He opened his eyes in the darkness.
Above him hung a vast expanse of intersecting canopies. Delicate, intricate cloud patterns were embroidered onto the dark cyan fabric, stretching from his field of vision into the shadows at the far end of the room.
The air held the chill of late autumn. Moonlight, cold as frost, filtered through the high, narrow window lattices, illuminating the mirror-smooth black stone slabs of the floor.
The charcoal brazier in the center of the floor had gone out. Not a hint of warmth remained in the embers; the cold seeped through stone, copper, and iron alike.
He sat up in bed and reached out to touch the oil lamp on the floor, but he could not reach it.
Suddenly, the harsh grating of metal on metal echoed from outside the door. A dark shadow burst into the pale moonlight.
He slowly looked up. Upon the carved window lattices of the door, an unnaturally tall shadow was cast.
The shadow remained motionless, yet it seemed to be staring at him through the door.
A familiar unease rose from the depths of his heart. He stumbled off the bed, fumbling to find the oil lamp, his hands shaking as he tried to light the wick that was nearly drowned in oil.
*Creak.*
A cold wind gently pushed open his door.
He could not remember why he hadn't closed the doors and windows properly, nor did he dare to look up. He only forced himself to light the lamp quickly.
*Clack, clack, clack.*
Heavy footsteps, accompanied by the clanking and grinding of metal, drew closer and closer.
Finally, he lit the lamp.
The faint flame cast a small patch of warmth onto the black floor, and then he saw them—a pair of feet clad in rusted greaves.
His gaze slowly traveled upward. The dark figure stood just five paces away.
It was a person clad in full armor, drenched in blood. The helmet was pressed low, leaving the facial features a blurred mess. There seemed to be moisture on the armor; droplets slid down the shaft of the spear, carrying a trace of turbid gore.
But he remembered that tonight was supposed to be clear. It hadn't rained all day.
He stared fixedly at the figure, telling himself over and over that it was merely an illusion in a dream.
"Mother?"
His trembling voice echoed through the great hall, but there was no response for a long time.
In the next instant, the figure suddenly moved, dragging the long spear as it rushed toward him.
He hurriedly threw the oil lamp in his hand at the figure, then, heedless of his shoes, ran out of the hall barefoot.
The autumn night was clear. Not a single cloud could be seen in the sky, only a solitary moon hanging high.
The winding corridors were silent; not a human voice or the chirp of an insect could be heard. The frost of the autumn night spread across the cold stone bricks. As he stepped on it, the frost turned to vapor, soaking his feet.
He did not dare stop until he saw the faint light emanating from the pavilion by the lake. Only then did he heave a long sigh of relief.
She hadn't left. His mother had not gone.
A biting wind swept over the lake, yet the gauze curtains around the four-cornered pavilion were thin. The woman's hair seemed frosted over, but her posture was languid. She leaned against the protruding railing, half of her hair hanging in the air, swaying with the autumn wind.
Hearing the boy's hurried footsteps and ragged breathing, she slowly opened her eyes. Her pupils were colder than the winter stars of this autumn night, and her features were more luminous than the solitary moon.
"Have you had another nightmare?"
He could not speak. Shivering, he took the woman's hand, seeking some response, but those slender hands merely pulled away gently, as they always did.
"What did you dream of?"
He composed himself, finally regaining some measure of calm and self-restraint.
"I dreamed... I dreamed of a general covered in blood."
The woman sighed softly, her face reflecting a sense of weariness and helplessness.
"Do not be afraid, Wei'er. You need not pay them any mind."
He tried his best to appear composed.
"I remember everything Mother taught me, but they always appear so suddenly. Sometimes they even shout..."
"Those are the people you will encounter in your life; you are destined to meet them in the future. They may be your enemies, but they may also be the ones you love most in this life. If you think of it that way, you will cherish such a fated connection."
He did not understand, nor did he know why his mother always said the same things to him.
"The person I love and respect most is Mother. How could those people be the ones I love?"
