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NOTE: Read the Prologue - It's very important!!!
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The village rooster of Qīngshān had not yet crowed when Zhì Yuǎn opened his eyes.
Through the narrow gap between the bamboo slats that formed the bedroom wall, the dawn light was only a cold, gray ribbon. At twenty-two years old, Zhì Yuǎn's body had lost the fragile lines of childhood. His shoulders were broad, and his chest, hardened by hours of heavy labor, rose and fell in a slow, unshakeable rhythm.
He tried to move his right arm, but the anchor pinning him to the bed was absolute.
Yù Qíng was not sleeping beside him; she was sleeping on top of him. The wife's long leg was thrown heavily across the man's thighs, locking his hips in place. Her left arm crossed Zhì Yuǎn's chest like a chain, and her fingers dug instinctively into the skin near his collarbone. The short nails left small crescent marks on her husband's hard flesh. Even in the unconscious world of dreams, her instinct demanded that she ensure he had not disappeared during the night.
Her breath beat warm against his neck, perfectly synchronized. The rhythm of two.
With the care of someone disarming a trap, Zhì Yuǎn slid his calloused hand free. He pried Yù Qíng's fingers from his collarbone one by one, lifted the weight of her thigh, and replaced his own body with a long pillow of straw and silk.
The loss of body heat denounced him immediately. The wife grumbled, clutching the pillow to her chest before opening her heavy, sleep-laden eyes. The territorial pout of irritation was already forming on her lips at the absence of that shelter.
"The bed went cold…" she murmured, voice hoarse and dragged, pulling the cotton blanket up to her chin.
"I'm going to wash my face in the stream and finish carving the black flute," Zhì Yuǎn replied, pulling on a loose charcoal-gray tunic. "The wood has rested for a week. It's dry enough for the first cut."
Yù Qíng buried her face in the pillow he had left behind, eyes half-lidded with laziness.
"The stream water must be freezing at this hour of the morning…" she complained.
Zhì Yuǎn paused in the bedroom doorway. He turned his face slightly back, lips curving into a mild, provocative smile.
"Cold water will do me good. And it should still be less icy than that tea you made yesterday afternoon."
Yù Qíng narrowed her eyes in the dark. The torpor of sleep evaporated. Guided by an instinctive impulse, she grabbed the straw pillow and hurled it with full force at her husband's back.
The cushion struck him with a dull thud, and Zhì Yuǎn laughed loudly, the deep sound mixing with the rustling of the bamboo grove outside.
"You're unbearable before the rooster crows," she grumbled, turning onto her side in the bed. "Go on, then. Father will need you to check hundreds of coal sacks this afternoon, before the shipment. If you linger out there too long, we'll miss lunch, and I'll have to make good on my promise to boil that tea."
Zhì Yuǎn merely shook his head, still smiling, and stepped out onto the back veranda.
The morning air was damp and cutting. The icy water from the stream on the veranda banished the nocturnal lethargy from his eyes in a single instant. Already settled on the low bench of rough wood, the iron blade met the stalk of black bamboo.
He picked up a small iron knife and the hollow stalk.
As the blade scraped the dark surface, his dark, attentive eyes dissected the nature of the wood. The resistance of the old fibers, the moisture trapped in the veins, and the exact weight of the friction against the iron transmitted directly to the nerves in his fingers. For the flute's sound to tear through the mountain wind without losing its force, the bore had to respect the stalk's thickness and the very direction of the cold breeze. The world was not magical to him; it was a rustic loom of weights, currents, and frictions, and Zhì Yuǎn's mind merely observed how the threads crossed in silence.
Shhh. Shhh.
The sound of the blade peeling the wood was the only living thing in the yard for a long time, until the sliding door panels creaked behind him.
Zhì Yuǎn smelled her before he felt the touch. Yù Qíng walked barefoot across the veranda and stopped exactly behind the bench. The thin cotton nightdress fluttered lightly, yet she did not seem to mind the cold.
Her icy hands descended over her husband's broad shoulders. She leaned forward, burying her pale cheek against his neck and nape. Yù Qíng rubbed her face there, inhaling the scent of Zhì Yuǎn's skin deeply, her body fusing with his in a heavy, territorial silence.
"Put the knife away, my love," she whispered against his warm skin, the velvety tone carrying its usual stubbornness. "The sun is about to rise. The old man gets cranky near tribute season. I don't want him coming here to shout."
He paused the motion of the blade, tilting his head back to accept the cold touch of her face against his nape.
