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When Xi Ping moved into the little cottage on Flying Jade Peak on a permanent basis, Zhi Xiu didn’t comment on it and only told Xi Yue to start cooking enough rice for three.
In a way, perhaps this was the way it should have been all along, this return to his teacher’s abode. Not many cultivators were allowed the grace of seeing their parents to the grave, having lost themselves to the wind and the clouds of those spiritual peaks. The freedom of the world was but a temporary sojourn, and in the end, falling leaves would return to their roots.
If his roots in Jinping were now buried beneath stone slabs, at least the reincarnation wood still flourished in one particular spot on the Xuanyin Mountains.
That first night, Zhi Xiu sat him down across the low desk in Zhi Xiu’s private room, passed a decanter of home-brewed wine between them, and poured for his disciple, stopping only when Xi Ping grabbed the whole bottle from his hand instead and spilled it all over himself as he drank straight from the elegant porcelain spout.
“Shiyong,” Zhi Xiu started in a soft voice, but there was nothing to be said, and so, he only watched helplessly as Xi Ping downed that sour wine without a sound of protest.
It suddenly all made sense why it was that the cultivators of old had never once looked back as their spirits ascended.
To be beyond the Eight Sufferings was never an achievable dream, not on this cultivation path. Either one willfully severed all emotions in the way of clarity, or one must hide from the truth lest it come and expose the places beneath the skin where one’s humanity was stored, tearing it open as the verity of the world subsumed every fiber of one’s soul.
“Let it all out,” Zhi Xiu tried again, but Xi Ping no longer had tears to shed.
Instead, he buried himself in his shifu’s lap, dry-eyed and almost preternaturally calm, and let his eyelashes flutter closed as Zhi Xiu began to stroke at his head as if he was still a child, shushing him even as he made no sound.
His mother used to indulge this childish whim, and when he was very, very young, so had Zhou Ying.
Xi Ping told himself that in the Law Breaker, his mother was always by her embroidery, with his father by the bonsai tree in the yard, talking over each other and looking the way he remembered them from years ago, dressed in the fashion of years gone past.
They would never change, as his memories of them remained indelible.
Compared to most people, Xi Ping was still so much more fortunate as he had always been.
“Shifu.” At the sound of Xi Ping’s quiet remark, Zhi Xiu made an acknowledging noise. The fingers carding through his hair did not cease. “How many years, do you think?”
“Hm?”
“Until it all ends.”
There was, he knew, no satisfactory answer. Zhi Xiu sighed, a little impatience showing through. “Shiyong.”
The thing about wisdom and experience was that none of it mattered in the face of grief. Knowing what he knew, Xi Ping still asked, “When will you leave me?”
“Little brat, aren’t I still here?”
It wasn’t an answer, but then again, Xi Ping wasn’t looking for one.
“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”
He could blame it on the wine. He could blame it on the grief.
Zhi Xiu went silent for a long time. The candles in the room flickered; the window to the outside garden was slightly ajar, and on such a warm summer night for this snowy mountain, it was likely that Zhi Xiu had no intention of keeping it closed. Xi Ping cracked open an eye, nuzzling his head deeper into Zhi Xiu’s stomach, and made a pitiable kind of sound until Zhi Xiu patted his head and lifted him without a warning. “I don’t know why I spoil you. Clearly you’re already rotten.”
“Clearly,” Xi Ping readily agreed, and clung on tightly, knowing he would not be dropped.
The night passed without incident, and through it all, Xi Ping found solace only in threading his fingers through his shifu’s long locks as Zhi Xiu succumbed to the pleasure of rest.
He did his best to not think about the eroding spiritual essence in his shifu’s body, an hourglass that even now was pouring through the cracks.
One year.
Two.
Xi Ping’s own room in that cottage lay empty, fastidiously cleaned by a Xi Yue who squinted knowingly at the door to Zhi Xiu’s chamber along the same wall, and Zhi Xiu never made a comment about it either way.
They woke. They trained. They worked. They dined. They disrobed. They slept.
