ba-dump, ba-dump of his heart filled his ear, so he had not heard what Xuanmin had just said in that low voice of his.
   
"Mn?" Xue Xian asked.
He had not yet recovered from that strange feeling of intimacy they’d just experienced –– his response came in a slight nasal tone, so that he sounded both tender and lazy.
Xuanmin fell silent for a while, then mildly said, "Nothing."
   
Finally, Xue Xian's pulse slowed to normal, and he breathed a sigh of relief. But his right hand, which had been gripped by Xuanmin so hard that it now rang with numbness, was a reminder of all that had just occurred. As Xue Xian flexed the fingers of that hand, he silently wheeled his chair to the table and turned his back to Xuanmin, refreshing the lantern to distract himself from that strange, overwhelming feeling inside him.
   
As he fiddled with the core of the lantern, the tiny flame bloomed and the room suddenly became far brighter. Xue Xian turned his chair back around and used the new light to steal a glimpse of Xuanmin ––
The thin white robe on Xuanmin’s body was soaked through with sweat, the cloth sketching a contour of the muscles in his shoulders and arms... After the strangeness from earlier, even though Xue Xian felt that he had calmed down now, this new view of Xuanmin did not make him feel much better.
   
Seeing Xuanmin drenched in sweat, and recalling the extreme heat emanating from his body before, Xue Xian summoned a dredge of sympathy for once and said, "Shall I go get you some water, to help you freshen up?"
Knowing that Xuanmin hated to have even a speck of dirt on him, Xue Xian figured the monk must be deeply uncomfortable with all that sweat. That was the only thing that Xue Xian had considered, and he'd forgotten other details –– such as the fact that, to wash, one needed to take off one's clothes, and Xuanmin wasn't the only person in the room...
   
As soon as Xue Xian uttered his question, this fact occurred to him, and he wished he could take the words back.
Xuanmin continued to sit there, contemplating Xue Xian's question. He opened his eyes, looked at Xue Xian, then shut them again and said, "No. I only need you to sit a bit farther away."
"…You’re that annoyed with me?" Xue Xian retorted. "If I go even farther, I'll be out of the room."
Xuanmin kept his eyes shut. It was only when Xue Xian wheeled back into that 'special healing corner' that Xuanmin slowly said, "No."
Just No. Who knew what the hell he meant by that.
   
The place where Xue Xian now sat was to the side of the bed. From his point of view, he could only see Xuanmin's profile, and most of his vision was blocked by the bedposts. But this actually helped to dissipate some of the awkwardness from before, so that Xue Xian finally felt himself truly begin to relax.
And the reason why it was awkward was because... Just then, at that moment, Xue Xian had felt his body… react. Of course, as soon as he’d noticed himself stir, [b] he’d put a stop to it. But…
He wondered whether Xuanmin had been in a similar situation.
   
Xue Xian settled comfortably into his chair, leaning his arm against the armrest and propping up his head against his hand. His other hand fiddled absent-mindedly with the copper coin pendant, his thumbs unconsciously drawing contours around one of the coins. His idle gaze landed at turns on the quivering flame in the lantern and on Xuanmin’s form.
Based on all that sweat on Xuanmin's body just now, if Xuanmin had really had a reaction too, then surely that reaction would be visible? But Xuanmin was so reserved and detached that it was impossible to think of him having anything to do with certain worldly affairs. Besides, Xuanmin was still sitting cross-legged, with his monk's robes draped across his knees, so it was hard to see anything there.
   
What in the world was going on? How did it come to this?
The night was uncannily peaceful, and time seemed to creep by abnormally slowly. With nothing else to do, Xue Xian sat deep in thought for a while, then suddenly remembered the wound on Xuanmin's hand that he'd licked, and what Jiang Shining had tried to tell him before Xuanmin had stopped him.
Xue Xian: “...”
Xue Xian finally understood why Jiang Shining had told him not to mess with dragon spit. But the warning had come too late.
   
He laughed bitterly to himself and straightened up again. This way, he looked more serious, and less like an instigator. He stopped staring at Xuanmin, too, instead guiltily closing his eyes and focusing on healing once more.   
   
