chapter 9 - end of a story

[raini7o5]

End of a Story

Snow never approached her since. It still continued circling overhead, disappearing every so often, Ying Ru suspected when it got hungry, but it followed her everywhere. Gradually, she accepted it.

Being the ironic persona that she is, she even gave it a name: Snow. It didn't have a cute ring to it like Fu Fu did, the name she had given the brown dog, but that's because a shiao is not a 'cute' creature in any sense. It is still pretty terrifying to her, and she hopes it never swoops down in front of her like that ever again. The distance right now, it somehow brings down that fright factor a whole lot.

Zhu Cheng's bustling crowd is as noisy as always. Ying Ru's eyes drift back and forth looking for a particular face.

She has gone down into Zhu Cheng again. One of three times leaving Bamboo Forest, she will meet with danger in the form of a jing or in the last incident, an animal. Still, she somehow ends up here. Saying she's itching for danger is not too far fetched.

"Lao Shen Sheng?" Ying Ru weaves through the busy street.



He is not in his usual corner across and down from the brothel. Sometimes, Ying Ru wonders why he chooses to sit so close to that kind of place. Isn't it noisy? Maneuvering her thoughts around another person that she has associated with that place, Ying Ru's eyes continue to dart around energetically.

Lao Shen Sheng does not strike as the perverted old man that enjoys peeping at those colorfully dressed ladies by the doorway. Today though, it finally hit her and then everything made sense. If someone was going to or from the Qing Lou (brothel) , they must have spare money, maybe even a good mood. He is a bit of a businessman, that old beggar. Why does he resort to begging?

"Have you seen an old beggar?" she grabs the arm of a passerby who looks at her strangely and shakes their head. "Ahyi (auntie), the old man that usually sits here, have you seen him?" She asks the vendor that is frying pancakes.

"That filthy beggar? It's great that he's gone! My business has gotten better since he's been gone!" Just as the woman says this, a customer accidentally shoves her aside, demanding a pancake.

Ying Ru chewed on the inside of her cheek, wondering where he had gone. The handful of honeyed date skewers in her hand was already an hour old. She pulled off a date with her teeth, unhappy all of a sudden. A few times, she had imagined an old tired voice shouting behind her "My favorite Ying Ru, come to see me?" By the third time, she had stopped turning around. It was obviously all in her head.

No one knows where he went...

"Ahyi, since when was he missing from here?" She pushed through again, hoping the the woman would not be too annoyed with her and tell her.

"Since three days ago!"

Ying Ru was immediately pushed out of the way by the crowd, but she had caught that. Already three days?

She stared down at the skewers in her other hand, "Looks like you have no business today." She lowered them.

Lao Shen Sheng, this person, other than being fatally addicted to honeyed dates but unwilling to buy them with his own money, Ying Ru actually doesn't know a whole lot about.

Zhu Cheng is a crowded little town in the valley of the Kirin Mountains. It is roughly four hours walk from Bamboo Forest down to here, very convenient and accessible for her so she comes down every chance she gets.

For this naive and curious girl, a meeting with a talented story-spinner like Lao Shen Sheng would be comparable to love at first sight. From the first meeting until today, five years has passed, but through high mountain peak and deep river gorge, love and hate, life and death, story teller and story listener, it felt like a thousand years had already been bridged. It is a strange relationship, but a special one nonetheless. Ying Ru cherishes it very much.

Perhaps Zhu Cheng to Ying Ru is exactly just Lao Shen Sheng.

Ying Ru stands in the middle of the human river, in a trance.

A little girl runs past her, bumps into her side, falling to the ground. Ying Ru instantly recognizes her as one of the children that she had caught throwing rocks at the old beggar one time. A random bout of anger erupted inside of her. She can't remember how many times she shouted at them.

"Hey! You don't have eyes?" She shouted in a loud voice.

The vendors here are busy dealing with the crowd, leaving their children to run loose around the stalls. They will scold their children when they stray too far, but it is somehow acceptable when the little ones entertain themselves by bullying an elderly beggar nearby. Her parents must not be doing their job, letting their little rascal run around throwing rocks at people. She felt like she was doing society a good deed by yelling at her, but the second those big fat tears came spraying out of the girl's eyes, she felt even worse than those jing that come after her. She suddenly wanted to take it back.

"S-sorry! Jie jie (big sister) is in a bad mood." Ying Ru quickly dropped down to a squat in front of the little girl, pushing her entire bundle of honeyed date skewers into her chubby little hand. "Don't cry please..."

Ying Ru is used to being the one being comforted so when the tables are turned, she is always at a loss. Luckily, the girl saw those skewers and immediately stopped.

