The Altar of Heaven.
Mu Gesheng looked at the figure standing not far away and let out a long, heavy sigh.
When he had performed the divination for the national fate all those years ago, he had harbored many concerns. If Song Wentong was the person who put his mind most at ease, then Chai Shuxin was the one who worried him the most.
Song Wentong was the type who could risk his life to help Mu Gesheng fight off the Ghost Soldiers, yet be the quickest to move on after his death. He was like a sharp blade that never rusted—clear-headed, perceptive, and never one to waste time in idle grief.
Chai Shuxin was the exact opposite. He felt things too deeply. On the surface, he seemed detached from the world, but in truth, he was a man consumed by his obsessions.
Before his death, Mu Gesheng had thought that since Chai Shuxin was willing to help him, the man would surely follow the path to its bitter end. Now that the "enterprise" had failed halfway, Chai Shuxin was likely driven mad with rage—perhaps he would even scatter Mu Gesheng’s ashes into the river just to vent his frustration.
However, according to the traditions of the Tiansuan lineage, a Tiansuanzi’s body could only be cremated after a full hundred days. Even if Chai Shuxin wanted to scatter him, he would have to wait. Mu Gesheng figured that for an adult, a hundred-day cooling-off period was more than enough. If the man still couldn't let go after that, then so be it.
But he truly hadn't expected the man to be this stubborn—standing on the Altar of Heaven for an entire month, guarding his corpse without moving a single step. Watching this from within the illusion, Mu Gesheng felt a wave of awkwardness. He wished he could just tell Old Second, *“Hurry up and burn me.”* If Chai Shuxin kept this up, it wouldn't look like he hated him; it would look like a son observing a period of filial mourning for his father.
Besides, going without a drop of water for a whole month... even the most legendary filial sons weren't this extreme. The Qing Dynasty had been dead for years; this "Empress Dowager" didn't need anyone to be buried with him. He really should just take his leave.
Song Wentong walked onto the Altar of Heaven, carrying a wooden box.
Chai Shuxin’s back was turned to him, motionless. One hand rested on the coffin, which held Mu Gesheng, dressed in white.
Unless cremated, the body of a Tiansuanzi would not decay; his face remained exactly as it had been in life.
Song Wentong got straight to the point. "I’m not here to persuade you. If you want to stay here and play the grieving widow, no one’s going to stop you. But Old Third and I are leaving soon. We’re heading to the Sparrow-Riding Terrace in the Kunlun Mountains."
Chai Shuxin said nothing. Song Wentong continued regardless. "Before Old Fourth performed the divination, he came to see me and left some things behind. I’ve looked through them; they were clearly meant for you."
He set the box on the ground and turned to leave, throwing one last sentence over his shoulder: "We set out this evening. Whether you come or not is up to you."
Mu Gesheng leaned in. His memories of that time were fragmented, and he was curious about what he had left for "39C."
Song Wentong had been thoughtful; fearing Chai Shuxin wouldn't open it himself, he had left the box open on the ground. Even if Chai Shuxin didn't want to look, he wouldn't be able to avoid it.
Inside was a very thick manuscript.
The manuscript was wrapped in kraft paper, with a few words scribbled on it in a chaotic scrawl. It took Mu Gesheng a moment to recognize his own handwriting from back then. The title read: *Cecil’s Internal Medicine*.
He realized what it was.
He still had some memories of his time studying abroad. Because of his correspondence with Chai Shuxin, he had often paid attention to Western medicine. He had eventually been gifted a medical book—a famous classic, apparently—but unfortunately, there was no Chinese translation. Although Chai Shuxin knew some basic English, he wasn't familiar with specialized academic terminology, so sending the original back to China would have been useless. During a period when Mu Gesheng had been idle, he had translated more than half of it.
When he returned to China, he had stuffed the large stack of manuscripts into his suitcase and brought them across the ocean. However, after his return, he had been overwhelmed by various affairs and never found the time to finish the final sections.
Shortly after Song Wentong left, Chai Shuxin slowly bent down and picked up the manuscript.
A wind swept across the Altar of Heaven, rustling the pages. The handwriting shifted between neat and messy; the paper was stained with various marks—brown spots from coffee, red ones from wine. As for the colorless water stains, those were likely from when he had fallen asleep at his desk halfway through a translation.
The manuscript was heavy, bound into a thick volume. The last few pages were entirely blank, save for a single opening line written in fountain pen:
*Unfinished. Awaiting your pen to continue.*
*That does sound like something I’d do,* Mu Gesheng thought.
