Chapter 2: Night Visitation to Xi Mo River Part 2

The Xi Mo River was the only place in the entire 48 Strongholds that didn't have constant patrol shifts. At the southeast end, where the two cliff walls of the mountain separated two lands, a wide Xi Mo River was right in the middle; it was a natural chasm.

There were countless local folklore about the Xi Mo River because the water in the river was neither blue nor green and looked almost black in color. If you looked from above, it was like a huge black agate was laid on the ground. Back when the old Stronghold leader was still alive, they had spent countless human and material resources in order to get rid of and polish the trees and sharp rocks on the two sides of the cliff wall. The walls on both sides were like two large mirrors, turning black in color from the reflection of the river water. As a result, the walls were not only hard to climb but also completely visible to those on patrol.

Even if someone had unparalleled qinggong [1] and could reach the center of the river, it didn't matter as at the heart of Xi Mo River was an old qianbei (senior) who was on guard. His age and origins were unknown and Zhou Fei felt that he was born there ever since she was born. People in the stronghold called him "Yu Lao" [2]; he was a legend who could guard any home and had control over countless mechanisms and traps.

Zhou Fei remembered when she was young, back when entering and exiting the 48 Strongholds wasn't as regulated as it is now, a few unlucky shixiong swallowed the wrong medicine or something and were determined to find out the depth of the Xi Mo River. A few with the best qinggong went down once and the next day, without exception, they were all tied up with rope and hung on the cliff. Yu Lao actively pursued order and did not just tie them up; he also aligned everyone at their feet, placing them in a row according to their height. If you looked from a distance, they were very level and it was very pleasing to see.

At that time, Li Jinrong ordered people to take down and lower this reckless group of disciples, joking that in the future, anyone who could cross the Xi Mo River would be through with their apprenticeship.

Once those words were spoken, they sparked the enthusiasm of one generation of disciples after another. Unfortunately, they all failed and to this day, no one has succeeded in crossing the river.

When Zhou Fei heard Li Sheng's unreliable challenge, she could not help but frown, feeling that he was asking for trouble. Li Sheng stared at her, revealing a slightly malicious smile, saying lightly: "It's okay to be afraid, I know you're not one to tell on people. Just pretend that I didn't say anything today and you didn't hear anything."

This "ji jiang fa" ("Prodding Somebody into Action") [3] was sometimes actually powerful. No matter how much one said "I don't buy your ji jiang fa", they would still get extremely angry internally. Oftentimes, the more one "didn't buy it", the more they were angry internally. Zhou Fei had no interest in provoking Yu Lao so late at night and logically thought Li Sheng had problems; however, emotionally she could not stand the word "afraid". Yet at this time, trouble-stirrer Li Yan thought she was self-justified in saying: "A-Fei, let's go, just ignore him, no one has ever crossed the Xi Mo River at midnight. Li Sheng, you must be crazy, can the 48 Strongholds no longer contain you?"

Li Sheng laughed arrogantly: "How large is the world, how wide are the seas! Unrivalled masters are ubiquitous and countless. In a mere 48 Strongholds, just because no one can cross it, I can't cross it? Well, I'm just going to become that first person!"

When every youth blurted out these brave and proud words, they contained true feelings. However, no one considered that they were only a small, young disciple and that those "ubiquitous unrivalled masters" had no relation with them whatsoever. Since their abilities couldn't be above worldly status, at the very least their sights could still be set impossibly high. This way, they developed an illusion of "being able to go above and beyond".

On one hand, Zhou Fei felt that he was extremely ridiculous; on the other hand, she couldn't help but be encouraged by that sentence of "how large is the world". And so she glanced at Li Sheng: "When should I go drag you out?"

Li Sheng didn't pay any attention to her verbal provocation, saying: "The day after tomorrow at night, 19:30."

"Oh, the fifteenth," Zhou Fei chuckled mysteriously, "That's a good day—the moon shines bright and in case of an emergency, with two howls Yu Lao would be able to see who you are."