In the darkness, counting the risings and fallings of Zhi Xiu’s chest, their hands interlaced through the night, Xi Ping found some semblance of what it meant to still belong.
Xi Yue still spoke little even now that he could, giving off a terse kind of demeanor to those who did not know him. Of course, when Zhi Xiu talked to him, he made an effort to respond in words, but when it was just him and Xi Ping, the former half-puppet preferred to gesture, sometimes articulately, sometimes wildly, depending on his mood. It made Zhi Xiu laugh whenever he happened upon them in the training yard, even now that Xi Yue was established enough in his swordsmanship that he no longer needed that kind of extensive training, but old habits died hard for a sword cultivator who had dedicated his whole life to this endeavor.
And, well. To two interlopers who had taken to nesting in his private abode.
The halls were filled with Xi Ping’s voice more often than not, and laughter, louder day after day, with only brief interludes to commemorate those who had since departed.
Shifu was still here, wasn’t he?
It was the one truth that Xi Ping knew, the foundation on which he had built this house that was now a home.
Three years into their unspoken arrangement, Xi Ping leaned over one night, pressed his lips against Zhi Xiu’s, and like a ripe fruit bursting after a long summer on the bough, Zhi Xiu yielded.
There were no fireworks. No explosions.
“Ah…” He understood now, the moment they opened up to each other. That was all there was. A gentle stream that would wear away even the hardest of stones.
But for all that Zhi Xiu had been his rock, Zhi Xiu had never been a stone, Xi Ping thought, and kissed his shifu again.
In an afterthought, the words came out of him, diffident for the first time. “Shifu. Shifu, can I?”
The thing about it, about everything he had taken so far, was that Zhi Xiu had never learned to say no to him. Zhi Xiu… there was nothing in Zhi Xiu but boundless love, freed from its intangible confines as the spiritual essence dissolved, and when Xi Ping looked into his shifu’s eyes, a feeling in him rose that had probably always been there, lain dormant until it had germinated into something quite as wonderful as this.
It did not mean Zhi Xiu felt the same. Just because Zhi Xiu never said no…
“Now you ask,” breathed Zhi Xiu against his lips. Their noses brushed, mingling their breaths. “Xi Shiyong, you impossible rascal.”
It did not sound the same as all the other times Zhi Xiu had called his name.
This was more than affection. More than indulgence.
Zhi Xiu’s mouth was warm and inviting, and Xi Ping stepped across the threshold from the cold, easing in. Things had always been easy with this man who had always opened his arms to him.
Like the Xuanyin Mountains, General Zhi meant home.
“Shifu,” he said again, offering everything he still had left.
“Slow down, you brat,” was all Zhi Xiu said, embarrassed and flustered, but the hands on his chest did not push him away, rather yanking him closer, as if the boundary of their roles was as easily traversed as the distance between their bodies on the bed.
And why not?
Xi Ping was a good disciple. A filial son.
Xi Ping could take his time, even when time was scarce.
He kissed Zhi Xiu again.
By year ten, the ailments came more often than Xi Ping would like.
The first few times, Zhi Xiu brushed off Xi Ping’s concern, perhaps a little embarrassed still by the way his flesh was no longer impervious to the changing of the seasons. Xi Ping found it a little endearing how Zhi Xiu pretended to not be bothered by the January cold seeping into the residence through the cracks under the door and between the window and the wall, refusing to do anything more than putting on another layer of inner robes rather than a cloak.
Xi Ping, who had never known how to do any household chores, took care to make sure that the iron braziers were lit.
Of course, it wasn’t as if he was in the habit of doing it all himself.
“I asked Xi Yue to chop more firewood today,” Xi Ping commented absently from his almost permanent position on Zhi Xiu’s lap. “For the kitchen. And collect more coal for your censers.”
Zhi Xiu snorted. “Lazy disciple. Did your arms fall off, and you’re unable to hold an axe?”