Zhì Yuǎn's exhaled laugh vibrated against her chest. It was only the two of them, the wood, and the mountain wind, in a world that, for now, was still simple enough to be governed by threats of bad tea.
---
The sun was already burning high when Zhì Yuǎn and Yù Qíng left the bamboo grove's shadow behind. The packed-earth trail wound between small cultivated fields before opening into the vast courtyard of the main Yù family house.
It was the largest building in Qīngshān. The central courtyard served as the village's logistical heart, and hundreds of thick jute sacks, swollen with mountain coal, were already stacked beneath the eaves, awaiting weighing for the imperial tribute.
The smell of coal dust mingled with the dense aroma of bone broth simmering in the open kitchen.
Sū Huì stood with arms dusty from flour, stirring an iron pot with a wooden ladle. The woman's face broke into an exhausted smile, the soot and tension of routine yielding a rare, silent millimeter of relief at the sight of the two approaching. On a low bench in the most shaded corner of the veranda, the family's old grandmother kept her eyes half-lidded, wrinkled hands resting in her lap. She said nothing when the couple drew near, but her clouded gaze followed every step Zhì Yuǎn took.
"Sit down," Sū Huì said, pointing to the long wooden table with her chin. "Lunch is almost ready. Mei! Come help with the bowls!"
The answer came in the form of a hurricane of rapid footsteps pounding the courtyard earth.
Yù Méi burst from the back of the house. At fourteen, the younger sister was a bundle of restless energy. Her hair was tied in a loose ponytail, fingertips stained with soot.
The moment the youngest's almond-shaped irises found Zhì Yuǎn's tunic, the courtyard's tumult and shouting were summarily crushed by the absolute calm and massive inertia the man exuded.
"Brother-in-law!" Yù Méi exclaimed, running toward him and invading the young man's space with the lack of manners of someone who does not fear danger. "Sister said your new black bamboo flute is finally ready! Play for me? Now?"
Zhì Yuǎn lowered his face to the sweaty girl. Before he could move his lips to answer, a shadow crossed the sunlight between them.
Yù Qíng slid to the side, a single precise step that cemented her own body like an impenetrable wall between her younger sister and her husband.
The eldest smiled. A docile, sisterly smile that did not reach her black, nailed gaze.
"The wood had its first cut today, Mei. It's still sensitive to heat," Yù Qíng said, voice sliding over her sister. Her pale hand rose, gripping Yù Méi's shoulder with a force that sank into the fabric. "And your hands are covered in dirt and coal. If you dirty his tunic before lunch, Mother will have you scrubbing clothes in the stream until nightfall. Go fetch the bowls."
Yù Méi blinked. Enthusiasm collided with her sister's impenetrable smile. She made a frustrated pout, rubbed her dirty hands on her own skirt, and muttered a grumble before spinning on her heels and marching toward the kitchen.
Yù Qíng's hand slid from her sister's shoulder to Zhì Yuǎn's back, fingers smoothing the fabric of his tunic in a slow motion, sweeping the space around him. Zhì Yuǎn said nothing; he merely followed his wife's hand in silence and sat at the table.
Lunch proceeded at its usual rustic rhythm. Yù Chéng, the village chief, joined them with rough hands and a face marked by responsibility. Between sips of soup and chunks of bread, the middle-aged man did not shout, but the weight of his position dragged at his voice. He spoke of the war in the north, of the hundreds of sacks, and of the imperial intendant's implacable inspectors who would arrive the next day.
The meal did not last long. As soon as the clay plates began to be cleared, Yù Méi rested her elbows on the table.
"Now?" she asked, eyes locked on Zhì Yuǎn with canine insistence.
Yù Qíng opened her mouth, but Zhì Yuǎn raised a hand, a mild gesture that closed the matter.
"The black bamboo needs to test the wind before it dries completely," he said, voice grave and unshakeable. "Two songs."
Zhì Yuǎn walked to the edge of the eaves and sat on the wooden floor. Yù Méi threw herself onto the earth a few paces away, crossing her legs and propping her chin on her hands, enraptured. Yù Qíng leaned her shoulders against the wooden pillar directly behind her husband. She crossed her arms and half-lidded her eyes.
The first note tore the air. It was deep and dragged. Zhì Yuǎn did not play with his soul; he played with his breath, testing the wind's friction against the freshly cut stalk. They were old melodies, songs he had composed in the first months of marriage about the swaying of autumn leaves.
Yù Qíng relaxed her shoulders against the pillar. The docile smile returned to her lips. She knew each of those notes. He was giving his sister and the family the leftovers of the past; the new music, the one he had spent weeks composing in the silence of cold dawns, remained locked away under seven keys in his throat, reserved for the mountain peak.
