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The nightmare would finally end.
It was the last thought she had before the sky reddened and darkened as the soul-splintering pain from her mouth and eyes flooded through and drowned her. Her body was already numbed when the sword plunged through her heart and tore it apart.
She woke into a darkness that was utterly silent and still. Once she would have feared it to be the beginnings of a nightmare—the gloom filling her with dread at the thought of being alone or not being alone—but it was an emptiness of an entirely different kind. Instead, she found some semblance of solace in what felt like a space of her own, unguarded yet nevertheless safe.
Steel rattled in the distance, shattering the hollowness of time. Two blurry figures shimmered into sight, donned in tall hats and billowy robes, in white and in black. They carried hand fans and chains instead of whisks and swords, but the air about them was familiar—an affable white figure and a stern black figure—reminiscent of the Daoist in white and the Daoist in black. Hope bloomed inside her even when she knew it could not be so. When she tried to call to them, she found herself voiceless and the words stuck on the tip of her tongue. Before she could muster the ability to utter their names, hazy voices broke the silence and echoed in the vastness:
Those you seek have yet to come.
Return if you must.
Death is not the end.
Something viscous filled her eyes and flowed down her cheeks, her vision spiralling into nauseating colours until everything turned red and black once again.
Then, she was falling.
❄
The fall was sudden and bottomless, like a bird lost in circles in the sky going flightless and plummeting headfirst into a deep ravine—into an abyss that was more foggy than dark, as soothing as it was disconcerting. Caught in the quagmire of nothingness, the wingless floundered against the pull, refusing to succumb to its smallness and futility—even when it was much easier to surrender and let the plunge run its course—to accept the liberation that came with the end of its journey.
Birds, after all, knew that true freedom was to have a branch to perch upon and thus, would always seek out their home even if it meant going back to the nebulous forest of tall, identical trees where the living wandered lost.
❄
Someone has to remain.
Someone has to remember.
Death is not the end.
❄
When A-Qing came to, it was winter, and a heavy, viscous blanket laid over her like an impenetrable surface of water under which she lay suppressed and beyond which she could only feel drowning.
There was no vast expanse of blinding whiteness that greeted her as it used to when it snowed in winters past: the world around her was covered in a dense and seemingly indispersible fog; the light she once took for granted was a mere memory from a life long gone—a vain dream.
It was the winds that told her about it instead, with their muted howls as they blew through her form and brought along a wall of falling snow. The cold sheared through her like shards as she lay motionless on the freezing stone, and flakes fell upon her until she was nearly buried under the crisp, powdery mass. Still dressed in her old summer robes, with the fabric thin and the layers not enough, it was easy for the frost to start nipping at her skin and biting at her flesh, beginning with her nose and mouth and then with her hands and feet. The piercing and burning feeling came, followed by a sense of numbness, but there was nothing tangible about her through which the frost could seep, and harden and disintegrate.
Xue Yang did not bother with her corpse, unlike what the bastard did with everyone else.
It was no longer around the stone on which she died and where she was currently bound and suppressed, but whatever happened with it—whether it was disposed of by a passerby when it started to rot or left exposed to the elements and mangled by animals—the modicum of care A-Qing felt was overshadowed by the relief that filled her upon the realisation that she was spared. The relief bordered on gratefulness, not necessarily for her fate, but for death giving her some semblance of power and freedom by according her with choices that were not much of a choice but still more than what she had been accorded to in life and would have been accorded to otherwise by Xue Yang’s hands.
Without a body, however, she was nothing but a disembodied spirit—wispy and gossamer-thin, an anomaly on the mortal plane, suppressed on ghostless days.
Robbed of sight and speech and unable to move as she waited for the suppression to pass, she relied on the winds, on the sounds they brought her way. She quickly picked up the signals for time: the distant crows of roosters that heralded morning; the people finding themselves lost in the vicinity of the empty town, for no soul would dare get near, let alone enter the gates past dusk; the veering and calming of winds that heralded night.
When the winds became quiet, and the snow dulled the echoes and muffled the sounds, A-Qing learned to truly hear.