“Aren’t I keeping you warm in other ways?” He peered at the stacks of paper on the low desk and yawned. Running a country from the solitude of Flying Jade Peak was an ideal solution only for Zhi Xiu and his two burdens; absolutely no one else, least of all those impatient bastards from the Kaiming Department, wished to communicate with General Zhi exclusively using carrier hawks with the winter blizzard swirling around in this part of Southern Wan. Especially not after the memory of the utter cold spell still remained. Xi Ping shifted so that his face was blocking Zhi Xiu’s view of the report of that year’s imperial examination results, grinning when he spotted Zhi Xiu’s distracted frown. “Shifu, am I hurting you?”
“Are you twelve, Xi Shiyong?” Zhi Xiu complained. He flicked his wrist; a single drop of ink from the weasel-hair brush landed on Xi Ping’s nose. It felt almost like a snowflake had melted into his skin. “Get up if you know your big head is heavy. And it is heavy. What do you store in there? Certainly not any of your shifu’s teaching.”
“I store it all in here.” Xi Ping tapped his own chest smugly. “Where shifu belongs.”
Seeing Zhi Xiu’s face flush a brilliant scarlet was one of his favorite pasttimes these days when Xi Ping did not spend it visiting those people he would begrudgingly call friends through the maze of reincarnation woods sprouting throughout the land.
Zhi Xiu mumbled something, but his words trailed off, all pretenses at working falling away as Xi Ping, no longer content with lounging around waiting for Zhi Xiu’s attention, began to play with the opening of his robes. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Your joints have been aching,” Xi Ping said accusingly. The ink brush clattered onto the low desk, sending ink splashing onto the document. Before Zhi Xiu could scold him, Xi Ping had pushed him all the way back so that Zhi Xiu had no choice but to use his hands to catch himself from falling flat backward, grunting as Xi Ping climbed on top of him, knees pinning on either side of his thighs on the bamboo mat. “Shifu. Lie down.”
“You need another thrashing,” Zhi Xiu attempted, but Xi Ping could see the way his shifu swallowed. Hard. It sent a thrum of pleasure through him to still be able to draw these kinds of reactions from Zhi Xiu. “Don’t think you’re too old now to be whipped.”
“Ooh, I’m so scared,” purred Xi Ping. “It’s been years since I’ve had a proper thrashing from shifu. Not since… hmm… Western Chu?”
With that, he kept one hand on Zhi Xiu’s chest, pinning him down. If Zhi Xiu truly wanted to, Xi Ping reasoned, he could simply reverse their position; for the years and the cruelty of the human body without spiritual essence to halt its deterioration, Zhi Xiu was still a renowned swordsman who could carry Xi Ping on his back even if not one-armed the way he used to before. But Zhi Xiu only groaned quietly, putting one hand over his eyes as Xi Ping impishly loosened his collars, leaning over to press their foreheads against each other, frowning as their skin touched.
Zhi Xiu was warm. “You have a fever,” Xi Ping murmured accusingly, lips against lips.
A sigh. “Just a little cold.”
“Shifu shouldn’t be working if he is ill. Surely the Heaven’s Design Pavilion could pick up the slack. Who knows what they’re all fluttering about for.”
“I’m not at death’s door, Shiyong,” retorted his shizun, and as if noticing the stiffness of Xi Ping’s posture at his words, Zhi Xiu hastily added, “Your Wen-shishu has kindly sent over a prescription. Xi Yue is brewing it for me tonight.”
“It’d be so bitter. He lacks tastebuds.”
“It’s fine.”
“I could make Wen Fei modify the prescription…”
“Don’t be so finicky, Xi-guniang.”
“But Jingzhai!”
Zhi Xiu’s mouth clamped shut and fell open again in succession, his ears reddening. “Preposterous!”
It wasn’t as if it was the first time Xi Ping had dared to breach this barrier, as he had breached others.
It was only the first time he had done it when Zhi Xiu was awake to hear it.
What a delightful shade of pink shifu’s cheeks had turned, almost girlish in its charm. Xi Ping made note of that, and pushed his ink-stained nose against Zhi Xiu’s face.
