The next moment, my body felt light, as if I were being lifted and carried horizontally.
“Shopkeeper, is there a place here where one can bathe and stay for the night?”
“Yes, yes, upstairs!”
“Ai, Young Saint Lord, where are you taking this commoner?”
“He is my friend, and since he can’t return to the palace with us, I’m taking him upstairs.”
“Young Saint Lord, even if I am greedy, I wouldn’t dare let you and the commoner leave as well. It was agreed that we would go out and search for the Tenth Prince, and if we found him, we would return. If you just wanted to sit in the carriage and get some fresh air like usual, that’s fine, but if you leave and go missing, and the Saintess finds out it’s related to me, neither I nor my family will be able to survive.”
“This lord will not delay for long or cause you to neglect your duties. Wait downstairs, I will send him upstairs, settle him, and then come down.”
“How dare I trouble the Young Saint Lord? Can’t I just go and send him off?”
“You should take Xiao Shi to the carriage first. Look at him. How can a prince get drunk in a tavern?”
“Then you’d better hurry up. It will be dawn soon. The palace gate will be inspected regularly. It won’t be easy to send you back.”
“This lord knows.”
Then, the “creaky” sounds of footsteps on the wooden stairs and the sound of the door being pushed open passed by my ears one by one, and my back fell on the slightly hard bed, covered with soft bedding.
Is this a dream? If so, why does it feel so real?
I was thinking in a daze, and suddenly I felt itchy on my face, as if being brushed by strands of hair and hot and humid air. The fresh breath became stronger than ever before, as if it had formed a big net that trapped me and made it difficult for me to breathe.
“When I met you just now, I was worried that you would be unsafe alone in the royal city at night, so I secretly came out to look for you. I originally didn’t expect to find you, but unexpectedly, you were with Xiao Shi. How did you know each other? Why didn’t I hear you mention it at all?”
The itchiness spreads slowly from the corners of the eyes and nose bridge to the lips.
“You deliberately hid it from me, didn’t you? You would play with him, laugh with him, get drunk with him, and also paint for him? That’s right, although he is also the royal heir, he is not a saint lord. He is much freer than me. It is much happier to be friends with him than with me, right?” Nalin’s tone in the dream suddenly became strange, gloomy, cold, and aggressive. I had never heard him speak to me like this before, and a panic surged in my heart. No, of course not!
I tried hard to open my heavy eyelids and suddenly felt my lips become heavy, as if being pressed by something soft and hot. The hot airflow accompanied by the scent of sandalwood invaded my lungs.
My hands were clasped tightly at the side of my head, and the ten jade-like fingers were embedded between my fingers.
“That’s right… You are so nice, how could I be your only friend? What can I do if you don’t want to come to me anymore?” The hot air flowed from my ears down my neck to my collarbone, lingering there and making me feel vaguely dangerous.
Suddenly, there was a creaking sound, like the sound of a door being pushed open.
“Ninth Brother, what are you doing?”
“What are you doing here? Get out!”
“Young Saint Lord, it’s getting late. We have to go back quickly.”
“I understand.” Nalin said coldly, his breath fading away. With the sound of the door closing, the surroundings finally became quiet, and I fell into the quagmire of sleepiness again.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw an unfamiliar room. The room was empty, without Nalin. A ray of sunlight shone through the window, indicating that it was already daytime.
I sat up, feeling dizzy and unable to remember what had happened. I only vaguely remembered going to a tavern with the Tenth Prince last night and getting drunk. Later I seemed to hear Nalin’s voice. Was he really here… No, I must have dreamed.
The desire to see him surged in my heart. I rushed downstairs, climbed up the back mountain of the royal city, and went straight to his residence.
But the courtyard was empty, with only Bai Ha’er there. I waited anxiously until dark, but he didn’t come back. I didn’t dare to stay away from home for two days, so I had to go to the post station.
The next morning, I wanted to look for Nalin, but when I walked out of the room, I was stopped by my mother.
“Jia’er, today is the Ghost Festival. Where are you going? Hurry up and pack up. Our whole family will go to the royal city with the master in the evening. We are believers and must not be negligent.”