When the final note died on the wind, Yù Méi let out a long sigh, clapping, eyes shining.
"You should play in the square every day, brother-in-law!" the girl exclaimed. "Everyone in the village should hear!"
Yù Qíng's pale hand descended from the pillar. The wife's slender fingers rested lightly on Zhì Yuǎn's broad shoulder.
"The sound of this wood is too low to compete with the noise of a square, Mei," Yù Qíng's voice floated across the eaves, burying the idea before it could germinate. "It was made for smaller places."
Yù Méi opened her mouth to argue, but the scraping of a wooden chair on the other side of the courtyard drew everyone's attention. Yù Chéng stood, collecting a ledger board.
"The music was good, Zhì Yuǎn," the father-in-law said, voice tired. "But the intendant forgives no one's art. Leave the wind for later and come here. I need you to use your eyes on the seams of these hundreds of sacks this afternoon. The loading will happen at dusk."
Zhì Yuǎn lowered the flute. He raised his face, met Yù Qíng's calm gaze for a second, and, in silence, rose to step into the world of weight, bindings, and coal dust.
---
The entire afternoon smelled of dry dust and soot beneath the main eaves.
Zhì Yuǎn walked among the hundreds of jute sacks swollen with coal. Yù Chéng accompanied his steps, extending the small wooden ledger board with markings.
"The workers finished tying the second batch," the father-in-law said. "They say every sack has the exact weight required. The imperial inspector arriving tomorrow has no patience for mistakes."
Zhì Yuǎn ignored the ledger board.
He walked in silence among the mountains of jute. The young man's deep-set eyes perceived the behavior of matter. He stopped before the third sack in the row. His gaze descended along the sisal cords.
He raised a hand, calloused fingers brushing the main knot.
"The third sack is light," he said, voice unaltered and apathetic. He took a few more steps and stopped before another in the dark corner of the eaves, touching the base of the fabric. "And the ninth has moisture soaking the core."
Yù Chéng frowned, approaching.
"You didn't even try to lift it, boy. They were weighed on the big iron scale."
Zhì Yuǎn pointed to the cord of the third sack.
"The iron scale has rust on the axle; it sticks before marking the real weight. But the cord does not lie." He pressed his thumb against the sisal, which gave slightly. "The jute has loosened, but the upper cord is slack. There's empty space inside. And in the ninth, the fabric is dark and dense. The coal in the center didn't dry in the kilns. The water will evaporate on the way and the inspector will deduct ten kilos for the lost volume."
He did not stop there. For the following hours, while the sun descended gradually and shadows stretched across the courtyard, Zhì Yuǎn walked through the sea of coal. His silence was broken only to point out defective bundles. The twentieth with frayed seams. The fortieth with useless dust flakes instead of coarse stones. The seventieth.
He dissected dozens of defective sacks amid hundreds, using nothing but impeccable observation of friction, weight, and moisture. When he finally finished and the sun began to flirt with the mountain line, Yù Chéng let out a long, noisy sigh. The old chief's tense shoulders collapsed all at once, his rough hand rubbing his sweaty neck as the threat of imperial punishment evaporated before that impeccable triage.
"I'll have the men open and repack these right now," the village chief grumbled, impressed. "You've got the sharp eye of a falcon, Zhì Yuǎn. You should consider taking over the village intendancy one day."
"I prefer the silence of the bamboo grove," Zhì Yuǎn replied.
Yù Chéng merely shook his head, silently swallowing the non-negotiable weight of that refusal, and moved away to organize the men.
Zhì Yuǎn turned to wash the coal dust from his hands in a water barrel. While drying his fingers on a cloth, a rustic, low voice sounded from behind the pillar.
"Zhì Yuǎn."
He raised his face. In the most shaded corner of the veranda, old Yù Lǎo Tàitai was still seated on her bench. It was she who, fourteen years earlier, had looked at the memory-less boy who had emerged from the forest and named him "Distant Wisdom."
He approached and lowered himself, resting one knee on the packed earth.
The old woman's wrinkled, cold hand rose, rough fingers touching the young man's temple. Zhì Yuǎn did not recoil.
"You are changing, boy," the old woman murmured, her thumb brushing the skin near Zhì Yuǎn's eye.
"I've grown, Grandmother."
"The body grows. The bones stretch. But I'm talking about your eyes," the matriarch's voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "When you came out of the bamboo grove years ago, your eyes were already empty. They were like two deep wells, watching ants."
The old woman withdrew her hand, a slight tremor shaking her stooped spine beneath the linen.