“Achoo!”
So much for his planned evening activities.
In the end, Xi Ping managed to convince Zhi Xiu to retire early for the day.
True to his prediction, Wen Fei’s prescription was filled with the foulest of ingredients, with the bitterness from the coptis herb that Wen Fei used in profusion tangible in the air even when Xi Ping only took a whiff of the tarry black decoction Xi Yue presented in front of their shifu. The note accompanying the bundle of herbs and roots primly described the benefits of this particular blend, meant to guide qi to the heart and stomach and drain the dampness from the body along with any toxins that might have accumulated, and Xi Ping had never tuned out of something as quickly in his life as from the moment he lay eyes on Wen Fei’s illegible penmanship.
“Absolutely foul,” Xi Ping declared, not daring to give it a taste as he stirred the liquid cautiously, as if it would jump out to eat him at any moment. Zhi Xiu gave him an exasperated look, and Xi Ping’s lips curled into a pout. “Would it have killed him to add some licorice root for flavor?”
Zhi Xiu mumbled something under his breath, clearly embarrassed at whatever the reason was, which Xi Ping only recognized as containing the words “blood pressure,” and reached out for the bowl. “Give it here.”
That would have been too easy and absolutely no fun at all. If common illnesses were now to be a fixture in their lives, then the least his shifu could do was to indulge him in his effort to play the attentive nursemaid. Xi Ping firmly pushed Zhi Xiu against the head of the bed, where a pile of feather-stuffed pillows already occupied much of the space. “Shifu, you rest. Let this disciple repay your tutelage.”
“I still have hands,” Zhi Xiu said, but at that moment, a spoonful of the black medicine, blown upon by Xi Ping a little less than carefully but with extreme enthusiasm, already entered his half-open mouth. “Mmph!”
“I know it is so bitter,” Xi Ping said sympathetically, dodging Zhi Xiu’s instinctive slap to his shoulder. “Careful! I’d spill all over your clothes!”
It wasn’t as if Zhi Xiu’s inner robes were made from fine silk, and it wasn’t that he could not afford new one, but Zhi Xiu’s mild-mannered frugality was difficult to beat, even by the man himself. Somewhat mollified, he settled against the massive pile of pillows, opening his mouth begrudgingly whenever Xi Ping and his overeager spoon arrived.
“I can kiss it sweeter,” Xi Ping suggested when the bowl was near empty. He should have thought about this sooner, but the anxiety that settled in his stomach whenever Zhi Xiu was sick was difficult to ignore even as he would have liked to pretend it was all in jest. Zhi Xiu’s eyes widened, understanding what was about to happen, but it was already too late.
Xi Ping gamely drained the entirety of the bowl and immediately connected their mouths, letting the bitter medicine trickle from his lips to Zhi Xiu’s, who was too stunned to do anything but grip his collar and held them close together lest the medicine drip out onto the sheets.
As far as kisses went, Xi Ping had had better. And he’d had better with Zhi Xiu. But there was something about the way Zhi Xiu’s face was faintly flushed with the pink of fever, the way his eyes were glazed like glass that had spent too long in the furnace that they had spun out of focus, that made this bitter kiss almost irresistible.
He did it again, and again, and the bowl fell soundlessly to the mattress as Xi Ping continued on his mission to cleanse the taste of that medicine from Zhi Xiu’s mouth.
Truth be told.
Truth be told, there was another reason Xi Ping insisted on acting this way around Zhi Xiu, a reason that even he did not want to think about in full details.
It had to do with a certain someone who had once smelled faintly of the scent of bitter herbs, whose long, silken hair dripped through his fingers as Xi Ping perched next to him in his sickbed, tugging at his hand to play only to receive a weak squeeze in return.
Half-lidded eyes. A pale, bloodless mouth, set against yet paler skin.
Too many times had Xi Ping thought he would lose this man to death, not knowing the truth would be far worse than that.