The ensuing silence lent her a newfound clarity amidst the surrounding fog, away from the affairs of the material world, and allowed her to sense fellow spirits tethered to the yin plane—both the disembodied and those trapped in their own bodies: to see them without sight and to speak to them without a tongue.
Yet, among the swarm of earthbound spirits, there was no trace of Daoist Xiao.
A-Qing already knew in her heart of hearts. The moment Daoist Xiao fell to his knees was etched on her soul: the way he folded in upon himself, the piercing wail from the otherwise sonorous voice, his spirit shattering even before he slit his own throat.
When the winds picked up again, even with the snow dampening all odours of life in what should have been an anosmic season, the news she received from the direction of the coffin house filled her with hope and dread.
❄
Ghostless days seemed to stretch to forever and then were gone in a breath of time.
A-Qing had been listening for Xue Yang: for a pattern of his movements, when he would come and go for business, for errands, or for his entertainment. Every so often, Xue Yang would speak outside his deranged laughter and smirks, his unused voice coarse when he hurled threats and insults at the fierce corpse of Daoist Song or told it unsolicited stories and nonsense to pass the idle time he had on his hands. His travels were frequent but usually brief; the sporadic windows between ghostless days gave her not much of a chance to get near the coffin house without being noticed. Xue Yang would return reeking of blood and corpse powder, and more often with paper, brushes, and inksticks than food or medicine—with the exception of sweets, of which the wrappers A-Qing could always hear crinkling.
Throughout winter and spring and summer and autumn, between periods of suppression, A-Qing took it upon herself to drive everyone who wandered into the town—lost travellers and well-meaning cultivators alike—away from the oppressing miasma of yin energy and Xue Yang’s tricks. She was always ready to slink from and into a corner she knew was hidden from view with the agility of someone whose survival had always been contingent on her stealthiness, on walking on the verges. Before she knew it, moons had passed until it was snowing again and the winds were howling, beckoning her towards the coffin house.
She did not have to be reminded.
The air turned putrid that summer, with a stench so unbearable like an animal carcass was left to rot by the roadside. She had an inkling of what it meant and often wondered if she was not making enough efforts to sneak into what she once considered her home for fear of confirming her suspicions.
Xue Yang left in his usual fashion, his footsteps drowned by the myriad noises trapped within and bouncing against the battered stone walls and the steep rock cliffs encompassing and looming over the town. A-Qing waited as she usually did when he left, listening intently for the muffled crows of roosters and feeling for the shifts in the faintest breeze. When hours turned into a day and then into two, she assumed he had needed to travel outside Shudong, perhaps past Yiling and Kuizhou. Maybe—if fate was for once on her side—even beyond Yueyang.
Having wasted more than enough time, A-Qing found her way through the gates and into the courtyard of the coffin house. She had kept her steps light and barely disturbed the snow so as not to leave any traces, but as she came to a halt some ways before the doorway, she let her feet touch the earth to ground herself, dipping into the cold as the snow rose up to meet her. The pungent smell had turned worse the closer she came; there was no mistaking the atrocities that were waiting beyond the threshold.
Then, she sensed it: an imposing figure some ways behind and high above her, like a vulture perched on the eaves of the wall honing in on her as though she had disturbed its peace and it was now contemplating its retaliation.
Old glazed tiles clacked against each other, followed by a sharp swish and a dull thud on the soft snow that crunched under booted feet as the figure landed on the ground of the courtyard. The way it moved was heavy but steady, quickly regaining any balance it lost and returning to its form with a flick of its sleeves. Its footsteps were louder and noticeably stiffer than Xue Yang’s, yet with a graceful cadence ingrained in the memory of its seemingly iron-hard bones and muscles.
A-Qing mustered up her courage and turned around, alert and intending to listen for the slightest movement. She saw, not quite through her eyes, a blur of a figure, silvery and nearly white against the dark—a vision almost. It stood tall with a deceptively slight build, its billowy sleeves and horsetail whisk fluttering with the wind.
The guardian of the coffin house.
The fierce corpse of Daoist Song.
It was merely a remnant of what he was. Somehow, A-Qing knew that it knew that it was.
