Of Mountains and Rivers 14
I Think You’re More Precious
Only one word could describe Chu Hua’s impression of the Liyi Clan’s children – wild.
They liked to play wildly. As they usually didn’t have to attend school or cram classes anyway, all day long like big wild horses, they’d run around the entire mountain and open fields.
They also had wild characters – a typical example is Xiao Fang’s daughter, Flower Bud. She had keen fangs and a sharp tongue; she could slaughter wild boars and would beat a crying younger brother.
Their adolescence was spent wildly without care or worry, and they dared to be wanton before their Patriarch; however, it was exactly these groups of wild children who were collectively frightened by the small earthquake.
The earthquake was actually only a slight tremor that passed after a few minutes. Typically speaking, the southwestern regions were situated on the Himalayan seismic zone, so the Earth’s crust would, to some extent, would experience some hyperactivity; as long as it wasn’t too tremendous, an occasional wobble shouldn’t be such a surprise. Let’s not mention the children – how come even the adults didn’t know what an earthquake was?
What made Chu Huan even more shocked was, when the ground trembled the children seemed to share a tacit understanding; they all looked at the sky together.
Did it have something to do with their religion or something? Maybe this was similar to how the ancient civilization believed the lunar eclipse was caused by the Tiangou eating the moon1 – maybe the Liyi Clan believed earthquakes were related to something in the sky?
Then what was with their guarded expressions?
Chu Huan quickly found out those wearing guarding expressions weren’t just the children. On the same night, during the evening lesson, the number of students was exceptionally whole. During his lessons, Chu Huan was very easygoing; basically, whoever wanted to join could join – the classroom was in an open space anyway. Generally, only half of the youths attended lessons; some had work to do and the rest had to patrol the mountain. The fast horses raised in their clan were used for this purpose.
But on this day, the number of people near the white boulder suddenly doubled. Included were those meant to be patrolling the mountain; they all had weapons carried on them, hidden in their pants.
This little tactic could trick others, but it couldn’t trick Chu Huan; however, he merely swept his gaze across the mountain patrols, pretending to not know, and conducted his Mandarin popular science lesson with normality. Even his teaching assistant, Patriarch Nanshan, appeared exceptionally grim. Chu Huan noticed he was holding something similar to a sceptre; he saw it once in Nanshan’s home, hung among a number of other cold weapons. It was so delicately carved that its sumptuous exterior appeared almost out of place compared to the other cold and threatening weapons.
Chu Huan guessed this item, which appeared more lavish than its purpose, represented patriarchal status.
“Quake – like this – means vibration. Earthquakes are when the ground is vibrating.” Chu Huan paused, before adding, “It’s usually caused by the movement of a big rock layer underground, like wind and rain.”
Then, he heard Flower Bud’s little attendant use their native language to say, “It’s not like wind and rain, it’s because the […] Gate has opened.”
The word spoken before ‘Gate’ was unheard of by Chu Huan, so he didn’t know what it meant.
Immediately, an adult’s hand reached out from behind the boy and slapped the talkative child.
Chu Huan, just like how he ignored the mountain patrols’ weapons, pretended to not hear the boy and nonchalantly continued his subject; however, he could clearly feel how the atmosphere suddenly tensed after the boy said that.
The lesson ended with a depressing atmosphere; even Dashan, who was usually very invested, seemed a little absent-minded. The Liyi people didn’t stay to sing and dance like usual; instead, they quickly dispersed in silence. The little brats who’d usually run around were also sent home by their parents.
Nanshan walked towards Chu Huan. “I’ll walk with you for a while.”
Chu Huan hummed in response. At this moment, a gust of wind blew away the dark clouds thinly covering the sky; Chu Huan unintentionally glanced up at the sky before his footsteps suddenly paused.
That was… a copper-like full moon.
How strange. Chu Huan couldn’t help but stretch out his hand and forcefully pinch the space between his brows; he could clearly remember how it was still a long and slender crescent moon the day before.
