Chapter 63: A Toast for You

Miss Xiao Qing has left just like that? Ding Songyan gazed at Xu Chang’an, somewhat wistful, and asked casually, "When did she give you the letter?"

In Ding Songyan’s heart, Miss Xiao Qing and Ren Youyang were currently better friends than even Xu Chang’an or Zheng Zhuxi—one might even say theirs was a bond forged through mortal peril. After all, Brother Youyang had truly given up one life.

Xu Chang’an replied with an expression full of envy, "About the time to drink two cups of tea ago. She knocked on my door, borrowed paper and a brush to leave this letter, and said she was heading straight for the east city docks.

"You were clearly home. Why didn’t she come find you directly?"

Two cups of tea ago? That would have been not long after I swallowed the Chaos remains... Miss Xiao Qing made it all the way to Chengyu Lane. Why did she not come see me? Ding Songyan suddenly thought of the words "Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil."

While he was mulling this over, another figure came walking down Chengyu Lane.

It was Ren Youyang, canine ears pricked upright, his phantom green-snake earrings coiling about him.

Ren Youyang carried himself with a blended air of divine authority and a hint of something sinister. Beneath his feathered robes, his body seemed to show signs of partial beastward transformation.

He was carrying two small jugs of wine bound with hemp rope. He had just reached the entrance to the Ding family’s courtyard when he suddenly narrowed his eyes, as if wanting to raise his right palm and shade himself from the blazing sun.

"Brother Youyang, what brings you here?" Ding Songyan asked with a smile.

Xu Chang’an looked at Ren Youyang who had physical abnormalities, radiating the presence of a true master, then looked back at Ding Songyan, utterly baffled.

Is this really the Brother Ding I know?

Since when did he have such an extensive circle of acquaintances?

First Brightnight Sect’s Zheng Zhuxi, then that heavenly beauty, and now this kind of powerhouse too?

Ren Youyang gave Ding Songyan a long, deep look, then smiled and held up the two dark-brown jugs.

"I head back to Dan Province tomorrow. I came to share a drink with you."

The True Spirit Sect was located in Dan Province, in the southeast of the Great Zhao dynasty.

Ding Songyan’s eyes lit up with sudden inspiration. He let out a laugh.

"Then let’s find a better spot for it!"

......

The east city docks had returned to their usual bustle. The Tianyang Trading Company’s tower boat was weighing anchor and setting off.

Su Chongxiao made his way to the cabin at the base of the uppermost deck and knocked on the half-open wooden door.

"Come in." Su Qingli’s muffled, discontented voice drifted out.

Su Chongxiao pushed the door open. Amid the fragrant scent filling the room, he looked toward his young niece sitting by the window, glum and downcast.

"Didn’t you go to bid farewell to Ding Songyan? Why the face?"

Su Qingli, now changed into a plain white dress, pure and fresh, glanced up at her second uncle.

"It’s just... just a bit of melancholy."

Her eyes shifted, and feigning nonchalance, she asked, "Second Uncle, say someone’s nature naturally counters yours. How would you even approach them?"

Su Chongxiao’s brow moved slightly. He sized up Su Qingli carefully.

Only when the girl was beginning to shift under his gaze did he clasp his hands behind his back and say,

"Either they reach the Heaven-Man Realm and become a Supreme Master—at which point all traits can be extended or withdrawn at will—or you cultivate to at least one minor realm above them. Even then you’d only manage a few exchanges at worst. If you’re a full major realm above, you can significantly minimize the countering effect."

"What about the same minor realm?" Su Qingli pressed.

Su Chongxiao suddenly smiled.

"You’d have enough presence of mind to curse them out a few times while they’re countering you."

"So I still can’t approach them normally..." Su Qingli lowered her head and looked down at her own feet.

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Just then, a shout came drifting from far away.

"Miss Xiao Qing!"

"Eh!" Su Qingli immediately pushed the window open, leaned out her upper body, and looked toward the source of the voice.

She saw Ding Songyan, in his moon-white lined robe with his hair simply gathered, holding a small jug of wine. He was standing at the corner of the eastern city wall closest to the river, with the feather-robed, tall-crowned Ren Youyang beside him.

