Old Wang of the Yongchun Wine House was pushing his small cart toward the Qianqiu Inn.
The small cart creaked and groaned; the wine jars on it clattered and knocked together. Anyone with a craving for drink would know from that pleasing sound that these were fine spirits, and every passing soul eyed them with longing.
What a pity — the first batch of Yunye Fresh to arrive in Xiaowanr Town since the onset of winter had been bought up all at once, without leaving even a drop for anyone else to hope for.
After two or three turns, Old Wang had reached the inn. In good spirits today, his steps were lighter than usual — he arrived a full quarter-hour earlier than yesterday.
“The wine is here!”
The old innkeeper, who had been crouching behind the counter pasting on a false beard with paste, looked up at the sound, the sparse threads of his whiskers drooping down by half.
“What are you shouting about? Of all the voices in this place, yours is the loudest.”
Old Wang gave a hearty laugh, opened his bow-legged stance, and began unloading the cart. As he busied himself, he lowered his voice to ask:
“Is that young master Zhong the same as usual today?”
The innkeeper, hearing this, forgot all about the half-pasted beard. His voice dropped as well.
“Isn’t he just. Hasn’t stepped outside all day again — quite strange indeed.”
Old Wang was unconcerned.
“Anyone who can afford to pay double the rate for wine can’t be strange — must be someone with money.”
At the mention of silver, the innkeeper’s expression shifted to one of immediate understanding.
“So that’s why you’re so eager today — you got a good deal out of it. But let me give you fair warning: he won’t be staying much longer. Yesterday I sent someone to find old Wu Laoda, and they said he’d come by today.”
Old Wang’s hands, still holding a wine jar, stilled. The buoyant mood he’d carried here suddenly halved.
“Don’t tell me you’re serious — you found Wu Laoda? Hasn’t he quit the business of going into the mountains these past few years?”
The innkeeper finally straightened his two strips of fake mustache and snapped the bronze mirror shut with a click.
“Perhaps his gambling habit has flared up again and he’s short on silver.”
Old Wang was puzzled and uneasy.
“But if he takes this job, your money tree will be walking out the door.”
“I’d like him to stay a few more days too, but his young woman can’t wait any longer. Last night, Old Sun went to deliver the charcoal, and said she looked like she wasn’t going to make it.” The innkeeper shook his head with considerable feeling, then muttered a few more words in a low voice. “Besides, he paid a full year’s room rent up front. Look — the contract’s right there on the counter.”
“So that’s how you had the heart to be charitable — you’d already taken advantage of the situation long ago.”
Old Wang gave a quiet snort, making no real effort to look closely at the contract with its stamped seal on the counter. He lifted the last jar onto the shelf, swept up the fat silver pieces arranged in the wooden tray, and tucked them into his cloth pouch. As he turned to leave, he muttered one last thing:
“With the sky nearly dark, Wu Laoda probably won’t come today.”
He could not have known that the moment he pushed open the inn’s thick felt curtain and stepped out, a sturdy figure stepped in right behind him.
The innkeeper caught sight of the newcomer, and without looking up, pointed to the second floor.
“Business is upstairs.”
Wu Laoda said nothing, grabbed the cold teapot on the table, took a swig, and was about to head upstairs, when the innkeeper shoved a few more jars of wine into his arms.
“Take these up too. Mind you don’t knock them about — you can’t afford to replace them.”
Wu Laoda remained silent. He tucked the wine under his arm and headed straight for the upstairs Tiānzì guest room.
In the only suite on the second floor, candlelight flickered — not because its occupant begrudged the cost of oil for lamps, but because decent candles simply weren’t to be found in this small out-of-the-way town. In that warm, dim glow sat a young gentleman in plain white with a jade pin in his hair. His features were naturally gentle, and bathed in such soft light, the whole person seemed dreamlike and unreal.
Wu Laoda felt an inexplicable unease for no reason at all, and set the wine down on the table with a thud.
“Your wine.”
The man glanced at him lightly and reached for the nearest jar.
He made no move to pour it immediately. He simply set the open, seal-broken Yunye Fresh beside the small table near the bed.
The wine’s fragrance filled the room. Wu Laoda could smell it but not drink it, and felt that staying here a moment longer was torture. He cut straight to the point:
“I haven’t traveled that road in a long time. I can’t take this job today — find someone else, young master.”
