Yun Jieshi could not remember ever hearing anything sadder than this in his life.
He crumbled. It was only now when he acknowledged just how much he had gotten used to the hag's manner of speech. He didn't need her to repeat herself to understand the meaning in her broken words.
He nearly melted.
"You think I'll leave you if you tell me what this urn is?" he said. The hag turned her head and gave a slow nod. While her expression did not change to a sad one, Yun Jieshi's felt the depth of her sorrow, her insecurity.
He lost all the will to press the her about the Complete Dear Treasure. To say he didn't feel a bit furious about not getting an answer would be a lie, but perhaps it hurt Qui Tian to think about the urn. So much about her hurt, he'd discovered.
Yun Jieshi inched closer to her and pulled on her tattered hemp cloak.
"It's okay. I won't leave you," he said, and every ounce of his heart thought to make it a promise, but he held himself back; he was no child. Some things were better left unsaid while riding a spur of the moment. He took in a deep breath. "You don't need to tell me about the urn now."
The hag gave another slow nod. Yun Jieshi gritted his teeth and patted her arm before closing the door to their cabin. When he turned, he found that she had gone stiff, her head hanging.
"We…go," she said and she bit her thumb to make create another talisman for the journey. Yun Jieshi quickly drew close to her, including himself in the sphere of protection that resulted.
Over the last few days, he had learned the characters to invoke this instruction, but as Qui Tian had warned, Yun Jieshi lacked the Xun for it. Even when he used choice blood to create a talisman bearing the instruction, it did nothing.
The little monkey had been a little disappointed by this limit, but he soon got over it. He took comfort in imagining a version of himself from the future with ample Xun using the instruction. He'd be that future Yun Jieshi one of these days.
Soon, the hag and monkey were off, with the latter carrying his bow and three arrows.
To lighten the mood, the little monkey made queer jokes along the way, all centred around the same topic.
It should have been a long while till he and the hag needed more meat, but their rate of food consumption had turned reckless over the last few days. Yun Jieshi's perfect makeshift rice, broth and meat recipe was a marvellous wonder in the Lower Southern Plateau. Or perhaps it was soon to be.
Funnily enough, when he had started teaching Qui Tian how to use utensils to eat, they both devoured even more food, making up excuses about how they were so close to mastering using chopsticks. Practicing with actual consumables helped motivate the hag to learn faster. In fact, she was the one who propounded the idea; a little more thought on this made Yun Jieshi begin to doubt her intentions though. He'd turned that sweet old woman into a glutton.
"If we catch something today, you are not going to use it to practise your table etiquette," Yun Jieshi said to the hag.
Qui Tian pointed at herself with a finger and responded with:
"Try stop… me."
Yun Jieshi laughed so hard his furs stood on end.
The duo didn't use the same way they usually treaded to reach the garden, but Yun Jieshi stiffened all the same. He'd discovered on his latest trips to the beds that there were a whole lot more of those black-stalked flowers than he'd thought. They were stubborn natives of this part of the Lower Southern Plateau.
As soon as he and Qui Tian entered within range of them, they ceased their usual activity and snapped in their direction. Yun Jieshi found himself swallowing hard.
"Little Sage…" the hag called to him and covered his view of the flowers with her hemp cloak while beckoning him forward. Yun Jieshi was touched. He nodded at the hag and gave a "Thanks."
They were picking up their pace again, leaving a large patch of the flowers behind when they came upon a field of bamboo. Like a few other plants Yun Jieshi had seen, the bamboo was quite resistant to the cold – unnaturally so. But it wasn't the sight of the bamboo that caught his attention. It was a sound coming from their collection. Something was moving among them, pushing a few of them aside.
The Sage and the hag stopped. The former took out his ruan and unscrewed one of the knives from its head. He held it firmly, ready to strike at the sight of prey, completely lacking the grace of a hunter.
The suspense didn't last for long.
It was a strange silver rabbit that appeared. Its nose shifted twice and then thrice as it sniffed the air and then climbed up one of the bamboo shoots.