Even though Lao Shen Sheng never yelled or hit them for the rock throwing, it is all bottled up inside of Ying Ru, and at that moment, she couldn't keep it in any longer and blew up. If he had put up with them for so many years, he would not have left for that reason. These children have nothing to do with Lao Shen Sheng's disappearance.

Well, at least she had taken care of all those honeyed dates!

Ying Ru sighs, making her mind to leave. Her feet feel heavy and don't really want to move.

She opens the drawstring bag, examining it's contents. A few pieces of silver sits at the bottom, unspent. To think that she helped the innkeeper wash dishes all day to earn this, she can only grumble to herself. She'll just consider herself saved some money this time. Lao Shen Sheng must've went on another trip or something, off to see things she can't. Didn't even leave her a message or anything! She will give him a piece of her mind when he gets back. Does he not think anyone will realize he's gone, just sneaking away like that?

Speaking of Lao Shen Sheng, that old kid. Already that old, yet still has the energy and spirit to travel and tumble around. He's really abnormal for an old man of that age. Does he not have any children, grandchildren to keep him grounded? Well, he is a beggar. If he had family that cares for him, would he need to beg for a living? What kind of family would allow their own kin to sit on the dirty streets begging? Ying Ru has always had the feeling that he is that kind of lonely old man. Surrounding himself with people on a busy street, even if they are merely strangers, as a sort of self-compromise for the company that he yearns for.

The sun slowly, very slowly starts on it's downwards trail. Already, some parts of the valley are shrouded in shadows cast by the peaks of the Kirin range.

Snow, the white shiao is soaring so high up in the sky Ying Ru can only locate it as a dot up there. Every so often, it would emit a long piercing cry that would leave her nerves twitching.

It's no longer Snow as the threat, but what the shiao could see from up there that she couldn't. Between Zhu Cheng and Bamboo Forest is a four-hour expanse of forest-covered mountains. If she were a jing, she would choose this time and place to pounce at herself as well. The trees and diminishing light is a perfect condition for jing to take advantage of. What is good for a possibly lurking jing is obviously not a good thing for her.

Ying Ru is not afraid of walking alone.

She is afraid of jing, afraid of dying, afraid of not being able to get back to Bamboo Forest, and afraid of unpredictability.

Zhu Cheng is a mortal town, and the people there live normal mortal lives. That is already something that feels like a previous life compared to her current situation. She is merely sixteen years old, but that split in the road is an event in her life that's already thirteen years in the past.

What is companionship of a lifetime?

The owner of the inn she gets her pocket money from has a daughter about her age, pretty and full of herself.

Earlier in the day.

"I, Wang Ning is going to be married soon. Do you know who the groom is going to be?"

Wang Ning brushes off the dust from a stool and sits down next to Ying Ru who was scrubbing away at the dishes.

"Fang Yu Han!" She clasped her hands together, stars about to shoot out from her eyes. "I confessed to him two days ago. Last night, he and his father came to ask mother for my hand!"

She must've been so happy. Ying Ru heard the excited girl share this news out in the front with random strangers, it would only be a matter of time before she comes skipping back here and share it with her. Happiness is like this? To be so over-stuffed with the feeling that Wang Ning has to tell everyone she could get her hands on. It must be a very amazing feeling.

No one in Zhu Cheng knows where Ying Ru comes from, except that she pops up in the town once in a while. She doesn't live here, but she's been here enough to have a few acquaintances like Wang Ning and Lao Shen Sheng. She knew that Wang Ning had her eyes on the banker's son. Twenty and full of flowery charms, that guy would easily be able to snatch Wang Ning's heart. Wang Ning has been under his spell for so long, every time Ying Ru sees her it gets worse. Ying Ru can barely watch. This time, it was like being struck by lightning. That guy who seems to smirk at every girl that passes by, flirts like a bee, even tried to engage Ying Ru in flirty conversation once, was interested in Wang Ning enough to ask for her hand? She never saw it coming.

Ying Ru sighed as her mind travelled back to the present.

Wang Ning was going to marry her crush of three years. She was going to walk the rest of her road happily with her flowery husband Fang Yu Han.

Since the time Master told her how she had survived that devastating incident, the one that turned her into an orphan, she had been living in Bamboo Forest. It's true, she has been feeling very restless lately, unable to stay still in one place. She has found herself coming down into Zhu Cheng more and more.

Being away from Bamboo Forest more often, it's naturally meaning she has more time to herself. The feeling of being alone becomes less frightening, easier to get used to. Still, she doesn't like it. Ying Ru still preferred to be surrounded by people.