That was all she could gather. Daoist Song was before her, but he was silent. She had met many an undead wandering around the town, and the souls confined within them by the resentment were always screaming, begging, wailing. Sometimes, there were coherent murmurs beneath all the chaos, fumbling through the swarm and reaching out.
Like Daoist Xiao, there were no traces of Daoist Song. A-Qing had thought it was because of his entrapment in his earthly body, but facing him now without any means to reach him, she realised that perhaps Xue Yang imprisoned him and did not simply trap him.
The cold breeze sighed through them, grounding and alerting them.
Gusts swept through the grounds; thick layers of snow whirred into flurries, sheets of rice and bamboo paper rustled as they were torn from their frames that were left creaking, wooden boards and beams groaned and cracked against the wind. The slew of noises further drowned the distant, snow-muffled sounds that would not have been discernible to naked ears, yet every dull thump of booted feet, every whisper of movement, every hushed, trembling voice, was crisp and clear to A-Qing.
The fierce corpse turned its head, assessing the direction of the noise, and jumped back on the eaves of the wall. In the past year, A-Qing had never heard the fierce corpse of Daoist Song leave the vicinity of the coffin house, but she still feared for the people entrapped in the fog as the guardian of the coffin house drew its blade, the shell of a swordsman now filled with nought but savage grace.
A second figure blurred into sight next to it, on the side of its sword hand. It was more flimsy and gossamer-thin with a glow that was golden instead of silvery. Although slightly smaller than Daoist Song in stature, it had a similar build and way of carrying itself. A-Qing thought it was almost like seeing Daoist Song in his youth.
The vision of the young Daoist Song turned to look at her and nodded, silently appeasing her worries and beckoning her to go and do what she had set out to do before she lost the chance.
❄
Heavy wood squealed as it slid against heavy wood, discordant against the continuous chimes of the bells and coin charms strung around the coffin.
The stench reeked more than it already did even before the wooden lid made a thunderous fall, the rancidity burning at A-Qing’s eyes until she could feel the blood pouring out of her like tears and coming up her throat like bile.
There was no need to see or touch for her to know what was inside—the coffin and the incantations Xue Yang had painstakingly written over and over did nothing to protect the remains of Daoist Xiao. Despite all the talismans the bastard made with fresh sheets of rice paper and sticks of cinnabar ink, time still collected what was due to it.
If Xue Yang was in a delusion that he could bring back Daoist Xiao, the least A-Qing could do was destroy that delusion and deliver Daoist Xiao from further suffering and humiliation.
Hindered by her violently trembling body, A-Qing fumbled as she sought for the ropes and strings coiled tight around the coffin. Once she had her fingers around them, she grabbed and pulled hard, ripping every bell and talisman and charm she could hear and touch until they fell on the floorboards. The wind scattered them further across the room, the chimes murmuring and the papers whispering, wasted and useless.
A-Qing felt no shred of satisfaction, and she knew no joy would await her to bear witness to the torment of Xue Yang when he was forced to face his own lies, but she would hear, if not see, it up close. She would remain and wait, melting into the shadows and making herself even smaller in the dark.
But before all else, she built a pyre and accorded Daoist Xiao the reverence he deserved.
❄
❄
The footsteps that entered the town were light; there was a subtle lack of rhythm about the pace, caused by a slight limp from injuries that were ignored before they could properly heal. Yet, each footfall was quiet, effortlessly so, even without any intention to conceal it, speaking of the boldness of a man confident in his own skills. There was the clanging of a sword—seething with resentful energy and ever-thirsty—knocking against its scabbard, worn out from years of overuse and neglect, residues of blood slowly and silently corroding the very blade that was wielded to spill it.
Xue Yang’s steps came to a halt. His smirk was audible beneath the loud crack and boom of the wooden gate as he kicked it open and let it bang against the mud-brick wall. The reverberation it made was quickly muffled by the conspiracy of ravens disturbed from their perch on the roof tiles and windowsills, answering with harsh, raucous caws before flying away. Among the cacophony of squawking and flapping, A-Qing could almost hear the moment Xue Yang’s face fell, and it was her turn, albeit weakly, to smirk.