Before his death, he must have considered how to settle Chai Shuxin. By helping him fight the Ghost Soldiers, Chai Shuxin had inevitably offended the Medicine School. Given the man’s temperament, his future path would likely be fraught with difficulty. The country was in chaos; a healer’s hands shouldn't be stained with any more blood. With half the world at war and Europe in shambles, the best place for him would be America.
*I handled my post-death arrangements quite well,* Mu Gesheng nodded to himself. *Fairly decent of me. This way, 39C shouldn't be so mad that he scatters my ashes.*
He watched as Chai Shuxin blinked very slowly, then began to cough. It startled Mu Gesheng; it was the first sound the man had made in an entire month.
The coughing was gut-wrenching, and once it started, it wouldn't stop. Mu Gesheng rushed to support him, but his hands only passed through a phantom image. Finally, Chai Shuxin covered his mouth and crouched on the ground. His eyes were closed, and he didn't open them for a long time.
He remained curled up beside the coffin for a long while. Inside the coffin was a sea of white robes; outside, he looked like a frozen stone statue as the falling snow melted away.
***
That evening, Wu Zixu and Song Wentong stood before the mountain gate of Penglai. Ancient pines lined both sides of the long stone staircase. In the distance, a figure slowly approached.
Wu Zixu breathed a sigh of relief. "He’s here."
Likely due to extreme exhaustion, Chai Shuxin’s face was deathly pale. He bowed slightly toward Song Wentong, his voice raspy. "Thank you."
"No need for thanks. It was Old Fourth’s to begin with."
"It’s about a ten-day journey from Penglai to Kunlun. Can you hold up?" Wu Zixu looked at Chai Shuxin’s complexion with concern, then turned to Song Wentong. "Maybe I should summon a Ghost Sedan? Or we could use a Ground-Shrinking Array."
"A Ghost Sedan would alert Fengdu, and all Ground-Shrinking Arrays are managed by Penglai," Song Wentong said. "While our departure for the Zhu family will be discovered eventually, we should stay as low-profile as possible until then. We need to stall for as much time as we can."
"Don't worry about me." Chai Shuxin waved a hand and pulled out a string of bright red beads, handing them to Wu Zixu.
"This is...?" Wu Zixu looked at the beads in his hand. After rubbing them for a moment, he suddenly froze.
Chai Shuxin fell into a fit of coughing. "These are the remains of Taisui."
When Wu Nie had passed away at the White Water Temple, a heavenly fire had descended, leaving no corpse behind. In the end, only a string of bright red "Blood Droplets" remained.
Chai Shuxin fell silent for a moment, then looked at Song Wentong. "I would like to ask you to keep something for me."
Song Wentong reached out. "Just give it here. Stop wasting words."
However, when he took it, his brow furrowed. "Are you sure you want to give this to me?"
It was the manuscript Mu Gesheng had left for Chai Shuxin. Song Wentong had seen it in the box.
Chai Shuxin nodded. "If there is no news of me after forty-nine days, burn it."
"You’re not coming with us?"
"I need to go somewhere," Chai Shuxin said. "If I don't go now, it will be too late."
Song Wentong didn't speak. He studied Chai Shuxin’s face, his brow knotted in a deep frown.
Wu Zixu said worriedly, "But your body..."
"Old Third, stop." Song Wentong suddenly interrupted him. He raised the manuscript in his hand toward Chai Shuxin. "Fine. I’ll wait. Forty-nine days from now at the Sparrow-Riding Terrace in Kunlun—remember to come and get it."
Then he turned and walked away.
"How can this be okay?" Wu Zixu was at his wit's end with the two of them. He grabbed Chai Shuxin’s wrist and shouted toward Song Wentong, "Old Second, talk some sense into him!" Then, he suddenly froze.
"Stop your damn yapping!" Song Wentong roared. "Let’s go!"
***
Mu Gesheng fell into a daze.
First, there was the matter of Taisui Wu Nie’s death.
When Mu Gesheng woke up decades after his death, the Yin-Yang School had already established a memorial tablet for Taisui Wu Nie in their ancestral hall. But no one could say for sure how Taisui had died. Wu Zixu had still been alive then, yet he had avoided the subject entirely.
The only thing Mu Gesheng knew for certain was that Taisui had vanished after the Ghost Soldier riot. Furthermore, the Yin-Yang ancestral hall did not house Wu Nie’s Blood Droplets; they had simply announced to the world that no remains had been found.