At first, Yun Jieshi was dazed by the look of the creature. It brought to memory Feng Jie Hong's account about he and his brother had seen two hares, a silver one and a yellow one.
'Wait! This isn't the same thing!' Yun Jieshi tore himself from the reverie, and readied himself to pounce at the rabbit; he only needed the hag's signal.
Qui Tian sprang a hand before him instead, however.
"What?" Yun Jieshi turned to her, puzzled.
Qui Tian pointed at the rabbit and what might have been smile pressed on her face.
"Luck… good," she said.
The screws in Yun Jieshi's neck twisted, making him tilt his head in confusion.
"Luck?"
Perhaps the rabbit had a mind to emphasise what Qui Tian had just said.
While its legs wrapped around the bamboo shoot, it reached behind it and retrieved – perhaps from hammer space – a thin bamboo flute. Yun Jieshi reeled when the rabbit began playing a graceful melody.
"What in the world…?" He leaned forward, gaping. How could a rabbit be so skilled in playing an instrument? The way it switched from pitch to pitch was incredible. Even Yun Jieshi's untrained ears could tell how well-practised the rabbit's handling of the flute was.
But again, the little monkey found himself wondering if he should be surprised that this was a thing here in the Lower Southern Plateau.
"Luck… good," Qui Tian repeated from beside him. Yun Jieshi turned to her.
A smile lingered on her face still.
"Our luck?" the little monkey said, and turned back to the rabbit when she gave no reply. Did she mean seeing the rabbit was good luck? The little monkey had imagined it was lucky catching the rabbit for a meal, albeit a small one.
Said rabbit didn't seem to have any intention of pausing its flute solo any time soon. Yun Jieshi would have applauded if wasn't sure it would only disrupt the creature's graceful rhythm.
Qui Tian beckoned him away slowly. Yun Jieshi hesitated only for a moment more before following after her.
It was curious how the world on this side of the Gap was.
Soon, the duo, while continuing to avoid the black-stalked flowers, came upon another curious creature. Well, there were three of them.
Foxes, they must have been. They looked the part, with beautiful silver fur that might not have wallowed in mud or muck since Ages gone by, and black, beady eyes. These foxes were rather small, however; they weren't any bigger than Yun Jieshi.
They looked innocent and normal, indeed, but they were still curious. Yun Jieshi spotted the oddness of their bushy tails. They were ghostly and translucent. If the foxes had ever died in their lifetimes, they might have imbued the tragedy of their deaths into their tails instead.
Regardless, Yun Jieshi, sure that this time he had the hag's blessing to try and hunt these creatures, prepared the blade from his ruan's peg.
But yet again, Qui Tian stretched out a hand, stopping him.
"What is it now?" the little monkey nearly snapped. "Are they good luck too?"
This time, the hag neither smiled nor explained why it was not wise to hunt these foxes. Instead, she silently beckoned Yun Jieshi past them. The foxes suddenly dissolved into the heavy winds and falling snow as they approached; even when Yun Jieshi and Qui Tian came forth devoid of neither quick gait nor intent to kill, the foxes did not slacken their guard. The little monkey reeled.
'Are they ghosts?' he thought, trying to find where the foxes had gone.
As it turned out, they weren't ghosts.
The little foxes reemerged behind them soon after. They left little paw prints in the snow as they followed after the two.
Yun Jieshi couldn't help looking over his shoulder after every dozen or so meters he and Qui Tian crossed. The little foxes followed them no matter what. They were as unbothered by the black-stalked flowers as the black-stalked flowers were as unbothered by them.
After a while, Yun Jieshi learned to ignore them. He invested his focus into imagining how he would deal with the creature he would actually be hunting today.
Unfortunately, he didn't get as much time to prepare as he would have liked. A creature whose thigh he'd bitten before into faced him.
"How about this one?" Yun Jieshi asked the hag.
Her response was simple.
"Kill."