Chapter 91: Waking and Sleeping 20.2

Wei Wuxian plucked like a man possessed, insatiable, until the seedpods were heaped so high upon the boat there was scarcely room for a foot, and the three of them sat hemmed in by little hills of green. He tore the green husks open, and there, tucked in their fluffy brown coats, lay the tender pale kernels; he dug them out one by one, peeled them one by one, and the lotus seeds within were snow-white and delicate, sweet and crisp on the tongue, their hearts a watery, pale green that held not the least bitterness. Wen Ning sat at the prow shelling without pause; Lan Wangji peeled two for himself, ate them, and stopped, and when Wen Ning held out the seeds he had shelled, he shook his head and bid him give them to Wei Wuxian. Wei Wuxian polished off a whole boatload alone, and they drifted on with the current another hour or two before they reached the docks of Yunping City.

The shallows by the dock were crowded with little fishing boats; women had gathered on the stone steps at the waterline to beat their washing, and a few bare-shouldered, wheat-skinned youths swam and dived along the river, when all at once they saw a ferry come drifting leisurely in. The one at the stern kept his head bowed, but the two young men amidships were both of striking appearance. The white-robed man seated foremost was plain as snow, his bearing remote from the dust of the world, and the grinning young fellow beside him was a remarkably pretty, fair-faced youth besides; such figures were a rare sight in ordinary days, and not a soul could help rounding their eyes and staring hard. The boys swimming in the river gathered round like so many fish, seven or eight heads bobbing at the ferry's side. Wei Wuxian said, 'A question, if I may. Is this Yunping City?'

A girl washing clothes by the river answered, coloring, 'This is Yunping City.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'We're here, then. Ashore we go.'

The ferry came alongside, and Lan Wangji rose first, stepped up onto the bank, and turned back to draw Wei Wuxian up after him. The two of them were both on the dock, but Wen Ning still stood stranded on the boat, unable to take a step; the swimming boys, seeing his ghastly pallor and the strange markings along his neck and cheek, his head bowed and his lips silent, his whole aspect so peculiar, felt no fear at all but only amusement, and a dozen hands seized the gunwale and rocked it without cease, until Wen Ning could scarcely keep his feet. Wei Wuxian glanced back and called, 'Hey! What's this, leave him be.'

Wen Ning said hurriedly, 'Young Master, I can't get down.'

Even as he begged for help, two more boys slapped at the water to splash him. Wen Ning gave a rueful, helpless smile. Had this pack of boys only known that the 'person' they were jostling about could, with no effort and his bare hands, tear them into bloody scraps and grind even the splinters of their bones to powder, they would never have dared their fun. Wei Wuxian flung the last few seedpods toward them and cried, 'Catch!' At once the boys broke and scattered, scrambling after the pods, and only then did Wen Ning leap ashore in a graceless tumble, brushing down the dripping hem of his robe.

Reckoned against the whole of Yunmeng, Yunping City was no small place, and a thriving one at that; when the three of them passed into it, the road ran thick with comings and goings, and the shopfronts dazzled the eye. Wen Ning had no love for crowded places, and after a while he quietly slipped away again. Wei Wuxian asked his way along by the address he held in memory, but when at last they found the spot they sought, and the two of them had made certain of what stood before them, both were left faintly taken aback.

Gazing at the building before him, splendid beyond the common run and busy with incense, Wei Wuxian said, 'This is... Guanyin Temple?'

Lan Wangji said, 'Mm.'

Jin Guangyao was hardly the pious, prayerful sort. The two exchanged a glance and together threaded through the unbroken stream of worshippers, stepped over the high threshold, and passed into the temple. It was a temple of three courts, with curling incense everywhere and the steady knocking of the wooden fish; to walk the whole round of it took no great while, and the last hall was the Hall of the Bodhisattva Guanyin. They had stood at its door only a moment when a monk approached with palms pressed together to make his bow, and they returned it; Wei Wuxian traded a few pleasantries and asked, as if in passing, 'An ordinary temple is built up in the mountains. One set in the middle of a city is a rare thing.'