The man heard his words and showed neither urgency nor irritation. His hands moved unhurriedly, and only after a moment did he say slowly:
“My wife is gravely ill, and the medicine is needed urgently. I need to get into the mountains as soon as possible. It’s bitterly cold, and yet you were willing to come all this way on nothing but the innkeeper’s message — that shows you’re not as hopeless as you make yourself sound. You’re a warmhearted person. I have no intention of putting you in an unjust position. I simply have no other recourse, far from home and alone. I hope you can lend me your help. The fee for the cart is negotiable.”
The words were well-chosen and the manner was composed, yet for some reason that face looked nothing like that of someone asking a favor. Instead it carried a kind of cool remoteness — like the stone lions at a yamen gate, no matter how carved and dressed up, never quite having the breath of life.
Wu Laoda couldn’t help curling his lip inwardly.
From the time he was young, feeding and raising a few younger siblings, to growing up and traveling the four corners doing business — he’d seen no small number of officials. Every single one of them had their impatience and disdain written plain on their faces. But the man in front of him, for all that his expression was serene, still carried an air that was no less imposing than those officials made him feel.
Though the fee for the cart did stir something in him, in the end he held firm to the decision he’d come in with, and waved his hand.
“It’s not about the silver—”
The words had barely left his mouth when the man calmly reached for a lacquered box beside him and opened the copper lock in front of him.
It was a small lacquered box. Inside lay a neat, thick stack of banknotes from Xiaomei Zhuang, each impressed with red clay seals.
“Take as many notes as you like, sir.”
So it truly wasn’t a question of silver — it was a question of whether there was enough silver.
Wu Laoda was dumbstruck.
He’d seen generous people before, but never anyone this generous — so generous it made him uneasy, so generous it made him suspicious.
Could this town have gotten a new con artist, forging seals to mimic a money house’s banknotes and trying to pull some trick?
Wu Laoda felt he ought to get a clearer look. So he stepped forward half a pace and rose up on the balls of his feet.
In that one moment of craning forward, he not only glimpsed the genuine clay seals on the banknotes, he also caught sight of the woman on the bed behind them.
The woman’s features were not delicate — on the contrary, her brows and eyes had a certain boldness about them. If not for lying ill in bed, she was surely the sort of person who could run and jump.
But somehow, he found the woman oddly familiar-looking — and the more he looked, the more he could not bring himself to simply walk away.
The silver, of course, he was also reluctant to leave behind.
“Fine, fine — I’ll stretch and take you as far as the foot of the mountain.” He rubbed his belly’s soft flesh with some irritation, and added as an afterthought: “But let’s be clear upfront — that mountain hasn’t had anyone going up for a while.”
The implication was plain enough: he was washing his hands of any consequences. If these people insisted on going up, and something went wrong, the fault lay entirely with the guide who had warned them.
“It doesn’t matter. The mountain is right there — if no one else has gone up, perhaps it’s just been waiting for me to go up.”
Wu Laoda raised an eyebrow.
Who’d have thought — behind that clean, delicate face beat a heart of stone.
Fine then. The weather was this cold — maybe he’d make it halfway up and turn back on his own. These days, could a person really freeze themselves to death?
“When do we set out?”
The young gentleman tapped the jar of wine.
“Now.”
* * *
In the depths of winter, on the Gelute Plateau, gales raged and blizzards howled.
The trail across the wilderness had long been swallowed by wind and snow, and one could only rely on an experienced driver carefully reading the terrain to find a direction.
The world was a vast white void — no road back visible, no road forward visible. The wind and snow made the long journey feel even more tedious, and if one happened to be paired with a particularly quiet fellow traveler, the endless road became more difficult still.
Wu Laoda refused to give up. He was determined to keep the man in the cart talking.
Perhaps because he had just received the banknotes and his spirits were high — he wanted nothing more than to pour out all the stories he knew, right down to the bottom, as if to prove to the other party that those notes had been well spent.
“How did the young master come to hear of Pingtou Peak? Not many people still know of it these days.”
“A family elder mentioned it.”
The person in the cart was consistently subdued — never asking questions on his own, but never letting the thread of conversation drop either.