The woman's tone softened, a glimmer from years past appearing in her eyes.
"At this moment, you do not know them, so naturally you do not know the depth of the affection. You feel these meetings are meaningless. But when you grow up, you will understand that even in a dream, being able to see them once is a precious thing. To know someone's heart but be unable to meet them—that is the greatest regret in this world."
"But..."
But he didn't want to look deeply into the people who appeared in his dreams. He only hoped that when he woke up startled in the night, he would have his mother's warm company by his side.
The woman's eyelids lowered gently again, and her fingertips lightly brushed his face.
"Go back to sleep. If your father sees you, he will punish you again."
Every time his mother mentioned his father, it was time for them to part.
In the past, no matter how reluctant he felt, he would have quietly bowed and withdrawn.
But this time, he did not leave.
"Why won't Mother speak softly to me like my wet nurse does, or hum a little tune to soothe my fear when I cannot sleep..."
"Because there are many long nights in life that must be endured, and I cannot be with you every night."
He remained kneeling where he was, unmoving.
The woman opened her eyes to look at the child before her. It was as if, through the cold shadow behind him, she saw the desires and obsessions buried deep within his blood, growing wildly.
She sighed softly.
"Do you know why Mother never mentions or writes down her own name?"
He shook his head.
"The Zhongli clan is destined for solitude. The two characters for 'Zhongli'—Final Parting—are a curse upon all those in this world who wish to stay together forever. No matter how deep the love or how long the union, there will eventually come a day of separation. This is your fate, and the fate of everyone under heaven."
"I do not believe in fate. Mother should not believe in it either."
"When I was young, I didn't believe in fate either." The woman actually laughed, her expression becoming vivid for a moment as if she had returned to the past. "Someone told me that no matter how beautiful the flowers bloom, they are destined to fall from the branches. But every day when I walked under the pear trees in front of my house, I always felt those flowers would never wither..."
Hearing her speak of the past again, he instinctively leaned closer, but her words came to an abrupt halt.
"It is just that those who do not believe in fate must always suffer. I do not want you to suffer."
After saying this, the woman spoke no more.
She merely reached out to pull him to her, holding his hand and tracing random strokes in his palm.
They were symbols that formed no words. Since his mother would not hum, he treated them as a lullaby to coax him to sleep.
The night wind was chilly. He leaned heavily against the soft cushion embroidered with twin-stalked mandalas in front of his mother, his consciousness gradually blurring and drifting away under her gentle movements.
After an unknown amount of time, in the darkness, he heard his mother's youthful voice again.
"Wei'er, wake up. You're dreaming."
Dreaming? Hadn't he already woken up from the nightmare?
"Wake up, it's time for you to go back."
Go back? Back where?
His body felt heavy; even curling a finger took immense effort. He wanted to open his eyes, yet he was still shrouded in darkness. He felt his awakened soul struggling desperately within this deathly still body until a crack appeared in the darkness, letting in a sliver of light.
He opened his eyes in the darkness.
Above him were simple wooden beams. An old paper lantern hung from one, its light already extinguished.
The morning light was faint. A cool breeze seeped into the room through the sparse window slats, carrying the scent of earth and fresh plants.
He slowly sat up from the simple wooden bed, his bare feet stepping onto the creaking, aged floorboards as he walked step by step toward the light.
****** ****** ******
At the junction of southwest Huozhou, northeast Chizhou, and southeast Minzhou, there lay a sparsely populated, little-known village.
The village was nestled in a desolate mountain hollow. At the bottom of the hollow was a small plain, divided into three sections by a three-way junction. These three sections belonged to Huozhou, Chizhou, and Minzhou respectively.
The people in the village did not know which province they truly belonged to, and those outside the village did not know which side the village fell under.
To the northeast of the village was a mountain that was neither high nor treacherous; to the southwest was a patch of barren land where nothing grew; and to the northwest stood an ancient pagoda of unknown origin. This mountain, this land, and this pagoda were all that existed outside the village.
