Chapter 99 — Old Friends

Daoist Wild Wolf gave a start, as though coming back to himself, but the fear on his face had not diminished. He glanced at little Wan beside him and stammered, "You don't know him?"

Little Wan nodded. "That's right. This is the first time I've ever seen him—though I think my grandfather seems to know him. Tell me, do you know him? Who is he?"

Daoist Wild Wolf's lips moved, as if he meant to say something, but for some reason he suddenly fell silent again, his eyes fixed straight ahead on the middle-aged man.

Little Wan frowned. She had a feeling that Daoist Wild Wolf's reaction was rather strange—there was fear in it, and now, it seemed, a measure of anger as well!

Zhou Yixuan and the middle-aged man stood side by side at the edge of the old road, gazing out over the wilderness.

A light breeze came, and the white hair at their temples seemed itself to speak of the years gone by and the vicissitudes of the mortal world.

"It's been many years since we last met, hasn't it?" the middle-aged man said quietly.

Zhou Yixuan gazed into the distance, his expression complex. Only after a long while did he say, "Several decades, I'd say."

The man smiled faintly. "Have you been well?"

Zhou Yixuan was silent a long time. "Wandering the ends of the earth, playing at large in the world—I can't say well, and I can't say ill."

The man seemed touched by this. He turned to look at Zhou Yixuan. "Do you still blame me in your heart?"

Zhou Yixuan gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. "You never wronged me. Why would I blame you?"

The man smiled. "In truth, there's nothing so bad about the way you live. An open heart, roaming free beneath heaven—looking back now, that's the life of an immortal. It does justice to the Xuan in your name."

Zhou Yixuan looked at him, then suddenly said, "If you wanted to live a life like mine, what would be so hard about it, old friend?"

The man was startled to hear Zhou Yixuan call him "old friend," but he quickly smiled and looked off into the distance. "I'm not like you," he said slowly.

Zhou Yixuan said evenly, "You are naturally not the same as I am. From the time you were a youth, you set great store by power, and by now, I expect you still cannot let it go."

The man's brows knitted. Deep in his eyes something like anger flickered and was gone—as though no one had ever dared speak to him in such a manner. But he turned and looked at Zhou Yixuan, and saw only a head of white hair and a face far more aged than his own, and suddenly a blankness came over him, and the anger vanished with it.

"How is it you look so old?"

Zhou Yixuan shook his head. "I am old—that is all. You, though, have achieved much in your cultivation; you should not..." Here his face showed some hesitation, but at last he said, "About your daughter—I have heard. You..."

The man's face darkened. Then slowly he shook his head, cutting Zhou Yixuan off, and said abruptly, "When we were young, you once stood at the foot of Huqi Mountain and cast the Heavenly Dipper Divine Reckoning to read my fate. Do you remember?"

Zhou Yixuan was taken aback.

The man lifted his eyes to the sky and said slowly, "I remember it clearly. You were young and full of fire then, and you told me everything to my face—that my fate carried too much baleful energy, that it would bring harm to wife and child, and that without some way to break the curse I would surely lose my wife halfway through life and have no son to carry on my line. And now every word of it has come true." As he spoke, his voice grew bleak.

Zhou Yixuan lowered his head. After a long while he looked up again and said flatly, "We are both men with one foot in the grave now, so I will speak plainly to you as well."

The man seemed faintly surprised. "Say it."

Zhou Yixuan glared at him. "What I said back then was all nonsense, made up to fool you. I have despised fortune-telling and face-reading since I was a boy—why would I have had the patience to learn it? As for that Heavenly Dipper Divine Reckoning, it exists, to be sure, but what do I know of it? So all those words were only spoken to needle you, because I could not stomach that smug look on your face. Do not take them to heart!"

The man's whole frame shook. It seemed he had never expected such words to come out of Zhou Yixuan's mouth. After a long moment he suddenly shook his head and burst out laughing, loud and ringing, until he was bent double—not a trace remained of the majesty with which he had first appeared.

In the distance, Xiaowan and the Wild Wolf Daoist stood staring, dumbstruck.

After a while the man slowly checked his laughter, and his expression gradually returned to its calm and commanding cast. Yet in his eyes now there seemed a few more threads of bitterness.

Zhou Yixuan watched him in silence.

They stood side by side a good while longer. Then Zhou Yixuan said mildly, "Why have you come here?"

The man glanced at him. "Have you not always prided yourself on your cleverness? You tell me."

Zhou Yixuan snorted. "You are going to the Dead Marsh, aren't you?"

The man said leisurely, "That is right—I am going there. What, would you rather not come along and have a look? Old friend?"

Zhou Yixuan curled his lip. "Your reputation is too foul. If I walk beside you, people will wonder. I would rather keep my distance."

The man looked at him, then suddenly laughed in spite of himself. "On this ancient road to the end of the world, to meet an old friend is a rare stroke of fate. We meet today, and who knows when we shall meet again. Take good care of yourself."

Zhou Yixuan snorted. "This old man is living fine and has no wish to die. It is your enemies who outnumber the foxes on Huqi Mountain—save your worry for yourself!"

Xiaowan had waited a long time by the roadside. Then she saw her grandfather and the man coming toward her together, and hurried to meet them, falling in at her grandfather's side. The middle-aged man's gaze passed over her, then settled on the Wild Wolf Daoist behind her.

The Wild Wolf Daoist's expression changed, and slowly he lowered his head.

The man studied him a moment, then said abruptly, "You are the Wild Wolf Daoist who serves at Mingli's side, are you not?"

The fear on the Wild Wolf Daoist's face deepened. He hesitated a moment, then said in a low voice, "Yes."

Standing beside Zhou Yixuan, Xiaowan could not help asking softly, "Grandfather, who is he?"

Before Zhou Yixuan could answer, the middle-aged man—who seemed to have caught even that tiny whisper—turned and said with a smile, "What is this? Does the little girl not know me?"

Xiaowan was startled and shook her head in bewilderment.

The man smiled faintly. "Then you may call me Wan Rengui."

Xiaowan was taken aback.

The man gave Zhou Yixuan a long, deep look, then suddenly swept his sleeve and turned, striding away without a backward glance. With every step, an air of looking down upon the whole world spread slowly outward from him.

Behind him, the others watched that figure make its way along the ancient road toward the Dead Marsh. Then suddenly they heard him sing aloud: "The road to the end of the world has always been long. A child's heart has always been foolish. Sky high and sea broad, eighty thousand leagues, and all the teeming multitudes lie prostrate. Stars by the thousand, the moon at its bright, the blue heaven cold, cold as frost. Laughable, that all things are but straw dogs—who makes the rain fall, who turns the clouds?..."

The song was rough and ancient. It was not sweet or pleasing to the ear, yet within its bleakness there was a grandeur of its own.

The others saw only this: beneath the vast sky, upon the ancient road, with white clouds drifting and the wild waste lying still, that man walked on with his hands behind his back, indescribably proud and untamed.

The song grew fainter. The man had already gone far away.