[If you’re not reading this on chichilations, then you’re reading a stolen copy. Reposts are not allowed anywhere or for any reason! Nor are unauthorized EPUBs!
Links for thee: Ko-fi Donation — Translator’s Twitter — Project Index — EPUB Library — Discord Server — Tumblr
I see all your likes and comments! Thanks in advance!]
Cheng Qian followed Zhenren Muchun off.
The latter’s figure was shriveled up, thin enough that his head — a teetering cap fastened to it — was more or less held up by three tendons. He led Cheng Qian along by the hand like how a traveling actor’s troupe leader would lead his freshly-kidnapped little servant.
Cheng Qian had a child’s appearance, but on the inside, he already had the heart of a teenager. Although he walked in silence, he couldn’t help but turn his head back to look.
He saw that his mom had a worn-out basket on her back, his sound-asleep little brother inside of it and his mother’s sobbing, indistinct face outside of it. As for his father, he was standing silently to the side with his head bowed; it wasn’t clear whether it was out of lament or guilt, but he refused to raise his head and look at him again, standing there like an eternally overcast shadow.
Cheng Qian took back his gaze without any sort of hesitation or longing.
The isolated road ahead of him resembled a black, endless night, and he was holding his Master’s shriveled-up hand like it was a lantern similar to that Cheng heirloom — even though it had the bombastic ‘immortal’ prefix, its halo of light could only reach a few cun before one’s feet. It was impressive-looking, but ultimately useless.
In general, there were two ways one could travel. One way was called ‘touring’, and the other was called ’scurrying’. While with his Master, not only did Cheng Qian sleep while exposed to the elements, but an earful of trash beliefs was dumped into his ear by this old fogey. This could not really be called ‘scurrying’ at all.
Speaking of cultivating to immortality and seeking the Dao, Cheng Qian had heard a little about them.
Once upon a time, the amount of people that had gotten big imaginations and wanted to knock on immortals’ doors were even more numerous than carp in a river.
In the Late Emperor’s era, sects of every size lined streets like toads in their river burrows after the rain. Whether one was just some Zhang, Li, or Wang, as long as fertility was high in the household and there was no shortage of pups, they would all swarm to make connections, be given to some sect to pursue immortality, or learn some fighting techniques like ‘Chest Breaks the Boulder’. No one had gained any actual accomplishments to be seen outside of that.
Back then, more people had been cooking up pills than were cooking up food, and more people had been studying scriptures than were tilling fields. It’d gotten to the point that there were a few years where no one seriously studied or practiced martial arts, allowing unproductive fraudsters to run amok.
Supposedly, when seeking immortality had reached peak popularity, any given county’s territory would be only ten li across and have only eight villages, yet from the east end to the west end, there could be no less than twenty cultivation sects — they would buy a book of made-up, half-recent mental techniques from some minor merchant, then boldly raise the banner of cultivation to recruit people and get money.
If those people actually could ascend into the sky, Heaven’s Southern Gate might not be able to hold that many nobodies.
Even all of those house-robbing mountain bandits had joined in on the fun, renaming what had been named ‘The Black Tiger Fort’ and ‘The Hungry Wolf Gang’ to ‘The Monastery of Pure Wind’ and ‘The Legation of Mysterious Minds’, then learn some deceptive techniques, like shooting flames out of their mouth and sticking their hands in hot oil. Before their crimes, they would put on a hooting and hollering performance that frightened passers-by into continuously giving them generous amounts of money.
The Late Emperor had come from military, being a rough and ill-tempered man. He’d believed that if commoners were allowed to continue cultivating in such an obscene way, the country wouldn’t be able to go on. A decree had thus come down to arrest every last one of these ‘immortals’ that were rampaging in the countryside, and regardless of whether they were actual deities or fake ones, they were banished to army posts.
Before that world-quaking edict had had time to leave the palace gates, every major official in the court had heard word on the wind and then had their souls fly out of them out of fear. They’d rolled out of their covers that very night, run to the main palace hall, and lined up in front of it, the lesser officials in front and major officials taking the rear. This had been in preparation to take turns bashing their heads open on a pillar in front of the hall as an admonishment of death, lest the Emperor offend the immortals and bring ruin upon the country.
The Emperor could never permit every official there was to actually smear their brains all over the ground. That pillar with a dragon coiled around it wouldn’t be able to withstand it, either.
The Late Emperor had been forced to renege on his decree. The very next day, he’d ordered the Imperial Astronomer to set up an ‘Agency of Divine Diffusion’. Under the direct supervision of the Great Chartmaker, a few real-deal zhenren were circuitously invited to take positions there, and a stipulation was set for the future for all immortal sects: they would need to report to the Agency for verification on whether they were fake or legit. Only after they were verified and had been issued an iron deed would they be allowed to take in disciples. Private sects amongst the populace were forbidden.
Of course, this vast country bobbed and weaved between the nine provinces, east and west had a thousand li between them, and north and south were unconnected. It was basically impossible to strictly enforce anything. A one-strike ordinance would still have loopholes to get into, let alone this dogshit decree made by a careless idiot.
