Chapter 277: Long Life and the Birth of a Son (Part 1)

Cui Fengji had walked until he was weary. Finding a roadside eatery at random, he sat down and called out to the owner to order a meal.

Outside, a light drizzle had been falling for a week straight with no sign of stopping. It seemed the Dragon King had a particular fondness for certain places.

Still, this bit of rain was nothing. The air in these mountain villages was different from the city, far fresher. Walking along a mountain path after the rain, the air carried the scent of withered weeds and cow dung, though Cui Fengji didn’t view it as just weeds and dung; he called it the breath of nature.

Cui Fengji ordered two stir-fried dishes and ate his fill with a generous serving of rice. He let out a satisfied burp, rested for a moment, and then planned to head into the scenic area to look around.

At the turn of summer into autumn, Hongcun^[1] was always filled with wave after wave of students, each carrying an easel as they headed into the scenic area.

Seeing these youngsters always made Cui Fengji think of his wife. She was different from him; she had received a formal education. Over the years, she had opened her own design studio and had even been hired to teach at a university.

Lately, however, his wife had been nursing a massive headache over a student at school. Cui Fengji didn’t usually pry into such things, but his wife had been nagging constantly about a student with incredible talent who was dead set on dropping out, despite several specialized teachers trying their best to stop them.

That, he supposed, was what people called “someone else’s child.”

Sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with his own genes. Otherwise, why hadn’t his brat of a son inherited even a shred of his mother’s artistic talent? All the boy wanted to do was wander through mountains and forests, specifically seeking out caves to crawl into. It was enough to make a man worry himself sick every single day.

Cui Fengji bought a ticket and entered the scenic area. He thoroughly enjoyed the slow pace of life in Hongcun. He planned to stay for a week or so, exploring the surrounding wild mountains before moving on to his next destination. He carried an ancestral trait in his blood; whenever he saw a naturally formed deep cave in the wild woods, he could hardly restrain himself from going down to investigate.

With his DSLR slung over his shoulder, he snapped photos as he walked. He followed the crowds at first, but eventually, Cui Fengji drifted further and further off the beaten path. It wasn’t until the crowds had vanished entirely that he realized he seemed to be lost. He wasn’t afraid, though; seeing domestic chickens roaming the woods, he knew he wouldn’t have trouble finding his way back. Instead, he raised his camera to capture the distant mountains shrouded in mist.

After another half hour of shooting, Cui Fengji felt a bit tired. He lowered his camera and considered heading back, but as he turned his head, he saw a young man sitting under an umbrella by a field ridge about five meters away.

The man was sitting on a folding stool of the kind art students used for sketching outdoors. He held an umbrella in one hand, an easel set up before him, and a box of paints spread at his feet. The light rain and gentle breeze ensured the paints wouldn’t dry out. What struck Cui Fengji as odd was the empty stool sitting next to the man. Despite having been in the area for half an hour, Cui Fengji hadn’t seen anyone else come this way.

Driven by curiosity, Cui Fengji found himself drifting closer, standing at a modest distance to look at the canvas on the easel.

The painting was nearly finished, depicting a landscape of lush green field ridges and distant mountains veiled in thin mist. The color palette was handled with great maturity. Cui Fengji hadn’t studied art, but he certainly possessed a basic sense of aesthetics.

His legs were starting to ache from standing. He stepped forward and lightly tapped the man’s shoulder. “Hello. I’ve been walking for a while. Would you mind if I borrowed this stool to sit for a bit?”

The man gestured with the brush in his hand and hooked the stool over with his pinky finger, signaling for him to sit.

Cui Fengji thanked him repeatedly and sat down on the stool. He stole a glance at the man, who looked fairly young, though visibly gaunt and worn down. He wore flip-flops, his stubble had grown out noticeably, and his medium-length, slightly wavy hair hung neatly across his face. Yet his eyes held a sharp intensity that completely contradicted his overall appearance.

Cui Fengji thoughtfully took the folding umbrella tucked under the man’s arm and held it for him, watching him make final adjustments to the painting with the tip of his brush.

As he watched, Cui Fengji couldn’t help but speak up. “Actually, don’t you think the tones are a bit dark?”

The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted it. To many painters, this kind of unsolicited advice from a spectator was the height of annoyance. His wife had told him more than once that watching a stranger paint was like watching a game of chess: “Observe the game in silence^[2].”