“Go play,” that person said in a raspy voice. A bare brush of wind against thin reeds. “Xiaobao, don’t wait up for me.”
“I’ll always wait for you,” insisted Xi Ping. “I’ll wait for san-ge to get better!”
Once upon a time, Xi Ping had thought that he would have an eternity to care for that person. To nurse him from every cold. To carry him when his legs refused to work. To shelter him from the ravages of his own bones.
Clearly, some things were meant to be just fantasy, and reality had a strange, funny way of making fools out of everyone from the most serious of monks to the most lighthearted of clowns.
That night, Zhi Xiu’s illness took a turn for the worse, with coughs that wracked his body under the thin white sheets.
That night, Xi Ping squeezed his shifu’s hand, pressing kisses against the green veins that rose above the planes of a swordsman’s grip, wishing that Zhi Xiu would squeeze back an acknowledgment.
But the fever rose, and it took Zhi Xiu with it to somewhere Xi Ping could not follow.
How funny, he thought as he changed the cool compress on Zhi Xiu’s forehead.
It was as if there was ever only one story in this world.
After a very tense visit from Wen Fei and some choice words from as close to angry as Xi Ping would allow himself to be, a new prescription was dispensed, and the vigil in their household continued until the fever broke five days later.
The first time Zhi Xiu’s eyes fluttered open after that bout of illness, Xi Ping could not contain the way his heart felt as if it had burst from some unnameable emotion, not quite joy, not quite grief.
As he had always done, Xi Ping chose the only possible course of action, putting one foot in front of the other, and grinned as he kissed Zhi Xiu’s forehead, thankfully cool to the touch and only a little clammy.
“You’re to do no work for the next month,” he loudly commanded. Zhi Xiu, who had barely recovered, only nodded dazedly as he followed Xi Ping’s flittering movements around his bedchamber. “Shifu, you nearly scared me to death.”
The irony of the words was not lost on him. But Xi Ping had always known to choose laughter over tears, and so, he laughed as he swept Zhi Xiu off the bed.
He had delegated the task of airing out the bedchamber to Xi Yue, and in the meantime, Xi Ping had secured Wen Fei’s begrudging acknowledgment that fresh air would do more good than harm to the patient.
And Xi Ping could no longer bear to see Zhi Xiu in that darkened room, barely responsive as his loose hair pooled on the soaked pillow and sheets.
Outside, it was still late afternoon, and the sun was close enough to the horizon that the rays were bright, but not overly warm. The veranda was covered in the gold of ginkgo leaves, and under the shade of an ancient tree, Xi Ping had already prepared a large rattan chair, covered in mounds of blanket and soft pillows, where he deposited his yelping shifu with a flourish.
“You’re very good at this,” Zhi Xiu complained, but he settled comfortably into the nest that Xi Ping had made. The wind played with his hair, sending long locks across the gray robes that Zhi Xiu still hadn’t replaced in years, worn threadbare in some places. Zhi Xiu’s complexion was still wan, but there was a little smile on Zhi Xiu’s thin lips, brightening the pale color of his face a little.“Have you been practicing?”
The smile came naturally as a blooming rose; the thorns pierced his heart where they could not be seen. “Something like that.”
“It’s almost like you were just waiting for your shifu to get old and feeble so you could lord it over me,” Zhi Xiu sighed, but his tone was teasing.
This was good. The fever was almost completely gone.
Zhi Xiu was still here, with him. In the flesh.
Xi Ping adjusted the silk-covered pillow behind Zhi Xiu’s back, thought better of it, and took off his fur cloak to wedge in-between to cushion the impact point. “Shifu says such cruel things to your most filial disciple. One of these days, I’ll run off to marry a chicken as you wish.”
There were laugh lines around Zhi Xiu’s eyes; subtle, faint, but when he smiled now, or sent into a fit of laughter by one of Xi Ping’s ridiculous statements, they crinkled at the corners, as if chronicling the passage of their time together, measured out in only moments like this. Xi Ping could not get enough of Zhi Xiu’s laughter, however weak. It was the most indulgent sound, accompanied by a gentle knock to his forehead. “Is it very filial what you do to me?”
