Chapter 028: Childhood

As Ye Minwei stepped out of her room tonight, she ran straight into Cang Shu. They rarely interacted in their daily lives, and this had become even more pronounced lately as she grew obsessed with various arcane arts.

However, this time she spoke first.

"Cang Shu, do you have any family?" she asked suddenly.

Cang Shu did not hear her—or more accurately, he did not see that Ye Minwei was speaking. Being deaf, he relied on lip-reading and divination for communication, and in the pitch-black darkness, there was no way he could have noticed. Thus, Ye Minwei persistently tugged at his sleeve and asked the question again.

Cang Shu was stunned by the question. He studied Ye Minwei for a moment, then smiled. "Of course I do. No one just pops out of a crack in a rock, so how could I not have family?"

"Why don't you go look for them? Don't you miss them?"

"They probably don't miss me. And even if we were to meet again, what would it change? We would only find ourselves looking at one another with pity, our faces covered in the dust of time." Cang Shu smiled faintly. The dim candlelight spilling from the room behind him rendered his words lonely, yet his smile remained warm.

"Though, I do miss them quite a bit," he added.

Cang Shu did not ask Ye Minwei why she had suddenly brought this up. He was an odd man, solitary and without kin, yet he managed to reach an unspoken, tacit understanding with everyone. After answering, he gave a small smile and opened his door to return to his room, upholding his regimen of early to bed and early to rise.

Ye Minwei’s gaze shifted toward the room where Old Granny Sun’s dim light was still glowing. She only returned to her senses when Wen Ci called her to head up the mountain.

The Chongdan Mountain at night was no longer as bustling as it was during the day, yet many immortal sects remained active, setting up arrays and keeping watch, waiting for the Nightmare Beast to fall into their trap. Some Nightmare Masters were also lurking in the periphery, searching. However, the Nightmare Beast had been disturbed by them in recent days and was gradually retreating toward the west side of the mountain, so most people were stationed there. Faintly, one could see flashes of light on the western side of the mountain—they must have been in pursuit of the beast.

In contrast, the Eagle Ridge of Chongdan Mountain, where Ye Minwei and Wen Ci were located, was completely devoid of Nightmare Beasts and thus remained peaceful. Wen Ci had carved out a safe zone here for Ye Minwei, erecting walls with nightmare spells to block the view from both inside and outside. Even if disciples from immortal sects or other Nightmare Masters happened to pass by, seeing such a formidable defensive barrier, they would know that the people inside were not to be trifled with and would generally avoid trouble.

Nowadays, most people operated in their own factions, and relationships were delicate; no one wanted to invite trouble over matters unrelated to the Nightmare Beast.

Of course, this wall also served to keep Ye Minwei from wandering off in front of the immortal sects or other Nightmare Masters—or into their trap nets. She was known to become so absorbed in her own thoughts that she would lose all sense of her surroundings, and if something crossed her mind, she was liable to run all over the mountain.

Today, however, Ye Minwei was uncharacteristically distracted. She stood still for a long time in the middle of her calculations before she took a crystalline stone from her pocket and buried it in the earth. She planted a tree seed over it; with a flash of light, the seed sprouted, its strong roots curling around the crystal and delving deep into the ground.

"Only one left," she murmured.

The moonlight was bright tonight, illuminating the soil, trees, and grass clearly. Ye Minwei rotated to a certain angle and then walked forward along that line.

One step, two steps, three steps...

The sound of a tambourine suddenly rang out. Ye Minwei looked up.

On the wide, open grass field, Wen Ci was standing atop a large drum, holding a tambourine and shaking it lackadaisically, as if recalling something.

Ye Minwei was wondering where he had gotten the drum, when Wen Ci swept his arm, his golden-yellow sleeves tracing a circle in the moonlight, and a wooden staff as long as a man appeared in his hand. The staff was intricately carved, its ends wrapped in gold and silver; at its top sat a small golden deity, with a foot-long, cloud-shaped golden tassel dangling beneath the lotus pedestal.

Chimes, flutes, a pipa, and a suona appeared out of thin air. He tossed the tambourine into the air, and it hovered there.

Right, these must have been summoned from his nightmares. Ye Minwei thought that to gather so many instruments, he must have sifted through countless dreams.

Wen Ci paid her no mind. He lowered his gaze, tapping his heels slowly against the drum, then held the staff horizontally in front of him. The golden tassels and bells chimed softly, and the floating nightmare instruments began to play of their own accord. The sounds of metal, stone, silk, and bamboo intertwined as his body began to spin on the massive drum. His footsteps followed the beat, from slow to fast, the rhythm chasing his movements, growing from weak to strong.

As the drumbeats became more intense and the melody more majestic, the exquisite staff spun, tossed, and swung in Wen Ci’s hands, as if it were a part of his own flesh and bone, obeying his command.

From the drum music, a thousand troops and ten thousand horses emerged. He danced and spun, stepping to the sound of galloping horses, his body tilting and then leaping up, flipping into the air before landing back on the drum. The staff wound around his shoulders and back, returned to his hand, and was then tossed high into the air. Just as it reached its peak, the golden tassels unfurled, the sound of their impact ringing out in unison with the bells and drums, piercing through the ears and hearts of any who heard it.

He was like the shaman of an ancient tribe, using dance and music as a language to commune with heaven and earth.

Then the drum itself rose into the air. Wen Ci stood steadily upon it, using the sky as his sea and the drum as his boat, while the instruments swirled around them, as if they too were intoxicated, unable to extricate themselves.