The monk said with a smile, 'The people of a city toil and rush from dawn to dusk. Do they not have all the more need of such a Guanyin Temple, to pray for blessing and to seek a stillness within?'

Wei Wuxian smiled as well. 'And all this clamor of crowds, will it not disturb the Bodhisattva Guanyin?'

The monk said, 'The Bodhisattva delivers all living things from suffering. How should she be disturbed by men?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'And in this temple, it is Guanyin alone who is worshipped?'

The monk said, 'Just so.'

The two of them made a few circuits of the Guanyin Temple, and having taken its measure in their minds, left it; then Wei Wuxian drew Lan Wangji into a side alley, picked up a twig, scratched a few square formations into the dirt, and tossed it aside. 'Jin Guangyao,' he said, 'works on a grand scale.'

Lan Wangji took up the twig he had thrown down and added a few strokes to the diagram, until the shape grew plainer and plainer, and there it was, unmistakable: a bird's-eye view of the Guanyin shrine they had just left. Wei Wuxian took the twig back from his hand. 'There's a great array inside this Guanyin Temple,' he said. 'Something is being pressed down beneath it.' He tapped one point. 'The array's a little intricate, and well safeguarded too, but break this Array Core and whatever's pinned down will come out.'

Lan Wangji rose to his feet. 'We break it at night, when no one is about. First find a place to rest and recover, then we plan.'

There was no telling how formidable the Evil Spirits sealed within the Guanyin Temple might be, and so they could hardly act rashly by daylight, when the place was thick with people. Wei Wuxian said, 'No knowing how long it'll take to clear out whatever's in this Guanyin Temple — will there still be time to reach Lanling? Won't it set our schedule back?'

Lan Wangji said, 'Your condition is uncertain. You must not force yourself.'

In that battle at the Burial Mounds Wei Wuxian had spent too much of his strength and spirit alike, held taut in mind and body for a long stretch of hours, and only hours ago Jiang Cheng had goaded him into a fury that nearly set the blood running from his seven orifices, and it had taken him a good while to come round. He felt no real harm in himself now, yet if some flaw lay undiscovered, and he forced himself on to Lanling by sheer will, there was no guarantee that disaster would not strike at the critical moment and ruin everything instead. And these two days had drained more than him alone; Lan Wangji had not had a moment's quiet either. Even granting that he himself needed no rest, he thought, Lan Wangji did. Wei Wuxian said, 'All right. Let's find somewhere to stop and rest first, then.'

Wei Wuxian himself could lodge anywhere, with money in a fine room and without it among the roots of a tree. But with Lan Wangji at his side now, he found it utterly past imagining to picture Lan Wangji lying beneath a tree or crammed into some filthy, cluttered little room, and so the two of them walked a long while before settling, at last, on a handsome and imposing inn on the far side of Yunping City. The proprietress came rushing out so warmly she all but dragged them in. The inn was kept in clean and tidy order, the ground floor near full of guests, proof enough that whoever ran it was a capable hand. Most of the staff were women, from a fresh-faced girl of a dozen-odd years sweeping the floor to broad-shouldered, thick-waisted aunties at the stove. Catching sight of two young men stepping in at the door, every one of their eyes lit up, and a girl topping up a guest's water stared at Lan Wangji so hard she let the spout drift off true and never noticed. The proprietress scolded them twice to mind their work, and led Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji upstairs herself to see the rooms, asking as they went, 'And how many rooms will the two young masters be wanting?'

At the first sound of it Wei Wuxian's heart gave a sharp upward lurch, and without a flicker of expression he stole a glance at Lan Wangji.

Two months ago the question would not have needed asking. In that first stretch after he had come back, bent on slipping free as fast as he could, he had thrown every trick he had into making himself loathsome to Lan Wangji, and Lan Wangji had seen as much, and so from then on simply asked for a single room and had done with it; for however many they took, Wei Wuxian would in the end come winding his way into Lan Wangji's bed regardless.

