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As Wen Kexing’s limp hands slip away from his own, Zhou Zishu panics. He checks for a pulse and finds nothing. A bit of broken glass held in front of Wen Kexing’s lips shows no mist from breath. He pulls up an eyelid but there’s no recognition there.
He starts to scream.
He screams and screams. Screams so full of pain that they outdistance the screams produced by driving in the Nails. He can’t stop screaming. His voice goes hoarse. He screams for what feels like days and nights, although he has no idea of time in this fortress inside a mountain.
He weeps, too, through the screams; cries until there are no tears left and he feels like a dried husk.
He curses everyone he has ever met or even heard of, starting with Ye Baiyi, not leaving out his own parents, going through his eighty-one brothers from Four Seasons Manor (how dare they die before he does), then the evil people ranging from Prince Jin to the Scorpion King to the ghosts of the Valley. Finally he arrives at Wen Kexing, and curses him the most of all.
“What about that promise of living and dying together?” he screams, though it’s now just a whisper from his ragged voice. “You said you are not afraid to die. Did you think that I am? I had only a few days left, so why didn’t you just die with me? You didn’t want to be alone. Oh, so you think I enjoy being alone?”
He goes on in this mode for days, weeks, maybe months. He has no idea.
He considers ways to off himself. He can’t starve himself to death, because he’s an immortal now, but he still has his sword. A dagger would be simpler to use on himself, but the sword will do in a pinch. It’s too flexible to fall on but surely he can slice his own throat open. He wonders if actual blood will flow in a puddle around his corpse, or if he’s so dried out by now that it would spill out like crimson powder.
There’s also the possibility of traveling down the mountain and eating as much hot food as he can, and drinking gallons and gallons of wine, until that kills him, but going by the example of Ye Baiyi, that method could take months or years and there’s no pleasure left in life without his soulmate. So that’s out.
First things first – before slitting his own throat, he needs to give Wen Kexing’s body a proper sendoff via cremation, and that can’t be done inside the mountain. He has to wait until the spring thaws clear the doorway. For now, he carries Wen Kexing’s body to the coldest room he can find and arranges him there on bags of grain covered by some tatty furs that he found in a storage room. Until the thaw frees the doorway of the armory and allows him to go outside, there’s no chance of burying the body, and he can’t light a pyre indoors for fear of setting the entire mountain on fire. There’s a lot of flammable stuff in here.
In another dusty chamber, he sets up a place for himself to sleep on more grain bags. Fortunately it’s too cold for bugs to take up residence, and the furs help. Although he is not disturbed by the cold, he finds that warmth is pleasant.
He doesn’t get hungry or thirsty at all. He checks on the body now and then, and touches Wen Kexing’s pale cheek; it feels no colder than he feels to himself. Yet still he breathes, while Wen Kexing does not.
He starts reading the scrolls and inspecting the depths of the armory, which goes on for miles inside the mountain. There are chambers dedicated to farming and agriculture, but also to music, arts, poetry, government, and rhetoric. He has nothing but time, so he reads. He finds writing tools and makes his own notes on what interests him. While not that great at painting, he does a bit of that, trying to recall what plum blossoms look like. He painted eighty-one of them, so one might think he could produce a good one even now. He also finds musical instruments: guzhengs, guqins, dizis, drums, pipas. He selects a jade xiao and practices on that. The large stone-hewn chambers are great for sound, providing a rich echo.
Strangely, the armory is not dark – there is light. It comes from skylights of sorts, where ice and snow are packed solidly in openings in the ceilings of the chambers, and let sunlight through. It’s always dim in here, but it lets him know when night comes. These openings, he surmises, are the real windows of heaven.
When he’s thirsty, because it does happen now and then, he digs at the snow packed into the opening to the outside and lets it melt in his hands, and drinks. Sometimes he takes some to Wen Kexing’s body and lets the snowmelt drip onto his lips. It’s a stupid idea anyway, and it doesn’t do anything. What was he expecting, after all?
The spring thaw comes at last. The mound of snow in the entryway thins until he can see light through its translucence. He pushes a way through and finds himself nearly blinded by the bright sunlight. The fresh, cold air is wonderful to breathe. He digs a small doorway and steps outside and gazes at the wonder of the world laid at his feet. Far, far off (he seems to have the vision of an eagle now) he sees Four Seasons Manor. The wreckage is being cleared and the new brothers are hard at work re-building. His heart swells with happiness for Chengling and the emergence of a refreshed Four Seasons Manor. With all the new brothers, and sisters like Gao Xiaolian, Chengling has a chance to grow up well.