This night of healing was definitely different from all the other times he'd healed before –– perhaps it was the new bone that Xue Xian had absorbed, or perhaps it was because two of the seals on the coin pendant had now been broken.
Before, Xue Xian was only able to feel a sense of swelling heat in the places where his muscles were mending themselves, or the turgidity of his growing bones –– it was as though his bones were trying to push themselves out of his body. But now, he could clearly feel the precise location of the swelling, as well as exactly where the bone he'd absorbed was growing. He could tell that all of the spiritual energy was gathered in the parts of his body that were injured: beginning from the broken and missing bones, the energy extended outwards, as though constructing a ghost of his past skeleton, with thin filaments spreading across his body.
   
The threads of energy seemed almost alive: as Xue Xian's spiritual power strengthened and deepened, the threads seemed to slowly grow longer too –– but the process took a lot of effort. Even after healing all night, Xue Xian was only able to grow half of the threads in his body, and now he was as exhausted, as if he'd been working at it for half a month.

In the morning, the sky lightened and the members of the Fang household began to step out of their rooms. But Xue Xian had already roused Jiang Shining –– who never slept –– and was planning to make Jiang Shining go find him something to eat.
"A-Ning, Xue... gongzi, what are you two doing?" Jiang Shijing asked. She had already washed her face and was about to bring some medicine to the three plague-ridden beggars when she came across the pair headed for the back door and waved them down.
   
"We're going to Huicui Hall," Jiang Shining said. He was familiar with the famous restaurants around Qingping and could at least show Xue Xian the way.
"Huicui Hall?" Jiang Shijing repeated, confused. "Why would you go there in the morning? Chen-sao is already preparing breakfast."
   
Jiang Shining wrung his hands. "This zuzong is very picky. He doesn't care about the difference between breakfast and dinner. He only eats meat, and there has to be a lot of it."
"At this hour, even if you go to Huicui Hall now and order meat dishes, you still have to wait a while for them to prepare it," Jiang Shijing said. If it weren’t for Xue Xian and Xuanmin, Jiang Shijing and her husband would probably still be sitting around in Wen Village, or even dead by now. So the entire Fang family held a sense of reverence and gratitude toward the two –– even calling Xue Xian by the basic honorific ‘gongzi’ felt awfully impolite, let alone letting him go hungry.
   
As Jiang Shijing spoke, Chen-sao happened to come out of the kitchen, and the two exchanged glances. Chen-sao clapped and said, "Chen-sao knows how to make all the specialty dishes at Huicui Hall. Xue-shaoye, tell me which dishes you'd like to try, and I should be able to lay out a whole table for you in no time."
Jiang Shining began to nod too. "We can get Xingzi to help Chen-sao. You missed dinner last night, so you must be ravenous now."
   
As a guest in someone's home, naturally Xue Xian was not about to order an entire banquet. Smoothly, he said, "Well then, thank you very much. It doesn't matter what you make, just do whatever you'd like. I don't mind as long as there's meat." As long as you don’t make me eat grass.
But...
Xue Xian looked around, then said to Jiang Shijing and Chen-sao, "Could I bother you for some hot water? The bald... Xuanmin was feverish last night and sweated through his clothes. He needs to wash."
"Feverish?" As soon as Jiang Shijing and Chen-sao heard this, their doctor modes kicked in. In unison, they demanded, "Are there other symptoms? Headache? Nausea?"
   
Other symptoms...
Drily, Xue Xian replied, "No, based on his physicality I don't think he's the type to catch cold. He was meditating last night. He’s probably just qi deviating or something." [c]
The Jiang siblings: “...” Qi deviation sounds far more serious than a cold, zuzong!
But remembering that masters were always eccentric, and not feeling comfortable asking for more information, the Jiang siblings simply nodded and went off to fetch hot water.
Whenever Xue Xian thought about last night, he felt awkward. He was trying to spend as little time as possible inside the room. So he spent the morning following Jiang Shining around aimlessly, then followed Chen-sao around until she asked him politely to leave the kitchen –– at which point he sullenly wheeled himself back to the guest hall table to wait for breakfast.
   