In truth, he had been harboring a sliver of hope all these years. As long as no remains were found, there was a chance she was still alive.
"Lord Taisui, a beauty who brings calamity"—even if Wu Nie had exhausted her cultivation during the riot, she wouldn't have lost her life just because of that.
Yet now, in this illusion, the past came rushing back across time. He saw with his own eyes Chai Shuxin handing the Blood Droplets to Wu Zixu.
*When a high monk passes, sarira are formed; when a Taisui departs, Blood Droplets congeal.*
Wu Nie was truly dead.
Judging by the events in the illusion, Chai Shuxin had collected Wu Nie’s remains sometime after the Ghost Soldier riot but before visiting Penglai.
While suppressing the Ghost Soldiers was extremely dangerous, Mu Gesheng didn't believe for a second that Wu Nie would die from it. On the contrary, after the city walls fell, Wu Nie was likely still alive.
Mu Gesheng pinched the bridge of his nose, trying desperately to recall the scene. When the walls collapsed, he seemed to have shielded Chai Shuxin... and after that, he had woken up in Penglai.
Chai Shuxin must have brought him to Penglai. Following that logic, Chai Shuxin and Wu Nie likely met after the city fell, and Wu Nie was still alive then.
What did they encounter? How did Wu Nie die?
The Ghost Soldiers had already been suppressed. Given their intelligence, the two of them wouldn't have been foolish enough to launch a counterattack against the enemy forces inside the city. What else could have killed Wu Nie?
Mu Gesheng simply sat down where he was, carefully pondering every detail. While the easier solution would be to wait until he left the illusion and ask Chai Shuxin, his intuition told him that he had to figure this out himself.
"Rivers and mountains may change, but a person's nature remains the same." Even though the man had transformed from Lingzhuzi into Luoshazi over the years, if he was determined to hide something, he wouldn't say a word even if it killed him.
*I wonder how Old Second and Old Third got along with Chai Shuxin during the years I was gone... Wait.* Mu Gesheng suddenly realized something.
During the Ghost Soldier riot, the Masters had suffered heavy casualties. To save Song Wentong and Wu Zixu, he had been forced to perform the divination for the national fate, which was how he had obtained the medicine in Penglai.
But what about himself? Who saved him? Old Second and Old Third were so heavily injured—how did he end up perfectly fine?
When the walls collapsed, he had shielded Chai Shuxin. He had already accepted his death then. With the walls falling and such severe injuries, it should have been impossible to survive.
Yet he had woken up safe and sound in Penglai.
Mu Gesheng remembered what Hua Bucheng had said to him after he woke up:
*"I told you before, sometimes the price of arrogance is more than just shallow blood and tears. If you want to fight Heaven for a life, you must be prepared."*
*"The spectator sees clearly, while the player is blind. You know far too little."*
At the time, he had felt the other was hinting at something, and he had thought about it for a long while. Back then, only Chai Shuxin had been by his side, and the man’s face had been incredibly pale. Mu Gesheng had always assumed Chai Shuxin had done something to save him.
But Chai Shuxin himself had denied it.
And because he later gambled his life on the national fate divination, he had assumed the "price" Hua Bucheng mentioned was his own life. Now, it seemed it was far more than that.
*I shouldn't have damn well believed him,* Mu Gesheng thought.
He knew the Medicine School had a forbidden technique for "exchanging lives." He had assumed Chai Shuxin used this method to revive him after he suffered the heavenly punishment. But now it seemed that wasn't it at all—the bastard had likely exchanged lives *before* Mu Gesheng even performed the divination.
Or rather, he had already died more than once. He had died after the city fell, and Chai Shuxin had traded his life back.
The Medicine School’s life-extension techniques were taboo. After the city fell, Chai Shuxin was also injured; he certainly wouldn't have been able to sustain the entire ritual alone—without a doubt, Wu Nie had helped him.
And that was likely the true cause of Taisui’s death.
It was also why Chai Shuxin had Wu Nie’s Blood Droplets.
Mu Gesheng suddenly didn't dare to think any further.
He knew Chai Shuxin had been hiding things from him, but he hadn't known what profound, heavy history lay behind that silence.
However, once the floodgates of thought were opened, various fragments poured out like a deluge. Since Chai Shuxin had extended his life long before the divination, what about even earlier?
Mu Gesheng thought of a dream he had many years ago.
In the dream, paper money fell like snow, and he heard the sound of sacrificial songs.