Here on the mountain, in little niches beside the snowfall over the entrance, he finds gifts left by, presumably, Chengling and others from Four Seasons Manor: packages of food now frozen, sealed jugs of wine, furs, linens, jade tea sets, sealed tea pouches. Most of it is useless but the thought is very kind. Maybe, he considers, these were left as gifts at a gravesite.
When the armory’s opening widens with the melting of snow, he finds a nice level spot on the side of the mountain and creates a pyre. The tree line is a mile lower on the mountain, so instead of going down there, he finds broken stools and tables inside the armory and uses those. It’s not a very high pyre but that’s no matter. It’s enough to do the job. On the pyre he stretches out the furs left by the entrance. Then he brings out Wen Kexing’s body. It’s not light in weight, but his own qi has grown so powerful that it feels like nothing to carry him. Setting the body on the pyre, he straightens out the deep maroon and blue robes, and places Wen Kexing’s hands on his breast, folded neatly. He finger-combs the white hair until it is reasonably tidy, and lets it fall down the side of the pyre like a waterfall.
Wen Kexing’s face is turned to the sky, but he doesn’t see the sun. His eyes are closed, his hands still, his skin porcelain.
Zhou Zishu leans over and kisses Wen Kexing’s lips for the second and final time. “Shidi,” he murmurs, “zhiji, I failed you. I hope we can meet in another life.” He doesn’t really believe it. Between them, they’ve done too much wrong to get a reward like that. But he can dream of it for another hour while there’s still breath in his body.
He retrieves his sword from inside, and a fire-stick. He lights the pyre, then sits nearby in the snow to watch, sword ready. He figures he’ll know the right moment to deploy it, probably when the body is mostly gone or completely gone. He doesn’t want to go first – he wants to go last. Angry as he was when he first woke to find his soulmate white-haired and nonresponsive, he won’t leave Wen Kexing alone. Not even Wen Kexing’s body. He’s the senior and he is the protector. He will die doing his duty, as a good martial artist should.
The fire burns merrily in the sunlight, wood crackling, the air wavering in the heat. Eventually he even smells singeing hair, that’s how good his senses are by now. He can feel, hear, see, taste every single thing, he can even smell the salt in the tears on his cheeks. Of course he feels the warmth of the sun in the cloudless sky, and wishes Wen Kexing could feel it as well. Wen Kexing was such a hedonist. How he would have enjoyed basking in the sun one final time.
It’s a good day to die.
Zhou Zishu closes his eyes, waiting.
A shadow across the sun rouses him. There’s a roaring sound and a huge wind that catches in his hair and flings it against his cheeks, while his robes flutter and even his drawn sword flexes and sings.
He opens his eyes. It is, as he might have guessed would happen, the old immortal, who is incandescent with rage.
“YOU BRAT ZISHU, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” yells Ye Baiyi, flying in and snatching Wen Kexing from the pyre. He alights nearby and lays the body in the snow and douses the strand of hair that’s on fire with a handful of snow.
Zhou Zishu crawls over to the body and tries to protect it. “Ye-qianbei, I cannot let you desecrate his body!”
Ye Baiyi’s hair has gone completely iron-grey, his eyes surrounded by wrinkles in his formerly smooth skin. His voice is as stentorian as ever, though. He smacks Zhou Zishu out of the way and grabs the shoulders of Wen Kexing’s body and shakes it with vigor. “Wake up, you pathetic idiot! Why are you still sleeping? Why do you never listen when I talk? I'm only the smartest person you've ever met, brat.”
Zhou Zishu nearly has a heart attack on the spot, although his powerful qi, of course, prevents it. All this time, Wen Kexing was merely asleep?
Ye Baiyi is not done yelling. He turns to Zhou Zishu, still shaking Wen Kexing like a rag doll. “I can’t believe you were going to burn him up! Great Buddha, he’s not dead, you stupid fool!”
Helplessly, Zhou Zishu sits in the snow, leaning back on his hands, watching half in horror and half in optimism.
Ye Baiyi is still shaking the body and yelling. “You only paid attention long enough to hear how to save your idiot shixiong and then tuned out when I was telling you how to cultivate your qi together? You should have been awake months ago!”
Zhou Zishu feels sick with hope. “He could have survived?”
Ya Baiyi sneers at him. “You dorks require so much saving.”
Then a miracle happens. Wen Kexing’s eyes open and he coughs delicately. “Ouch,” he says, “would you stop that?”
