COPPER COINS

Chapter 67: Dog Tag (II)

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Outside, while they weren’t paying attention, the sky had long turned to a deep blue. For once, the night was not windy, and the entire vast forest within the mountain hollow stood absolutely still, without even the soft noise of leaves rustling against each other. The world was full of an eerie calm.
   
The black bird, which really did seem to belong to Xuanmin, had flown out of the room as soon as the sun had set, and was now perched somewhere inside the dark forest, every once in a while crying out in an idle manner.
But the bird's cry did not sound like a normal caw –– instead, it was far closer to a human sigh. Its echoing sighs made the night seem gloomy, as though it was haunted, which explained why all those rumors about Boji Mountain had proliferated.
   
The bird's sighs resonated within the mountain hollow, sounding much louder and nearer than they really were.
The poisonous fog that Xue Xian had blown away that day reappeared with the night, gliding at a deceptively slow pace across the hollow. Soon, it had become a dense blanket around the forest again.
   
This fog was far heavier than normal fog, white and soupy like a block of congealed fat. In no time, it had swallowed everything, so that anyone trying to walk through it would not even be able to see their own five fingers in front of them. If two people stood next to each other, they would only be able to hear one another, and not see anything.
   
Thankfully Stone Zhang and Lu Nianqi had left early, for if they'd encountered such a fog on their journey, they would be lucky to survive.
   
Unlike them, Xue Xian and Xuanmin did not fear the fog. Earlier, when they’d arrived at the mountain and dissipated the fog, had been more out of consideration for the other two. Xue Xian and Xuanmin had their own ways of avoiding the effects of poison, so their bodies did not, in reality, feel the effects of the fog at all.

As the fog crept in again, it felt far denser than it had been before Xue Xian had repelled it. Now, even the bamboo building could not escape it: the fog slithered in through the gaps in the windows and filled every floor with blinding whiteness, as well as a chilling cold air.

Yet, amid the freezing chill, Xue Xian was so hot that he was sweating all over.
   
He frowned and tugged at his robes. The sleeves that he'd folded up earlier came loose and swayed off his thin frame.
   
Because he was wearing all black, it was impossible for anyone else to tell, but Xue Xian was completely drenched in sweat. The thin cloth of his robe, laden with moisture, stuck uncomfortably to his back and arms, but hung off him from the front, so that his open collar revealed a long slice of flesh along his neck and chest.
   
Having been half-paralysed for six months, Xue Xian had lost a lot of weight and shed much of the muscle on his body, so that only a thin, lean layer remained. Now, the clammy sweat made his skin glow dimly under the lantern light, giving him a renewed air of sturdiness.
   
He was still sitting on the desk, his two hands gripping its side and his head leaning forward so that the sweat on his forehead was dipping onto his eyelids. His eyes were half-closed, and the moisture in his eyelashes blurred everything in his vision.
  
Xue Xian didn't know how much worse the third dose of dragon spit felt compared to Xuanmin's feverish state the previous night. He only knew that, right now, he felt unbearably hot, and that his own sweat was washing across his body in ceaseless waves. He was also much more sensitive than usual, and could not touch a single cun of his skin or a single hair on his body. Even the sensation of the sweat seeping out of his pores was enough to stimulate him and make his entire body tremble.
   
He needed to find a way to direct the heat and the accompanying anxious feeling out of his body, but he had no idea how. Besides, he was so deeply submerged in the heat that his whole skeleton felt as though it were swimming in hot sweat, giving him an indescribable bloated sensation. Even raising his hand from the table had become an almost impossible task.
   
In Xue Xian’s daze, the sigh of the crow outside became an uncanny whisper in his ear that made his eardrums itch, which in turn sent more shivers down his body.
   
He had hoped Xuanmin would come up with an idea. After all, their senses were linked and they were experiencing the same thing. But Xuanmin insisted on repressing it, whereas Xue Xian saw no end nor limit to the scorching heat inside him. If it kept on like this, he really would...
Xue Xian squinted. He shook his head, forcing himself to stay awake.
   
But as he moved, beads of sweat ran down his neck, triggering the tingling nerves in his skin. Gently, like a dragonfly skidding across the water, the sweat streamed down to his chest.
Xue Xian tightened his grip on the side of the table and took a deep breath –– another wave of stimulation.
   