"But now…" she continued, pressing her thin lips together. "The well is becoming too deep. There is a weight that does not belong to this place. Be careful, Zhì Yuǎn. Those who look too deeply into the root of things usually forget how to live on the surface."
The old woman's words caused no tremor in the young man's posture. They merely laid bare the same dry, mechanical perception that had already been cementing itself in his own mind for days. A strange rhythm, an invisible flow at the edges of his perception.
Before he could formulate a response, a soft aroma of fresh herbs cut through the dust smell of the eaves.
"He does not need to live on the surface, Grandmother. He has our home."
The velvety voice came from behind him. Zhì Yuǎn did not need to turn. Yù Qíng's pale fingers had already found his shoulders, nails sinking lightly into the linen fabric, pulling him back.
The wife stopped beside him, dark eyes fixed on the old lady, carrying a polite smile that closed the conversation like the slamming of an iron door. To Yù Qíng, anyone who tried to point out flaws or question her husband's sanity was simply wasting their own breath on the wind.
The grandmother merely lowered her head, clouded eyes returning to stare at her own lap, accepting the barrier raised by her granddaughter.
Yù Qíng slid her hand from his shoulder to Zhì Yuǎn's wrist, her fingers interlacing with his in a non-negotiable grip.
"Let's go to Sunset Peak," she murmured, tugging him lightly upward. "The sun is about to begin its fall. And you owe me the new music."
Before they could take the first step out of the veranda, the kitchen door banged. Yù Méi appeared, arms dirty with soot and eyes shining.
"You're going to the Peak?" the adolescent asked. "I'm coming too!"
Yù Qíng's answer cut the breeze immediately.
"Tomorrow, Mei," the elder sister said. There was no rise in voice. No irritation. It was the mild tone of an absolute verdict. "Today, my husband will play only for me."
Yù Méi made a frustrated pout, shoulders falling in defeat, and muttered a grumble before turning her back and returning to the kitchen.
Zhì Yuǎn accepted his wife's tug in silence. As they walked away from the eaves and the hundreds of inspected coal sacks, lethargy returned to his eyes. He allowed himself to be guided toward the mountain, not knowing that this would be the last sunset of his mortal life.
---
The trail to Sunset Peak wound upward, slowly distancing itself from the Qīngshān valley. As they climbed, the smell of soot was replaced by the rarefied, cold air of the slopes, perfumed with the damp scent of ancient pines.
They walked in silence.
Yù Qíng's small, pale hand was firmly interlaced with Zhì Yuǎn's. Her grip was a mechanical, precise fit, fingers digging between the knuckles of his, locking the young man's warmth in a cage of flesh and stubbornness.
It was Yù Qíng who broke the quiet, floating her voice over the cold breeze.
"Grandmother tried to warn you in the courtyard."
Zhì Yuǎn did not take his eyes from the steep trail, maintaining the rhythm of the climb.
"She sees things in the shadows that blindness does not let her see in the light," he replied, voice grave and monotonic. "She thinks I'm forgetting how to live on the surface."
Yù Qíng stopped walking.
The sudden jolt made Zhì Yuǎn stop as well. He turned. His wife stood in the middle of the dirt trail, the cold wind tossing her black hair around her pale face. Her eyes bored into his with a silent, irreducible fervor.
She asked no questions about his sanity. Yù Qíng took a step forward, invading her husband's vital space. She raised her free hand and touched Zhì Yuǎn's face. Her thumb slid across his temple, methodically and unhurriedly wiping the exact place where the old grandmother had touched him minutes earlier.
"The surface is only dust and noise, my love," she whispered, face centimeters from his, warm breath beating against her husband's chin. "If you are going to sink… drag me with you."
The naked, raw promise floated between them, heavy as an iron anchor. Zhì Yuǎn observed his wife's face, absorbing the total absence of hesitation in it. The matriarch's warning about the loss of humanity rotted in the trail dust. Yù Qíng did not recoil before the absolute void swallowing her husband's irises; she merely tightened her icy fingers against his flesh, claiming her own territory in that darkness with non-negotiable force.
He raised his free hand, caressed her pale neck for a second, and pulled her by the hand again toward the summit. Yù Qíng smiled, a small, satisfied smile, and followed his steps.
Sunset Peak was a tongue of dark stone hanging over the abyss of the valley. The wind blew strong there, yet neither of them seemed to mind. From up high, Qīngshān Village was reduced to a handful of pathetic rooftops.
