Xuanmin reached out and ghosted his hand over the fallen leaves at his feet. Considering he refused to touch even moss without a hemp barrier in between, touching those dried leaves was impossible for him.
Lu Nianqi quietly reached out to poke a fallen leaf himself, but all he got out of it was a muddy finger. He shot a mistrustful glance at Xuanmin’s profile, then wiped his fingers clean on his clothes before standing up. To him, Xuanmin’s actions seemed rather pretentious—flashy and ceremonious but with no real effect. He’d always been mistrustful, and he was at that rebellious age when children thought that most people were either muddleheaded fools or selfish snakes. A snake, like himself. A fool, like his father who’d passed early.
He knew he was heartless. Earlier, he’d shouted for Xuanmin to take him along, but now Lu Nianqi began to think the monk was just full of it.
Glancing at the black-awning boat on the shore, Lu Nianqi decided that—if things came down to it—he would just return to the boat and wait for the fog to clear before heading back to the island.
When he withdrew his gaze, he accidentally met Jiang Shining’s eyes. Lu Nianqi was still a young child, so an inexplicable sense of guilt welled up in him, but that just made his stare more defiant.
However, Jiang Shining swiftly turned his gaze away. He was waiting for Xuanmin to speak.
Xuanmin stood up, lightly dusted off his pristine monk’s robe, and pulled a piece of talisman paper from his lapels.
Not again! Lu Nianqi rolled his eyes inwardly. Was this monk going to use the same trick until the dynasties changed?
Surprisingly, Xuanmin didn’t use the talisman to manipulate anything this time. Instead, he pulled out a fire starter alongside the talisman. Shielding it from the wind, he managed to light a flickering flame despite the damp chill of the snow and fog.
Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi watched in confusion as he used the fire to ignite the talisman. To them, the yellow oil paper was no different from the kind used for funerals. It burned swiftly, curling into a shriveled, charred mass. With a flick of his finger, the curled mass scattered into fine ash that was swept away by the wind.
Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi resembled two quails as they stood with their hands tucked in their sleeves, wide-eyed, watching the ash drift into the woods. Where the ash landed, a row of footprints formed on the muddy ground that had been unmarred moments before.
Unlike typical footprints that sank into the ground, the row of ash-outlined footprints were only shallow imprints on the surface of the mud, as if the owner’s steps had barely grazed the ground.
“Those tracks don’t look like they were made by someone walking,” said Jiang Shining. “They seem more like they were left by someone hanging as they brushed against the ground.”
Lu Nianqi said nothing. He suddenly regretted coming to the island with these people. None of them made a lick of sense.
“What do you mean, hanging as they brushed the ground?” Xue Xian asked. Still at the bottom of the pouch, he felt conflicted. On one hand, he was dying to know what Xuanmin and the others were doing, but on the other hand, he couldn’t bear to leave his golden marble. During this brief conversation, the marble seemed to have grown warmer, even more so than Xuanmin’s body temperature. However, the difference was so minute he couldn’t be sure.
“Bald donkey,” Xue Xian called, still clutching his marble. When Xuanmin didn’t respond, Xue Xian continued to pester him. “Bald donkey. Hey, bald donkey!”
Xuanmin remained silent still.
Xue Xian rolled his eyes and shouted, “Xuanmin! Let’s discuss something!”
“Speak,” he replied.
“You love ripping your hem, right? Let’s make a deal. Instead of ripping your hem, why not do it to this pouch instead? If you rip the opening lengthwise so that it’s a little lower, I can poke my head out while still holding my marble.”
It would be more than a miracle if Xuanmin agreed. One might even think he was possessed.
“You overestimate yourself,” Xuanmin said coldly. “Your flimsy paper neck would rip if you stuck your head out for too long. I don’t perform rites for paper corpses.”
In other words: In your dreams. Get lost.
He stopped wasting his breath on Xue Xian and strode forward, following the footprints. Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi hurried after him.
After sulking for a while in the pouch, Xue Xian reluctantly straightened himself again. By nature, he was always doing as he pleased, and he’d spent his lengthy life without the words “restraint” or “acquiescence” in his vocabulary. It was hard for him to give in, but eventually he stretched his flimsy neck out of the pouch’s entrance. However, since he was still clutching the golden marble, it was a rather taxing position, leaving him on the verge of ripping himself in two.
His eyes were sharp, far beyond what a mortal could see. After a short moment of leaning out, he exclaimed, “There’s something under the tree!”
Xuanmin halted. There was a strangeness to the feng shui of this island, but he couldn’t pinpoint what. It seemed that someone had tampered with it, but he felt no traces of human interference. Aside from the occasional glance at the footprints, he’d placed all his attention on the layout of the woods during their trek and hadn’t been observing the ground.
“Which tree?” Xuanmin asked.
“In front, to the left. The one with a crack in the trunk.”
That was an ancient tree about three yards away from them that looked to have been struck by lightning: A large gash had split its trunk open. However, such trees were quite a common sight in the wild, so that in and of itself wasn’t notable. Xuanmin walked over to it, searching around the roots until he finally spotted a stretch of string almost the same color as the dirt. It seemed to have been roughly snapped into two; one end still bore a knot.
“Huh?” Lu Nianqi picked up the rope. He ignored the dirt on it and examined the knot closely for a moment before frowning. “This looks like the string my family uses to carry our coins.”
“Are you sure?” Jiang Shining asked in surprise. “How can you tell?”
“I was the one who made this knot. I do it differently from most.” Lu Nianqi clumsily held out the knot out. “Look.”
Seeing the mud on it, Xuanmin stepped aside.
Lu Nianqi held it up for them to see, then snatched it back when he remembered something. “But the money in our house was all stolen! How did the string end up here?!”
As soon as Lu Nianqi realized something was wrong, an unidentified object struck him. He was caught off guard; his legs buckled, and he fell to his knees.
A sharp clang followed. He’d landed heavily in his surprise, with no idea what trap he’d triggered. A mechanical whirring rang in his ears, and the ground beneath everyone’s feet suddenly gave way. This unexpected plummet was accompanied by the sound of stone grinding against stone, leaving everyone dazed and disoriented.
During their rapid descent, Xue Xian felt a tiny wisp of respect toward Xuanmin rise within him for the first time. Somehow, that damned bald donkey managed to maintain his balance in midair and even stuck a perfect landing, avoiding a messy tumble on the ground.
Xue Xian wasn’t so lucky. The moment Xuanmin landed, the momentum dragged Xue Xian’s neck—still caught on the pouch opening—sharply downward. Shit shit shit. Damn him and his big mouth. It’s really going to tear!
Xuanmin straightened up in the dark. He had the vague impression that something had just fluttered to the ground.
“Ow…”
“Ugh, my arm is about to rip.”
“What accursed place is this? I’m dizzy from the fall.”
“Master? Master Xuanmin, are you there?”
Having heard Jiang Shining and Lu Nianqi’s tangled wails of pain, Xuanmin grunted in acknowledgment and lit a talisman. By the flickering light of the paper flame, he looked down and met the gaze of a paper head that had fallen to the ground.
It was only the head, and nothing more.