He couldn't remember if he had spoken to Xuanmin. Perhaps he had called out for him once or twice, or perhaps his voice had become stuck at the bottom of his throat, with no words coming out.
He did not know how much time had passed. As his eyelids began to flutter shut again, the thick fog inside the room –– whether controlled by someone or of its own accord –– suddenly grew even denser. It clouded over even the lantern by Xue Xian’s side, and was so thick that he couldn’t see the bottom half of his own robes anymore.
   
The white fog before Xue Xian’s eyes made him even more disoriented. He frowned and took some more deep, slow breaths, scanning his blurred gaze aimlessly across the floor of the room. His eyelids, drenched in fine beads of sweat, slowly... slowly... dragged themselves open and shut, yet never fully closed.
   
In his ever-deeper daze, Xue Xian thought he could hear Xuanmin speak to him. Xuanmin’s voice felt both close by and far away at the same time. He was saying, "Give me your hand."
   
Xue Xian did not know if he had heard Xuanmin correctly, but he automatically loosened the grip of one of his hands and lethargically pointed it outward. Immediately, his hand was held in the grasp of another. That hand gripping his was hot to the touch, but strong, and as it held Xue Xian tightly, he felt as though it had become the only thing keeping him upright.
   
Slowly, gradually, Xue Xian began to lean into that hand until his entire weight was pressing against it.
He tightened his own grip and opened his mouth to say something, but in the next instant, no words came out. Instead, the breath moving in and out of his nose suddenly became heavier. Because another hand had reached out from the white fog and landed on the curve of his waist.
   
Xue Xian's eyelids stopped blinking as a shudder passed through them. He froze for a moment, and then his breath suddenly quickened.
All of that overwhelming heat and anxiety inside him finally found an out. Xue Xian frowned and loosened his other hand's grip on the table, violently grabbing the hand that rested on his waist and pulling it closer toward him. As he grasped that second hand, he unconsciously dragged it beneath his loosely folded robe.
   
"Don't move," said the person whose hand he'd seized. The fog was too dense, and Xue Xian saw nothing before him except a white oblivion. He could not see Xuanmin's face, but in that low voice, Xue Xian could detect a sense of peace — as well as, perhaps because of their shared fever, a slight huskiness.
   
But they were already at this stage. Xue Xian had no intention of obeying. He guided that hand beneath his robes, searching, and as the hand felt hungrily across his body, the thin cloth of his robe shifted too. The cloth followed the motion of the hand that it was concealing, moving again and again, urgently and manically, without ever stopping...
   
The anxiety within Xue Xian was consuming all parts of his body, and his mind was still utterly blank. He was dimly aware that, at some point, and somehow, the silent person helping him had pulled him closer, so close that Xue Xian had to pry his knees apart slightly in order to let that person stand steady between them. So close that, in his daze, as that hand tugged up and down, Xue Xian thought he could feel the other person react, too.
   
Yet he still could not see that person’s face –– he could only hear his breathing, so close that their breaths seemed to tangle themselves together, becoming intertwined.
   
Somehow, Xue Xian's other hand, the one that held Xue Xian’s own weight, had been clamped down onto the desk. As his hand moved up and down, the other hand against the table clenched itself into a fist and let go, over and over. And his forehead was burrowed in the other person's shoulder, his half-closed eyes still shrouded by the mist.
   
Xuanmin seemed to tell him not to move again, and then, for some reason, tried to step away, but Xue Xian held on tightly and would not let him leave.
The discomfort caused by the dragon spit was far worse than experiencing such a state in normal circumstances, which made it so that it was a long time before that anxious feeling within Xue Xian began to near its peak. He thought he might make a noise –– he was so close to relief.
When the moment came, Xue Xian’s fingers began to tremble desperately. He himself couldn't figure out whether this was an urge to ease his own discomfort, or to hold on tighter to Xuanmin's hand. His entire spine was rigid with tension.
Soon, he burrowed his head further into the crook of Xuanmin's neck and squeezed his eyes shut as the sense of relief rushed across his body.
Xue Xian remained there, silent and tense for a while, and then slowly began to relax. He was finally able to breathe again. Another wave of sweat poured down his body, the moisture seeping through his robe.
   
