HNYWEF -Chapter 185 Another Him

Xie Yingdeng stood there without moving.

Zhou Xiong walked up to him and paused for a moment. He nodded once without speaking. Xie Yingdeng also nodded and stepped aside.

Zhou Xiong passed by him and walked toward the patch of grass.

The grass was tall. It flattened softly beneath his feet. Dew soaked the surface of his boots, but he didn’t notice.

His gaze swept across the ground. After circling once, it stopped.

A grave mound.

It was small and low, barely higher than the surrounding grass. If not for the stone stele standing in front of it, it would hardly have looked like a grave at all.

The stele wasn’t tall, only reaching his knees.

Its edges had been rounded smooth by wind and rain. A thin layer of moss covered the surface, gray-green in color, hiding most of the words. Only a few strokes could vaguely be seen—horizontal, vertical, crooked and uneven, like they’d been carved by someone barely literate.

Zhou Xiong crouched down.

His fingers touched the stone. Touched the moss. Touched the grooves worn out by weather, the blurred strokes of the characters.

His fingers slowly slid across the surface of the stele. One finger tracing from one end to the other, then back again.

Like touching someone’s hair.

She had been sitting on the edge of the kang bed while he stood beside her. Her hand had hung loosely at her side, her hair falling over her shoulders. He had touched it once.

Only once.

She had just given birth then. Her hair had been long, black and glossy. He had stood behind her, reached out, brushed it lightly—and quickly withdrawn his hand.

She hadn’t turned around, but he knew she had smiled.

His fingers stopped on the stone and did not move again.

Suddenly, his vision blurred.

The stele was still there. The grass was still there. The mountain was still there. But something seemed to rise from above them all, thin as gauze, covering everything beneath it.

And under that veil, a figure slowly emerged, becoming clearer and clearer.

She stood behind the stele, wearing her favorite rose-red beizi jacket. Her hair was pinned up, held by the silver hairpin he had bought for her. She stood there looking at him, a faint smile at the corner of her lips.

He didn’t move.

She simply looked at him, and he looked back at her.

Neither of them spoke.

He couldn’t hear her voice, and she couldn’t hear his.

But he knew what she was saying.

You came.

Was the journey tiring?

Where’s the child? Let me see him.

He didn’t answer.

He crouched there, staring at her face, staring at the smile on her lips.

Zhou Yi stood behind him, watching Zhou Xiong crouch there with his fingers pressed against the stele, motionless.

He didn’t know what his father was seeing, but he didn’t move or make a sound.

Li Lizhi stood beside him, also motionless.

She glanced once at Zhou Xiong, then once at the gravestone, before lowering her head to look at the grass beneath her feet.

The wind blew from the mountainside, pressing the grass flat before it rose again.

Rustle, rustle.

Zhou Xiong crouched there, looking at that face.

He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he couldn’t lift his hand.

He wanted to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t open.

So he simply looked at her, and she looked at him.

Then his gaze shifted away from her face.

Not because he wanted to—something had appeared in the corner of his eye.

Farther away. Behind her. Within the gray haze.

There was a shadow.

Dark blue in color.

Standing far away.

Its face couldn’t be seen. Its figure couldn’t be seen clearly. Only the outline.

Zhou Xiong froze for a moment.

He blinked.

The shadow was still there.

He narrowed his eyes, trying to see more clearly.

The shadow didn’t move. It simply stood there in the gray mist, before things he could not make out.

His fingers slipped away from the stele.

The face before him slowly faded. The rose-red jacket faded. The silver hairpin faded. Even the smile at the corner of her lips faded.

Only that dark blue shadow remained, motionless.

Zhou Xiong crouched there, staring in that direction for a long time.

Then he lowered his head and looked at the stele again. Looked at the words buried beneath the moss. Looked at the blurred, indistinct strokes.

He stood up. His legs had gone numb, and he staggered slightly before steadying himself.

Zhou Yi took a step forward, wanting to support him, but Zhou Xiong didn’t allow it.

He simply stood there, looking at the stele one final time.

Then he turned around and walked back.

Xie Yingdeng was still standing where he had been before, unmoving.

Zhou Xiong stopped in front of him, and the two men exchanged another glance.

Xie Yingdeng didn’t ask what he had seen, and Zhou Xiong didn’t say.