Watching this Wen Ci, Ye Minwei felt as if she had returned to the Zhaiyue Pavilion, watching him dance while clutching a copper mirror. When he danced, his beautiful features were obscured, yet he was a thousand times more beautiful than he was on any ordinary day.

It was not until the staff was held horizontally before her eyes that Ye Minwei suddenly snapped back to reality. The music had stopped at some point. Wen Ci stood on the hovering drum, pointing the staff at her; the golden statue at the head of the staff was no more than three inches from her eyes, and the golden tassels swayed before her.

Through the swaying tassels, she saw a light sheen of sweat on Wen Ci’s forehead, like a layer of cold dew, making him look like a handsome divine idol. The beauty’s chest rose and fell, and he lifted his chin slightly to look at her.

"What are you doing?" His voice was uneven, his breathing heavy.

"Watching you dance."

"Didn't you have something to calculate?"

"Ah... I forgot."

Wen Ci frowned at her for a long time before retracting the staff and tapping it against the drum.

In an instant, all the instruments, along with the staff, vanished. He dropped back to the ground, brushed his hands, and sat down to rest on a large rock in the middle of the grass.

Ye Minwei thought for a moment and then walked over to sit beside him.

Wen Ci glanced at her and asked, "What happened? Why are you so distracted?"

Ye Minwei did not answer. She looked up at the night sky. The stars were brilliant tonight, hanging like lanterns across the sky, their silver light falling into her eyes and illuminating the confusion within them. Something in her hair glittered under the starlight.

Wen Ci reached over, took the hairpin from her head, and turned it over to examine it.

"Old Granny Sun truly treats you like a daughter."

It was a delicate gold and jade hairpin. The area around Chongdan Mountain was rich in mineral resources, especially gold, and smuggling was rampant, making gold easy to come by. Even so, such a hairpin would be considered a family heirloom for an ordinary household.

This was one of the few treasures Old Granny Sun possessed; she had once given it to her own daughter, and it had eventually returned to her. Now that she saw Ye Minwei as a daughter, she was trying every way she could to give the hairpin away. If Ye Minwei refused, she would wait for an opportunity to pin it into her hair. This play of giving and returning had already been performed several times.

Ye Minwei took the hairpin from Wen Ci’s hand, studied it carefully for a while, and then looked up at him. "Wen Ci, have I ever mentioned my family to you?"

This was a normal question for anyone else, but coming from Ye Minwei, it was utterly anomalous—if not once in a thousand years, then certainly once in a century.

Wen Ci looked at her in surprise, and it was a long time before he answered, "No."

Ye Minwei lowered her eyes, gazing at the hairpin, lost in thought. She seemed almost disappointed.

Wen Ci suspected he might be seeing things. After a long silence, he picked up a blade of grass beside him and began to twist it in his hands.

"However, after I came down the mountain, I did inquire about your family background," he finally said, choosing to share what he knew.

"You were born into a family of imperial star-gazers of the previous dynasty. You grew up studying mathematics and divination, and at twelve, you accurately predicted the celestial phenomenon of Venus crossing the sun, which invited much controversy. Your family sent you to the Xiaoyao Sect to cultivate and avoid disaster. Not many years later, the dynasty collapsed, and your family perished in the chaos."

The imperial court believed that celestial phenomena were omens of disaster for the mortal world. Venus crossing the sun signified total chaos, the changing of a dynasty, and the displacement of the people. It was a sign of great calamity.

Yet Ye Minwei, at only twelve, had calculated the omen before it appeared, as if she were a step ahead of fate, or perhaps as if she had brought the ill omen herself. Had she not been sent away by her family, she would have been executed long before the dynasty fell.

"Anything else?" Ye Minwei pressed.

The blade of grass between Wen Ci’s fingers had been twisted into a thin string. As his fingers moved, he wove it into a knot, which grew more complex as he told the story.

"Later, on Mount Kunwu, you built many observation mirrors, calculated various celestial movements, and compiled a star chart spanning fifty years. I could see that you didn't care about omens or whether they came true; you said that the sun, moon, and stars move according to their own laws, and you were likely just interested in the patterns."

Ye Minwei’s eyes flickered. She looked at the sea of sparkling stars and shook her head. "I don't remember."

The celestial sphere turned quietly and soundlessly. Ye Minwei thought for a moment and said, "I once saw an instrument for observing celestial phenomena in a book, called an armillary sphere, which looked very much like the celestial sphere."

The first time she saw a drawing of an armillary sphere in a book, she had guessed that the celestial sphere might have been designed based on its appearance.

So these were her childhood, her origins, the parts of her that made her who she was—yet she had forgotten them entirely.

Were these things important? She didn't know.

It was just that the strength of Old Granny Sun’s grip when she held her hand seemed to linger on her skin, binding her bones when she spread her fingers, and tugging at her spirit when she tried to lose herself in calculations.

The mountaintop was quiet, save for the noisy cicadas and the rustle of the breeze through the trees.

"And your childhood, Wen Ci? What was your childhood like?" Ye Minwei broke the silence.

Wen Ci suddenly stiffened. The starlight formed a cold light in his eyes, as if a dark, impenetrable wall lay deep within them. The burning intensity he had shown while dancing had completely vanished; he was like a man made of stone, cold to the touch.

After a long silence, he withdrew his arm, rested it on his knee, and brushed off the dust.

"I told you when we first met."

"But I have forgotten."

"What does your forgetting have to do with me? I said it once, and I will not say it a second time."

Ye Minwei cut straight to the point: "You don't want to talk about it."

Wen Ci admitted it readily. "That's right, I don't want to talk about it."

"Why not?"

"Ye Minwei, the most basic courtesy in life is not to press when someone is unwilling to speak."