Wu Laoda asked for nothing more, and felt quite satisfied with this response. He began to work up to a revelation.
“Then does the young master know — Pingtou Peak didn’t always go by that name? It used to be called Baito Peak, which means White-Headed Peak.”
“Why?”
Two words only — yet Wu Laoda launched into a torrent.
“The old township head changed the name, thinking the words ‘white head’ sounded inauspicious. But the locals here always called it that. Young master, do you know — the reason the city on that mountain is called Xuancheng is because it was once a place that was warm all four seasons, like perpetual spring.”
Outside the window the snow fell without cease — great snowflakes rolling into clumps, clinging to everything they touched, as if trying to swallow up heaven and earth entirely.
The person in the cart turned his gaze away from the window and lowered his head to cup the young woman’s hands in his, gently breathing warmth into them.
“Hard to tell from the look of it now.”
The half-broken curtain swayed and trembled in the cold wind, letting through the faint and uneven light from inside the cart.
Wu Laoda pulled his gaze back and felt a vague, nameless ache in his chest, though his mouth kept on going.
“It all happened over a hundred years ago. The fortress cities on this high plateau weren’t always so solid, you know. Legend has it that the twenty-ninth city lord of the Hua family had a wife who was a goddess, and together she and the city lord stacked these stone walls, rock by rock. Every winter she was there to hold watch, Xuancheng had no snowfall — only that one patch of white at the mountaintop, which is why it was called Baito Peak. But the emperor of the former dynasty had her killed, and winter came back to Xuancheng, and the mountain became Pingtou Peak again.”
The cart fell quiet for a moment. Then the young gentleman’s voice came again.
“I see.”
The answer was brief as before, but plainly a little different from what had come before. Wu Laoda, deep in his tall-tale stride, did not catch the difference, and tacked on another thought of his own.
“Oh right — if anyone on the mountain asks, young master, do not say where you’ve come from.”
The man’s voice dropped lower, nearly lost in the wind and snow.
“Why?”
“Young master doesn’t know — the people living on Baito Peak have never been particularly welcoming of visitors from the capital.”
“Is that so?”
It wasn’t really a question — more a perfunctory acknowledgement — yet Wu Laoda answered it instantly and at length.
“Isn’t it just! A few years back, a man of rank from the capital came up the mountain seeking medicine, and they say both his legs were beaten and broken. If a hunter out searching for his flock of sheep hadn’t found him, he would have starved to death on that mountain. And speaking of which—” He cleared his throat awkwardly and laid the groundwork: “It’s not a good time to be going up the mountain right now. The roads up are rough going — there’ll be another snowstorm soon, and you can barely see your own feet. One wrong step and you’d tumble right off a cliff into the ravine. I’m only saying it out of goodwill — you’ve been waiting in that inn for three days with no one willing to take you, and I can see it myself: by the foot of the mountain, I’m afraid the rest of the road young master will have to walk on his own—”
This sounded like well-meaning advice but was really just another way of washing his hands of responsibility. He was nothing but an innocent guide — whatever the weather did, whatever happened to these people, it was none of his doing.
The young gentleman gave a quiet, soundless smile, and his voice held a sense of release it had not carried before.
“It’s all right. So long as there is a road, it can be traveled.”
The north wind wailed, gutting one to the bone.
The night had reached its deepest hour. The cold had seeped into every inch of earth.
Wu Laoda rubbed his hands and watched the solitary figure in the distance, carrying someone on his back, moving forward. Only when that silhouette disappeared from sight did he turn the cart around and set off.
Perhaps he should have tried to talk that young man out of it a bit more.
But when the man had left just now, he had caught just one glimpse — and somehow, quietly, he had understood that this was someone who could not be talked out of anything.
So be it. Every person has a road they must walk — sometimes there’s simply no use in insisting otherwise.
The clatter of hooves faded into the distance. The wind and snow promptly covered the slender cart tracks. Between the black mountains and white snow, all that remained was a solitary figure, pressing onward toward the depths of the snowfield.
His back was not broad enough. From the day he was born until now, he had never carried anyone on his back.
His legs were not strong enough. The mountains he had climbed were not high — the roads he had walked were not long.
But he believed he could keep going.