Suddenly, loud squawking filled the air. Snow was acting strangely, so strangely that even though she was not familiar with the bird, much less what accounts to normal or abnormal behavior, she could tell that there was something wrong. Ying Ru's first reaction was to run. Was it jing again? Had Snow discovered jing in the area and was trying to somehow communicate that to her?

Ying Ru then saw the bird dive right out of the sky. She quickly rushed towards that direction, taking caution to not make herself too obvious in case it had really been jing.

The dirt road hugged the edge of the mountains, darting through the trees. Usually there are endless trees on the right and glimpses of scenery on the left that she could glimpse through the scattered trees. Against one of those gnarled tree trunks, laying in a very unnatural way, was an old, thoroughly battered figure. The person had their head propped up by the foot of the tree, the rest of the body sprawled haphazardly over the snow-covered ground as if discarded there. Not many people would recognize this ragged person, but Ying Ru did. She had been looking for this person for the entire afternoon.

"Lao Shen Sheng?" She asked in a loud voice. The figure on the ground made no response. She started making her way closer, faster. "Lao Shen Sheng!" She shouted again. Maybe he didn't hear her. He continued to lie there silently on the ground. She finally had no choice but to admit to the abnormality that this image was making itself out to be. Throwing away all caution to the wind, Ying Ru rushed forward.

The air here wore a faint scent of something. It made her stomach roll with unease. The figure was unresponsive.

Her feet stopped besides the body, slowly bending down. The sight was even more startling up close.

"Lao Shen Sheng... Lao Shen Sheng..." Ying Ru's eyes swept over the old man's body. Clothes that were already tattered and dirty appeared to be even more unsightly. Worry began to sprout out like little weeds inside of her. She lightly shoved the old man, hoping to get some sort of response. Something wet clung to her palms. Lao Shen Sheng's clothes had always been dark and full of stains. She couldn't tell which was new and which was old. On the dark greyish robe, there were large patches of black. Only pushing his body over slightly and seeing the red color soaked into the white snow did she confirm what it was. Obviously it was blood.

Ying Ru threw a glance over at the large white bird hovering over them. It was still that clean snowy white, not a speck of red on it's feathers, beak, or talons. She let out a breath. Ying Ru would never forgive herself if she had somehow caused this. Snow was a predatory bird after all. Just because it had not done anything to harm her doesn't mean it can't go and harm others. The bird seems to have sensed the hostility in her gaze and gave an enraged scream, took off again. Gust and snow slapped against her unprepared body and face, momentarily causing her to shiver from the cold.

"Ying.. Ying Ru?" A weak remnant of a voice brought her back. Lao Shen Sheng must have woken up by the sudden commotion, but his eyes didn't completely open. He seemed like he was not fully conscious.

She quickly helped Lao Shen Sheng to prop up against the trunk of the tree, into a sitting position that was more comfortable.

Eyes landing on his condition, she found it hard to breathe. Her thoughts were like the air lodged in her throat, trapped. All that managed to pass was a weak "How..?"

A defenseless old man who doesn't have any money or valuable belongings, even thieves wouldn't care to touch him. Who was cruel enough to hurt him to this extent? What is the use in hurting Lao Shen Sheng, Ying Ru's mind cannot come up with even one possibility.

"Who did this to you?" She yelled angrily, eyes raking over all the deep cuts glaring out from in between slits in the grey fabric. He looks like a fishing net! Her own body recoiled, imagining the pain he must be in. With every rise and fall of his chest, she swore she saw more blood spill out from those cuts. Ying Ru bit back waves of stinging tears. She could feel her fingernails stabbing into her palm through the rough fabric she held in her hand. It was a corner of Lao Shen Sheng's grey robe.

Did he offend somebody or something? Who wouldn't let go of a penniless old man like Lao Shen Sheng?

"It's no use even if you know..." He half wheezed, half choked out.

"You're about to die! Don't you know?" Looking like this, even if she has high cultivation, it won't be of any use. How is he even alive? "Stop talking! Just tell me who it is! That's all I want to hear!" Ying Ru knew how valuable these few minutes, seconds perhaps, were.

"Silly girl... you want to take revenge for me or something?" He shook his head with difficulty. "You can't do it." A bloodied hand came up to pat the top of her head. He didn't use much force, but each pat seems to force a few loose tears out of her eyes. "Give it a few hundred years... perhaps..."

Ying Ru's mind stumbled over those last few words Lao Shen Sheng said. The bright light briefly glinting in her eyes passed. They went back to being their usual dark brown, a layer of moisture over them.

