Chapter 100:
Anxieties
“HALF A MONTH AGO,” the monkey yao named Lao-Wu replied. “The king is presently gathering members of the yao race in preparation for war against the heavenly demon.”
Hongjun was stunned into silence; so many things had happened while he’d been left in the dark.
The full story now came to light: Li Jinglong had sent Qiu Yongsi here before the break-ins at the imperial mausoleums to investigate claims of a yaoguai who ate children’s brains. Having cultivated for over three centuries, the macaque Qiu Yongsi found proved an extremely difficult opponent. In the midst of their battle, Qing Xiong had arrived out of nowhere, defeating the macaque and forcing it back into its original form.
Qing Xiong and Qiu Yongsi had conducted a joint interrogation of the macaque and managed to obtain some useful information. When they were done, Qing Xiong informed Qiu Yongsi he was assembling yao that belonged to neither Xie Yu nor the heavenly demon’s faction to assist Li Jinglong in his coming battle against Xie Yu. He’d then quickly made his farewells and departed Luoyang.
When the macaque first came to Luoyang, it had enslaved a young monkey—Lao-Wu, who was in front of them now. As for the sand snake yao, Li Jinglong, Hongjun learned, had freed him on purpose. After departing Dunhuang, Li Jinglong had left Hongjun alone in the bathhouse while he traveled to meet the captive to take care of this matter himself. He released the sand snake yao, instructing him to return to Chang’an and give Xie Yu some important information.
“What information?” Hongjun asked, lost.
“He told Xie Yu the demon seed inside you was volatile, and that you could lose control over it at any time,” Li Jinglong said. “I was hoping to force Xie Yu to accelerate his plans. That way, he’d come for you immediately to reclaim the demonic energy he had so carefully absorbed as the heart demon inside Lu Xu—the demonic energy you stole.”
“But you…” Hongjun trailed off as Li Jinglong shot him a look. He understood at once—Li Jinglong had already planned to seal the demon seed with the heart lamp when he deliberately let slip to Xie Yu that it couldn’t be controlled. Xie Yu had taken the bait and tried to steal the demonic energy from Hongjun in the Zhao Mausoleum. In this regard, Li Jinglong’s plan had been a success: Hongjun had fought him off, and Xie Yu had inadvertently revealed his whereabouts, enabling Li Jinglong to narrow down their suspects to Yang Guozhong.
Hongjun thought back again over everything that had happened. What made Li Jinglong so sure he could seal the demonic energy inside him? Perhaps, he realized, it was that night in Dunhuang, when the ghost king had told them about the seven emotions and six desires. Li Jinglong couldn’t seal Lu Xu—but he could seal Hongjun.
Looking back, it seemed Li Jinglong’s tactics and plans were all interconnected. The corner of Hongjun’s mouth twitched. “You’re way too devious.”
“I just made a few small deductions,” Li Jinglong said humbly. “Hardly worth mentioning.” He turned to the two yao. “Tell us, has there been any unusual activity?”
“A great number of yao arrived in Luoyang,” the sand snake yao answered deferentially, “including Masters… Uh, two gu apes. They’re in the city now.”
Lao-Wu grimaced; he obviously feared the apes. “They’re formidable opponents, Your Majesty. You must be careful.”
According to the conversation Zhao Zilong had overheard, the two apes had left Chang’an to pursue the divine kun, who had escaped after suffering grievous injuries. It seemed the two yaoguai had remained in Luoyang instead of returning directly to An Lushan in Chang’an—though what they were planning here was anyone’s guess.
Li Jinglong mulled this over. “Where are they now?”
“One of them is at Ten Thousand Blooms, a restaurant east of Tianjin Bridge,” the sand snake yao answered. “The other is at House of Peerless Beauty, outside the city.”
As Li Jinglong sank into thought, Hongjun noticed Lao-Wu open and then close his mouth, as if considering whether to say more. He motioned for the monkey yao to speak.
“Has another yao king come to Luoyang?” the monkey yao asked. “A few days ago, I felt a great surge of yao energy, but it was gone before I could locate its source.”