Ye Baiyi stops shaking him. “There you are,” he says, almost fondly.
Zhou Zishu scrambles over again to shove Ye Baiyi away and rest Wen Kexing’s head in his lap. He blinks away tears and leans over and presses his lips to Wen Kexing’s forehead. “Beloved,” he whispers against Wen Kexing’s skin.
“A-Xu,” says Wen Kexing, voice a little grumbly. “Is there a fire somewhere?”
Ye Baiyi snorts. “Your boyfriend lit a bonfire to warm you when you woke up.”
Wen Kexing smiles. He turns his head against Zhou Zishu’s stomach. “It smells nice. You smell nice. It’s pretty up here.” His eyes fall closed. “I’m just going to rest a little if you don’t mind, a-Xu.”
After this reprieve, Zhou Zishu vows to never mind anything ever again, so long as they are alive and together.
When they repair to the armory for the night, Zhou Zishu won't let Wen Kexing get far from him. Wen Kexing is feeling weak, so it’s easy to convince him to rest in Zhou Zishu’s arms.
“It’ll take a while to get your strength back. You’ll need regular infusions of qi,” says Ye Baiyi. He is cooking some meat over a small fire.
“We’re supposed to eat snow and ice and you do that?” says Wen Kexing. “How rude.”
Ye Baiyi simply grins.
“It’s not that bad, I’ve been doing it for months,” says Zhou Zishu. “We don’t need food. I’ve been wondering, though, what if I pour cold mango juice on a cup of snow? Is that allowed?”
“It’s not a matter of what’s allowed, it’s more a matter of whether you are ready to start decaying,” answers Ye Baiyi, munching on a skewer of meat. “Maybe if it’s cold, it won’t be a problem. I don’t know every detail. When I went through the Six Combined Cultivation Technique, I winged it.”
“Maybe we can pour cold wine on snow?” says Wen Kexing.
“You can try it,” says Ye Baiyi. “Your body will know if it will have a deleterious effect. You’ll feel it in your gut.”
While they watch him eat, Zhou Zishu picks up a scroll and unrolls it. “I found some good poetry, Lao Wen, would you like to hear it?”
Wen Kexing nods even though Ye Baiyi grunts.
“Nobody asked you, old monster,” says Wen Kexing. “You just eat your damn hot food and I’ll listen.”
He leans against Zhou Zishu, resting his head on his shixiong’s shoulder. Zhou Zishu’s voice is gentle and loving.
“The cosmos, though vast,
Is brightly surveyed by the sun and the moon;
The world, though immense,
Approves not villains in Heaven or on Earth.
If your intent is trickery,
Even this life will bring retribution;
If your giving exceeds receiving,
There’s blessing not only in the life hereafter.”
As the night grows long, Zhou Zishu leads Wen Kexing to the bed of grain bags and furs. He can no longer bear to be parted from Wen Kexing, so they sleep tangled together, legs and arms and flowing robes, and wake when late moonlight filters through the opening above.
“I don’t mind ice and snow if it means I can spend eternity with you,” whispers Zhou Zishu.
“Nor do I,” Wen Kexing whispers back. “Hold me tighter.”
Zhou Zishu squeezes him until he squeaks.
“Are you two done flirting over there?” Ye Baiyi yells from the other side of the chamber.
“I totally forgot he was still here,” says Wen Kexing to Zhou Zishu.
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving now,” says Ye Baiyi, strolling over to them. “I want to get an early start.” His sword is already slung over his shoulder. “No longer do I have a taste for this much cold. I think I’ll visit Four Seasons Manor and see if they need some help fixing things up.”
They sit up, cross-legged, and look up at the old immortal.
“They’ll feed you well,” says Zhou Zishu.
“Do you have much time?” asks Wen Kexing.
“Probably not. Don’t worry about me, I had a good run of it. I’m not complaining. Much.”
“Tell Chengling and the others to come for a visit before winter sets in again,” says Zhou Zishu. “Also if you happen upon Prince Qi and Da Wu.”
Ye Baiyi nods. “I doubt I’ll be this way again. Don’t forget my instructions this time.”
The soulmates rise and go to the immortal, dropping to their knees and kowtowing deeply.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” says Zhou Zishu.
“Just let him go,” Wen Kexing stage-whispers. “He’s insufferable enough already.”
Ye Baiyi laughs and then he’s gone.
They stay there on their knees for a long time. “We’ll live together, and when we’re ready, we’ll, you know,” says Zhou Zishu, uncharacteristically unable to spit out the bare truth.
