Chapter 145 — Meeting
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 7
Little Grey nodded at once, then looked toward Taotie; the anger on its monkey face gradually faded, replaced by a look that was unfamiliar, yet tinged with warmth. It watched Taotie licking the bone for a while, then cautiously edged closer, slowly reaching out a hand, as though wanting to touch Taotie's hideous head. Taotie whipped its ferocious head around and gave a wary, low growl; Little Grey immediately sprang back, but after a moment it gave two soft cheeps and approached once more. Taotie's attention, too, seemed for the moment to have left the bone and settled on Little Grey.
After a moment, Little Grey's hand reached out again. Taotie did not move, but all four eyes were fixed on Little Grey's hand, and both Ming Li and the youth kept silent—the youth especially, a strange light in his eyes as he quietly watched this exchange between the two strange beasts.
Little Grey's hand touched Taotie's head and stroked it gently. Taotie gave a low rumble or two from its throat, but offered no further objection, its attention returning to the meaty bone before it. Little Grey then slowly drew close to the beast's side and gently stroked its body, a look of delight spreading over its monkey face.
Ming Li slowly lowered his head. He vaguely recalled that many years ago, on Great Bamboo Peak, Little Grey and Big Yellow had grown close in just this way. Time flowed like water—and Little Grey, it turned out, still remembered those days...
The youth suddenly broke the silence, a faint smile in his voice: "Who'd have thought these two would take to each other so? Wouldn't you say?"
Ming Li glanced at Little Grey and Taotie, a trace of warmth in his own eyes as well. "Indeed," he said.
The youth turned back, added a slender twig to the fire, and fell silent again. After a long while he suddenly laughed. "This Taotie has followed me more years than I can count. I always thought I was the one looking after it—only today do I realize it's been the happier of the two of us." The smile on his face seemed to carry a faint bitterness. "Full belly or not, it isn't even of your kind, and yet your monkey here is willing to be its friend."
Ming Li raised his eyes to the youth and saw his features bleak and desolate, as though cloaked in an indescribable loneliness. "If you're lonely," he said mildly, "just go find yourself a friend."
The youth gave a cold snort, proud and disdainful. "In all this wide world, who is worthy to be my friend—and who would dare?"
Ming Li frowned. The youth's arrogance was so extravagant it was almost absurd, and it grated on him. Yet then he saw the youth's face darken, as though something had come back to him, and heard him murmur low: "And yet... there was once someone I truly believed in..."
Ming Li watched him through the leaping flames. "And?" he said calmly.
The youth's face went cold at once, and he laughed grimly. "Later I found out she had been deceiving me all along. And worse—she brought me to utter ruin, nearly beyond saving!"
Ming Li said nothing. From the youth's expression, memories long buried rose unbidden—a decade-old wound stirring again, and the face of that kindly old monk seemed once more to appear before his eyes...
He shook his head sharply, but his fingers clenched, and the twig he had been adding to the fire gave a faint rasping crack and crumbled to powder, scattering across the ground.
The youth glanced at his hand. "So you have sorrows of that kind as well?" he said suddenly.
Ming Li's face darkened, and he did not answer. The youth watched him, a flickering light in his eyes, then said abruptly, "If you were to die right now—are there any wishes left in your heart?"