Just like this, without stopping, without stopping, pressing forward — even if what lay ahead was nothing but endless frozen darkness, as long as her hands were clasped around his neck, as long as her heartbeat could reach him through his back, he could walk on like this, without wavering, until he could see the end of everything.
A young girl in a red padded jacket and red cape was crouching on a stone ledge, watching that figure below.
This person was clearly not a martial artist — his frame was nowhere near as solid as the hunters she knew. The clothes he wore were of fine make, but offered little protection against the wind. One glance was enough to tell he had never known the bitter cold of the north.
He walked very slowly. Every step he set down came with a long pause to catch his breath. The snow had nearly swallowed him to the knees. Each stride was a struggle, his figure swaying unsteadily — yet he would rather let himself stumble and rise again than allow the person on his back to touch a single drop of snow or meltwater.
He had given all the thick furs and cloaks to the woman on his back. He himself wore only a single layer. The steam of his breath froze onto his brows and eyes, layer by layer, as though trying to press him down — but still he wore that same expression: faint and quiet, yet unmovable in his determination.
Before she met him, she would not have imagined he was this kind of person.
If she just chased him off the mountain, would he freeze to death on the road back? Best if he turned around on his own — that would save her from having to play the villain.
The young girl rested her chin on her hand and weighed her options, but her calculations came to nothing in the end.
That figure never stopped. It crept along, bit by bit, until it reached the foot of her stone ledge.
The man was no martial artist, yet he had a certain terrifying instinct. He quietly removed his hood, and neither looked up toward the ledge nor glanced around.
“Descendant of the Qu family — where are you?”
The young girl’s brow furrowed, and she cleared her throat. When she spoke, her voice was crisp and bright.
“The Gelute Plateau does not welcome descendants of the Qiu family.”
The man finally looked up. His features were ethereally handsome, yet his black hair hung loose and disheveled, his expression fierce — like a vengeful ghost.
“I have traveled eight thousand li through mountains and rivers. I am not here to discuss the word ‘welcome.’ Bring out your master — tell them to come and face me!”
His voice rang through the mountains, carrying with it a pressure that seemed born into his very bones.
But the young girl on the stone ledge was utterly fearless. She planted both hands on her hips, raised her sharp brows, and looked down with considerable disdain.
“What insolence and arrogance — what presumption. I have heard that the ruler of Tiancheng is a man devoted to cultivation and the Buddha. In person he turns out to be a madman.”
There is a saying: the ignorant know no fear.
But this one clearly knew quite a bit. Knowing his identity and still being able to stand there with such bravado — this was true fearlessness.
He reined in his expression, but his voice still carried an authority that brooked no contradiction.
“Since you used blood ties as grounds to shut me out, you ought to know that some things cannot be so easily severed. Has leaving the Qu family and coming out from Buxu Valley made you forget where you came from — and on whose realm you now stand?”
The young girl laughed. And when the laughter passed, her expression was more bold and unruly than it had been before.
“Baito Peak is not under Tiancheng’s jurisdiction. You may be the ruler of a nation, the Son of Heaven himself — you have no right to command me, and no right to speak to me like this!”
With that, she executed a clean flip and leapt down from the stone ledge.
She had intended to send him away directly, but catching sight of the woman cradled in the man’s arms — her face pale as chalk — she could not help adding one more line.
“Someone — bring her a freshly filled hand warmer. Then escort both of them down the mountain. Don’t come and bother me again.”
Several men in bearskin coats emerged from hidden positions and were about to step forward — when a clear, ringing strike echoed through the snowy night.
The young girl’s figure froze. She turned her head — and saw the man kneel slowly in the snow, bow deeply, and say with gravity:
“Please, miss — save her.”
The young girl’s gaze fell upon the bronze bowl in his hand. Her sharp brows drew together slightly.
“What relation does the monk Wumin have to you?”
“He was my master.”
The young girl’s expression first showed surprise, and then skepticism.
“Yikong is a monk — what are you? How dare you lie to my face!”
The man in the snow did not change his expression.
“Dharma Master Yikong is my elder brother.”
“I never knew Wumin had taken a second disciple.”
“At your age, there must still be many things you haven’t heard of.”
“You—!”