❄
The blaze of the pyre burned long enough to reduce the coffin and corpse of Daoist Xiao into a crumble of remains and smoulder the ceiling and the front walls before the wet, heavy snow fell, muffling the crackling and slowly quenching the fire. A-Qing made out the silvery blur of the fierce corpse of Daoist Song as it stood witness from the courtyard, seemingly aware of and once again faced with its own futility.
It had been a few days since.
The winds had scattered the ashes and crushed bones she was not able to gather into an unused pot. All that was left were the half-dissolved remnants of bells and coins and the sword Daoist Xiao wielded—Shuanghua, she remembered—that had resisted the heat and emerged from the flames searing to the touch, but otherwise unscathed.
Xue Yang was enraged almost to the point of incoherence and tears—if only he still knew how to shed them—seething, his breathing laboured, his teeth grinding. He sent his sword flying about the room, knowing full well who had robbed him of his property, but he was unable to reach her as A-Qing, unyielding, willed her form to shrink into a tiny, inconspicuous corner of the room, holding on tightly to Shuanghua.
There was a harsh, throat-tearing scream before Xue Yang keeled over, making a resounding thud as he fell on his hands and knees. A-Qing stood her ground and listened as Xue Yang began throwing blames at her, at Daoist Song, and even at Daoist Xiao—everyone else but himself and the sublimation of his envy—as he refused to acknowledge the emotions bursting from the hollowness inside him, even if they were for Daoist Xiao. A heart was threatening to be born inside Xue Yang, and he shrank from the unfamiliar feeling—a cavernous and calamitous longing—tearing the skies with his cries as he fought the piercing pain erupting from the cavities of his chest.
The power A-Qing felt over Xue Yang was but for a fleeting moment. Such suffering was dwarfed by his sins and not even a semblance of punishment for everything he did; it did not compare to the ones he inflicted and would never suffice. Nothing would bring back those who had perished by his hands, and all the punishment in the world would not heal the shattered, untraceable soul of Daoist Xiao.
Xue Yang’s long, tearless wails slowly turned into coarse breathing, loud and heavy like his steps as he moved to gather his discarded sword. He muttered hoarsely about a promise and mentioned a man named Chang Ping, blaming Daoist Xiao for what he was about to do with Daoist Song. The words were discernible but unclear, and it woke an inexplicable sense of foreboding in A-Qing. Careful not to make a sound, she emerged from the shadows and crept closer, helplessly watching the silvery figure of the fierce corpse of Daoist Song leave the coffin house for the first time, unable to disobey the commands.
❄
A-Qing built a fire over the frozen soil and drenched it with boiling water to allow her to dig deep enough to bury the pot of Daoist Xiao’s remains along with his sword in the earth, at the approximate location of where he died.
She pulled out the blade once before she laid it to rest. A blurry figure with a golden glow appeared before her, recognising her, much like the young man she saw when Daoist Song drew his sword, only this one was akin to seeing Daoist Xiao in his youth. There were only traces of it left, however, as though it was stretched thin beyond its capacity and, as she reached out to it, torn at the slightest touch.
In a breath of time, it disappeared into the dark.
Shuanghua.
The last of Daoist Xiao.
❄
In the ruins of the empty coffin house, the air was dead and plaintive.
Grief had been a privilege A-Qing could not afford up until that moment. All of a sudden, she was allowed to grieve, and even then, she could no longer shed any tears and utter prayers for the departed.
But A-Qing would still weep and pray for Daoist Xiao—if the heavens were real—and she did, for who would do either after the atrocities Daoist Xiao was tricked into committing, after what happened to his dear friend who only wanted to do right by him, after taking his own life that was not his to take?
A memory of hazy voices echoing in the vast emptiness returned to her.
Death is not the end, she thought, but it was for Daoist Xiao.
Kneeling on the earth where Daoist Xiao was rested, A-Qing wept and prayed, guttural and wordless, bleeding as her means of crying.
The winds of frost joined her and carried her woes and prayers, bellowing and howling a lament for Xiao Xingchen.