Content warning: [1]Depiction of human trafficking, discrimination
Jiang Ling changed back into women’s clothing soon after leaving Yuzhou City. Jiang Ling asked He Xi to braid her hair again, and in light of the styles of the central plains, He Xi only plaited two braids on either side of her head and gathered Jiang Ling’s long hair behind her. The style was simple and elegant.
The two of them followed the public road eastward, riding on one horse while the other horse became their ‘Little Donkey’ and carried their rather light belongings.
Perhaps because she had finally faced He Xi’s feelings, even though she still felt awkward at times, Jiang Ling’s desire to be with He Xi at every moment was far stronger.
Jiang Ling said she was cold and wanted to share a horse with He Xi for warmth. He Xi was, of course, all too happy to see Jiang Ling ‘throwing herself into her arms’ and embraced her, her chin resting lightly on her shoulder, her cheek just behind Jiang Ling’s ear, her eyes heavy-lidded as she relaxed.
He Xi’s cheek brushed past Jiang Ling’s ear with the horse’s movements. Jiang Ling, unable to endure the ticklish sensation, shook her shoulder lightly, “Don’t get so close.”
“Stop moving, I’m resting.” He Xi closed her eyes, “Last night was tiring.”
“…” Jiang Ling knew that He Xi said something like that on purpose. She wanted to ask her if she knew what the word ‘decency’ meant, but swallowed her words back down before they could leave her mouth. Perhaps she really was tired from their prolonged activity. She was also afraid He Xi would start saying even more shameless things. So, all she could do was let He Xi lean against her as she rested.
Jiang Ling traveled along the same path she had three years prior. She reminisced on her fresh-faced excitement when she had just left the mountain, and remembered Miss Chu Yue. That had also been the first time she had seen plainly the cruelty of the world. She felt a melancholy rise up in her heart, “He Xi, let’s go see Miss Chu Yue.”
When He Xi had seen Jiang Ling again in Jiangdu Town, Jiang Ling’s heart had been troubled. As a youth, Jiang Ling had worn her heart on her sleeve, joy, grief, anger, and sadness all written plainly on her face. Chu Yue’s death had been a blow to her. He Xi hugged her tighter, murmuring in agreement.
Jiang Ling steered the horse around, heading back along the road where they had first encountered Chu Yue.
Of course, their detour would delay their arrival by two days, but they would need to wait for Yun Yangzi to receive the letter in any case, so the delay was no major issue.
Jiang Ling scoured through her memories until she found where Chu Yue had been buried. The wooden epitaph had small cracks and patches of moss, the surface already blackened.
With no one to care for the grave, weeds had overtaken it. With no epitaph to mark the site, no one would know anyone was buried here.
Jiang Ling pressed her palms together in prayer, closing her eyes, “Miss Chu, I came to see you.”
He Xi closed her eyes, too. She brought her right hand to her chest and recited a few scriptures silently. Despite being ‘exiled’ from the Cult of Light, He Xi still retained her customs.
Jiang Ling rolled up her sleeves so she could clear away the weeds covering Chu Yue’s grave.
“Do you know this lady?” Just as Jiang Ling was taking care of some weeds, she saw an elderly lady walking toward her. She was the matron of a nearby peasant family, surnamed Hua, and she asked them again if they were the ones who had interred Chu Yue.
Jiang Ling nodded, put down the handful of weeds in her grip, and walked over to her, “We only knew each other by happenstance.”
“Miss Chu Yue has already returned to her home.” Grandma Hua explained, “Three years ago, her family came looking for her and found this grave.”
Grandma Hua came forward and helped Jiang Ling straighten her clothes, “Her father asked me to keep a lookout, to thank her benefactors in his stead.”
Jiang Ling’s nose felt stuffy. She said, choked with emotion: “What kind of benefactor am I…”
Grandma Hua did not know of the loss in Jiang Ling’s heart. She merely saw that the sky was growing dark and offered: “It’s getting late, why don’t you two young ladies come to my home for some rest.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” He Xi tugged on her hand, her palm warming Jiang Ling’s hand.