She didn't say she would go and didn't say she wouldn't go, reaching out and patting Li Yan's shoulder. She deviously wiped that idiot girl's snot and tears back before carrying her zhai-bei dao on her back and leaving with a swagger.

However, no matter what Li Sheng was planning, nature did not help him at all—this month's fifteenth was a cloudy day.

It was a dark and windy night and Xie Yun hid silently in the treetops. With each breath, it was almost as if he had become one with the large tree. There was a nest two fists away from him and the older bird protected the young; the old and young in the nest slept soundly, completely undisturbed by the human tree tumor beside them.

Suddenly, a gust of wind swept by and the older bird jerked awake, warily opening its eyes. Two patrols of the 48 Strongholds who were on duty sped through the dense forest.

The people of the 48 Strongholds were not related by blood and were all father-son/brother soldiers [4], having an unspoken coordination between them. Far apart from each other, those two patrols exchanged glances and didn't even need a hand gesture to communicate. They then telepathically headed in two ways: one searched the main road, one searched the side road. In the blink of an eye, both of their shadows disappeared.

After the two had left, the bird turned its head before tilting its head and staring at Xie Yun. Xie Yun didn't even move his eyelids and he was as quiet as a dead object. The bird stared at him for a moment, decided that other than looking strange, this "tree tumor" didn't have any problems and unworriedly buried its head in its wing, going back to sleep.

The dense forest was very quiet; somewhere, frogs croaked with an urgent rhythm, constantly whispering with the large and small insects. After approximately one incense (30 minutes), the two patrols from earlier suddenly appeared, meeting where they began—turns out the two of them had been chasing for nothing.

The two searched around the vicinity but couldn't even find the shadow of a ghost. The younger one said: "Fourth Brother, it might be that we saw the wrong thing."

The older one cautiously said: "We might've seen the wrong thing for one day, but with the two of us and four eyes, how can we see the wrong thing every day? This person must have extremely good qinggong, these days he's been continuously circling around our village, his intents are unknown…no matter what, let's go back first and send a message telling our brothers to still be more alert tonight. If something really happens, even though we didn't catch the person, there's the 108 Ming An Zhuang (Light Dark Posts) ahead. He's all alone, even a sparrow wouldn't be able to pass."

After the two left, a little under half a shi chen (one hour) passed. Once the moon that had been covered by clouds showed its face again, Xie Yun's gaze moved slightly and he instantly became a living creature again, landing on the ground like a feather.

He was a young man of around twenty years of age with a pair of eyes that were like a calm lake; they seemed to be able to absorb all the surrounding moonlight and reflect a beam of motionless moonlight—extremely bright and extremely calm. He leaned against the tree and thought for a moment, reaching into his arms and pulling out a palm-sized lingpai—if an official of the former dynasty had been there, they would've definitely been shocked. On the surface, the words "天子信宝,国运昌隆" [5] were carved using da zhuan [6], the exact same as the zhuan engraving on the imperial jade seal!

Xie Yun threw the strange and arrogate lingpai up in the air a few times before carelessly tucking it into his arms. He heard those people say there were the 108 Ming An Zhuang ahead but didn't panic at all. He picked a palm-sized leaf from where he was standing and folded it in half, drawing the dew into a line and drinking it to moisten his mouth before turning and sliding out. His entire being seemed to be weightless, the tips of his feet tapping the tops of branches, lightly breezing by the treetops. Where he passed, the tops of the branches would just barely quiver, the dew not even falling off the leaves.

According to legend, this move was called "Feng Guo Wu Hen" (Wind Passes Without a Trace), one of the world's top qinggong. It was comparable to Chuan Hua Rao Shu (Through Flowers Around Trees) and Ta Xue Wu Hen (Stepping on Snow Without a Trace). Who could expect that at such a young age, he was an absolute qinggong master.

He didn't take the main road and didn't take the side road; rather, he went around the 48 Strongholds in circles.