“Yes. When we’re ready, we can descend the mountain and enjoy what time is left,” says Wen Kexing, “and do good deeds for deserving people. Maybe then in the netherworld we will meet up again with those we lost.”
Zhou Zishu nods. Eighty-one brothers. Their parents. Gu Xiang and Cao Weining.
“Do you think they are together?”
Zhou Zishu knows what Wen Kexing means. “Yes,” he says. He puts an arm around his zhiji’s shoulders. “They’re together, their souls are one another’s for eternity and every life to come. You gave her and Weining the charms that Da Wu blessed, didn’t you?”
Wen Kexing nods and sniffles.
“She’s waiting for you. I don’t think she’ll mind waiting a bit longer. She’ll want to hear all the stories of what we did while we lived on the mountain. She is a good girl. There’s blessing not only in the life hereafter.”
If his shidi breaks into tears then, it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone. He holds him instead, and wonders at the beautiful soul nestled in his arms.
The legend grows below the mountain, among the villagers, of the Snow Ghost and the Sky Lord who roam the cold hillsides. Sightings become the stuff of myth: the immortals who are hard to see straight on, but are sometimes visible out of the corner of the eye, watching the intruders who climb the mountain or practice martial arts on the snowy plains below their lair. It is reported that they hold one another’s hands or fly together across the ranges in the sunlight, their robes fluttering, hawks following and frolicking in the down drafts.
When storms rage over the mountain, it is said that the sleet signifies the tears of the Lord longing for his lover before he was re-born, and the thunder is the anger of the Ghost who mourns his murdered sister.
When winter comes and the snow flows down the mountain to blanket the village in softest ermine, some villagers even claim to see the immortal pair walking amongst them, always with their backs turned, walking away. Yet the white-haired one sometimes looks over his shoulder, his eyes dark and wide with sadness.
As it happens, the villagers are being overly dramatic.
“Can you believe they dare to call me the Snow Ghost?” Wen Kexing snorts. “Snow Ghost, my ass.”
Zhou Zishu smiles. Wen Kexing has a way of drawing these smiles out of him now. Zhou Zishu’s cheeks would hurt from so much smiling, except there is no longer any pain to be felt.
“I don’t know, Lao Wen, I can kind of see it.” He runs his fingers through the fine white strands of Wen Kexing’s hair, draping it back over his shoulder and cupping his cheek tenderly. “My pale, cold beauty,” he says. “Pale as snow, cold as ice, pallid as a winter’s sky, like an Ice Mai—“
“If you say Ice Maiden, I will destroy you with extreme prejudice.”
“I was going to say Ice Prince.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Zhou Zishu just smiles. Wen Kexing snuggles deeper into his embrace.
“A-Xu, I’m concentrating,” he says, quietly, meaningfully.
“Good for you,” says Zhou Zishu.
Wen Kexing frowns. “I’m concentrating hard.”
“Okay?”
“Don’t you remember, a-Xu?” Wen Kexing’s voice sounds hurt now.
That won’t do. Zhou Zishu certainly remembers. “It sounds familiar,” he says, still not quite ready to give up the teasing. Consider it payback for all the early teasing that Wen Kexing subjected him to.
“So cruel,” says Wen Kexing.
“Says who?” He turns and slings one leg over Wen Kexing’s lap and sits right down in it, straddling him. He takes Wen Kexing’s dear face into his hands. The skin is cool, as it always is now, but where he touches it turns deliciously warm. “Is that your warning?” he asks, looking into those dark eyes.
“A-Xu,” Wen Kexing whines, looking up at his soulmate. His cheeks are pink. His hands steal to Zhou Zishu’s slim waist. “So mean.”
For the third time in his life, Zhou Zishu kisses his Lao Wen.
“Is this what you wanted?” he asks playfully, drawing back the tiniest bit and bringing their foreheads together.
“This,” Wen Kexing says, “and a lot more.”
“Oh, a lot more, is it? So greedy, Lao Wen.”
“I’m very greedy. I want everything. Do you hear me, a-Xu? Everything.”
“Most assuredly, my Ice Prince. You will get everything, in time,” and he leans forward again and gives Wen Kexing his fourth kiss, of many, many, many kisses to come.
“Now,” insists Wen Kexing.
Zhou Zishu smiles against his lips. “Now? How impatient you are.”
“I think I’ve waited long enough.”
Zhou Zishu kisses him for the fifth time. Oh, who's counting? “Very well, since you insist.”
But first they make sure the Old Monster is nowhere in sight.