“You can just call me Grandma Hua.” Grandma Hua led the two of them to her home, “Those bandits back then committed all kinds of wicked deeds. We didn’t dare go outside after dark. Miss Chu’s father said that the one who buried her was probably one of those chivalrous warriors.”
“Putting it that way, they’re also a great help to the common people.” He Xi said.
“Indeed. We’re too remote, so the government’s power doesn’t reach us, and the bandits reigned supreme. All of the young ones have fled, but the elderly left behind could only suffer through it.” Grandma Hua’s face was full of helplessness.
He Xi pressed her face close to Jiang Ling’s and bit her ear: “See, it wasn’t all for nothing.”
Jiang Ling put away her tears. The tips of her ears burned. She shrugged He Xi off, her brows knitting lightly, “We’re in company.” Don’t be so forward.
Grandma Hua lived by herself, for her husband had been killed by the bandits some years ago. She had a daughter who had married a family of Luoyang, so she would only see her when she would come back for a visit. The home was of average size, though quite spacious, and Grandma Hua kept it tidy. She gave them her daughter’s room for them to sleep in.
Grandma Hua, viewing them as the benefactors who had eradicated the bandits, treated them warmly, “Make yourselves at home.” She helped them settle into their room.
“No need to trouble yourself, Grandma Hua, we sisters can sleep together.” He Xi accepted the bundle of bedding from Grandma Hua, “We can take care of everything.”
“Alright, whatever works for you both. It’s cold outside, sleeping together is warmer, too.” Grandma Hua passed her the bedding and said, smiling, “I’d just killed a chicken today, so it’s perfect timing.”
Grandma Hua rolled up her sleeves to start preparing the food. Of her own accord, Jiang Ling went over to lend her a hand.
Once they finished dinner, Jiang Ling talked with Grandma Hua for a while, then went back to the room to rest.
He Xi had already curled up in the blanket. Jiang Ling thought it was a little funny. She sat on the edge of the bed next to the lump, “Going to bed so early?”
“It’s cold, let’s sleep early.”
It was another ploy, but Jiang Ling was not fooled. She completely forgot her own shameless ploy of crying cold to ride on the same horse as He Xi, “A Northern woman like you scared of the cold?”
He Xi rolled over, showing her back to Jiang Ling.
When Jiang Ling crawled under the blanket with her cold body, He Xi was frozen through.
He Xi rubbed the chill from her shoulders, not letting Jiang Ling hug her. Jiang Ling pushed her luck and tightened her grip, pressing her ice-cold body flush against He Xi’s back, “It’s so cold, warm me up.”
He Xi chuckled in spite of herself. When did martial artists like them start fearing the cold? She flipped over and pulled Jiang Ling’s cold form into her arms, her chin resting on her forehead, “How about this? Still cold?”
Jiang Ling’s fingers slid into her clothing, skimming across the tender skin at He Xi’s waist, “We could keep each other warm this way.”
He Xi pressed Jiang Ling’s roaming hands down, scolding: “Not here, just be good and go to sleep.”
Jiang Ling could only obediently withdraw her hands, pouting. She went back to hugging He Xi.
Jiang Ling closed her ideas and started to reflect on when, exactly, she had become so lustful. She laid all the blame on He Xi for constantly teasing her.
“Tell me what you were talking about with Grandma Hua just now.” Evidently, sleep was eluding her at the moment, so He Xi found a topic of conversation.
“Grandma Hua told me about her granddaughter…”
When Grandma Hua spoke of her granddaughter, her face softened considerably. Her granddaughter’s cute mischievousness, sensibility, and cleverness, Grandma Hua recounted them all to Jiang Ling with utmost familiarity.
“What about when you were little?” He Xi thought to herself that, when she first met Jiang Ling, she was already sixteen years old, her hair up in a ponytail. With how she looked back then—her yet-immature face, her plump cheeks, and her loveable pair of dewy eyes—she must have been quite a clever child.
Embarrassed, Jiang Ling buried her face in the crook of He Xi’s neck, “Aside from practicing martial arts, all I did was make trouble with my shixiong. If it wasn’t catching wild game, it was going down the mountain to help the villagers with their work. We even helped that little beanspout’s family with their farming.”
“How would helping the villagers be considered ‘making trouble’?”