The moon couldn’t possibly have inflated. Could it be he remembered wrong?
Hallucination? Memory disorder? Or had he become even more brain-dead?
As far as Chu Huan’s self-perception was concerned, he felt he couldn’t have become crazy to this point.
But if this wasn’t his problem, then how else could he explain this objective natural phenomenon?
“…Chu Huan?”
Nanshan called him several times before Chu Huan returned to his senses. “Huh, what?”
Nanshan carefully took a measure of his complexion. “You’re a bit pale. Are you sick?”
He looked concerned as if he was talking to someone who had one foot in their grave, causing Chu Huan to suddenly remember the rumours he heard in the late afternoon. He finally found a channel to divert his attention to, no longer confused about whether he was having hallucinations or not.
Chu Huan dejectedly glanced at Nanshan, desperately wanting to ask what about him misled Nanshan to create a mistaken impression he was ‘someone belonging to a species that could be stabbed to death with a branch’. He’d long worked his face through the vicissitudes of life and made no regard for his personal image, but… for some reason, Chu Huan didn’t wish for his image in Nanshan’s heart to be so unheroic.
Chu Huan disputed Nanshan stiffly. He pointed at the stick in Nanshan’s hand and asked, “By the way, are you holding this today because something’s going to happen in the clan soon?”
Nanshan was taken aback by his sudden question. A while passed before he hesitatingly nodded. Chu Huan could see it wasn’t very convenient for him to explain the details, but he was too sincere – in addition, he didn’t know how to fob someone off with nonsense – so he pondered hard about what to say.
“Yes,” Nanshan admitted after some time. “You… Hm, try not to be alone these days.”
Chu Huan glanced at him. Although Nanshan wasn’t evading the question, there was some kind of ‘don’t ask’ look in his eyes.
Chu Huan immediately became tactful; he willingly accepted the other’s advice to not inquire about it and casually praised Nanshan’s patriarch sceptre. “Is the top embedded with jade or jasper? It’s such a translucent green.”
Nanshan: “Does it look good?”
Chu Huan: “It’s not bad.”
Generally speaking, praising someone else’s things is actually just a way for two people to continue from the preceding conversation with a new one; the person speaking and the person listening wouldn’t be too mindful, and there’d rarely be any meaning behind it. However, Nanshan clearly wasn’t an ordinary person.
Chu Huan’s ‘not bad’ hadn’t even landed before Nanshan’s fingers were already clasped around the largest gemstone on the sceptre. Suddenly, his long and slender fingers bent into a claw-like shape. Without another word, he used all his strength to dig out the stone. With one hand carrying the bald sceptre and the other handing over the gemstone to Chu Huan, he sincerely said, “Then I’ll give it to you.”
Chu Huan: “…”
Nanshan clenched the gemstone in his hand and weighed it. He suggestingly said, “I’ll pierce a hole in it for you. You can wear it around your neck.”
Wearing a gemstone the size of a fist around your neck? That’d definitely play an important role in encouraging cervical spondylosis.
No, the point is – this is a gemstone, right? Not a large sugar cube?
Chu Huan: “N-no, I didn’t mean it like this.”
Nanshan tilted his head with doubt. “You don’t like it?”
Chu Huan replied in vain. “…No, I didn’t mean it like that either.”
The two stood facing each other, unable to communicate with a verdant stone separating them. Exactly what he meant, even Chu Huan himself didn’t know.
Chu Huan smiled awkwardly. Before the chasm of their wide cultural gap, he patiently explained, “From where I’m from, we’d typically not exchange such precious gifts without any reason.”
Nanshan used his naive and beautiful eyes to stare unblinkingly at Chu Huan and committed a gaffe. “Why? I think you’re more precious.”
Chu Huan was, once again, speechless.
He could swear to heaven that he’d never deliberately indulged in any wild fantasies, but the way Nanshan said the words so seriously made it extremely difficult for him to control himself – Chu Huan felt his heart seem to inexplicably jump. A string of mojibake2 lingered on his perturbed mind.