The young girl was clearly a little angry now. She shot to her feet and was gone in seven or eight quick strides around the stone ledge. The men in bear and fox-fur coats vanished with her. The wind and snow stretched vast and empty in all four directions, with only the howling north wind blowing fiercer and fiercer.
The black-clad man made no move to rise and leave. He gathered the young woman before him tightly into his arms, trying to pass on what little warmth remained in his body. But no matter how hard he tried, that form grew slowly colder.
He brushed the snowflakes from her hair again and again, his gaze fixed all the while on the base of the stone ledge.
Just when he thought the wind and snow would cover those footprints and bury them, that red figure reappeared, hurrying through the snow and mist.
“Lucky for you. Bring her and follow me.”
* * *
If the foot of Pingtou Peak was all white, then the top of the stone ledge was black rock and gray horizon.
Wind cut through the mountain pass with a howl, scattering the falling snow in all directions.
The blizzard seemed to ease a little. On the narrow, steep black stone steps, the girl in red walked ahead without a word. After a moment she remembered something, and turned to look at the man behind her.
“You are Wumin’s disciple — and who is she to you?”
The man followed the girl’s gaze toward the woman on the small palanquin nearby, and said with the same quiet composure:
“She is my wife.”
Still that same face — yet his expression was entirely unlike the fierce and savage look he’d worn in the wind and snow just now.
So this was what he looked like in stillness. The lines of his brows and eyes were soft and fluid, like the divine figures enshrined in the old temples. Had he worn this expression before, she probably wouldn’t have doubted he was Wumin’s disciple.
The young girl flicked the snow from her braids and waved the men carrying the palanquin ahead, so that the woman on it would not endure the chill of this windswept ledge.
The man said nothing and followed silently behind.
The young girl glanced at that overly quiet figure and suddenly felt a prick of curiosity.
“I’ve seen many people come seeking medicine — if not a thousand, then certainly hundreds. Women may look fragile, but they are always tenacious. Men, however, rarely show such conviction and resolve as you. They tend to think more, always believing they stand on higher ground, see further, possess more wisdom, and are never willing to lose out. In the end they can only leave empty-handed.”
The man ahead finally stopped, and turned slightly. Beneath the half-lowered hood emerged half a face — unreadable.
“What loss is the young lady planning to make me suffer?”
The young girl gave a cold snort.
“Now you think to ask? Seeing how proud and unyielding you were earlier, I thought you were truly unbending — and yet in the blink of an eye you just followed along. You’re not afraid that I might be trying to deceive you, harm you, or find some way to humiliate you?”
The man did not answer her directly. He only looked toward the woman on the small palanquin.
“As long as you are willing to save her — even if you deceive me, harm me, or humiliate me — what does it matter?”
The young girl was left without words. She sobered her expression.
“You’re beginning to look a little like Wumin’s disciple now.”
She made a leap and landed beside the man in two or three steps, then raised her hand and pointed toward the gray distance.
“What do you make of that mountain peak?”
He followed the direction of her fingertip. Through the drifting snow and mist, a lone peak emerged — straight and steep, its summit seemingly sliced clean off, yet towering and unyielding, starkly pale and desolate. It was the peak from legend — Baito Peak.
He withdrew his gaze and answered honestly.
“The work of a divine hand — nothing less than a thousand years in the making.”
The young girl smiled with satisfaction, making no attempt to conceal the brightness in her expression.
“There was no peak there to begin with — my great-grandmother carved it out when she attained divine enlightenment. You are a descendant of the Qiu family, and also Wumin’s disciple — your intuition should be exceptional. Judging by what you said just now, your character is no ordinary thing either. With a year or two, you might well reach enlightenment yourself. Pity — you no longer have that opportunity.”
The young girl finished speaking, looked at him no more, and quickened her pace up the stone steps.
He took one last look at that silhouette — visible one moment, hidden the next — and then, without a moment’s hesitation, turned away and followed in silence.
At the top of the stone steps lay a flat clearing. The entire mountaintop had only this one flat clearing, and on it stood only one stone house. At the center of the stone house sat an enormous brazier built of black stone, blazing red and radiating heat, warming the whole room to something like the fullness of late spring or early summer.