"I’m here!" Su Qingli’s face immediately beamed with a bright smile. She stretched out her arm and waved it gently.

From his place at the corner of the wall, Ding Songyan saw that Miss Xiao Qing had not yet gone far. He let out a great laugh, raised the jug of wine, and called out, "For a friend departing for home, how could I not come to see her off?"

Su Qingli’s eyes lit up. She spun around and called to her maidservant Yuyao, "Fetch me a jug of wine!"

Yuyao hesitated, her gaze drifting toward Su Chongxiao.

Su Chongxiao sighed. "Bring her a small jug of rice wine."

"Okay." Yuyao turned and ran out of the room.

"Quickly, quickly," Su Qingli urged. At the same time, she climbed out the window, and, using the gaps in the planking and the various protrusions along the cabin exterior, ascended with fluid, graceful ease—within five or six breaths she was at the very top of the tower boat.

"Wait for me!" Su Qingli cupped her hands around her mouth and called back toward the city wall.

A gust of wind swept across the river, leaving her white skirt billowing. She looked like a fairy of Gushe Mountain coming down to earth.

The tower boat moved slowly toward the center of the river. Seeing that Ding Songyan and Ren Youyang had already sat down cross-legged, Su Qingli followed their lead. She straightened her skirt and settled onto the deck with easy, unstudied grace.

She gazed out at the river, rolling and vast, its far bank barely visible, and felt suddenly as though her own chest had opened wide.

A moment later, Su Chongxiao tossed the small jug of rice wine that Yuyao had fetched straight up. It landed squarely in front of Su Qingli.

The girl broke the clay seal and lifted the jug.

Ding Songyan, seeing this, thought to recite some verse—but it had been so many years since graduation, and most of what he had memorized was long forgotten. He could only recall a complete version of the ten or twenty most famous pieces; for anything else, dredging up a single line was a triumph.

Unable to find anything suitable, he simply improvised, throwing out his own botched version without any concern for parallelism, tonal pattern, or rhyme.

"Miss Xiao Qing—grand ambitions, shared in laughter and talk; no joy surpasses drinking to the dregs with a kindred soul!"

With that, he raised the small jug of fine wine and took a large swig.

Carried on the river wind, the words reached Su Qingli’s ears, and she shouted back, "Well said!"

She raised her rice wine and poured it into her mouth, tasting something sweet and gently spiced, soft but not sharp.

Ding Songyan glanced at Ren Youyang, who was sitting beside him in a daze.

"Brother Youyang, are you not drinking?"

Ren Youyang swept a glance at the soldiers patrolling the city wall, the Brightnight Sect disciples and yamen constables below, and the crowd at the distant docks. He let out a sigh, raised his own jug, and tipped his head back to drink.

After wiping his mouth, Ding Songyan called out again with a laugh, "Are we the kind to waste our days in weeds and ditches? When the storm comes, we become dragons!"

"Well said! Are we the kind to waste our days in weeds and ditches!" Su Qingli raised her jug in reply and clinked it across the air toward Ding Songyan and Ren Youyang.

All three threw their heads back and drank.

Ding Songyan wiped his palm across his mouth, stood, raised his jug high, and called out with a laugh, "Miss Xiao Qing—may we both live long, and meet again another day!"

He had almost gone with may we both live long, and share this moonlight across a thousand miles, but found it too suggestive, so he forced a change to the second half.

"May we both live long, and meet again another day!" Su Qingli stood as well, calling back across the water.

Ren Youyang said nothing at all and simply kept drinking.

The tower boat had not yet reached midstream, but all three had already upended their jugs and shown them empty.

Three cups drained—and with that, the parting was done.

Su Qingli felt that this was exactly right for figures of the jianghu. Why wallow further in sentiment? She waved once, took the empty jug, and leaped straight from the top of the boat, tapped lightly off the ledge of her open window, and spun back inside like a bird wheeling on the breeze.

A faint flush lay across her face. She passed the empty jug to Yuyao, her eyes and the corners of her mouth all smiling, and said, "This is the jianghu I had in my heart."

As she spoke, her gaze sparkled and danced, as if two pools of fine wine were hidden within—so vivid that even the little maidservant Yuyao felt almost as if she herself had grown tipsy.