A type of thorny bramble grew year-round near the mountain hollow where the village was located. In winter, the area was shrouded in thick fog for months on end. The entrance to the hollow was often submerged in a sea of thorns and mist. Consequently, few merchant caravans or travelers were willing to pass through, and outsiders were even less willing to put down roots in such a wretched place.
Those outside did not want to come in, and those inside did not want to leave.
The villagers rarely ventured more than ten *li* from the three-way junction and seldom interacted with the outside world, sustaining themselves on the small amount of farmland at the bottom of the hollow. This tiny patch of arable land was the result of generations of hard work, for the hollow was rich in a type of white stone that was scattered everywhere in the soil.
This stone was neither hard nor soft. It could not be fired into bricks or used as carving material. It could only be painstakingly crushed to pave courtyards—a time-consuming, labor-intensive task with meager profits that no one ever bothered to exploit.
And so, this village standing amidst the piles of white stones was called Baishi Village.
How small was Baishi Village? A five-year-old child could run from one end to the other in a single breath.
How obscure was Baishi Village? Even an elder who had lived for decades in the small town of Chizhou, thirty *li* away, could not name it.
People only knew there was a village in the white stone piles. For the sake of convenience, they called it Baishi Village.
For such a small, self-sufficient village that had been isolated from the world for years, the ways for villagers to pass the time were limited and meager. They worked hard from sunrise to sunset; if they could light a lamp at home and have a sip of wine after dusk, it was the greatest consolation.
Thus, there were no cloth shops or teahouses in Baishi Village, but there was a thriving wine shop. In the busy summer, they brewed rice wine; during the winter storage, they brewed fruit wine. Although the wine was full of impurities and had a coarse taste, it was the most easily obtained joy in these mountains.
The wine shop was small, but it had many customers. Since there was usually only one person tending the shop year-round, the work had to be done with exceptional briskness.
If the villagers craved wine, they had to bring their own bamboo tubes to the wine counter built of white stones at the village entrance to buy it.
The woman behind the counter serving the wine had clearly been in business there for a long time. A row of various bamboo tubes waiting to be filled sat on the counter. She only needed to glance at the appearance of the tubes to know whose family they belonged to. She never called out the wrong name, and her movements never paused for a second.
However, when she turned around this time, she couldn't help but freeze.
This tube was one she had definitely never seen before.
With a flick of her wrist, the wine-selling woman unceremoniously tossed the bamboo tube away.
A figure leaped out nimbly, steadily catching the discarded tube. She walked to the counter in a few steps, her voice tinged with confusion and indignation.
"Why did you throw my tube?"
The wine-seller looked up at the young woman's face, becoming even more certain that this was indeed a fresh face Baishi Village hadn't seen in over a decade.
"My family's wine is only sold to villagers."
Xiao Nanhui leaned half her body against the counter, wanting only to see what was inside the wine vat.
"What kind of wine is so precious? I want to see if it's better than the Cloud Leaf Fresh from Xiaofu Residence..."
The wine-seller's movements were quite agile. With a pull and a push, she protected the wine vat and blocked Xiao Nanhui out. Clearly, she was well-practiced in driving away penniless, wine-craving rascals.
"I'm not selling, and that's that. Don't block my business; people are waiting behind you."
As she spoke, the crowd of young and old holding tubes behind her immediately erupted in dissatisfaction. A mix of Huozhou dialect and Minzhou patois made her head ache.
Xiao Nanhui had to step back for the moment, but she didn't intend to give up.
She had set out before dawn and walked a full ten-plus *li* of mountain paths to get here; how could she return empty-handed?
Seeing that the short, stout middle-aged man who had been behind her had successfully bought his wine, Xiao Nanhui hurried forward and flipped her palm, revealing half an ingot of silver.
The man froze, his eyes fixing on the silver.
"This is to buy the wine in your hand. Will you sell?"
The man found it somewhat unbelievable. He picked up the silver with his short, thick fingers and checked it repeatedly to confirm it was genuine.
