Qin's Moon: Yang Shi's Long Song

Ten years ago, on the border of Baiyue, there was a dilapidated temple.

The rain was pouring down. An eight-year-old boy was huddled in a corner, covered in mud, and hadn't eaten for three days.

A girl in a red dress walked in, glanced at him, and took out half a piece of dry rations from her bosom. The rations were still warm.

The boy asked her name. She said, "You don't need to know me."

The boy said, "I will come back to you."

The girl smiled—not a smile of belief, but the kind of smile that comes from "a child's words."

"fraud."

She left. The boy clutched the half-eaten ration in his hand for a long time. The warmth of the ration seeped through his palm; it was the warmest thing he had ever eaten in his life.

Ten years later, he came down the mountain.

-

Guiguzi said that the lives of those who descend from the mountain are not their own.

Yang Hui knelt on the stone platform at the top of the cliff. The edge of the platform was a bottomless abyss, where clouds and mist surged like boiling water, and a waterfall cascaded down from the heavens into the valley, yet no echo could be heard. The wind at the top of the cliff blew incessantly all year round, making people's robes flutter, but he knelt there, motionless, like a tombstone buried in the earth.

He was nineteen. Or rather, he looked nineteen.

In the ten years of Guigu, he grew from an orphan who crawled out of a pile of corpses into the only person in Guigu's three hundred years to "combine vertical and horizontal sword techniques." These were the words of his master. He himself did not know what "the only one" meant, only that from the age of seventeen, when he practiced swordsmanship, he no longer needed to think about "whether it is vertical or horizontal," the sword would move on its own.

The door to the thatched hut was ajar, and a person sat inside. Yang Hui could not see him, but he could hear his voice—old and calm, like the hard core left after the weathering of mountains and rocks.

"Hui".

"Disciple is here."

"The art of celestial secrets, I never intended to pass it on to you." The voice from inside the door paused. "Those who try to peek into the secrets of heaven are like those who hold a candle in the wind. Every time it is used, the flame shortens by an inch. That inch is equivalent to a year of lifespan."

Yang Hui remained silent. He already knew. His master had told him three years ago—on the night he first mastered "Sword at Will," his master called him into the thatched hut and said, "There is one more thing you need to learn, but listen to this first before deciding whether you want to learn it."

That night, the master finished speaking. After listening, Yang Hui said one word: "Learn."

It took him three years to obtain the final volume of the Heavenly Secrets Technique. His master had delayed for three years, hoping he would change his mind. He didn't.

"You are the most talented disciple I have ever seen," the voice from inside the door continued, "but you are also the person I have ever seen who cares least about his own life or death. This has nothing to do with talent, it has to do with fate."

Yang Hui slightly raised his eyes: "Master, is this my fate?"

"Whether your fate is this way or not is up to you. But the Heavenly Secrets Technique is about 'reversing cause and effect.' The more you see and reverse, the more you reverse, and the heavier the backlash will be. Every time you use it, you are borrowing a year of life from Heaven. Once you borrow it, you have to pay it back."

"I know."

"Are you still going down the mountain?"

"Yes."

"For what reason?"

Yang Hui was silent for a moment. The wind swept up from the bottom of the cliff, carrying moisture and chill, and brushed against his face. He thought for a moment and said, "For one person. And also to change my way of life."

The voice inside the door didn't ask who the person was. Guiguzi never asked "why." He only asked, "Do you regret it?"

"No regrets?"

No regrets.

A long silence followed in the thatched hut. Then Guiguzi said, "Stretch out your hand."

Yang Hui stretched out his hands, palms up. He heard a noise inside the thatched hut—a very soft sound, like bamboo slips being untied and rolled up again. Then something flew out from the crack in the door, whistling through the air, and landed precisely in his palms.

It was a scroll of bamboo slips. It was very old, the edges worn smooth, and covered with densely packed ancient characters written in cinnabar. The handwriting belonged to the master, but some parts were blurred, as if it had been written and then erased, erased and then written again, revised many times over.

"These are the last three pages of the Heavenly Secrets Technique. I used it once when I was young, and it took me three years to finish writing it. You take it."