The Dynasty couldn’t even clean up all of those human traffickers. How could it dictate whether sects took disciples or not?
Genuine immortal sects hadn’t placed any importance upon the old Emperor, doing whatever they needed to. Jianghu charlatans with guilty consciences restrained themselves a little more, but that restraint was limited—it wasn’t like iron deeds were impossible to forge.
The Late Emperor’s hard work hadn’t been in total vain, however. Even though the yields of several bouts of torture, investigations, and purges were little, the fervor people had had for cultivation weakened a lot. Furthermore, from far and wide, no one had ever heard of anyone actual achieving anything in cultivation. After enough time, everyone had returned to tilling the fields and tending to livestock, no longer having wild daydreams.
Ever since the present Emperor’s ascension, the cultivation fad amongst the citizenry was still lingering on its last breaths, but that mad obsession had since passed. The Emperor knew well that wanting water to be too clear would yield no fish to fish, so he mostly turned a blind eye to those swindlers acting in the name of cultivation. No complaints were filed, so no action was taken.
Cheng Qian had once heard that old scholar lecture through all of these events. In consequence, he viewed the wooden rod dragging him along as just a simple rod… a rod that provided food, at best. It really wasn’t anything deserving of particular respect.
The rod-like Muchun stroked his swaying mustache, then kept saying some nonsense. “My sect is called ‘Whirlwind. Do you know what a whirlwind is, little one?”
The old scholar had abhorred stuff like this, so he had refused to speak of it. Since he had just started his schooling, Cheng Qian had been influenced by him a little, and it made his heart fill with disdain. Even so, he forced himself to put on a front of full attention.
Muchun raised one finger in front of Cheng Qian. That digit seemed to have some sort of spiritual ability; everywhere it went, an inexplicable burst of strong winds would rise, make swirls, then carry the withered grass on the ground straight up. The hollowed-out blades had a line of harsh, emaciated yellow that became illuminate by a bolt of lightning falling from the sky, nearly blinding Cheng Qian’s eyes.
The lad was struck dumb from watching this spiritually-charged, bizarrely-powered finger.
To tell the truth, Muchun himself hadn’t expected that to happen, being caught off guard for a moment. Upon seeing that he was awing this cold-faced-and-hearted little pup, he withdrew his hand and took the out.
His withered hands tucked away in his sleeves, he flaunted leisurely, “The peng migrated to the southern deeps, its wings striking up water for three thousand li and stirring up a whirlwind that went ninety-thousand li high, which took six months to come to a rest.[1] Without form, without bounds, it can revolve with wind. When it comes, it is profoundness; where it goes, it is limitless. That is a whirlwind. Do you understand?”
Cheng Qian did not understand, naturally. In his teeny-tiny chest, his wonder at this unknown power and his disapproval for these heretical teachings tangling up with one another, becoming difficult to separate. In the end, he held disapproving wonder towards his Master, and placed him at the same position as that lousy lantern on his family’s wall.
He nodded in confusion.
Fully satisfied at his goal being reached, Muchun’s mustache puffed out. Right when he went to use this to put on another display, however, the Heavens unexpectedly refused to give him more face. Before he could open his mouth again, the cowhide already had a draft — after the thunder rumbled, a strong wind aggressively attacked their faces, then extinguished the fire so that it turned into a handful of cold ashes right before their eyes. Immediately after that came violent gales, the lightning and thunder raising their voices in tandem, while shouts from the west called about bad weather coming in.
Muchun no longer care about pretending to be magic. “This is bad; it’s a downpour,” he shouted.
Saying so, he leapt up, picked up their pack with one hand and Cheng Qian with the other, then ran for it on his two reed-thin legs, taking small and quick steps like a long-necked pheasant.
Unfortunately, the rain came far too fast. Even though he was a pheasant, he couldn’t escape his fate of turning into a drenched chicken.
Muchun put Cheng Qian into his arms, took off his own outer robe that had been instantly drenched, then covered the boy he held with it, because it was better than nothing. While scampering away like mad, he shouted wildly, “Oh no! Crap! It’s raining so hard—ugh—where can we hide at?”
Cheng Qian had ridden countless beasts and birds while on errands in his life, but this was probably the bumpiest and most gibberish-filled one he’d ever been on.
The sound of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning entwined with his Master’s clamor. His head was covered by the robe, placing darkness before his eyes, yet he smelled a non-specific woody fragrance coming off of its sleeves.
His Master was holding him to his chest with one arm, which freed one hand to keep the top of Cheng Qian’s head covered. While the old man’s jutting bones hurt him whenever they pressed against him, the embrace and his protection were both genuine goods.
It was unclear as to why, but in spite of this long-necked fowl having just tried to dupe him with big talk, he seemed to have a natural sort of closeness with him.
Draped in Muchun’s outer robe, he silently peeped out through a gap in the cloth at his Master, who was drenched in the curtain of rainfall. For the first time his life, he was enjoying the treatment a child should have, and was savoring it thoroughly for a moment.
He was perfectly happy to recognize him as a Master, and he also made up his mind — even if his Master had a mouth full of shit and a belly full of heretical thoughts, he would forgive him.
