He reached the gate. But just as the words were about to leave his lips, Shen San suddenly saw that the garden was covered in ice and that snow had drifted over the frozen ground. The medicinal garden was strewn with sickly branches and leaves, all clumped in the mud.
His heart sank. All the warmth evaporated.
Yao-xiong was deeply fastidious. Had he been there, not a single fallen leaf would be lying in the garden. It was clear he’d been gone for a long time. The little garden was abandoned.
Dazed, Shen San stood at the entrance for a while before finally going in with his wine. He searched both inside and out. Everything, even the stone Go set, was covered in a layer of dust—everything but the wind chime, which still rang. All that had happened there might as well have been just a figment of his post-injury imagination.
With a puff of the icy wind, it all scattered like dust.
6
SHEN SAN SETTLED DOWN in the thatched hut. Clumsily, he cleared out the mud and snow in the yard and dusted everything inside the hut clean, then buried his wine jars beneath the plum blossom tree. After the bitter winter, the plum blossoms would bloom. They would carry moonlight within their petals, dusted delicately with frost.
He reinforced the hut with wood and stone, showing every sign that he intended to stay for a long time. Next he carved a sword out of wood, and every morning when the birds started chirping, he practiced with it. He spent his daylight hours hunting and fixing up the garden, and when the sun set, he slept.
Slowly, the ethereal little garden and hut that had seemed fit for an immortal came to seem more and more homely. The once-elegant garden of medicinal herbs was reborn as a vegetable garden. Shen San hung a row of cured meat and dried fruit beneath the wind chime. He brought so much life to the place that even when the chime sounded, it seemed to ring with the fragrance of living.
The only thing he couldn’t bear to touch was the plum blossom tree by the entrance. That, he left to grow as it pleased.
In the blink of an eye, the plum blossoms had bloomed thrice and withered thrice. In the thatched hut, Shen San had played Go against himself for three years.
Shen San had fulfilled his promise, but the one he’d returned for never came back.
Finally, it seemed he couldn’t wait any longer.
One evening, he washed the stone Go set and hung up the board. He put away the cured meat and dried fruit hanging in the window and packed up all the rest of his things before the sky turned dark. It added up to only enough for a small bundle, which he hung from his wooden sword. After hanging that on the door, he blew the lights out early and went to bed. It seemed he was about to go on a long journey.
Just after midnight, when the moon was barely hugging the plum blossom tree’s branches, a black-robed man stepped out from the tree’s shadows. He laid one ice-cold hand against the bundle, then passed through the door as silently as if he were a shadow himself.
It was the hut’s owner, Yao-xiong Wei.
Three years earlier, when Shen San had left the mountain, Wei had followed him the whole time. Wei watched as he traveled great distances and faced constant danger, but also saw him at the height of his glory, his call never going unanswered. Wei had thought he would never come back. But somehow the man really did walk away from all that hustle and bustle and return. As a result, this mountain spirit who was never meant to see the light of day had been left with no choice but to hide himself, hoping Shen San would leave again in disappointment. He never imagined he’d be in hiding for over a thousand days and nights.
But…
Wei’s long sleeves stirred up a light breeze. The highly skilled man, who would startle awake at the drop of a leaf, somehow fell into an even deeper sleep, as though his soul had left his body. Wei gently sat down next to him, the tip of a finger carefully tracing each of his features.
Stroking further downward, Wei’s finger came to rest on the back of Shen San’s hand, which he then cradled in his own. Barely audible, he called out, “Kunlun.”
He had sworn never to meet Kunlun’s reincarnations. He had already trespassed in caring for Shen San for over a month. Those dozens of days spent with him should’ve never happened. He shouldn’t still be greedy for more.
It was just as well that the man had reached the end of his patience. He was finally going to leave.
The next day, as usual, Wei hid in the shadow of the plum blossom tree. He didn’t emerge from his hiding spot until he had seen Shen San leave with his bundle and horse. After leaning against the gate in a daze for some time, feeling a void in his chest as if his heart had been cut out, he unearthed the wine Shen San had buried under the tree.
Perhaps Shen San had thought the wine Wei made wasn’t strong enough; the wine he’d brought back was powerful liquor from the north. When Wei swallowed it, it felt like a fierce blaze had ripped him open from throat to chest. He so rarely traveled around the Mortal Realm that he had never really tasted strong mortal alcohol, and therefore wasn’t aware of his own lack of tolerance. After only a few gulps, he was sliding down the plum blossom tree.
The great weight of an endless lifetime dragged him inexorably downward. Past and present blurred together; he could no longer count the number of times he had endured parting and death all alone. Reflecting on all these memories made his chest burn the same way the alcohol did.
There, beneath the plum blossom tree, Wei fell into a drunken stupor. He lay insensible for three days and three nights. On the fourth morning, when the sunlight stabbed his eyes, he had the sudden sense that something was off. He sat up and found he’d been taken inside the hut.
Just then, someone moved to block the morning light spilling in through the window. Shen San was there, observing him closely, arms crossed in front of his chest. Slowly, he said, “I only brought two jars of wine. How dare you drink and spill an entire jar while I was gone?”
Wei looked up at him in disbelief. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Didn’t you leave…?
Somehow, Shen San seemed to hear his thoughts. “I went to buy salt on the other side of the mountain. The salt jars in the kitchen here were all nearly empty. It’s not like I can make some appear out of thin air like you, Yao-xiong.”