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Even though Han Yuan was a bit older than Cheng Qian, according to order of entry, he became his junior sect-brother, fourth in line. Cheng Qian had been a ‘final’ disciple, the door supposedly shutting behind him, for only a few days before he turned into a senior.
Clearly, the Whirlwind Sect’s rear door wasn’t shut all that tightly.
As for that beggar’s chicken… it had mostly ended up in their Master’s belly as a show of filial piety, of course.
Chicken couldn’t even stop up the chatter of Zhenren Muchun’s mouth; where he’d picked up such a huge preaching addiction was unknown. “Where did this chicken come from?” he asked while eating.
Han Yuan had a nimble tongue, as well as a bit of a talent: he could gnaw on chicken bones without using his hands. After stuffing a whole piece into his mouth, his cheeks would bulge out a few times, that brittle bone would rattling for a short moment, and then it would be spat out, clean and intact.
With a pah, he crudely spat out the bone in his mouth, then said to their Master, “Stole it from the village ahead.”
Confucius once said: No talking while eating, no speaking while eating.
Beggar’s chicken was inevitably aromatic. Cheng Qian had been hesitant on whether he should follow in his Master’s footsteps of tearing off a drumstick to eat, but after witnessing this scene and hearing this sequence, he resolutely drew his hand back, then quietly nibbled on the flat bing that had since turned hard as a rock.
With the quality level Han Yuan had, what sort of quality would a chicken he caught have?
Looking at it from that perspective, then despite Cheng Qian’s youth, his Daoist mind and principles were already firmer than his stick-like Master.
This clearly had no effect Zhenren Muchun’s appetite—all he did was go half-agape in the middle of his great chewing process. “Regardless of what you invite onto yourself as a thief, how could I, a true cultivator, be like a dog and steal a fowl?” he asked, wagging his head. “Ah, how disgraceful! This is no example to set!”
Han Yuan gave a muffled affirmation. Since the young beggar understood nothing, he couldn’t argue.
Stealing fowl isn’t okay, but deception is probably fine, Cheng Qian thought bitingly, which was followed by him remembering the secret tolerance he’d just given to his Master during that downpour. He could only mentally sigh like he was quite a bit weary of the world’s trials. Nevermind.
This chronologically-fourth junior of his, Han Yuan, had a small nose, a bit of an underbite, and tiny little eyes that constantly flickered with devious light, something that wasn’t too charming to see.
Cheng Qian hadn’t been too happy with Han Yuan from the second he’d seen him. His unsightly appearance aside, Han Yuan occupied the title of ‘junior sect-brother’, and it was difficult for Cheng Qian to have good feelings over anything related to the word ‘brother’. Still, his dislike was silent, and on the surface, he continued to put on an air of friendliness that wasn’t too discreet.
In the Cheng household, the freshly cut-out clothes had gone to the eldest brother, and sugary custards had gone to the littlest brother. Good things had never landed upon Cheng Qian’s head; he had instead always been assigned work.
Since generosity wasn’t in his nature, he’d felt resentful. However, he’d also heard the phrase ‘Fathers are compassionate, sons are filial; older brothers are kind, younger brothers are respectful’ constantly hung upon that old scholar’s lips. He often felt that his resentment was completely illogical as a result.
As a tiny boy, he hadn’t had the time to fully cultivate his self-restraint skills, so he couldn’t genuinely be without grudges. He’d been forced to pretend that he didn’t—and now, after joining a sect, he continued to act like that.
Since his Master had gone back on his word and opened the proverbial door yet again, Cheng Qian seemed to have no choice but to decently act like a senior.
When there were errands to run on the road, he, as a senior, did them. When they had a bit to eat or drink, he yielded them entirely to his Master, then his junior. Acting like this was never easy, so Cheng Qian had to constantly check himself, lest he lose his front of being kindly and mild-mannered.
He was often as demanding upon himself as this. For all his life, his father had been poverty-stricken, rough, and violent, having never treated him well. After hearing what that old scholar had once said, Cheng Qian had never dared to overtly hate his dad, and was instead obliged to pity him covertly.
Whenever the young man dreamed of the past in the middle of the night, he would often think of how he would rather die than become someone like his father.
For this reason, this gentle front came from him wracking his brains to support himself from being confused and surrounded. He wouldn’t tolerate losing it, no matter what.
Alas, Cheng Qian quickly found that despite his good deeds, this junior of his really didn’t deserve any of his care at all. Not only was he repulsive to look at, but his personality was really irritating.