Zhì Yuǎn sat on the edge of the abyss, legs dangling over the void. Yù Qíng settled beside him. She drew her knees to her chest and leaned her shoulder against his, pressing her own body against her husband's firm side to shield herself from the wind. The fit was perfect.
The sun began to kiss the distant mountain line, bleeding the sky with tones of red, ochre, and gold.
Zhì Yuǎn released his wife's hand to retrieve the black bamboo flute he had spent the dawn carving. Yù Qíng closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his shoulder, lips parted. No younger sister. No imperial intendant. Only them.
He brought the wood to his lips and released the first breath.
The sound was not a sweet melody. It was a long, dragged, hoarse note. The thick wood resisted the breath, demanding that he push the air from his diaphragm. It was the raw sound of friction, a rustic imitation of the wind that cut the abyss below them.
The sun continued to sink. The shadows of the stones on the peak began to lengthen rapidly.
It was then that Zhì Yuǎn stopped merely playing. He began to observe the shadows.
The illusion of chance vanished from nature. The exact architecture of how the light receded and the cold swallowed the empty space materialized before the young man's eyes like a primordial, undeniable mechanism. It was a cycle. A silent breath of the mountain itself. Heat rose, cold descended. Light shrank, darkness swallowed.
Without realizing it, the rhythm of his lungs changed to align with that pulse of the world.
He inhaled deeply when the sunlight receded over the stone. Held his breath at the exact instant heat and cold collided in the atmosphere. And exhaled the flute's note when the shadow advanced, occupying the ground.
Inhale the fall. Hold the impact. Exhale the darkness.
On the fourth cycle, the melody changed. The notes spaced out. The air around Zhì Yuǎn suddenly became dense. The wind that had been whipping both their tunics seemed to die, creating a pocket of heavy, unnatural calm on the edge of the precipice.
Zhì Yuǎn drew breath once more.
And the world yielded.
What entered through Zhì Yuǎn's mouth and scraped his throat was incredibly dense and heavy, as if he had inhaled a drop of cold lead. The particle descended, forcing its way through channels in his chest that had been dry and dead since birth.
The pain was sharp and immediate.
Zhì Yuǎn's body stretched in a rigid spasm. The veins in his neck stood out. The bones of his shoulders cracked under the pressure. The black bamboo flute slipped from his hand, struck the stone with a hollow snap, and rolled perilously toward the edge of the abyss.
Beside him, Yù Qíng opened her eyes at the same instant, feeling the rigidity of the shoulder she had been resting against.
"My love?" she called.
The sound of her voice seemed to come from the bottom of a well. Zhì Yuǎn's ears buzzed, and blood roared in his temples. The heavy particle lodged just below the sternum, occupying a space previously invisible.
The crushing tear of the cartilages in his trachea silenced in the blink of an eye, replaced by the mechanical and lucid weight that cemented the young man's bones. For the first time in twenty-two years of a sparse existence, the cavity of his lungs filled with the true and impassable density of the world. His innate Wisdom, which before had been only an instinct for observation, awakened like a dark eye opening in the center of his own mind.
He did not answer his wife. His face inclined slowly forward, gaze nailed to the void of the abyss, watching the sun disappear completely. His irises seemed to have swallowed all the remaining light on the peak.
The air around him cooled drastically, not from the wind, but from the simple pressure his body's density now exerted on space.
Yù Qíng looked at her husband, and her breath caught.
He was there, but the mortal man who cut bamboo and complained about tea was being summarily rewritten from the inside out. An immense and lethal essence overflowed beneath that skin, rendering Zhì Yuǎn's presence something distant and far too heavy to fit in the village.
The cold of imminent loss crushed the young woman's stomach. The asphyxiating, unfathomable anomaly threatened to tear her husband from his earthly borders, unlocking the most primitive and possessive instinct of her flesh. The old grandmother's warning echoed: The well in his eyes is becoming too deep.
Yù Qíng's reaction was instinctive and violent. Both her hands flew. She seized Zhì Yuǎn's right arm and dug her fingers against the bone of his wrist with desperate force. The wife's short nails tore the young man's skin, sinking into the flesh until her own knuckles whitened.
Zhì Yuǎn was yanked from the internal buzzing and turned his face.
Yù Qíng was pale, eyes wide, trembling with pure stubbornness. The brutal grip and nails buried in his blood screamed the only law she permitted to exist. If he was going to fly, she would break her own fingers to be dragged along.
Zhì Yuǎn looked at her nails dug into his flesh. Then he met his wife's black irises.
He turned his hand slowly and returned the grip, locking her icy fingers in a warm cage. The blood from his own wrist stained the wife's pale skin.