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Zhang Chengling visits his shifu and Wen-shu’s graves less often than he’d like. He's not proud of it, but running a sect is hard work and ever since Nianxiang grew into a beloved nightmare of a child, he’s been swamped with watching her too; not an excuse, never an excuse for neglecting them, but he likes to imagine Wen-shu waving him away with a wooden spoon. Go mind the younger generation, shaxiaozi , leave these elders to ourselves! We’ve been here for so long, don’t think we’ll disappear if you can’t see us for a moon or two.
And so, it’s almost a full year before Zhang Chengling can whisk himself away to the mountains again. It’s the tail end of winter; if he leaves now, he can make it in time for Qingming . A-Ying takes Nianxiang from his arms with an exasperated glance as he’s nearing the manor gates; she knows him too well.
“We’ll be fine,” she says firmly. “The disciples are well trained. This is not the first time you have gone, and it will not be the last; I will watch the manor until you return.”
Han Xiuying was a shocking addition to his life, but Zhang Chengling couldn’t help but be grateful for her; she was nearly five years older than Zhang Chengling, and still wise beyond her years. She was the young mistress of a small martial sect until the Heroes Conference when her clan sided with the Gentle Wind Sect and was nearly eradicated. Her father tried to sell her off to regain their status, but during the wedding procession, she escaped from the carriage and fled. She had been on the run for nearly three years before meeting Zhang Chengling by taking his money pouch back for him when it had been stolen.
That day he remembers vividly; the cherry blossoms caught in her hair and the light smirk she’d worn, her rough callouses at odds with her slender fingers as she pressed the pouch into his clumsy hands. The way the sun had caught on the pale curve of her smile, the way she’d laughed when he’d dropped his pouch again in a blundering effort to thank her.
She’d looked at him the same way then as she is now; expectant, warm, one brow raised; and Zhang Chengling flushes just a bit before stumbling out of the gate, made clumsy with love even after twenty years of marriage.
Nianxiang raises a chubby hand as the gates close. He waves back at her, and she scrunches her nose at him before running off, disappearing behind the sturdy wood. He watches the gates for a moment more. The plum blossoms rustle, not yet ready to shed their petals; it’s early spring, and frost still eats at the flowers before the sun melts it away.
The breeze ruffles his hair once- twice, rougher than the first, before Zhang Chengling turns away and sets for Mount Changming.
-
He resented them for a time, afterward. It wasn’t fair- how could they leave him alone? They were everything he had- Xiang-jiejie was gone, Cao-dage was gone, and now shifu and Wen-shu too, had abandoned him- he was alone again.
It had taken moons after his return to Four Seasons Manor to understand. Watching shifu’s disciples train, watching the manor restored; they had left him, yes, but he wasn’t alone. The manor was with him, the disciples left to him , and shifu had trusted him to take care of Four Seasons Manor even after he’d died.
He may have felt alone, but they had trusted him to find the answer himself. A lesson, a task; a final gift of a foundation to build on, from the men who saved his life.
-
The jianghu becomes quiet in the winter, waiting with bated breath for the start of spring. On the cusp of change, everyone seems coiled tightly; yet none let loose, perhaps in fear of breaking the strange unspoken truce agreed upon without a sign from the earth.
Whatever the reason, Zhang Chengling travels undisturbed. Only twice did he stop for reasons other than rest, once for an elderly oxman’s broken cart and once to pick up nuerhong wine. He hefts three jars of it into his pack and the auntie at the stall waves away his silver taels. “Good on you for visiting your elders!” She says, smiling widely before her expression sours and Zhang Chengling retreats half a step. “Some children these days… don’t let your little idiots become disrespectful, and this auntie will call that her payment!”
He sleeps in small towns when he can, avoiding the merchant roads in some long-ingrained habit. He can handle the bandits, of course, but it somehow feels wrong for Zhang Chengling to disregard his shifu’s teachings while on his way to visit him. He feels the jars of nuerhong heavy against his back, and wonders if it is enough; both had been prodigious drinkers, several jars a night if they hadn’t sparred and more if they had.
He picks up two more jars in a strange riverside town; something pungent and unlabeled, enough to make his tongue curdle in his mouth, but he remembers the scent from shifu’s neverending gourd of wine and so he purchases some anyway. Armed with more wine than food, he continues toward Mount Changming, and only breaks one jar on the last leg of the journey by his own clumsiness.
When he reaches the foot of the mountain, he shivers. Always underprepared for the cold; he thinks of big hands wrapping warm furs around his shoulders; the smell of incense, couplets written in neat black ink and hung too high for him to reach.
It is, it seems, perpetually winter on Mount Changming. Frost billows from each breath he takes, and though he ascends quickly, the whirling snow beats him backward, making each step into three.
It takes him three shichen to reach their headstones, and when he finally stumbles to the top, the sun has fallen below the ridgeline and shadows stretch over the mountain, covering its icy slopes in a deep blue hue. Zhang Chengling slows as he nears the site; even the wind calms, as if recognizing the tragedy and paying its respects; too late, too late.
When Zhang Chengling reaches the clearing, he drops to his knees and kowtows. Pressing his forehead to the snow, he says, quietly: “Shifu, Wen-shu; this unfilial disciple has come to visit.”
