Chapter 11 — The Deep Valley
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 6
Zhang Qingyue climbed the mountain and came to the bamboo grove so familiar to him. Everywhere the slopes were green, tier upon tier, and where the mountain wind passed, the sea of bamboo rose and fell like ocean waves, a magnificent sight that at once broadened his heart.
He drew a deep breath of the fresh mountain air, stretched his limbs, and walked into the grove with his billhook. The place he headed for now was not the same as when he had first come three years ago: it lay in the deepest part of the grove, where the great bamboo stood tall and the wood was all the harder.
A faint morning mist drifted among the trees like gossamer, and on the green leaves flanking the path hung glistening dewdrops, beautiful and translucent.
After a while he found himself in a green ocean. The black-joint bamboo here mostly soared high, their branches and leaves thick, piercing straight into the sky, and light filtered down through the gaps, leaving patches of shadow on the ground. Zhang Qingyue looked this way and that, picked out a large black-joint stalk, took its measure, and raised his blade to cut.
"Thup"—a sudden muffled knock, and Zhang Qingyue felt a stab of pain at his brow: something had struck him on the forehead. He looked down and saw a pine cone rolling on the ground. Black-joint bamboo grew all around here, and bamboo shoots there were in plenty, but pine cones there were certainly none.
He thought for a moment, and a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. He looked about and called out loudly, "Senior sister, is that you?"
His voice carried far through the grove, but for a long while no one answered. Zhang Qingyue knew his senior sister was mischievous by nature and loved to tease, and he was about to call again when suddenly his brow smarted once more—a sharp pain, for another pine cone had struck him—and from overhead came a shrill chattering, "Chee chee chee chee!"
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Zhang Qingyue looked up and saw that a grey-furred monkey had at some point climbed onto the black-joint bamboo. It clutched several pine cones in its paws, its tail hooked over a branch so that it hung upside down, and it screeched with laughter, "Chee chee chee chee," looking thoroughly delighted at his misfortune.
Zhang Qingyue was dumbfounded. In three years he had never seen a monkey in the bamboo grove, and Mount Dazhu was almost entirely bamboo, save for a wild stand of pines and cypresses in a deep ravine on the shaded side. The monkey must live there, he supposed; how it had come up the mountain today, he could not guess.
Mount Dazhu was steep and perilous. Though it did not overtop the clouds as Jietian Peak did, it still pierced into the sea of cloud, and from its foot upward there was scarcely a path to climb; most disciples of the Canglan Sect came and went by flight. Zhang Qingyue's cultivation was shallow, and apart from cutting bamboo each day, he had often heard his senior brothers talk: in the deep ravine behind Mount Dazhu, pines and cypresses grew into a wild forest, secluded and unfathomable, seldom trodden by human feet. In years past, an ancestor of the Dazhu Peak lineage had ridden a sword to search that ravine, but it was only primeval forest, with nothing strange about it—only more than a few fierce beasts and venomous insects, which never left the valley, so that through the years all had remained peaceful.
As he mused, he saw the monkey lift a paw, and his heart skipped; he dodged aside at once, and sure enough another pine cone came smashing down—had he not dodged, he would have suffered again.
Seeing him slip away, the grey monkey gave two sharp cries, its face creased with anger, as though it blamed Zhang Qingyue for dodging when he should not have.