Cheng Qian was carried by his emaciated Master until they finally arrived dripping wet to a run-down Daoist temple.
The large-scale ‘tidying of Daoism’ during the Late Emperor’s time had tidied up a great many unregistered sects, which had left behind many unregistered-sect temples. These had later become areas where homeless beggars and travelers that had missed their stop for the night would take refuge.
Cheng Qian tunneled his little head free of Muchun’s robe. As soon as he looked up, he met the eyes of the mud-fashioned Great Immortal enshrined within it, and jumped in fright.
It had two buns on top of its head, a doughy face with no neck, harsh lines across its cheeks, circles of red on each cheek, and a gaping, bloody maw below that, its smile showing a mouth full of jagged teeth.
His Master also saw it, of course, and quickly raised his paws to cover Cheng Qian’s eyes. “A pink coat with a jade-green robe? Tsk, it really has the gall to take offerings here with such obscene clothes? How absurd!” he angrily chastised.
Owing to his finite know-how, the very young Cheng Qian was both baffled and a little shocked.
“Those that cultivate in earnest have pure hearts and few desires,” Muchun righteously explained. “We must constantly pay attention to what we do and say! Dressing up like an opera performer is not any sort of decent!”
He still knew what decency even was?… Cheng Qian’s respect for him grew a bit.
At exactly that moment, the ephemeral fragrance of meat wafted out from the back of the dilapidated temple, cutting off his ‘pure-hearted and few-desired’ Master’s bitter words.
Muchun’s throat automatically bobbed, and he was suddenly speechless. A weird look on his face, he led Cheng Qian behind the obscene idol, and they saw a beggar boy that wasn’t more than one or two years older than Cheng Qian.
With the use of some unknown tools, the young beggar had dug out a hole in the ground in the temple’s back hall, inside of which a plump beggar’s chicken was being roasted. He knocked the clay shell open, sending its aroma overflowing to everywhere.
Muchun gulped down saliva yet again.
If someone reached a certain extent of skinniness, some things were a bit troubling for them. One example was that, when famished, it wasn’t too easy to mask their instinctual reaction when their slender neck was thin enough to be held in one hand.
Zhenren Muchun set Cheng Qian down, then put his own philosophy to work by putting on a performance for his young disciple, which demonstrated how to be ’someone that cultivated in earnest and constantly paid attention to what he did and said.’
He wiped the water streaks off his face, put on the smile of a lofty man with an immortal’s air, then finally strode forth with breezy, swaying lotus steps. He floated over to the beggar boy’s side, and — right in Cheng Qian’s face — spoke at great length with composure and pretty words, telling of an overseas immortal sect that had warm clothes, plenty of food, and precious metals bedecking it. He spoke until the beggar’s eyes were staring blankly at him.
Muchun fervently cajoled this big-headed, small-bodied beggar, saying, “I can tell that you have excellent aptitude. Someday, you might soar through the skies and dive into abysses, perhaps possessing great luck — what is your name and surname, child?”
Cheng Qian felt those words to be a bit familiar.
Despite the beggar boy being quite a bit sly due to his distant travels, he was still young, and was successfully duped by this man until two clear snot trails came down from his nose. “Xiao Hu. I don’t know my surname,” he answered, dumbstruck.
“Then how about you take mine, Han?” Muchun stroked his goat’s beard, slickly cementing their master-disciple status. “This Master will also grant you a personal name — will the single-character name of Yuan do?”
Cheng Qian: “…”
Han Yuan, just like the other ‘hanyuan’ that meant ‘bearing a wrong’… How very optimistic and jolly.
His Master must have gone stupid with hunger — he was pretty much rambling incoherently in the face of the charred skin and thick meat of the beggar’s chicken.
The translator says: Some people aren’t going to like that I didn’t stick to ‘fuyao’. Here’s a reality: I can’t do wordplay with pinyin, and when it comes to priest, wordplay is inevitable.
Whirlwind/扶摇/fuyao has four definitions on baidu. One is a literal violent storm that rises from the bottom to the top, one is a metaphorical storm that does the same as a portrayal of great and sudden success in life, and the third is ‘high speeds’. I’m sure it’s obvious why I chose the translation ‘Whirlwind’ for it—and for anyone who’s read this novel before, you’ll know that the word is very appropriate for many, many different reasons.
The fourth definition is that it’s also the supposed name of a legendary Daoist tree. I can’t verify this, though; the originating reference to it is supposedly in Zhuangzi’s Having Forgiveness (莊子·在宥) in the quote 過扶搖之枝/“passing through Fuyao’s branches”… but at the same time, that could just as easily be interpreted as “passing through high-rising/swaying/soaring branches”, as the individual characters 扶 and 搖 mean ‘raise up’ and ‘shake’, roughly. It’d be cool if there really was a Fuyao Tree, but the lack of sources and other material referencing it just make me think that someone read it wrong somewhere. Presumptuous of me, I know.
I kind of lied when I said that the rest would be purely on the Google Doc; I’m going to go to like, 5 or something before I do that.
Chichi's Dives 