The words come easily. He remembers the first year when he had knelt in silence for so long the moon had fallen before he had choked out the words. Anger and guilt and despair and so many things in between; now, all he feels is longing, and something he could call love.
Zhang Chengling rises, and lifts his head to see his shifu and Wen-shu for the first time in a year; has to stop, stare, cough out what should not be a laugh. It would not be appropriate for a grown man to laugh at a burial site, much less his master’s.
But shifu and Wen-shu were never men inclined for that sort of thing.
Their headstones match, engraved in Zhang Chengling’s poor calligraphy. Originally set just a hand’s width apart, facing the rising sun and moon; he had wanted them to see every sky together, as they weren’t able to in life. He hadn’t been able to inscribe anything but their names; what could have encompassed them, what words would have sufficed?
Every occasion since then, they had been standing tall against the sunrise, and every time Zhang Chengling came to visit, he’d watched their headstones like he’d watched their broad backs as a child; perpetually trailing behind them, dragging sore feet and tired limbs step by step as those two martial masters seemed to glide over the earth, always teasing and arguing and always so close together, never more than a handspan apart.
Now, somehow, after just a year without Zhang Chengling’s careful observation, shifu had shifted to prop himself against Wen-shu, and Wen-shu had shifted to accommodate him. Their headstones were leaning against each other like drunken men, one supporting the other as they stumble to the rooftop to watch the moon.
Zhang Chengling stares, and does not cry. Shishu told him not to cry even as a shrimpy little kid; if he is a man now, some thirty-odd years later, would that age not make shifu’s advice more relevant?
But, as always, Wen-shu nags back. Just a boy, A-Xu! Aiyoh, I bet even you sour old man cried when you were younger. Chengling, ah, don’t mind your shifu- cry when you want to cry and laugh when you want to laugh. Who will see it but us?
Heeding Wen-shu’s words, Zhang Chengling doesn’t not cry. He simply sits, in silence, kneeling in the snow as the moon rises and the headstones glow, silver and white from the snow and stone. When his knees feel frozen, he rises with the jars of wine; two nuerhong , as one had broken, and two unlabeled, and poured each slowly over their headstones.
Sitting back with the empty jars, he goes to say something, but no words leave his mouth; his throat left as dry as the jars, with nothing to wet it.
This is fine, also. The longer he sits, the more he feels like an intruder. If he squints, he can see the backs of his master and his master’s husband instead of the headstones. Leaning, resting, watching; and now, Zhang Chengling really does feel like a child again, peaking through the slats of the paper door to find shifu and Wen-shu pressed against each other in the courtyard, faces hidden behind curtains of hair and bodies shielded by silk robes. He flushes, rising to his feet and stumbling over himself.
Truly, he thinks, I have always been a child before those two masters; no matter how old I may be, I think I will always be young and stupid in front of them.
He bows again once he has gotten his pack. The moon shines directly above him; if he leaves now, those two will still have half the night to enjoy it in the other’s company.
“This disciple will leave early. I hope,” Zhang Chengling catches himself pausing, unsure. What does he want to say; what can he say, that he hasn’t already said? That they don’t already know?
“I hope,” he starts again, slowly, “shifu and Wen-shu will not be displeased with this disciple if he takes his time before meeting you again. This disciple begs forgiveness.”
The end of his words is met with silence; only the crunching of snow underneath his boots and the rustling of wind; a gentle breeze on the back of his neck, like a hand resting gently upon his skin.
Why are you in such a hurry to become old? Do you think you are as advanced as all that already?
Shaxiaozi, don’t rush. What about your lovely wife? You shouldn’t be in such a rush to make her a widower.
Imagined voices, imagined scolding; still, he smiles, wiping tears with the back of his hand. Destined to be a bad disciple, it seems.
The way down the mountain is quicker; of course, going with the wind is easier than fighting it, but Zhang Chengling feels lighter somehow, not just his pack but something within his blood, his bones. He left something on that mountain, he knows, but it belongs there.
Leaping between the mountain and the plains, the snow melting into long grasses and flowering trees, Zhang Chengling thinks of his disciples, the Four Seasons Manor. He thinks of the screen doors he hasn’t fixed, the plum blossoms flying off their branches and into the courtyard. He thinks of Nianxiang’s sticky, chubby cheeks, and A-Ying’s smile, the sway of her robes as she glides through the orchard, more beautiful than any flower and more lovely than any song.
The riverside village flows past him, the auntie with the nuerhong plies him with another jar but he declines; thinks better of it, and asks her to send it to Four Seasons Manor. “How will I get it there, daren?” she asks archly but waves him away regardless.
He passes the oxman’s cart, slowing briefly again to pay him a silver tael; a request for a jar of wine, and his manor not a shichen away. The oxman takes it- and Zhang Chengling flies home.
The wind picks up as he dashes through the orchard, light and swift; Han Xiuying sees him not a moment sooner than he arrives. “Chengling? Is something wrong? You’re early.” Her hair is done with a simple pin, her robes creased from kneeling in the grass, her basket filled with weeds, a smudge of dirt on her chin.
A petal blows past, then two, then the wind picks up and the sky is filled with pink. Han Xiuying’s gaze follows it, incredulous, and Zhang Chengling sweeps her into a hug, pulling her tight against his chest.
Zhang Chengling returns with the coming of spring, and knows he is glad to be home.