When we arrived at the royal city, there were already huge crowds of people on both sides of the city road, and everyone was kneeling without exception.
“When will they come, Mother? Do we have to kneel like this forever? It’s so uncomfortable. Can we sit for a while?” Not long after I knelt down, I heard my sister next to me complaining in a low voice.
“Mi Loo, hush.” My mother covered my sister’s mouth, looked around, and whispered, “Don’t dare to do this. If people find out that you are not sincere, our whole family will be punished.”
I pursed my lips and said nothing, but in fact I felt the same as my sister. I felt disgusted and resistant to the teachings of the Tusheng Sect, but I was also afraid that if I was disrespectful, as their teachings said, I would anger the half-god, half-demon dual-phase god and be doomed. So I had no choice but to kneel on the ground obediently.
I don’t know how long I knelt, but I heard loud chanting of mantras and rhythmic beating of drums and bowls in the distance. I knew that the sacrificial procession of the Tusheng Sect had arrived. I looked up and saw a huge team of hundreds of people walking along the city road, with tea flowers floating all over the sky like rain.
The male members of the sect wore masks of gods, revealing their tattooed upper bodies as they beat drums and gongs. The female members wore masks of ghosts and monsters and danced on both sides of the team. In the middle of them, they carried a huge drum that was so big that ten people could hug it, and on the drum stood a figure in red.
This was not the first time I watched the Nuo dance ceremony of the Tusheng Sect. I knew that the person dancing on the drum was a high-ranking shaman in the Tusheng Sect, a very old male shaman. There was nothing to see, but as the procession got closer, my eyes could not help but be fixed—the face of the person on the drum was covered by the double-phase mask of Tunshe Tianzun, half black and half white, like day and night, with a golden crown on his forehead, long black curly hair draped over his back, and he wore extremely wide shoulder armor, which made his waist look narrow and his figure tall.
This person’s figure looks somewhat familiar.
My heart started pounding as I stared at the eyeholes of the mask. That person seemed to sense something and raised one hand, moving his mask down, revealing half of his face.
A pair of sea-blue eyes looked around in the rain of flowers, as if looking for something.
“That’s the Ninth Prince, the Young Saint Lord! The Young Saint Lord has never attended the festival, so why would he come this year?”
Someone exclaimed.
“Young Saint Lord, please bless us!”
I couldn’t help but straighten my upper body. Mother hurriedly held my back and tried to push me back. I struggled and twisted desperately. I saw his face turned towards me, and our eyes met.
The shouts were overwhelming, and my mother held my neck, and I knelt down to kowtow.
He had never appeared at the festival in the past, but this year…
Could it be because of me? Did he want to come out and see me because I hadn’t seen him for the past two days?
I looked up and saw him looking down at me from afar. He raised one hand and hit the drum with the golden ball bell hanging from the end of his robe sleeve. With a “dong” sound, it seemed to hit my heart. He leaned back and jumped up. He hit the drum with the golden bell in his other hand and danced on the drum with his toes.
At this moment, the sun and the moon lost their luster, the lights were dimmed, and even the early autumn wind was attracted by his dance. The falling camellia petals circled around him, like hundreds of eyes around him.
It is clear that the Nuo dance is to ward off ghosts and ask for blessings from the gods, but I feel that the dance he performed is not for ghosts and gods, not for all living beings in heaven and earth. It is a dance he performed just for me on my birthday.
I stared at him infatuatedly, my heartbeat resonating with the sound of the drums under his feet that resounded through heaven and earth.
Nalin, I like you. Do you know how much I like you?
If I can love and stay with you in this life, I am willing to endure eternal damnation and not be able to be reborn.
T/N: Just a heads-up, I realized that red algae and carnelian are actually different things (silly me for mixing them up :3 also it refers to the color Mi Jia needs to find). I’d like to go back and correct any instances where I used “red algae” instead of “carnelian,” but since I can’t remember which chapters I did that in, I’m leaving this note here as a reminder instead.