Xie Yun came to the 48 Strongholds to see one person and deliver one item—he knew beforehand that it was hard to enter the 48 Strongholds and that if he self-reported his menpai (sect) and requested an audience, perhaps before he saw the one he wanted to see, he would be sliced and cooked as hot pot by Li Jinrong. Yet breaking in through force or sneaking in was even less desirable—that was something even Big Corrupt Thief Cao Zhongkun couldn't do and Xie Yun self-believed that he didn't have to be a thief to that extent.

He was extremely patient, lurking outside the 48 Strongholds for a full six months. He first pretended to be a travelling merchant for a month; it was impossible for the 48 Strongholds to completely cut off from the world, there were always some things that they couldn't provide for themselves and they needed to send people to go purchase them. While Xie Yun got familiar with the geography, he also heard a bunch of hearsays. Even "Li Da Dang Jia likes to eat dumplings with radish leaves filling" spread around in vivid and lifelike detail.

A month later, he obtained a delivery job but could not enter the mountain. The people of the village only let them deliver the goods to the periphery and they sent their own people to pick them up, not allowing them to enter the gate. Xie Yun remembered the entrance and that night, he counted on his high qinggong abilities and went to investigate. Contrary to expectations, he underestimated the security of the 48 Strongholds and had to be satisfied with the little he discovered. He didn't even have the time to show his face before he was almost hunted down like a dog, escaping with difficulty.

After that, he regrouped and circled around the 48 Strongholds for over three months, even counting the number of rabbit holes on the mountaintops, carefully probing at the edge. Finally, good things come to those who wait and he found the only path that didn't have as many An Ming Posts—and that was the chasm at Xi Mo River.

The plum tree by the main road that no one has harvested must be bitter. Xie Yun didn't know if his qinggong reached the level of "not a second one in the world" (unrivalled), but based on what he saw from the outside, he thought that there were still some people in the Jiang Hu who had the ability to cross this river. Since Li Jinrong was so at ease, there had to be something off about the river.

Xie Yun would circle around the river once every day but was not in a hurry to go down. Day after day, he observed from the shore.

At the heart of the river was a small pavilion. A layer of light floated up every night, indicating that there was someone on guard inside. However, on this night of the fifteenth, when Xie Yun snuck into the 48 Strongholds again and arrived at the Xi Mo River, unexpectedly, he did not see that light. Immediately, he decided better now than ever and dived down from the cliff.

Dressed in night travelling clothes, Xie Yun lowered his head and faced the surging Xi Mo River. He then fished out a copper coin from his arms.

"I'll divine a divination," he thought, "Front is everything will be great, back is there'll be fright but no danger."

Heaven had perhaps never seen such shameless divination and decided to mess with him. As soon as Xie Yun threw the copper coin into the air, a loud sound came from nearby, as if some important item fell into the ravine, causing a string of sound to come from the silent valley. There were patrolling disciples on the two sides of the mountain wall and lamps were immediately lit, causing Xie Yun to lose focus. Unexpectedly, in that brief moment, a gust of wind happened to blow past and he didn't catch the coin.

The copper coin fell on the group in front of him, landing neither front nor back. It was stuck between two stones in a provocative side pose.

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谢允 Xie Yun – the male protagonist

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[1] 轻功 qing gong – a Chinese martial arts technique for making the body extremely light in weight

[2] 鱼老 Yu Lao – 老 lao or Elder is an honorable way to address a senior

[3] 激将法 ji jiang fa – getting someone to submit/agree to something by saying they can't do it or they're afraid to do it

[4] 父子兄弟兵 fu zi xiong di bing – 父子 means father son, referring to the order of authority one should have when in the army and 兄弟 means brother, referring to the kind of close relationships soldiers have (Note: if anyone knows a better definition of this, please let me know!!)

[5] 天子信宝,国运昌隆 – "The Emperor's sign, the luck of the nation thrives"; basically means that it represents the emperor and may the nation have a flourishing future

[6] 大篆 da zhuan – a type of ancient Chinese character/font

I hope the footnotes weren't too long, if you feel that they are, please let me know! On the other hand, if you have any questions just drop a comment below!