First and foremost, Han Yuan blathered a lot. Before the young beggar had been picked up, their Master had been wholly responsible for being noisy, but after picking the young beggar up, even Zhenren Muchun seemed to be a lot quieter.
Having apparently been inspired by their Master’s phrase of ‘being like a dog and stealing a fowl’, the beggar casually fabricated a tale of how he had defeated a big, yellow, zhang-long weasel, then pilfered a fat chicken. He narrated the lie in lifelike detail while waving his arms and stamping his feet, the beginning, process, twists, and end undulating wildly. All of it magnified his personal great brilliance and divine bravery.
“How could a weasel be over a zhang long?” Cheng Qian attempted to logically challenge.
Provoked, Han Yuan quickly puffed out his chest, raised his chin, and defended himself. “It turned into a spirit, of course. Master, weasels can turn into spirits, right?”
Their Master had somehow been moved by unknown words used in the weasel spirit’s tale, and his expression seemed a little off, as if he had both a toothache and something like an upset stomach. After a good while, he absentmindedly answered, “All things have spiritual energy. All of them can probably become spirits.”
Like he’d received the greatest recognition ever, Han Yuan shot Cheng Qian a barely-concealed, condescendingly look. “Senior, you haven’t seen much of the world, so of course you would think a lot of things are strange,” he said, which was baffling. “Humans can cultivate to immortality, so living creatures can cultivate into yao spirits, too.”
Cheng Qian didn’t answer, laughing in mockery on the inside.
Were a weasel to actually be a zhang long, then four legs wouldn’t be enough for it—that super-long body would have to move around with the ground rubbing against its belly. Would a yao cultivator strenuously cultivate for so long just to polish its belly into hairless iron?
Cheng Qian couldn’t grasp what designs a yao cultivator would have, but he knew what designs Han Yuan had.
The young beggar was like a leech grown from a stinking sewer. The second he caught a whiff of blood, he would desperately struggle to go suck it up with a ferocity that went to his bones.
Han Yuan was fighting with him over their Master’s favor.
He seized every single chance to display his unworldly bravery to their Master while simultaneously doing all he could to besmirch his ‘weak and gullible’ senior. Watching him jump around was ridiculous to Cheng Qian, so he imitated that old scholar in coming to a half-pedantic, no spice, lid-on-the-coffin conclusion about his junior: ‘A noble will inevitably be needy, but a lout in need will lack discipline—what is this, you little bastard?!’[1]
After hearing about Han Yuan’s achievement of ‘bravely fighting a weasel spirit’, the very next day, Cheng Qian got to see with his own eyes the ‘unworldly bravery’ of his bastard junior.
Today, their Master was leaning against a tree for an afternoon nap. Cheng Qian was flipping through an old text that was in his Master’s back-basket; it used difficult words that he was too unlearned to know, the majority of these scriptures being ‘met’, just not ‘acquainted with.’ Still, he took enjoyment from it,and didn’t think it dull at all, as no matter what was written in his Master’s scriptures, this was ultimately the first time in his life he had ever openly touched a book.
Of these two disciples Zhenren Muchun had picked up, one was as still as a wooden stake, and one was as active as a macaque. Cheng Qian—the wooden stake—didn’t move at all, and Han Yuan—the macaque—didn’t stop for even a second.
It was unknown where Macaque Han was right now, which made Cheng Qian happy enough that his ears were free of that filth. They weren’t free for that long before Han Yuan was seen tearfully running back, though.
“Master…” Han Yuan whinily pouted.
Their Master’s response was a delicate snore.
Han Yuan thus proceeded to howl, shooting a glance at the nearby Cheng Qian while he did so.
Cheng Qian had a suspicion that their Master was actually awake and just pretending to sleep, intending to see how their relationship as sect-brothers was. With how his junior was weeping all ugly-like, it wouldn’t be good for him as a senior to ignore that familiar sight, so he was forced to put down his ancient scriptures and ask with a pleasant face, “What is it?”
“There was a river in front of me and I wanted to catch a fish for my Master and senior to eat, but there was a big dog on the short that chased me,” Han Yuan said.
Cheng Qian sighed internally. He was also wary of vicious dogs, but with Han Yuan’s panicky eye movements on top of his claim of being a filial junior that had been harassed by an animal for catching a fish, would there be any reason for his senior to shrink his head back if he asked him to come forwards?
He was obliged to pick up a large rock off the ground, weigh it in his hand, stand up to follow Han Yuan to the riverbank, and continue to say, “Okay. I’ll go have a look with you, then.”
