Gao Xining stood with her hands clasped behind her back, gazing into the distance, looking every bit like a masterful painter about to capture the beauty of rivers and mountains with sweeping brushstrokes, or a wandering poet on the verge of singing praises to the grandeur of the land.

She said: “And what good does it do you, being a rogue?”

Li Chi stood there looking like a man who had been struck by lightning — scorched on the outside and not exactly tender on the inside.

She continued: “If a man finds himself so constrained that he cannot even bring himself to make advances on the woman he loves, he is, without question, pitiable.”

Li Chi was struck a second time.

She went on: “Just talking about it has you flustered and unable to contain yourself, and yet you don’t dare do a single thing. That really is quite a failure.”

Li Chi asked: “Can we stop now?”

Gao Xining sighed: “And here is this very same man, complaining that the woman he loves isn’t shapely enough, not big enough in the—”

Li Chi: “I never said that!”

Gao Xining sighed again: “His secret thoughts have been laid bare, and instead of owning them, he shouts and carries on — not a shred of composure.”

Li Chi lifted his head and looked up at the sky, sincerely wishing at that moment that a bolt of divine lightning would come down and strike him where he stood.

Gao Xining turned back to look at Li Chi, fixing him with a gaze that was sincere and blazing all at once, then asked: “Do you truly lack the courage to break convention and challenge the way things are? Could you really bear to see a woman’s eyes filled with resentful longing? Can you not just shout out — I dare?!”

Li Chi: “I dare!”

Gao Xining gave a small nod. “Good. Noted.”

And with that, she clasped her hands behind her back, set her ponytail swinging, and walked away.

As she went, she murmured to herself: “But I don’t dare. And if I don’t dare, I don’t want to. And if I don’t want to, I won’t feel bad about it. And if I don’t feel bad, you will.”

Li Chi: “……”

He silently fell into step behind her, like a child who had done something wrong and couldn’t bring himself to lift his head in front of an elder.

Gao Xining, meanwhile, carried herself like a mother hen who had just finished scolding her foolish son — head held high, chest puffed out with all the dignity of a proud and triumphant parent.

“I’ll go ask Elder Zhang Zhenren later if there’s any way to break through this.”

Li Chi let out a huff. “Just you wait!”

Gao Xining glanced back at him, sighed once more, and said: “I’ve always been waiting. What did you think I was doing all this time? Did you think I was trying to seduce you?”

Li Chi: “……”

Gao Xining said: “Yes, I was trying to seduce you. But you didn’t dare.”

Li Chi: “Aghh!”

Gao Xining: “Try to take it in stride.”

Li Chi, bristling with indignation, strode forward in great angry steps, overtaking Gao Xining and heading off in the direction of where Elder Zhang Zhenren and Young Zhang Zhenren were.

Gao Xining watched that foolish fellow marching ahead with his head high and chest thrown out, and a small smile curved at the corner of her lips.

Then, out of reflex, she glanced downward at herself — and couldn’t help letting out a quiet little huff. “He actually dares to look down on my figure.”

After the midday meal, the convoy rested for a short while before setting out once more. They still had a very long road ahead — from here back to Jizhou City was several thousand li.

Li Chi deliberately boarded the carriage where Young Zhang Zhenren and Elder Zhang Zhenren were riding. He settled himself down with an expression of the most shameless, ingratiating smile.

Elder Zhang Zhenren looked at him, then turned to Young Zhang Zhenren and said: “Do you see this? Prince Ning’s face is flushed. He’s on the verge of saying something but keeps stopping himself — a touch embarrassed, a touch expectant. What would you call this?”

Young Zhang Zhenren said: “I wouldn’t dare say it out loud.”

Elder Zhang Zhenren said: “Go on and say it.”

Young Zhang Zhenren looked at Li Chi, who also gave a nod of encouragement. “Go ahead.”

Young Zhang Zhenren sighed. “He’s in heat.”

Li Chi: “……”

Elder Zhang Zhenren chuckled and said: “Some things exist if you believe in them and cease to exist if you don’t. If Prince Ning has come to ask about matters between men and women, the simplest answer is probably just to follow his heart.”

Li Chi’s face lit up with delight. “Follow my heart?”

Young Zhang Zhenren: “Following your heart means chickening out.”

Li Chi: “Gah!”