He was speechless for a very long time before he finally put on a sincere expression fitting of an upright gentleman. His voice was slightly hoarse as he said, “Orally, we’d typically not say such… Uh, such words that can only be said on special occasions.”
“Oh, you don’t say it much?” Nanshan nodded blankly, appearing to understand when he truly didn’t, expressing how he’d benefit from further advice. However, just as Chu Huan forced out a laugh – before his next breath had even come up – he asked with crystal-clear eyes, “Then if I like you a lot, what should I say?”
Chu Huan immediately choked on his saliva, causing him to cough to the point he was hovering between life and death.
Nanshan felt very perplexed. He smiled at Chu Huan with slight embarrassment. “I said something wrong again?”
His eyes clearly showed his noble and benevolent character. Chu Huan felt his filthiness fully reflected within them. He composed himself. There was a slightly weak numbness in his palms as he received Nanshan’s spectre and gemstone – it was originally embedded at the top, yet Nanshan just imprudently broke it off, not even leaving its root.
Chu Huan scrutinised it for a while before he remembered he had a small box of 502 glue. “Let’s go – I’ll stick it back on for you. It was well-embedded, so why did you just break it off?”
“It’s okay, it has no use.” Nanshan followed him, not caring much, revealing a tyrannical manner resembling nature itself. “It’d be good if you could stay here forever. Will you stay here forever?”
After hearing this, Chu Huan hesitated for a moment. Words came to his lips, but he carefully made them indirect. “How do I say this? The affairs of the world are inconstant, don’t you think?”
Questions difficult to answer can be tactfully answered in a roundabout way. Most adults would listen to the song-stringed accompaniment and understand the kind offer3, so they’d most likely cease their questioning.
But Nanshan once again expressed his extraordinariness.
With a blank stare, Nanshan asked, “Ah? What does that mean?”
Chu Huan choked a bit. He reflected on his wording and found no matter how he worded it, it’d all be nonsense, so he could only follow Patriarch Nanshan’s speaking manner. As straight as a wooden club, he said, “…It means I won’t.”
“Oh.” It was straightforward enough this time. Nanshan was silent for a moment before he nodded, appearing a little sad. After a good while, he said, “I saw something written in the book you gave me – ‘airplane’. One can sit on it and fly above the clouds. Is there really a car that can fly into the sky across the river?”
Chu Huan: “Yes. When there’s time, I’ll invite you to sit in one. We can fly to my home and play.”
Nanshan: “Where’s your home?”
“My home is…” Chu Huan’s voice suddenly paused, the question stumping him.
Where was his home?
He didn’t have a home; only a small apartment with no living room, and Chu Aiguo’s property that he’d inherited under his name. The former had a cat tree he hadn’t tidied up whilst the latter had been unoccupied for a very long time as he’d been too lazy to rent it out.
Just a house and property – could they be called home?
Nanshan smiled. “Even if you said it, I wouldn’t know where it is; either way, it’s very far away, right? I can’t go – can’t leave too far away from the clan – but in the future… In the future, maybe, after the clan’s children have grown up and learned their Chinese, I can leave to see the outside world with you.”
When he said this, there was a longing beneath it that could make one unable to bear breaking it. Chu Huan swallowed back the fun-spoiling ‘the outside world is very chaotic’.
He let Nanshan into his small courtyard. “Come in, I’ll help you glue- Eh?”
Chu Huan saw a snake coiled by his door. The unexpected guest was like a watchdog, its tongue spitting out at him.
Translator's Notes
- 天狗 – literal meaning ‘Heavenly Dog’. An ancient mythical creature resembling a black dog or meteor that was thought to eat the sun or moon during an eclipse.
- Garbled nonsense showed when a computer software fails to render text
- A reference to a 14th-century novel called ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’. The whole phrase is ‘although I’m not as clever as Shi Kuang, listening to the song-stringed accompaniment I understand your kind offer.’ It means ‘even if someone isn’t smart, they can still understand the hidden meaning behind someone’s words’.