Yet dragon spit was too powerful, and not so easily defeated. Soon, that anxiety surged within him once again...
   
Everything he could remember about what had happened next had been fragmented by that strange fog. Looking back at when Xue Xian had used Xuanmin to help himself, Xue Xian could not remember how long they had tussled, nor if he had bitten Xuanmin’s neck...
   
But no matter how long it had been, that fog had lingered the whole time, and Xue Xian had not at all been able to see Xuanmin's face. It was an odd, indescribable feeling, tinged with a slight awkwardness — so that even Xue Xian, who had up until now been open to everything, felt flustered.
   
After a long time, Xue Xian finally felt himself become fully calm. The anxiety within him seemed to have gone away, leaving a faint impression, which waxed and waned at the bottom of his heart. But with the dissipating sense of heat, even that was slowly seeping away.
He leant against the desk and let himself wind down. Soon, his restless hands were fiddling with the lantern again, and as the weak flame inside the lantern grew brighter, that dense fog suddenly disappeared too, as though it knew.
   
Xuanmin had summoned the fog on purpose...
Xue Xian thought this, but was too exhausted to say it out loud. When the poisonous fog finally lifted, he casually scanned the room again and saw that the bottom half of his robe, which he had lifted away to release heat, had now been gently drawn back in its place. Everything on that once pristine desk had become a scattered mess. Under the glow of the lamp, Xue Xian could even see streaks of sweat left behind by their hands having pressed themselves against the table, the prints damp yet too vague to make out.
   
Not far from Xue Xian, Xuanmin was kneeling on a prayer mat with his eyes closed, silently meditating. By his hands were some of the books he'd extracted from the bookshelf, stacked up neatly. It was as though he had never even left the mat.
   
Where Xuanmin sat, everything was clean and tidy, in great contrast to the clutter and disarray around Xue Xian. For a brief moment, Xue Xian had a doubt, and wondered whether all that had been yet another vision.
   
He looked down at his own hands: thankfully, his wrists were mottled with bruises in the shape of another person's tight grasp. If not for this, Xue Xian would really have begun to believe that he'd experienced more Heart Demons.
   
Xue Xian gazed at those marks for some time, then raised his head to say to Xuanmin, "Courtesy demands reciprocity. [a] Come over here and let me give you a hand. If you want, you can bring back some more mist. No one will be able to see anything. You can pretend it's all a dream."

Xuanmin did not even open his eyes. He paused, then quietly said, "No need. It's been resolved."
Xue Xian was still feeling dazed from his release, so his reflexes were a little slow. "Resolved? How is that possible? If meditation could cure it then why did I––"
   
Suddenly, he stopped himself and shut his mouth, swallowing the second half of his sentence.
Xuanmin was silent again. Finally, he said, "When you were resolved, I also stopped feeling uncomfortable."
“………” Xue Xian slowly digested the meaning behind those words, then sat there numbly. He wished he could spit on that bald donkey's disrespectful face.
   
Great. It was as though he had let loose a volley of arrows at his enemy, but the damn things turned in the middle of their journey and came right back to stab him in the heart…
   
"Lend me your belt," Xue Xian said with a blank expression on his face.
Xuanmin did not understand what he meant. Although he kept his eyes shut, he frowned and said, "What for?"
"I don't really want to live anymore," Xue Xian deadpanned. "Let me hang myself off your doorframe."
Xuanmin: “...”
"Will you lend it to me or not?" Xue Xian asked.
Xuanmin retracted his gaze. "No." [b]
Xue Xian let out an annoyed scoff and went back to fiddling with the lantern flame. He no longer wanted to speak.
   
It hadn't been that bad when they'd been talking. Now that the room had fallen into silence once again, a faint sense of awkward intimacy rushed to fill the space between them. Xue Xian looked down for a bit in contemplation, then said, "What time is it? If you're finished here, shall we go back to the Fangs?"

Before Xuanmin even had the time to respond, Xue Xian felt something in his pocket suddenly move.
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[a] The chengyu here is 礼尚往来 (li3 shang4 wang3 lai2), which describes good will and good deeds being passed back and forth.
[b] There isn’t a description of Xuanmin opening his eyes to look at Xue Xian before this, so I assume that this is a small mistake/inconsistency on Musuli’s part.