Elder Zhang Zhenren said: “As an elder, it would naturally be improper for me to say anything on this matter… When you get back, you’d be better off consulting with Senior Brother Changmei. He’s an elder too, but he has no sense of propriety.”

Li Chi narrowed his eyes and asked: “How did Elder Zhang Zhenren know I was coming to ask about this?”

Elder Zhang Zhenren said: “The workings of Heaven may be glimpsed but cannot be spoken of. Cannot be spoken of.”

Young Zhang Zhenren said: “He eavesdropped.”

Elder Zhang Zhenren raised his hand and rapped Young Zhang Zhenren on the head. “You and your loose tongue!”

Elder Zhang Zhenren gave Li Chi a sheepish smile: “Truly, it was not intentional — I merely happened to be passing by at the right moment and caught a line or two.”

Young Zhang Zhenren: “Master, you always said that a Daoist who tells a lie will suffer divine retribution.”

Elder Zhang Zhenren: “I caught… a line or twenty…”

Li Chi sighed: “To think that I, in the finest years of my life, should be constrained by… ah!”

Young Zhang Zhenren said: “I just recalled a four-character idiom that seems perfectly fitting, but I cannot say it — saying it would make me sound unspeakably crude. Well — no, supremely crude.”

Li Chi said: “Then don’t say it.”

He could guess well enough what four-character idiom Young Zhang Zhenren had in mind. In fact, those same four characters had been said to him by Xiahou Zuo over a year ago.

At the time Li Chi had protested vigorously, but Xiahou Zuo had told him with nothing but a look that his protest was invalid.

The road was genuinely long, but with no particular worries weighing on anyone’s mind, everyone seemed to be in high spirits — easy, unhurried, at peace.

It was the most beautiful season of the year. All along the journey, they were treated to the most magnificent scenery the land had to offer.

Upon reaching the Nanping River they switched to watercraft, and the journey sped up considerably. After drifting along the waterway for a full month, they disembarked on the northern bank of the Nanping River and continued toward Jizhou.

Meanwhile, at Cloud-Hidden Mountain.

Scholar Netcliff Li Shangong sat on a high slope, watching as Cao Lie nimbly and deftly fed the pigs, his face written over with undisguised envy.

He was envious of someone for being able to feed pigs successfully!

Even if that were said aloud, most people probably wouldn’t believe it — that a scholar of such extraordinary talent should be most heartbroken by the fact that he was unworthy of raising pigs.

And Elder Li himself stood up on the high ground as he habitually did, staring blankly into the distance, lost in his thoughts.

In the time that Cao Lie had been on Cloud-Hidden Mountain, he had observed that Elder Li often spent long stretches doing nothing but standing in a daze, and almost always in the same way — standing somewhere high, gazing out at the distance.

Cao Lie had the sense that Elder Li was trying to see through something with that look of his, yet what lay before him was only open emptiness — precisely the sort of thing that cannot be seen through.

“Why is Elder Li always so melancholy?”

Cao Lie waved Li Shangong over and asked him this.

Li Shangong shook his head. “I don’t know either. Elder Li always says he ought to be one who has no place in this world. I remember once, after he’d drunk too much, he wrote down a few lines. Even now I can’t quite grasp what state of mind he was in when he wrote them, but I do understand the loneliness in them.”

“What were they?”

Cao Lie asked.

Li Shangong said: “I’ve forgotten the earlier part — I only remember the last line… I have a house, facing the sea, where spring is warm and flowers bloom… I have not.”

Cao Lie thought it over. The words didn’t seem particularly profound, nor did they carry any especially sweeping sentiment.

Perhaps it was because Li Shangong had forgotten the lines that came before. Perhaps it was because the wine had lent them a note of sadness that evening.

“Perhaps Elder Li’s former home was very far from the sea, and so he longed to have a house like that.”

Li Shangong looked up toward Elder Li on the high ground and said, as if to himself: “He has his past. He has his life. But somehow, some way, all of it can only become something he mourns.”

Cao Lie turned that over carefully in his mind, and decided that perhaps the reason he couldn’t understand it was simply that he was still too young.

And so he too raised his eyes toward Elder Li on the high ground — and the longer he looked, the more he found, quite suddenly, that he understood the kind of loneliness Li Shangong had described.