Jiang Shining had gotten excited as soon as he'd seen those familiar rows of medicinal herbs, so had gone off to help his sister prepare medication. The only ones left in the hall were Fang Cheng, who was checking over the accounts, and Xue Xian himself.
Xue Xian thought for a while, then decided to speak. "Respectfully, may I ask you a question?" he said to Fang Cheng.
Fang Cheng's hand stopped writing and he said, "Of course, of course. Ask away, and I'll tell you everything I might possibly know."
"Have you heard of dragon spit?" Unlike Jiang Shining, Fang Cheng did not know that Xue Xian was a dragon, so Xue Xian did not feel as embarrassed to ask him. "What effects does it have? Could it harm a human?"
   
"..." Fang Cheng gave him a confused look. "I have naturally heard of it, but I've never seen it. So in terms of effects... I only know the rumors."
"What do the rumors say?"
"Just that... if a girl comes across dragon spit... then she will… become pregnant." Fang Cheng was clearly not a natural storyteller –– that one awkward sentence seemed to be the full extent of his explanation.
Xue Xian: “...”
What?

Fang Cheng spoke again. "The rumors are always about how, in a certain place, a certain someone was fortunate enough to obtain some. They either sold it for an insane price or gave it to someone to take. The rumors say that apart from being able to heal wounds and illnesses very quickly, and to serve as an antidote for hundreds of poisons, dragon spit has other uses as well. They say that it can increase yin and hasten yang... Well, it's an aphrodisiac. And they say that its effect is quite long-term. But that's all just rumor, of course. If there really were a type of medicine that could heal everything and repel all poison, then just seeing it once in my lifetime would make my life worth it.”
Fang Cheng had spent all his life as a pharmacist, so when it came to talking about medicine, he did so very seriously and did not come across as inappropriate at all. But...
   
Although Xue Xian had roughly guessed the meaning of dragon spit last night, it was vastly different from hearing someone say it out loud.
To the point where he immediately wheeled himself into the courtyard to find Jiang Shining and said, "Let’s make a deal. Can we switch rooms tonight?"
“…No,” Jiang Shining said. “Just one night in the same room as dashi will send me straight to the afterlife. Didn't you agree to let me stay a few more days and spend my sister's birthday with her?"
Xue Xian said, "Alright, then we won't switch. But let me into your room. It’s not like I’ll take up bed space."
Jiang Shining laughed drily. "You’ll make Stone Zhang wet the bed. And how do you think Nianqi will react to that?”
Xue Xian: “...”
   
"Did you piss off dashi again?" Jiang Shining got the feeling that he had become everyone's mother, and wasn't even getting paid for it –– all this fretting was taking years off his life. Oh wait, he no longer had any years in his life.
With a blank expression, Xue Xian pinched his fingers together, leaving a small space between them. "Just a little bit," he replied.
Jiang Shining thought, He must've gotten into huge trouble. It's definitely not 'a little bit.'
   
As the two spoke, the back door to the courtyard was pushed open and two youths dressed in pharmacist uniforms came in with baskets of herbs. Seeing Jiang Shining, they froze, then greeted Chen-sao as she emerged from the kitchen with a steaming plate. "Good morning, Chen-sao. What you're making smells delicious, you're making us both hungry. Where're shaoye and shao-furen?”
"Shaoye and shao-furen are both busy. Put the baskets away and wash your hands, we'll be eating soon," Chen-sao replied.
   
These youths were the Fang family’s servant boys. As they arranged the herbs they’d collected, they said to Chen-sao, "Ugh. We were supposed to get back last evening, but we came across a carriage train on the way, and they made us clear the road. That's why we were delayed by a night.”
"Carriage train? What carriage train?"
"The authorities." Now that the youths had begun to talk about it in more detail, their tones became mysterious. "You know how we reported the plague in the county to the higher-ups? The imperial court sent ceremonial exorcists to expel the plague. [d] They must be in the city by now. Guess who they sent?"
"Ceremonial exorcists?" Chen-sao repeated, stunned. "Then it must be..."
The servant [e] waved his hand. "They say that the officials that the emperor sent report directly to the Guoshi. There are so many types of officials that I can't remember what they're all called, but basically, these are the ones whose job it is to follow the Guoshi around every day. They’re probably some of the only people that have actually seen the Guoshi’s face.”