Nor was that all; trusting in the fact that no one then knew who he was, Wei Wuxian had dared every shameless thing under the sun. The very first night down from the Cloud Recesses he had bolted, before anyone could stop him, straight under Lan Wangji's quilt, and when Lan Wangji pushed open the door it was to find him rolling about on the bed; Lan Wangji stood a moment with no expression at all, then went off to the other room he had taken next door. As if Wei Wuxian would let him off so cheaply: he gave chase, clamoring to sleep beside him, and once up on the bed flung one pillow out the window, insisting the two of them share the one, and demanded to know why Lan Wangji lay down still clothed, and set about forcibly stripping him of his robes. In the dead middle of the night he would suddenly thrust his ice-cold feet under Lan Wangji's quilt, seize his hand and press it by force against his own chest, 'Hear my heart beating, Hanguang-jun!' and then fix him with eyes all innocence and tender feeling... until at last a light tap of Lan Wangji's palm left him rigid head to foot, unable to so much as stir, and only then did he fall quiet.

The past did not bear looking back upon; for the first time, Wei Wuxian was appalled at his own shamelessness.

By the third stolen glance Lan Wangji still kept his eyes lowered and said nothing, his expression past reading. Seeing him so slow to answer, Wei Wuxian's thoughts began to run wild: 'Lan Zhan always used to ask for one room, so why has he gone silent today? If he asks for two this time, that means he really does mind. But if he still asks for one, that doesn't prove he doesn't mind either; maybe it's only to look as though he doesn't mind, so that I won't mind...'

Minding this way and minding that, the proprietress resolutely answered her own question for them, ringing and brisk: 'One room, then? One room will do just fine. The rooms here sleep two in comfort. The beds aren't cramped at all.'

He waited a beat; Lan Wangji raised no objection, and only then did Wei Wuxian's heart, and the soles of his feet, stop their floating and come, for the moment, to rest on solid ground.

The proprietress pushed open a door and brought them in, and it was indeed roomy enough. 'Ah,' she said, 'will the two of you be taking a meal? Our cook has a fine hand. Shall I have it brought up to you once it's done?'

Wei Wuxian said, 'We will. Not just now, though, a little later. Send it up at the hour of xu.'

The proprietress agreed wholeheartedly and went out. No sooner had she stepped away than Wei Wuxian, just as he was about to close the door, suddenly hurried out after her. 'Proprietress!'

The proprietress said, 'Was there something the young master needed?'

Wei Wuxian looked as though he had made up his mind to something, and said in a low voice, 'When you bring the meal up tonight, kindly see there's some wine as well... the stronger the better.'

The proprietress laughed. 'But of course!'

Having seen to it, he went back into the room as though nothing were the matter, shut the door, and sat down at the table, where Lan Wangji reached over and laid his fingers to his pulse. Though he knew well enough that this was only an examination of his condition, still, as those two slender, pale fingers traveled up along his wrist and slowly pressed and worked, the other hand Wei Wuxian had resting beneath the table curled its fingers, ever so faintly, in.

Near a quarter of the day had gone into examining him before Lan Wangji said, 'There is no real harm.'

Wei Wuxian stretched lazily and said, smiling, 'Many thanks.' Seeing Lan Wangji's look grave and his brow unquiet, he said, 'Hanguang-jun, are you worried for Zewu-jun? I think Jin Guangyao still holds a measure of respect for Zewu-jun, and Zewu-jun's cultivation is higher than his besides, and he is already on his guard, so he won't necessarily fall for any scheme. Let's crack the array in the Guanyin Temple as fast as we can, and try to be back on the road tomorrow.'

Lan Wangji said, 'There is something strange in this.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'What?'

Lan Wangji said, 'My brother and Jin Guangyao have been on good terms for years. Jin Guangyao is no rash, bloodthirsty man; he never strikes without thought.'

Wei Wuxian said, 'Mm, that's my impression of him too. It isn't that Jin Guangyao can't be ruthless, but where he can avoid making an enemy, he avoids it as far as he can.'

Lan Wangji said, 'This affair at the Burial Mounds was lavish and hasty. It does not match the way he conducts himself.'

Wei Wuxian thought it over and said, 'That gambit at the Burial Mounds, if it came off, it came off, but should it be exposed, it forces the Hundred Cultivation Clans to set themselves against him. The risk is considerable.'

Lan Wangji said, 'There may be more behind it that wants looking into.'