A loneliness of having no place in this world.

What was Elder Li thinking as he stood up there?

Was he thinking of his past?

Up on the high ground, Elder Li was standing there thinking: Bloody hell, how had he forgotten something so important… With what he knew, he could absolutely brew beer… It wasn’t even that difficult.

How many years had he been in this place? And it had never once occurred to him to do something about having a drink?

Once he made something like that, he could probably go live another stretch of life in some guise he hadn’t tried yet.

Ah… finally, something new to look forward to.

Down below, Cao Lie crouched by the pig pen and said to Li Shangong: “Should we try to come up with some way to take Elder Li out somewhere — get him a change of scenery, lift his spirits a little?”

Li Shangong shook his head. “Nobody can fool Elder Li. And when Elder Li does something, even gods and ghosts can’t predict it. If you tried to deceive him and he caught on, he might turn around and vanish on the spot — and whether you’d ever see him again in this lifetime would be left entirely to fate.”

Cao Lie let out a long inward sigh. In all the days he had spent here, his admiration for Elder Li’s knowledge had grown to the point of absolute prostration.

Astronomy and geography, mathematics and history, the ancient and the modern — no matter what subject you could conceive of, no matter what question you could put into words, Elder Li could answer it.

He understood now why Li Shangong had said that if there was one person in this world who came close to being a god, it could only be Elder Li.

The two of them had been murmuring back and forth for a little while when they stood up to look — and Elder Li’s silhouette was no longer on the high ground.

They exchanged a glance, sensing something was off, and hurried back to the living quarters — only to find those empty as well.

On the table lay a letter with no envelope, the ink not yet dry, clearly written just moments before.

【I give you the pigs. Give me my freedom.】

Nine characters. That was all.

The two of them stared at each other, and then simultaneously turned and bolted out of the door, sprinting up to the high slope in one breath. Looking out into the distance, they could just barely make out, at the very edge of their vision, a rising plume of dust.

Elder Li had ridden off into the distance on a pig — a solitary figure vanishing in a cloud of dust.

“This is your fault.”

Li Shangong sighed: “It must be that Elder Li sensed you were planning to deceive him, and so he made his move first.”

Cao Lie: “He’s really that perceptive?”

Li Shangong said: “He is something like a god… Perhaps he’s gone somewhere else to make new legends.”

Far away in the distance, Elder Li was galloping along on his pig, thinking — I shouldn’t go making money off Central Plains people just yet; what if what he produced turned out substandard? Better to try it out on foreigners first…

This place had stopped being peaceful. First comes a Li Chi, then comes a Li Shangong, and the day after tomorrow there’ll be another Li-something…

With his temperament, he would always rather make himself scarce when he could. Heaven only knew what day he’d run into a protagonist.

Cloud-Hidden Mountain was no longer suitable for a life of seclusion. Time to find a new place… Medicine Valley.

Back on the mountain, Cao Lie and Li Shangong sat back-to-back fretting. They had come here to take shelter under Elder Li’s wing, and now Elder Li had run off — leaving them nothing but a herd of pigs.

“How about we hand them over to those women?”

Cao Lie said: “And we head back to the Central Plains.”

Li Shangong thought it over and shook his head. “You know how devoutly those women revere Elder Li. If they found out he left because of us, they would definitely hold us responsible.”

Cao Lie said: “Do they know our names?”

Li Shangong shook his head. “Elder Li never permitted them to enter Medicine Valley at will — they never knew we were here, so how could they possibly know our names?”

Cao Lie said: “Then it’s simple…”

He stood up and gave Li Shangong a pat on the shoulder. “Wait here for me.”

Shortly thereafter, Cao Lie sprinted at full speed to the gates of Cloud-Hidden Palace, planted his hands on his hips, and bellowed into the interior at the top of his lungs: “Ladies! Esteemed celestial sisters! I am terribly sorry to intrude — my name is Li Chi, Li Chi of Jizhou, and I have gone and driven Elder Li away with my behavior. So I, too, must now take my leave. I am entrusting the pigs to your care — my sincerest apologies! If any of you wish to write up a curse-seal or talisman to punish me — a thunder-strike talisman, a hellfire talisman, a bed-wetting talisman, whatever you like — just make sure you write the name down correctly!”

And with that, he turned and ran.

—