"I'll sell." Fearing she might regret it, the man confirmed again and again, "You set the price yourself; don't you go back on it."
Given her personality, spending half an ingot of silver on wine worth only a few copper coins was indeed something she would regret. But this wasn't her silver; it was Ding Weixiang's. So what was there to regret?
Xiao Nanhui chuckled, exchanging the money for the goods.
"I certainly won't."
Seeing her so straightforward, the man also began to smile broadly, revealing a row of yellow teeth missing the front incisors. He became quite talkative.
"Actually, it wasn't that she wouldn't sell to you. We brew wine in this small place, and the water isn't very refined. Previously, there were outsiders who got upset stomachs and insisted on making trouble."
Xiao Nanhui looked at the contents of the wine tube; it was indeed a bit turbid.
But she didn't care at all. She had drunk wine much coarser than this; she had confidence in her stomach.
"I have indeed just arrived here. Buying some wine can be considered paying my respects to this land."
The man looked her up and down, noting her overly casual ramie tunic.
"Where is the young lady from? We don't often have outsiders here."
She paused, then said vaguely.
"I came from the north."
Unexpectedly, the man still sensed something and exclaimed in surprise.
"Then when you came, did you pass by that mountain?"
Xiao Nanhui shook her head.
She hadn't passed by the mountain; she had just walked out of it this morning.
"It's good that you didn't. Don't be fooled by how that mountain looks—not high or special—but you must never go near it. The valley entrance is the boundary; you must not step a single foot inside."
The middle-aged man spoke with a nervous expression, sounding like he was giving earnest advice.
Her curiosity was piqued, and the leg she was about to move retracted.
"Why?"
The man lowered his voice, his words whistling slightly because of the effort he put into his pronunciation.
"A cruel and ferocious Earth Immortal lives in that mountain. If ordinary people go near, they will surely be snatched away to do hard labor and can never hope to escape."
Cruel and ferocious? Hard labor? Thinking of the terrifying aura the old woman had when she ordered Ding Weixiang to feed the chickens, Xiao Nanhui nodded sincerely.
"Indeed, indeed."
The man had clearly been unable to share these "village secrets" with an outsider for many years; once he started, he couldn't stop.
"Speaking of that Earth Immortal, we all think it's some vengeful spirit that turned into a monster. You should know that long ago, people lived in that area. Later, not a single one of them met a good end. Now everyone thinks that place is unlucky; no one dares to even mention the name Zhongli."
Xiao Nanhui froze.
"What did you say? The previous name of this place was Zhongli?"
The man suddenly realized he had said something unlucky and spat several times in succession, then muttered somewhat dejectedly.
"You might not believe it even if I told you. My maternal grandfather told me when he was still alive that many years ago, there was a great drought in the Zhongli area for consecutive years. The villagers had almost all fled. Then a group of outsiders suddenly arrived. No one knows what magic they used, but they prayed for a great rain..."
"Outsiders?" Xiao Nanhui's heart began to thud, an inexplicable theory rapidly forming in her mind. "How many people? Where did they come from?"
"About a hundred or so, said to have come from the Huozhou side. Hmph, outsiders are rare here to begin with; a hundred of them coming at once like that was even rarer."
"The outsiders you mentioned—where did they go later?"
The middle-aged man looked at her strangely.
"They met with disaster, of course. Otherwise, why do you think everyone feels that place is unlucky and changed the name?"
Xiao Nanhui was stunned, nearly dropping the wine tube in her hand.
"My grandfather also said that the great drought didn't happen for no reason; perhaps this place is destined to be inauspicious. Zhongli... Final Parting... a land of parting..."
The man continued to mutter as he walked away with a hunched back. She remained standing there for a long time before finally carrying the heavy wine tube toward the mountain to the northeast.
The country roads were not as good as the official roads, but they were soil packed down by the feet of countless farmers carrying loads. Walking on them wasn't tiring, though one had to be careful of the toads and frogs that occasionally hopped out from the fields.