"Why?" Did he see her as unable to do it? Is the person who did this very powerful? She stared at him through watery eyes. "When did you know? Is that why you tell me all those stories?"

She had never told him she was a cultivator.

Lao Shen Sheng had never asked either. She wasn't exceptionally powerful, from the outside it would be impossible to tell. Xian and mortals don't mingle, likewise with cultivators of the Xian path. How Lao Shen Sheng, a mere mortal beggar could tell what she was is startling. She thought in the old man's eyes, she was just a curious girl that liked hearing whimsical stories. She forgot though, mortals don't care nearly as much about their ascended counterparts as the other did for them. Ask Wang Ning if she wanted to hear any of Lao Shen Sheng's stories and she would run off, rather spending her time with her flowery Fang Yu Han. Lao Shen Sheng knew all along that Ying Ru was not like the usual sixteen year old mortal girl. She may act like one for now, but deep down, a seed had already been planted. That is why those whimsical stories of his were able to captivate her.

"Your Master...." His dirty and wrinkled hand held onto her arm. She could feel the struggle coming with each word because that hand would tighten. Ying Ru who was deathly afraid of pain, wished at that moment that she could help him to shoulder it.

"Master?"

Lao Shen Sheng nodded. "What is his name?"

Ying Ru bit down on her lip. She has never disclosed her Master's identity, not even to Wang Ning, who she could consider her only friend in Zhu Cheng. No one even knows there is a bamboo complex up in the patch of bamboo in the Kirin Mountains, much less the name Ju Fan.

"Heh, I think I can guess..." He dared to give a hearty laugh, causing Ying Ru to go into a panic when large amounts of blood started spilling from his mouth. The laughter turned into body-shaking coughs. "The scenery of Bamboo Forest is quite beautiful. It is truly a good place to cultivate, full of elemental qi. How long it must have taken your Master to find, I wonder."

Ying Ru bitterly sat there, wishing he would just stop talking. Not literally, just stop talking about nonsense. She already assumed he knew who's student she was, but was it that important? They were just a handful of no-name cultivators living on the side of a mountain, not even worth a mention if compared to those large Xian clans Lao Shen Sheng told about in his stories. Why was he wasting his last breaths complimenting the scenery of Bamboo Forest?

"I'm sorry, ate so many of your honeyed dates...." His voice became very weak. Sadness was swimming in the depths of his eyes, fear also, to her surprise. Was he afraid? Of death or of not being able to taste the sweetness of those skewers he loved so much? "Honeyed dates...."

"Lao Shen Sheng!" She wailed, finally unable to take it anymore. "Who is it? I just want to know who did this to you!"

Lao Shen Sheng's face was already very pale, looking exactly like a person who's candle was going out. "Who did this..."

Ying Ru tries very hard to be patient, tries to bite back all the useless tears that wanted to come out. She nodded, ushering him to quickly tell her.

"The whole world did this to me..." Lao Shen Sheng's cryptic answer. "Will you go kill off every living beast and being on Pangu for me?"

Ying Ru would hit this stubborn old man if they were sitting in their usual crowded corner in the city. This old beggar is really long-winded, loving to take his time building up suspense. Ying Ru will say 'Lao Shen Sheng! You already said that!' or 'Lao Shen Sheng, stop talking in riddles!' but at this moment, she could only stare at him with wide, watery eyes.

Thinking that corner Lao Shen Sheng occupied, that small space besides the pancake vendor's stall that Ying Ru would always run to after purchasing a handful of honeyed date skewers, squat down with a casual 'Lao Shen Sheng, have you eaten yet?', will remain empty from now on, inside Ying Ru's chest it felt like there was a rapidly expanding pocket of emptiness growing there. She swallowed back the dryness in her throat, her chest gradually resonating that dull aching feeling throughout her body.

"Spend your entire life killing... killing....... killing, you'll never wipe them all out." The old man takes her hand suddenly, startling her with his strength. "Don't put your mind on fruitless things...."

Ying Ru's entire body was stiff with fear, "Lao Shen Sheng!" The hold on her wrist was becoming unbearably tight, she could feel the old man's fighting, as if her wrist was the last thread of life he was holding onto.

Ying Ru has never seen anyone die. Master told her she was three, and three year olds don't have complete memory. She doesn't remember the first time death paid her a visit, taking her family away from her. She doesn't remember the blood or the gore, not even the screams.

Thirteen years from that incident, death brushes her shoulder for the second time in her life. This time, it made sure she remembered.