Xi Ping knew he was spoiled. Xi Ping knew he was loved.
He leaned in now, stealing a kiss from Zhi Xiu, satisfied that even now, he could still surprise his shifu and be rewarded with a little yelp that he swallowed almost immediately, slipping in a little tongue until Zhi Xiu positively bloomed around him, allowing this most impudent trespass.
The moment sung a high note, lingering in the air, purer than any music from a qin.
“Brat,” Zhi Xiu said, a little breathless, shivering from what Xi Ping hoped was more than just the brisk wind.
They sank into the chair together, kept warm not by any spiritual essence but by mere human body heat, learning and relearning what it meant to truly exist in this world, as the sky above shifted from a brilliant blue to a muted violet, and finally, the stars emerged.
In the northwest corner, the Tai Sui star shone bright.
When they retired to bed that night, with Xi Yue already settled down in his own room, Xi Ping lifted a lock of Zhi Xiu’s hair to his lips as he had done all those nights before.
There were streaks of silver running through that formerly endless night sky, like a river of stars.
How many pairs of lovers had once sworn to remain until the day their hair had gone snowy white and their teeth loose in their sockets, hand in hand until the grave? Mortal lovers with no cultivation, who declined in the flesh prisons of their bodies, slowly returning to the earth as their cracked veins merged into the interlacing roots of the verdant trees above their tombstones, who ambled along the Yellow Spring Road, parted only by the water of Mengpo and the wheel of reincarnation…
The Eight Sufferings of life crashed over him at once, and with a loud bark of laughter that startled even himself, Xi Ping felt a warm wetness on his cheeks that immediately cooled in the late autumn air.
“What was that?” Zhi Xiu asked, sleepy from the decoction, barely able to sit upright for the exhaustion that must have seeped into his bones from the late hour. It took longer now for Zhi Xiu to recover from a bout of illness when the weather turned, and he favored tisanes of boiled ginger over wine now, prone as he was to the cold. There was still half a bowl cooling on the table in their room, covered by a porcelain lid. Zhi Xiu said earlier that he had had enough, and there it remained. “Shiyong…”
Xi Ping only hummed in response, leaning in to allow his shifu to rest more of his bodyweight against Xi Ping’s chest.
He took another long inhale of the crown of Zhi Xiu’s head, feeling a single moment of glee surfacing at his unfilial gesture, and sighed when Zhi Xiu fell asleep completely, head on Xi Ping’s shoulder. Zhi Xiu’s posture forced his loose white robes apart to reveal a patch of pale collarbone where the marks from their previous nightly activities remained startlingly red even after days, like delicate blooms of camellia in the early spring’s frost.
Colors, like all things in this world, faded. And flowers bowed under the heavy snow, their fragile petals and stems crushed into a lovely translucence in that singular moment before their demise.
Maybe it was enough that there was someone to witness that evanescent beauty before they returned to the earth, as all things but him would be.
The point of it all, knowing what he knew, knowing what was inevitable, smelling the faraway scent of decay emanating from deep within Zhi Xiu’s bones even as Xi Ping cradled his still-firm flesh, was that there was no enjoying an unending feast, only savoring the conclusion of a banquet with one last gulp of wine.
One last smile at the blushing serving girl. One last morsel of lingering sweetness as the guests trickled home and the banquet hall returned to nothing but beams of wood and oiled paper screens depicting the memories of what had once been.
For something to be unending, it would never be complete.
Xi Ping thought he finally felt complete, here, with this man.
The point of it all…
The point of it all, knowing how Zhi Xiu’s eyes looked when they gazed at him from across the training yard, from across the dinner table, from across the low desk, from across the bed, from a mere breath away from his own, from the entangled mess of their limbs intertwined, was that there was no other way to go about it.
The point of it all, Xi Ping thought as he ran a hand through a sleeping Zhi Xiu’s starry hair, was this.