Li Jinglong put the pieces together in an instant—the divine kun had either been captured or was hiding somewhere in Luoyang to nurse his injuries. He told the two yao to continue monitoring the city and left them with instructions to report to him immediately if anything else happened before dismissing them.
He and Hongjun remained in the main hall, Hongjun still replaying Li Jinglong’s labyrinthine maneuvers in his mind as Li Jinglong stood lost in thought. He glanced at Hongjun every now and then, a smile stealing over his face.
“What are you smiling at?” Hongjun asked.
“I’m smiling because you’re finally mine,” Li Jinglong said. “Can’t I be happy about it?”
Hongjun gave him an exasperated look. “Well, what do we do now?”
“You’ve charmed me so thoroughly, I can’t think straight,” Li Jinglong said helplessly. “I’ve turned into an idiot.”
Hongjun grinned back at him. “I’m going out for a walk. Is that okay?” Li Jinglong nodded eagerly and made to get up. “Alone,” Hongjun said. “You can stay here and think.”
Li Jinglong was less than pleased, but even he realized they couldn’t just cling to each other and canoodle all day. Being with Hongjun robbed him of his ability to think critically—when he was here, he only wanted to talk to Hongjun. He said reluctantly, “Watch the time; don’t stay out too late.”
Hongjun leaned in and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I’ll get us some food while I’m out.”
That kiss made steam rise from Li Jinglong’s head like he was a kettle singing on the stove.
Once he’d calmed down, it struck him how comfortable Hongjun was around him now compared to before, when he’d reciprocated Li Jinglong’s affection much more reluctantly. Perhaps it was thanks to that dream, filled with childhood memories of them, that he’d let down his guard. Li Jinglong had the strange feeling they’d been at each other’s side for years, two halves of a loving whole—this was the sort of love he’d been yearning for all his life.
All in all, everything seemed too good to be true—and that made Li Jinglong nervous. He was firstly not yao, and secondly not from a sufficiently respectable family; he wasn’t worthy of Hongjun’s affection. He feared these happy days were ephemeral, like a dream—just as flowers at the peak of their bloom would surely wilt, and the sun would surely set. He worried over the faint sense of foreboding underlying so much of what Hongjun said. And then there was that dream he’d had, in which…
Li Jinglong stewed in his anxieties throughout the afternoon. He didn’t know where Hongjun had gone, and fretted that he’d be abducted by the apes. But the heavenly demon wasn’t in Luoyang, and he really should stop working himself up over nothing. He had cases to solve, details to smooth out, an interconnected series of traps to lay for the apes to step into…
Why wasn’t Hongjun back yet? How long had he been gone? The incense on the tea table was still burning. So little time had passed—so why did it feel like forever?
It was Hongjun’s first time in Luoyang, and he’d left Li Jinglong behind for one simple reason: He wanted to buy Li Jinglong a gift. He’d always envied those romances he’d read in books, of people who found their best beloved and stayed with them until their hair turned white. Granted, love didn’t always end well—the poet Zhuo Wenjun, for example, began her “Ode to White Hair” with the lines, I heard you have another on your mind, so I come to bid you farewell. But if husband and wife shared a love so resilient they never doubted each other’s hearts, there could be nothing better in the world.
Thus Hongjun wanted to give Li Jinglong a love token. Jade and gold were too common, and sword tassels and armor too uncouth; a protective spiritual device, he thought, would make a decent gift. Back at Yaojin Palace, he’d tried his hand at making some trinkets to use on Chong Ming, but most of them ended up failures. He’d never attempted a spiritual device before—he’d have to ask Qiu Yongsi about it after he returned.
There was only one marketplace in Luoyang, which was smaller than both the East and West Markets in Chang’an. As Hongjun strolled around the stalls, his eyes lit on a thumb ring. Li Jinglong was an accomplished archer; a thumb ring was a good idea. He bought one he liked, planning to use it as the mold for a spiritual device he’d make with materials he’d gather later.
He resumed his shopping and came across a set of leather armor crafted in the Hu style. This type of outfit, consisting of several leather bands that wrapped around the left arm and a leather glove for the right, was normally worn by falconers. Hongjun recalled the defined muscles of Li Jinglong’s chest and abdomen and concluded this revealing style of armor was sure to look good on him. He frittered away his money and bought the full set.