“I’d always make a mess of it, to everyone’s amusement. Shifu had to pay a lot in compensation.”
“And your shifu still let you go and help out?” Their master-disciple relationship seemed more like a parent-child relationship. He Xi felt envious.
“Once we learned the ‘trade’, we planted some crops on top of the mountain so we didn’t have to always make the trip down.”
He Xi snorted a laugh, “Are you sure you joined a martial arts school and weren’t hoodwinked by your shifu?”
Jiang Ling pulled away, her brow furrowing. She softly bumped her shoulder with a fist, “That’s called training, train—mn.”
Jiang Ling’s coquettish grumblings were really too adorable; He Xi could not help herself and stoppered Jiang Ling’s rebuttal with her mouth. Jiang Ling’s fist gradually loosened and instead clutched onto He Xi’s clothing.
He Xi only released Jiang Ling when she started gasping for breath.
Jiang Ling would always be left sputtering when it came to kissing. He Xi had gotten a laugh out of it many times.
Jiang Ling’s heartbeat thundered in her chest. She huffed, placing the blame on her, “Ever heard of ‘sauce for the goose?’”
He Xi put on an innocent expression: “Nope, I’m not from the central plains.[2]只许州官放火， 不许百姓点灯：an expression meaning that officials can set fires but the common people can’t light lanterns. Pretty much the opposite of sauce for the goose, but it’s … Continue reading”
By now, they had thoroughly warmed up.
“You really know how to bully me.” Indignant, Jiang Ling bit He Xi’s collarbone, only letting go when she heard He Xi’s hiss of pain, then reached out to caress the pink teeth marks gently, “What about you? Your childhood?”
He Xi endured the ticklish sensation on her collarbone and caught Jiang Ling’s hand so she could not stir up anything more. Her thoughts returned to the days of her childhood, memories she could not bear to recall.
…
“Faster, mutt!” The leader of the human traffickers lashed He Xi on the back with a whip. Her flesh sliced open, blood pouring out. He Xi gasped with pain, her eyes glazed with tears, but she gritted her teeth, not letting them fall.
She was not called He Xi then. She was only addressed as a ‘mutt.’ She had forgotten how she had ended up here, cycling through the hands of human traffickers, living on in these harrowing circumstances.
He Xi’s hands were bound with coarse rope, her wrists rubbed raw. She gritted her teeth, endured the pain, and hobbled along barefooted as she followed the other slaves.
She did not know why these people called her that. Was it because her hair color was different from everyone else’s? The mother of her hazy memories had also had crow-black hair, and she did not think there was anything strange about it. Why, when she came here, did even the slaves look at her strangely and reject her?
At the slave markets, they would be corralled together as they waited to be honored by an employer.
He Xi’s chin was pinched painfully by a rough hand, and she was forced to meet the other’s gaze. It was a man with light brown, curly hair, stubbled on his jaw, and eyes that were, like hers, amber-colored as they reflected her dirtied face within them, “One from the central plains?” The man shook his head, his expression full of disdain, “But the eyes are different.” Like those of his da-ge, who had been so enthralled by a woman of the central plains that he did not even return home.
“Your parents?” The man’s voice was crude and rough; no feeling could be gleaned from it.
He Xi bit her lip. She did not respond with words, but the sorrow in her eyes gave him the answer he wanted.
Those with ambiguous ties to the central plains would not meet good ends, and those who would give birth to such a hybrid creature should just go die a cheap death.
The man tossed out a money pouch, his face filled with an eerie insidiousness, “I’ve bought her life. You can’t sell her to anyone else. Don’t give her any food or water on the road, and when she dies, just leave her to feed the wolves.”
…
“I spent my whole childhood under Luo Zhu’s tutelage.” He Xi stroked Jiang Ling’s head, “That was the happiest part of my childhood.”
Luo Zhu was different from those Xiyu people who rejected people of the central plains, and he had never thought any differently of He Xi. The Cult of Light was also to the east of Xiyu; the further east one went, the more common black hair was of the Xiyu people. If someone did not look too closely, they would not notice the slight differences in He Xi’s facial features. Her amber-colored eyes were enough of a diversion.
Footnotes