The sun was gone, shadows replaced where light once occupied. The moon was bright and round. Although it couldn't lift any shadows, it didn't allow the night to go completely black. If she thought about it now, this would really be the first time Ying Ru stayed out in this region past sundown.

Ying Ru's unmoving figure remained seated in the same posture, on the ground. A large white bird stood not far away. It appeared to be preening itself, something it seemed to enjoy doing if it wasn't up in the sky. It's not a wonder how it keeps itself so clean and spotless if that is all it seems to do besides hunting and flying around above her head.

Her light green figure sat there motionless, as if frozen. A breeze was blowing through the night, rattling the trees as it brushed past, creating faint rustling sounds. Inside her head, on her arms, she could almost feel the remnant presence of the old man. In reality, he was long gone. It's been at least a few sticks of incenses since Lao Shen Sheng departed.

She has never buried anyone before. The only close individuals that had passed away in her presence had been her parents. Only Master had dared to take care of her parents' funeral matters for her. The entire village had fled upon the news of what happened to her family. Nobody wanted to become the recurrence of it. Without anyone telling her specifically, she knew enough about what to do with the dead if she were to come across that sort of situation. It was something she had learned by interacting with the folk of Zhu Cheng. Wang Ning's father had passed away about the time she first came into the city. They had arranged a funeral for him, the entire family donned white garments and close neighbors helped carry the wooden coffin outside of the city to bury into the ground.

She would have done that for Lao Shen Sheng, except.... he didn't leave a body for her to bury.

Mortals, jing, beasts all leave a physical body after death, their souls parting to enter another cycle. A mortal man can die, reincarnate multiple times and die multiple times, and perhaps somewhere down the cycle his restless soul would become tired of the meaningless repetition, decide to live once and end the cycle there.

It occurred to her that very instant, that the old man she had grown so attached to was not mortal and that he had reached the end of his last stick of incense.

It shook her to the core of her bones, this kind of revelation. She was only sixteen, barely started her cultivation. Yet in front of her eyes at this unerasable moment in her life, she was in the presence of the greatest irony of her life.

A xian was dying before her eyes.

His weight suddenly became paper light and he appeared to have stopped feeling pain, that mischievous smile returning briefly to his face before his hand slowly slipped off of her wrist, lifeless.

What followed was something she had never been told, experienced, or imagined before.

Ying Ru's eyes widened at the sight of Lao Shen Sheng's body shining with blinding rays of light emitting from every cut on his body. Her tears, like frightened back into her eyes, stopped falling altogether.

A brilliant qi trigram appeared on the ground, so magnificent and bright that it forced Ying Ru to cover her eyes with one hand. It stirred the snow underneath them, gently whipped the cold air around them as it started to spin around the two figures like a breathtaking tornado of light, faster and faster, pushing its pinnacle higher and higher into the sky above them until it pierced the clouds above them with the sound of a clap of thunder. The gentle gust became violently spiraling wind, as if the heavens were trying to pull them in.

When Ying Ru tilted her head up, Lao Shen Sheng's body, as if made up of millions of pieces of delicate sheet gold, weightlessly swept into the air by the gust of qi. The qi trigram then ruptured and drifted off like bits of shimmering dust, spinning after the rest of qi until it too melted into the clouds above. Suddenly everything was silent again. Bits of snow fluttered back to the ground, the air was completely still with no wind.

It all happened in the span of a held breath.

Nothing remnant of the old man remained, even the bloodstains on the snow that she had failed to realize when had also disappeared. It felt as if the old man had never existed to begin with.

This must be what loss felt like.

Ying Ru felt like part of herself had gone with him, head raised and eyes unblinkingly fixed in the direction Lao Shen Sheng had gone. Her mind was completely empty, she could not feel any part of her body, it felt empty as well. Only her eyes wordlessly absorbed every single detail of Lao Shen Sheng's departure. When it was all over, Ying Ru gradually felt her soul return to her body bit by bit. First her breathing returned, then her senses, lastly her ability to think. It was already dark by the time she had repeated that piece of memory in her head for the hundredth time.

Xian live thousands of years, they soar through the sky on swords and clouds, watch over the helpless mortal realms with their unfathomable wisdom and far sight. They weren't like this.

They don't... die.

Not like this.

----

Author's note:

Sorry for the long wait. I wanted to have a good amount written before I start updating again. This chapter is long overdue, but it is an important one. The story will get more intense from this point on, so hopefully this is a memoriable chapter!

Thanks for the support all my readers new and old. I wish I just had more time to spend on writing. I will continue to update this story, so hopefully it will be worth the waits! I know it will be fore me!

Raini