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Daozhang once told her that evil was not inherent, that it was impermanent, that it was like a shadow.
“Where shadow is born when something blocks the path of the light,” Daozhang explained gently, apologizing that he couldn’t think of an example that was more appropriate for someone without sight at that moment, “evil is born of different circumstances that hinder the goodness of a person.”
Daozhang might not know but A-Qing could see and what he meant was clear to her. Daozhang lived by his words, and A-Qing was a witness to it. Daozhang was patient, generous, compassionate. Daozhang was simply speaking his truth. But A-Qing would take any chance she could get to make him understand, so she answered, “The shadow follows you.”
A-Qing hoped that Daozhang would get what she was hinting at. Having tried to warn him so many times, she was sure he had an idea about what she was saying. Daozhang, however, only smiled like he always did, frustrating A-Qing to no end. A-Qing couldn’t tell him the ugly things she’d seen because she was lying to him about being blind. If Daozhang learned about her deception, she might lose him and be left alone again, and she didn’t want that to happen.
If only what she truly feared were as simple as that.
To go back to living in the streets—she wouldn’t complain if she had to. To part with Daozhang no matter how much she liked him—it would pain her, but she would do so if needed. Only A-Qing couldn’t and shouldn’t part with Daozhang, not when that filthy bastard who kept clinging to him continued to exist. A-Qing’s worst fear was Daozhang losing his trust in her and putting more confidence in that piece of shit more than he was already doing.
Daozhang was already caught in a net. If she were gone, there would be no one left to stop him from walking straight into the demon’s den.
The thought disgusted A-Qing more than the molesters who kept trying to touch her or even the presence of that rotten scoundrel whenever he came to pester Daozhang.
If evil was like a shadow, then she had seen it. She kept seeing it. And she despised it.
It followed Daozhang around.
It was a poisoned dagger hiding behind a smile.
It was a pair of sharp eyes focused on Daozhang’s old scars.
It was a fanged mouth aiming to make Daozhang bleed at any chance.
It was a deranged fiend deceiving and toying with Daozhang.
It was a snake hiding in the grass she couldn’t beat, knowing that it would undoubtedly bite them once disturbed.
If evil was like a shadow, then they needed the sun so bright to chase it away from Daozhang.
The hope for such a light came in the form of a Daoist cultivator clad in black robes with billowy sleeves that fluttered with the wind, a sword on his back and a horsetail whisk in his arm. How he carried and conducted himself reminded her of Daozhang when they first met. Only the black-robed cultivator held himself taller and seemed a lot colder and more aloof than Daozhang.
The way the cultivator’s face turned ashen once he saw the human scum told A-Qing of the repugnance he seemed to have at the mere fact that he was living under the same sky as that bastard.
His voice became numbingly frosty when he called the foul horseshit by name.
“Xue Yang.”
The cultivator looked and sounded like he was ready to flay that son of a bitch alive.
In her hiding place, making herself even smaller, A-Qing watched the confrontation with bated breath.
Before she and Daozhang found their way to the deserted village where they settled, A-Qing followed him night-hunt after night-hunt. Even in his blindness, Daozhang was graceful, elegant, and a master of the sword. When he exorcised or slew, he did it in a way that seemed like it was almost sacred.
The man was definitely someone Daozhang knew well.
A-Qing could almost imagine that the black-robed cultivator was Daozhang.
Except there was no reverence with how the cultivator approached his opponent.
It was pure rage.
The clangs of blade against blade echoed in her ears.
The cultivator’s attacks were ferocious and powerful, each one stronger than before, fueled by fury at Xue Yang’s words.
In a few moves, the cultivator had struck and wounded Xue Yang several times.
A-Qing thought he definitely would have killed Xue Yang with the first strikes if he wasn’t desperately seeking answers.
It was dangerous.
Xue Yang was shrewd and good with words, whether for deception or to use the truth to his advantage. A-Qing knew this because they were the same, even if she didn’t want to acknowledge it, no matter how much she hated to be compared with that filth of the earth. She had observed and lived with him long enough that she couldn’t deny it.
Xue Yang would fight poison with a different poison.
That was how they survived their destitute lives, after all.
Looting a burning house.
Picking at the scabs and old scars of other people.
Xue Yang went for bandaged wounds that had just dried and viciously peeled the crusted bandages until the wounds were gaping and bleeding again.
That was how the black-robed cultivator—Daozhang’s friend—lost the upper hand.
A-Qing wouldn’t have been able to warn him even if she wanted to.
Knowing that she was helpless, she stayed silent and unmoving, her hands tight around the bamboo pole. One of them needed to survive to take Daozhang away from the horrible demon who wanted to drag him through dirt and taint him. Daozhang’s friend would understand her.
Her eyes grew hot and became watery as she continued to watch and listen.
Her eyelids trembled and closed for a moment in terror even when she refused to blink as Xue Yang’s sword flew into the cultivator’s mouth and ripped his tongue out. Warm blood hit her face and stung her eyes. She tasted iron on her lips and tongue.
A-Qing was paralyzed and as still as the dead when Daozhang appeared, guided only by his sword, and plunged his blade unknowingly through his own friend’s heart.
“He is beautiful,” she remembered the black-robed cultivator telling her earlier, his words full of reverence. “On his sword are engravings of patterns of frost.”
The hope for light so bright was gone in a breath of time, as though the worthless snake that was Xue Yang, with his wicked tricks, transformed into a dragon and ate the ball of fire in the sky and never spat it out.
Everything was cast in shadow.
A-Qing wondered if that was how it felt to be a ghost. Invisible. Powerless. An unwilling witness to the atrocities of the world. Save for the hot tears wetting her cheeks, at that moment, she felt like a being without a body, lost, and more useless than the lowest of wandering ghosts.
The chill that ran through her body reminded her of the cold, windy night by the stove when she begged Daozhang to tell her a story.
“He is a man of great nobility, honesty, and virtue,” she recalled Daozhang saying when she asked about his best friend he used to night-hunt with.
The best friend who lost his entire monastery and was blinded simply because Xue Yang realized how important the man was to Daozhang.
The best friend Daozhang dug his eyes out for and lost for what Xue Yang had done.
The best friend who was searching for Daozhang, only to die by Daozhang’s own hands for Xue Yang’s amusement that was as fickle and ephemeral as a whim.
Kicked down and desecrated, the dead was left exposed to the elements, the eyes that were once Daozhang’s wide open but unseeing.
The filth-eating scum Xue Yang liked to play family with her and Daozhang. Arguing over buying groceries. Sharing meals with them. Telling unfunny wisecracks. Sleeping under the same roof in the cramped coffin house.
A-Qing did not want to be family with Xue Yang in any way, even if it was just a game or make-believe. Still, she put up with it because she could see that the hoodlum’s presence helped take Daozhang’s mind off his loneliness.
Nothing truly bound the three of them together; she and Xue Yang were merely deceiving Daozhang for entirely different reasons. But the death of the cultivator, who could only be the best friend Daozhang spoke of once, seemed to have changed that.
Perhaps, they had become a real family for once, bound by blood.
An odd little family bound by the blood of the black-robed Daozhang staining their hands.