He had always thought it was a Tiansuanzi’s prophetic dream, hinting at the upcoming Ghost Soldier riot. But the lyrics sung by the figure in white were different from those of the night watchman at the West City Gate.
*"O Soul, return—"*
Taisui Wu Nie had exhausted five hundred years of cultivation just to divert the disaster of the Ghost Soldiers. That night, he had encountered the Ghost Soldiers in the Yin-Yang Ladder; he should have been certain to die, yet he had woken up just seven days later.
When he woke, Wu Nie had been rowing the boat to send him off. She had said then: *"You fought the Ghost Soldiers a few days ago and barely managed to close the Yin-Yang Ladder. But the gap between you was too great. You overestimated yourself and ultimately died of severe injuries."*
*"...That boy from the Medicine School treated your wounds himself. You’ve only just started to improve; otherwise, I’m afraid you wouldn't have been able to get out of bed for a year or two."*
Memories surged like the tide; the past overturned like a flood.
Although the Medicine School possessed life-extension techniques, they weren't something just anyone could use, and it was even more impossible to use them repeatedly. Chai Shuxin had extended his life so many times; his own lifespan was likely nearing its end.
*I’m really a piece of work,* Mu Gesheng thought.
He didn't dare imagine what Chai Shuxin had been feeling as he watched him perform the divination for the national fate. That night, when he had said goodbye to Chai Shuxin, the man had uncharacteristically lost control. Something had been on the verge of being said, but it was forcibly suppressed.
Chai Shuxin understood that even if he told him the truth, Mu Gesheng would still trade his life for the survival of Song Wentong and Wu Zixu. Speaking would have been useless; it would only have ensured Mu Gesheng died without peace.
Mu Gesheng was rarely dazed. His brain was still racing, but his spirit had long since come to a standstill.
*Damn it, I owe him too much. Even if I find all forty-nine Mountain Ghost Flower Coins, it won't be enough to pay him back.*
No wonder Chai Shuxin had given the manuscript to Song Wentong for safekeeping. No wonder Wu Zixu’s face had changed the moment he grabbed Chai Shuxin’s wrist. No wonder Song Wentong had turned and left.
He was settling his affairs.
Mu Gesheng rarely encountered something he couldn't figure out—if these painstaking sacrifices were happening now, he wouldn't be surprised. After all, with decades of companionship day and night, the relationship between them could no longer be simply summarized as "brothers" or "family." It was more like a destiny of life and death, where each was the only person the other could truly entrust themselves to.
But tracing back decades, he and Chai Shuxin had been mere friends—at most, kindred spirits. Why would the man sacrifice so much?
Wait. Mu Gesheng suddenly realized something was wrong. Where was this man going next?
Chai Shuxin himself had little life left. How did he manage to drag Mu Gesheng back from the gates of hell once again?
The scenes in the illusion shifted rapidly. He saw Chai Shuxin leave Penglai and head south, eventually returning to the ancient city.
The ancient city had long since fallen. Why had he come back? To return to his roots?
The night was devoid of stars or moon; the streets were dim. Chai Shuxin stumbled along until he reached an intersection.
Mu Gesheng knew the surrounding scenery all too well. Looking at Chai Shuxin’s back, a wild, desperate suspicion suddenly took hold of him.
He saw the man take a bright red bead from his robes—it was one of Taisui Wu Nie’s Blood Droplets. He had given a whole string to Wu Zixu but kept one for himself.
The Blood Droplet was placed in the center of the crossroads. Chai Shuxin bit his finger, letting a drop of blood fall onto the bead, and then drew an incredibly complex array on the ground around it.
In an instant, a wind rose from the flat ground. Space cracked open into a bottomless fissure. A ghostly wind howled, thick with an indescribable stench.
This man was actually opening the Yin-Yang Ladder again.
Mu Gesheng suddenly lunged forward, trying to grab him, but his hand only met a phantom mist.
He watched helplessly as Chai Shuxin jumped in.
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
---|---|---
玉面无常 | Jade-Faced Wuchang | Wu Zixu's nickname.
清水为胎，心有逆骨 | Born of pure water, possessed of a rebellious soul | A description of Wu Zixu in the family genealogy.
西氏内科学 | Cecil’s Internal Medicine | A famous medical textbook Mu Gesheng was translating.
乘雀台 | Sparrow-Riding Terrace | The secluded residence of the Zhu family in the Kunlun Mountains.
血滴子 | Blood Droplets | Crystallized remains (sarira) left behind by a Taisui upon death.
魂兮归来 | O Soul, return | A traditional line from sacrificial or summoning songs.
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