However, the man was magnanimous. He didn’t kick Cui Fengji off the stool or pack up his things to leave. Instead, he gave a faint smile and gazed at the rolling mountains in the distance. “Perhaps my mind wandered while I was painting just now, so I didn’t get the colors quite right.”

Cui Fengji scratched his head awkwardly, trying to keep the conversation going. “The scenery here makes it hard not to let your mind wander. It’s my first time here, and I’ve taken so many photos.”

The young man stopped his brush and turned his head. Cui Fengji quickly pulled out the DSLR hanging from his neck and flipped through his photos one by one to show him. As he scrolled, he asked, “My surname is Cui. May I ask yours?”

The young man dropped his brush into a water bucket and extended a hand toward Cui Fengji. “Qu. Qu Zhang. A pleasure.”

Seeing that the man truly didn’t mind his intrusion, Cui Fengji let out a sigh of relief and laughed heartily. “Hello, hello, Mr. Qu. My wife is like you, she studied painting as well. It really is a way to cultivate one’s character. Are you a local, Mr. Qu?”

The young man who called himself Qu Zhang shook his head. He rinsed his brush and continued painting. “I’m not a local, but I’ve been here for a while. I didn’t come here to sketch. I only came to look at the mountains.”

Cui Fengji was a bit puzzled. “Look at the mountains?”

“The mountains ahead. Don’t you find them interesting?” Qu Zhang pointed.

Cui Fengji squinted, peering as far as he could through the curtain of rain. The mountains within the mist were layered and overlapping; it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began.

“I don’t quite understand,” Cui Fengji said. “What specifically do you mean?”

Qu Zhang glanced at him, his tone flat. “Don’t you think those two mountains joined together look like a Ruyi lock^[3]?”

Cui Fengji looked again, his expression turning to shock. The shapes of those two mountains did indeed resemble an old-fashioned lock. Even the trees on the slopes combined with the mist to form a beautiful Ruyi pattern. However, it required an extraordinary capacity for abstract visual reasoning to recognize it at a single glance.

“There are locks within these mountains, and those locks connect the mountain passes. With the locks acting as anchors and the stream below providing a vent for the Qi, the Dragon’s Breath won’t be stifled into something malevolent. It is a superlative piece of Feng Shui, but these two mountains already have a master. That they form the shape of a Ruyi is no coincidence,” Qu Zhang said.

Cui Fengji was so shocked he nearly sat down hard on the ground. He stared wide-eyed at the young man before him. He hadn’t heard talk like this since his father retired from the trade and passed away. This man didn’t look old, yet he spoke of such deep matters as casually as chatting about the weather. His depth of knowledge in Feng Shui was unfathomable.

Taking a chance, Cui Fengji tentatively changed how he addressed the man, using Thieves’ Sect cant that he hadn’t uttered in years. “Which Yuanliang finds himself in this Mo Gully? Pray, where have you split the mountain scales before? (Senior, how did you end up in a place like this? Where did you used to operate?)”

Qu Zhang heard him but didn’t answer immediately. He finished the last few strokes of his sketch, stood up, and folded the easel into his tool bag. Cui Fengji stood up with him, still holding the umbrella over his head.

After a long silence, Qu Zhang finally spoke. “The same river offers different views. In my youth, I graced the Golden Hall; today, I am but a partridge. (We are not of the same trade. I had the fortune of entering royal mausoleums as a child, but now I simply wander the world.)”

He paused, then added, “There is a spark of fate between us. I’ll give you this painting. Tomorrow, I’m going into that lock for a Renyan. If you’re interested, you can come along.”

“Ah! A Renyan?” Cui Fengji was stunned by the man’s words. In the jargon of tomb raiders, a Renyan meant scouting a site. Qu Zhang intended to head into the wild woods to case the joint!

Cui Fengji’s heart pounded in his chest. He knew he desperately wanted to go, but he still hesitated and didn’t agree immediately. Grave robbing was always a gamble with death. His father had retired and hadn’t taught him many of the trade’s actual skills; his proficiency in rock climbing and rappelling was merely a personal hobby.

Qu Zhang saw his hesitation and added, “You needn’t worry. I don’t lack money, and I’m not looking to touch any earth-goods. You can treat it as a rare adventure.”

Cui Fengji’s eyes soon lit up with excitement. He thought it over for a moment before finally nodding his consent.

A short story. You can guess who the characters are, or just enjoy it as a standalone piece.