Zhou Xiong walked past him and headed out of the mountain.

His pace was neither fast nor slow. Each step pressed softly into the grass, leaving behind faint footprints.

Xie Yingdeng remained where he was, watching that figure gradually disappear into the distance.

Then he turned around and glanced at the gravestone.

The blurry words carved into it were still blurry beneath the sunlight.

He said nothing, withdrew his gaze, and walked off in another direction.

The dusty gray Daoist robe swayed in the wind for a moment before the mist quickly swallowed it whole.

Old Liu stood where he was, looking one way and then the other. He scratched his head, hefted the hammer in his hand, and followed after Zhou Xiong.

Zhou Yi and Li Lizhi walked at the very back. Neither of them spoke.

The mountain mist slowly dispersed. The sun finally emerged from behind the clouds, shining over the clearing, over the gravestone, over the ashes of burned paper scattered by the wind.

No one remained in the clearing now.

Only the wind still blew.

Rustle, rustle.

That dark blue figure had made Zhou Xiong understand something.

His journey was not over yet.

Halfway down the path, Zhou Xiong suddenly stopped.

Zhou Yi was following behind him and nearly bumped into him.

He looked up and saw his father standing there, shoulders tense, fists clenched tight, his whole body taut like a fully drawn bowstring.

“Dad?”

Zhou Xiong stood there, chest heaving violently, as though wrestling against something inside himself.

After a few breaths, he suddenly turned around and looked at Zhou Yi.

His eyes were frighteningly bright.

“The matter of moving your mother’s grave—I’m leaving it to you.”

Zhou Yi froze.

Zhou Xiong spoke quickly and urgently, as if afraid he might change his mind.

“You’ll handle everything. When to move it, where to move it, how to do it—you decide it all. If there’s anything you can’t manage, go to Cheng Yaojin, go to Qin Qiong, even go to Li Er. They’ll help you.”

He paused, then added another sentence.

“And your wife too.”

Li Lizhi, standing behind them, was startled for a moment.

Zhou Yi opened his mouth.

“Dad, then what about—”

“I have something I need to deal with,” Zhou Xiong interrupted him. “Something important. I need to go alone first.”

Zhou Yi was even more stunned.

He looked at his father’s face. It was urgency—an urgency that said I can’t wait any longer.

“Where?” he asked.

But Zhou Xiong had already turned away.

He strode forward rapidly, much faster than before, as though something were dragging him onward.

“Yizhou. Western Mountain.”

The four words drifted back from ahead, and the wind scattered most of them away.

Zhou Yi stood there motionless, staring at the retreating figure, unable to process it.

Yizhou?

Did his father just say Yizhou? Western Mountain?

Chang’an was already to the west, and Yizhou lay even farther west beyond that.

His father had traveled all the way east from Chang’an to Xiangzhou, and now he was turning around to head west again—to Yizhou?

How far was that journey? What could possibly be so important?

More important than moving Mother’s grave?

He opened his mouth, wanting to call out to stop his father.

But no sound came out.

He watched his father’s figure grow smaller and smaller, farther and farther away, until a stretch of forest blocked the view completely.

The wind blew cold from the mountainside.

Zhou Yi stood there without moving.

Li Lizhi walked over and stood beside him.

She said nothing. She simply reached out and held his hand.

Her hand was cool, and he did not let go.

Old Liu stood behind them, hammer in hand, looking ahead and then at Zhou Yi. His mouth opened as though he wanted to say something, but he swallowed the words back down.

He scratched his head, and in the end only managed to mutter:

“That old bear’s been like this his whole life. Says he’s leaving, and he leaves.”

Zhou Yi said nothing.

He stood there for a very long time—so long that Old Liu eventually squatted down, set the hammer beside his feet, pulled out his pipe from his robe, lit it, and took a puff.

Smoke drifted from his lips and scattered into the wind.

At last, Zhou Yi moved.

He took a deep breath, turned around, and looked at Li Lizhi.

“Let’s go.”

Li Lizhi nodded.

The two of them started walking back. Old Liu knocked the ash from his pipe, picked up his hammer, and followed behind.

The three of them walked along the mountain path in silence.

Ahead of them lay Wagang, the horses, and the road they had come by.

Behind them lay that mountain, that cave, and that gravestone.