After walking a few *li* like this, even paths as wide as field ridges could no longer be seen. She could only look at the gap in the silhouette of the distant mountains and forge a path through the wild grass and scattered rocks.
For Xiao Nanhui, this was no difficult task, for an hour ago, she had felt her way out in the dark in the same manner.
Ten *li* later, she finally entered the mountains.
The sun slowly rose higher, its golden light falling from the peaks to the mountainsides, dividing the entire mountain into two halves—one cold and one warm. Inside the mountain was a patch of barren, muddy ground where nothing grew. In the mud was a hidden path paved with white stones; as long as one stepped on the stones, their shoes would not get dirty.
Passing through the desolate mud and turning through several winding valleys, the scene before her suddenly opened up.
Delicate yellow grass covered the entire valley. Strange pines and cypress grew on the exposed white stone of the mountain. Between the rock walls, a hot spring actually gushed out. Beside the spring's eye was a grove of pear trees shrouded in mist, their branches laden with blooming white flowers, looking as if snow had fallen in the first lunar month.
How strange. It was already the seventh month, yet there were still pear blossoms here.
As she thought this, she looked up and saw his figure.
He was still wearing the inner robe she had changed him into before she left. The thin, translucent fabric clung to him in the wind, like the cloth draped over a divine statue in a temple.
She froze for a moment, then very happily raised her right hand to wave at him, and raised her other hand to shake the wine tube.
He heard her voice, turned to look at her, and suddenly quickened his pace.
A gust of wind blew, momentarily parting the lingering mist. The falling pear blossoms fluttered like heavy snow. She could not look away, staring fixedly until, by the time she reacted, he was already before her.
"You're finally awake. Why aren't you even wearing shoes..."
She was only halfway through her sentence when he pulled her into his arms.
He was wearing very little, and her ramie tunic was also very thin. A scalding temperature rapidly transferred through his embrace to her skin, like a mountain fire spreading uncontrollably.
"I thought you had left."
She blinked, not knowing what to say. After a long while, she raised her hand and gently patted his back.
"Haven't I come back?"
After just a few pats, his arms tightened even more.
"Don't try to fool me. I am not a child anymore."
The way he said it, he was clearly a child.
She didn't know whether to laugh or cry as she gently pulled back a little to create some distance.
He kept his head lowered, his loose hair obscuring some of his expression. What remained flickered between light and shadow, making it impossible to tell if it was loneliness or helplessness.
She must have seen wrong. How could such an expression appear on his face?
Xiao Nanhui reached out, brushing the messy hair away from his face.
"I didn't leave. I promised you."
He didn't speak. His trembling eyelashes lightly brushed her fingertips, carrying a trace of imperceptible fragility.
She had already come this far with him, and she would continue to walk the path ahead with him. She would not leave him. But how... how could she make him believe her?
She thought for a moment, then put her arms around his neck and slowly drew closer.
Noses brushed, soft lips met, and she finally saw the last trace of gloom dissipate from those eyes as she had hoped.
Even if parting was the fate of this place, she was willing to believe that shattering fate often required nothing more than a gentle kiss.
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
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云气纹 | Cloud patterns | A traditional Chinese decorative motif representing clouds and auspiciousness.
钟离 | Zhongli | A surname; also the old name of the village area.
终离 | Final Parting | A homophone for "Zhongli," used here to explain the "curse" of the name.
白石村 | Baishi Village | White Stone Village.
地仙 | Earth Immortal | A low-level deity or spirit associated with a specific location; in this context, used by villagers to describe a "monster."
小福居 | Xiaofu Residence | Likely a well-known tavern or restaurant mentioned by Xiao Nanhui.
云叶鲜 | Cloud Leaf Fresh | A specific brand or type of wine.
里衣 | Inner robe | A thin garment worn under outer layers of clothing.
并蒂曼陀罗 | Twin-stalked mandala | A floral pattern; "mandala" here refers to the Datura flower (曼陀罗花).