The young girl untied her cape. She moved through the rows of soft green plant tendrils and foliage until she reached a pool of jade-colored water.
She bit open her index finger and rested it gently beside the pool. Before long, a gray-white head broke the surface, trailing a few copper-coin plants.
The young girl extended her hand, and that white creature leapt onto her palm with an almost sentient instinct.
It was a frog — snow-white all over, with a small horn on its head.
The man stared at this peculiar-looking frog, and after a while, slowly said:
“Is this the medicine a thousand people have come here to seek?”
“This is only an ordinary high-plateau snow frog. It cannot save the person you love.” The young girl paused, then pinched the frog’s head with two fingers. “What can save her is this.”
The frog’s head was lifted, and only then did he notice: on the snow frog’s throat was a translucent sac, inside which a dark red fluid moved and pulsed. It looked somewhat unsettling.
“What is this?”
“The blood of Qu Jiu Li carries spiritual energy. If it encounters a dead object, it disperses very quickly. So it must be carried by a living vessel.”
“And who is Qu Jiu Li?”
“She is the end of the divine legend upon this earth, and the reason the Niexuan dynasty crumbled to nothing. All things in the world are destined to flourish and decline in cycles — the flow of yin and yang. There is always a way out in the most desperate of situations, and what has reached its peak must inevitably fall. So it is with people; so it is with gods.” The young girl gently scratched the frog’s belly with one finger, and the snow frog narrowed its eyes in contentment. “Her blood is a deadly poison to those of divine blood. To ordinary people, however, it is a medicine that can raise the dead. Over the past century, the blood she left behind has saved countless lives. Now — only this much remains.”
The man’s cool eyes showed complete understanding.
“Name your terms.”
“The Emperor of Tiancheng is truly a person of keen wit. Tonight’s work is a bit taxing, and the sooner I settle things with you, the sooner I can go and get some sleep.”
The young girl laughed. The frog in her palm seemed to grin along with her, the red sac beneath its throat gleaming like a precious stone.
“This blood is neither more nor less than exactly enough for two people. If you want to save her, you must drink it together.”
There was only a brief silence in the stone room. The long pause she had anticipated did not come.
“Agreed.”
The young girl was a little surprised.
“You — you don’t even want to ask me why?”
“I have grown weary of chasing causes and truths. And even if I found them, what would be different about the outcome now?”
He wasn’t wrong — not only was he not wrong, he was clear-sighted.
The young girl felt an unexpected twinge of reluctance.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This is a matter of shedding old bones and washing the marrow — nine chances of death and one of survival. Even if you are lucky enough to survive, any child you and any woman bear will surely perish in infancy. You will never be able to continue your bloodline in this lifetime.”
“Is that all?”
The young girl paused, then nodded.
“That is all.”
On that face, which was generally a little remote and detached, there suddenly appeared an expression of profound relief. She could not find words to describe that moment — she only felt that all the plants and grasses in the room had caught a breath of spring wind in that instant, and burst into a warmth beyond measure.
“Then it is very well.”
* * *
At the first light of dawn, the blizzard slowly stopped.
The sun that had just risen climbed above the solitary peak standing alone against the horizon, casting a blazing golden halo. Days of relentless snowfall had washed the sky into a blue-violet hue. Not far away, on the sheer cliff face, the outline of a mountain city gradually grew clear and vivid.
This ancient city, stretching across the mouth of Migu Pass and cradled in the arms of Lake Naga, was Xuancheng — commanding a natural fortress, drinking four-season winds, as solid as bedrock and impregnable, unchanging and eternal as the dawn upon this high plateau.
On the stone ledge at the easternmost point of the stone city, the young girl sat before the stone house with her chin in her hands, staring vacantly at the snow frog on her palm. The snow frog’s throat was hollow and empty, and its two bean-sized eyes were equally blank.
When her grandmother had first told her to wait for that person to come, she had thought she’d be guarding this mountain for the rest of her life.
Who would have thought that day would arrive so suddenly, and end in the blink of an eye.
Her grandmother had said that the divine bloodline would be severed by the sword of Jiajia. But she had seen no sword — not even a bladed knife.
Her grandmother had also said: when the time came, the person would bring their wish and come in person, and at that moment she must exchange one vow for another, and not give an inch. Yet before she had said a word, that person had already agreed to her terms.