......

At the bend in the city wall.

Ding Songyan turned to look at Ren Youyang, half-amused.

"Brother Youyang, you didn’t seem to be in the highest spirits just now."

Ren Youyang swept a glance down at the base of the wall, then said, carefully, "Songyan—when you were shouting and drinking like that, every boatman, ferryman, porter, warehouse hand, guard, Brightnight Sect disciple, county and prefectural constable, traveling merchant, and passerby heard you and saw you. Aren’t you afraid of being mocked behind your back or talked about?"

Oh, so you found it embarrassing, worried about losing face... Ding Songyan smiled, speaking with a slight warmth of wine, "So long as I’m not near Chengyu Lane or Dangkang Temple, fewer than one in a thousand people in this city know who I am. What does it matter?

"If anything, it’s you, Brother Youyang. You are the one who’s already famous throughout the jianghu. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have gotten up on this wall in the first place. And now you’re even more formidable than before. Truly, who in the world does not know you?"

This was Ding Songyan’s way of teasing Ren Youyang: nobody knows me, so you’re the one who lost face, not me.

Ren Youyang’s expression froze. For a moment he could not think of a response.

By now, Ding Songyan’s dark true qi had circulated through his body several times, dispersing most of the wine’s effects.

This prompted him to reflect, with some appreciation, that Zhen Qianfan had quite likely been administering some rare poison to Yan Changqing every day. However, Yan Changqing’s stomach had long since undergone a fundamental transformation, and Dijiang’s remains were nearby. Whatever the poison, the moment it was consumed it would surely have been subsumed into the Chaos, and the state Yan Changqing showed under the influence of his own internal transformation had led Zhen Qianfan to believe the poison was working; hence, he had never suspected otherwise.

I can’t quite manage that yet. I should still be susceptible to drugs. But my true qi carries the quality of Bringing All Things Into Unity, and with strength at the perfected Dharma Realm, a full circulation through the body would be enough to neutralize the great majority of any poison or drug’s effect within a very short time... Ding Songyan took the opportunity to review his own condition.

He smiled and clapped Ren Youyang on the shoulder.

"We’re out of wine. Come on, Brother Youyang—my treat, drinks and company!"

Brother Youyang had my back earlier. I absolutely have to treat him!

Ren Youyang’s canine ears twitched. He sighed.

"Sigh... I no longer have that kind of worldly desire."

Ah... So that’s the price of becoming divine after death? No wonder Brother Youyang spent every day before his death visiting pleasure quarters. He wasn’t worried at all about wearing down his primordial essence... Ding Songyan asked, with genuine commiseration, "Then what do you still desire?"

Ren Youyang gazed out at the great river rolling past, and said, "The feelings of loyalty and affection have grown weaker, but they’re still in my heart. The desire in that aspect hasn’t entirely vanished either, only... one must first have feeling. What’s stronger is the principle I want to see enacted in my own conduct. And, mm—wine, blood offerings, well-prepared beef, lamb, and pork, as well as chickens, ducks, and geese are also things I crave. I can still find pleasure in watching plays and listening to storytelling, that sort of thing."

"That’s not bad at all." Ding Songyan was genuinely glad on Youyang’s behalf.

Ren Youyang drew his gaze back and looked at him. His expression turned serious.

"Songyan, did you consume something?"

Hmm... Ding Songyan did not answer at once.

Ren Youyang touched the phantom green-snake earring at his ear and said with a smile, "I became a ghost-deity, a corpse-deity—I have the nature of both ghost and corpse, and can pass in and out of the netherworld. I’m half a sinister creature. How would I not sense that something about you is off? Just now it was entirely the divine aspect holding me in place, keeping me from instinctively backing three paces away."

Author’s Note: For the three toasts Ding Songyan calls across the water, the first is adapted from James Wong’s Life; Jianghu. The second’s first half comes from Li Bai’s Parting from My Children at Nanling for the Capital; the second half has no traceable source. The third borrows the opening of Su Shi’s Mid-Autumn Moon before the closing line is made up. It shows how long Ding Songyan has been out in the world: his poetic sensibility has grown blunt.

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