He was fully prepared. In the event that there really was a vicious dog, he would smash this rock against the back of his junior’s head, ensure that the little bastard was smashed until the pulp of his big melon was visible through its cracked skin, then hand him over for Brother Dog to deal with.
Sadly, by the time they arrived at the riverside to look, the dog had already left, leaving only a few rows of pawprints in the ground.
Cheng Qian bowed his head to observe the tracks. By his estimation, that ‘vicious dog’ had probably been less than a chi long, and was like a young feral.
Han Yuan was simply incapable of doing anything and incapable of eating enough. Like an imperial eunuch, he flattered everyone around him without shame or dignity, yet his courage could fit through the eye of a needle. Only when a bull blew a rumbling breath out of its nose would he know what ‘fighting for favor’ actually was.
With those thoughts, Cheng Qian placed his hands that held the rock behind his back. He looked at his incompetent junior gently, no longer wanting to hit him, as he didn’t feel like lowering himself to his level.
The two of them hurried back with their caught fish. Their Master was already ‘awake’, watching them with kindly gratification.
Upon meeting his Master’s gaze, Cheng Qian felt heavy, indescribable vomit in his gut.
Before he could say anything, Han Yuan had smarmily sidled up close to their Master, then told a concurrently-embellished story of how his senior wanted to eat fish, so Han Yuan had bested a vicious dog as big as a cow, then suffered horrible pains to dive into the brook and grab a fish for him.
Cheng Qian: “…”
This divinely-talented junior of his was making him stupidly mad.
Like so, he traveled with one old swindler and one self-aggrandizing bullshit peddler for over ten days.
Then, the three of them arrived at the sect at last.
This was the first time in Cheng Qian’s life that he’d ever traveled far from home. Due to the exotic companionship of his Master and junior, he had seen many odd happenstances of the word, and had since become calm enough that a landslide wouldn’t ruffle him.
He hadn’t had much hope held for this ‘Whirlwind Sect’, which had sounded like a grassroots theatre troupe to him. He’d thought that it might be an unregistered Daoist monastery that was plopped into desolate wilderness with the elements all around it, and in order to enter its doors, one would need to burn incense and kowtow to its ‘ancestor’ that was not obscenely dressed, yet still ever-smiling.
However, the sect largely exceeded his expectations.
The Whirlwind Sect was the sole occupant of a small mountaintop. The mountain itself was ringed on three sides by water, and when looking up from its foot, its green waves seemed to flourish, the wind’s passage having left trails upon it.
Within the chirping of birds and insects was the occasional few cries of cranes, and every once in a while, white blurs would streak past, one glimpse of them leaving quite the impression. It immediately inundated the place with an immortal air that seemed ephemeral.
Near-level stone steps went up the mountain; someone clearly swept them clean from time to time. A rivulet descended from the summit, bringing with it a sound of rushing water.
After ascending the stairs to the mountain’s middle, Cheng Qian saw the vague silhouettes of residences on the mountaintop. Here, a plain, mossy stone gate stood before them, the word ‘Whirlwind’ written upon it in ostentatious calligraphy.
He couldn’t tell whether that handwriting was good or bad, but he did feel like the word was about to fly right off the gate. It really did have that insufferable arrogance of ‘soaring through the skies and diving into abysses.’
This area was not any sort of otherworldly immortal mountain that was surrounded by mist and far removed from the human realm, but there was a certain indescribable beauty held therein. Cheng Qian had felt so the first step he’d taken in here, and in his breaths, his entire being felt a lot lighter.
He glimpsed the sky through a palm-sized gap in the dense foliage that shaded him. The unique feeling of looking up a well to the sky above, everything being far away, rushed right to the middle of his brows, making him carefree enough to want to wind around the mountain while laughing and hollering.
However, he restrained himself. At home, he had never dared to make noise lest his father beat him. Here was much the same, of course, because he didn’t want to lose this nobleman’s persona (which he’d gained via eavesdropping) in front of Han Yuan, the vile rat.
Their Master patted the doggy heads of his two newly-picked disciples, saying warmly, “In a moment, you will go with me to burn incense, wash up, and change clothes, then you will go to pay respects to your…”
Our ever-smiling ancestor? Cheng Qian thought heedlessly.
“…eldest sect-brother.”
The translator says: the most seniorest of senior monkeys
I write in a file prior to putting these posts through a line breaker, so italics get lost in the transfer. No formatting is lost on the Docs version, which is linked from the ToC.
[1] From The Analects of Confucius, section Duke Ling of Wei.
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