Yang Hui put the bamboo scroll into his pocket. He felt the scroll against his chest, slightly warm—it might be an illusion, or it might be the "echo" of the Heavenly Secrets Technique.

"Take the Heaven-Asking Sword down the mountain."

"Yes."

"But you must remember: when you ask the heavens, you are asking the heavens, but the heavens may not answer. When you draw your sword, if there is even a trace of 'seeking' in your heart, the sword will be empty."

Yang Hui stood up. He turned to face the thatched hut and bowed three times.

The first bow was to express gratitude to his teacher. The second bow was to thank him for ten years of nurturing. The third bow—he paused, as if thinking about something, then bowed again. The third bow was a farewell.

As he straightened up, the sheathless black sword at his waist swayed slightly. The sword was named "Asking the Heavens," and it was entirely black, without a guard or any decoration, like a charred, withered piece of wood. But it was extremely heavy—not in a heavy hand, but in a way that made you feel as if the whole world was pressing down on your shoulders when you held it.

"Hui." A voice came from inside the door behind me.

"Disciple is here."

"After you descend the mountain, you will meet many people. Some will become your friends, and some will become your rivals. But remember—"

Yang Hui stood still, waiting for his master to finish speaking.

"Whether they are friends or rivals, they are merely scenery along your path. The real path is one you forge yourself with your own feet. Don't look back."

Yang Hui nodded. He didn't say "okay," because his master never accepted promises. His master only accepted "doing."

He walked towards the plank road. The plank road, so narrow that only one person could pass at a time, hung on the cliff, with a bottomless abyss below. He walked slowly and steadily, each step firm and deliberate.

As he took his third step, for a fleeting moment—a very brief instant—he heard a voice.

That wasn't the master's voice.

It was a strange, younger voice, carrying a smile yet also a distant voice he couldn't understand. The voice spoke a very short sentence, like a gust of wind brushing past his ear, or like someone shouting to him from a very, very far away place:

Keep moving forward, don't look back.

Yang Hui didn't stop. He kept walking. He wasn't sure if the sound was real or just his imagination. He wasn't even sure if he had "heard" it at all—it was so faint, like an echo generated in his own mind.

But he remembered that sentence.

Ten years later, sitting on his sickbed in Changxing City, with a piece of paper in his arms that read "All the heavens and myriad worlds are scenery," he suddenly remembered this moment. Only then did he understand—that sentence was not an illusion. Someone, a very, very long time ago, in a very, very far place, had said to him, "Don't look back."

Of course, that was a long time later.

Yang Hui had finished walking along the plank road and was standing at the foot of the mountain. He glanced back in the direction of Ghost Valley—the clouds and mist had swallowed the cliff top, and he couldn't see anything. He tightened his belt, patted the bamboo scroll in his arms, and made sure it was still there.

Then he turned around.

The road ahead led to a land he had never seen before: the border with South Korea. He was going to Xinzheng. There lay the person he needed to save—the girl in the red dress, frozen for ten years, imprisoned in the deepest part of a dungeon. Ten years ago, he owed her half a piece of dry rations, and he hadn't forgotten.

He started walking forward. The mountain behind him grew farther and farther away, becoming increasingly blurry.

The wind blew in from the north, carrying the scent of earth and crops. He smelled the scent of "humanity".

Guiguzi said that the lives of those who descend from the mountain are not their own.

Yang Hui walked on the official road outside Xinzheng City, his feet firmly planted on the yellow dirt. He felt his master was right—his life truly wasn't his own. But he also felt something else:

"My life doesn't belong to me, it belongs to my sword. The sword's life belongs to me."

He smiled. It was a very faint smile, fleeting. Then he wiped the smile away and quickened his pace.

It's still three days' journey to Xinzheng.

He wasn't in a hurry. But he knew that someone had been waiting for ten years.

The person waiting for him wasn't in Xinzheng—they were in the dungeon. A woman named Yan Lingji, she didn't remember him now, but he remembered the half-eaten piece of dried rations she handed him. It was still steaming. It was the hottest thing he had ever eaten in his life.