She did not understand those prophecies, and she did not care about those things.
She only felt a quiet wonder: that man had finally saved his beloved — but the time they could be together, was it perhaps only the one dawn that was now arriving?
Morning light finally poured over the entire mountaintop. Beneath an old pine tree, two figures leaned together. Perhaps the rising sun was too bright, for the man opened his eyes and slowly rose to his feet.
He stood barefoot in the snow. Jet-black hair hung loose and disheveled over his shoulders, and he wore only a thin, single-layered robe. He seemed to feel no cold at all, and simply stood there in stillness, his robes billowing in the wind — elegant and otherworldly in a way that was entirely his own, as though at any moment he might dissolve into the air and ascend.
“A deity? Are you a deity?”
A childish voice rang out from behind him.
He turned his head and saw two small, round-faced children.
The girl was slightly shorter, but her air of authority surpassed the boy’s by half. She looked him up and down with all the gravity of an adult.
“How could he be a deity? Did you look carefully?”
The boy was not convinced, and sniffled.
“The figure in the painting at the ancestral shrine looks exactly like this — and that painting is of a deity.”
“That’s no deity — just an ordinary person who lived a bit longer than most.” The girl said this decisively, then pointed one plump hand toward the distance with absolute certainty and pride. “That is a deity.”
Perhaps idle for a moment, the man tilted his gaze and followed the direction of the girl’s finger.
He saw: from the bend in the stone steps below, there emerged a hunched, white-haired elder. The old person was deeply wrinkled and gray of hair, wearing a plain cloth jacket over a simple padded vest, dressed like a farmer of the northern lands — entirely ordinary in appearance.
His expression paused — then he was about to turn his gaze away, when from around that same bend came another figure.
It was an old woman, seemingly older and frailer still, a thick racoon-fur drape over her shoulders, her waist nearly bent double under its weight.
The old man walking ahead would turn back every three steps and extend his hand to the old woman. The old woman would then take it with a trembling grip, and follow.
Those hundred-odd steps of the long stone staircase — that was how they walked it, one step at a time.
“Those aren’t Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather? You’re lying!”
The boy panicked and his sniffles came back. The girl caught sight of them and was full of disdain.
“Who’s lying? No one is allowed to lie at Baito Peak. A’Niang said Great-Grandmother was born with the fate of a deity — she just chose to stay in the mortal world because she couldn’t bear to leave Great-Grandfather.”
“If she was really a deity, why has no one ever seen her fly into the sky? If she could truly transform and ride the wind, why has no one ever seen it?!”
“No one has seen it doesn’t mean it never happened!” The girl grew urgent too, and desperately sought a third party to settle the matter. “You come and judge — which of us is right?”
She turned around with a huff, and found the man had returned at some point to the side of the sleeping young woman, leaning against the stone beside that old pine tree.
“Hey, did you hear what I said?”
“I heard. Only — I’ve never seen a deity either.” His voice was a little sluggish, like someone waking slowly from a deep dream and about to drift off again. “But in one thing your A’Niang was right. Human bonds are the most difficult to sustain, and the best things are the hardest to hold. People are born alone. But if deities truly possess the divine powers praised in books — perhaps they could walk together until their hair turns white…”
The girl did not quite understand all of it, but felt certain he was taking her side.
“You heard that? He thinks I’m right too.”
The boy was simply not convinced. He muttered to himself:
“What do you know — short little bean sprout, not even tall enough to reach the stove. What do you understand about love and feelings—”
“I am not small. In two more months and four days, I’ll be seven—”
The two children argued without end, their voices climbing to outdo each other.
The man beneath the pine tree heaved a quiet sigh and drew the person beside him into his arms.
“It seems children are this noisy after all. It is only right that you don’t like them—”
Saying it, his voice trailed off. He leaned against that stone, and gently closed his eyes.
The two small children quarreled on until halfway through — and suddenly noticed the stillness all around them. They exchanged a look, and crept over together. But the man never opened his eyes again.
His face was very peaceful — not even the pine needles and their load of snow, falling from above, could disturb him.
He never got to brush the snow from the young woman’s hair again. The snowflakes carried on the wind fell softly, slowly turning both his and her hair white.