Nightfall

It was late in the night and the time for the Building of Pines and Cranes to put up shutters. People inside the building were cleaning, and thus they embarrassedly refused Ning Que’s request. Ning Que, of course, was unwilling to leave now, he took out a sheaf of notes, then drew one and gave it to the manager after thinking for a while.

When he left the Old Brush Pen Shop yesterday, he was ready for the outcome of never going back, in the case he could find Sangsang. So he took the most valuable things with him, including the Primordial Thirteen Arrows, and of course, the notes.

Though it was only one note, the manager clearly saw its denomination and suddenly became frightened when he recalled the thick sheaf of notes in front of his eyes just now. He knew clearly that a guest who carried so many notes would certainly not be an ordinary person. The manager didn’t dare to offend Ning Que. So he accepted the note obediently and welcomed Ning Que to the building, arranging a private room near the window on the second floor.

All kinds of delicacies were brought in the private room and put on the table. Ning Que, looking at the extraordinarily fresh night sky beside the window, was drinking the liquor slowly with a tiny cup.

With beancurd sprouts mingled steamed pork, Ning Que gradually became more excited by the liquor and his eyes squinted. He looked upstairs at the stars in the sky, thought about the messes during these past two days, then knocked at the urn with chopsticks and hummed, “Can we meet once again, I have begged in front of Buddha for thousands of years…”

At this time, there was a remark coming out from the nearby room, “What is that garbage song? It is so rare to hear such an annoying song, and the lyrics are total nonsense.”

The Building of Pines and Cranes set a veranda at the lakeside for the guests to rest at their leisure. Each private room had a small door which was connected to the veranda. At night when it was quiet, any slightly higher voice could pass through the doors, windows and the veranda to other room. Ning Que’s singing sounds were just heard this way.

It was just until then that Ning Que realized there was another guest in the Building of Pines and Cranes. By the aged voice, he knew the man was old, then he laughed and said, “I don’t agree with you, vulgarity is not always bad. Just take as example, when the aftereffect of drinking shows up and you can’t remember other songs, but this one.”

The guest from the next room then asked curiously, “Does it have a name?”

“Begging to Buddha,” Ning Que replied,”If I don’t remember wrongly, that’s the name.”

The guest laughed and mocked, “Buddhas only cultivate themselves and don’t get involved in worldly affairs, let alone small love between mortals. Young man, if you truly want to get rid of these annoyances in the mortal world, there is no way but to avoid them. It’s better to depend on yourself than to seek help from Buddha.”

Ning Que found these words interesting, so he looked at the next room through the window and tried to figure out who was this man drinking liquor and making fun as he did in the night.

Below the firmament and stars, a man was sitting in the next room’s veranda. Ning Que didn’t see his face clearly as the light was dim and the man only showed the side of his face. Only one thing was clear, he was so tall that even the large and wide chair still seemed small for him.

Ning Que looked at the tall figure, and found he was familiar but couldn’t remember his name. Then he frowned and got lost in memories for a while, later bursting into a laugh as he remembered the saying about why you have to remember every man you meet. So he shook his head and sat back in his chair, then took out a handkerchief and coughed up some blood.

His depressing cough was reverberating on the veranda of the Building of Pines and Cranes.

Ning Que put the handkerchief back in his sleeve. After thinking for a while, he carried the urn and the chair to the veranda, and then looked at the man, and said, “Do you mind if I sit here?”

The man replied, “This is your place.”

The manager of the Building of Pines and Cranes knew that the last two guests were sitting on the veranda. He was confused by them not fearing the cold, but he still asked a servant to ignite wind proof light at the edge of the veranda.

With dim light covering the veranda, Ning Que saw the man clearly. Wearing a precious deep red fox-fur robe, the man looked hale with his beard waving in the night breeze, like a rich man in Chang’an. Yet he gave people a mysterious impression. He didn’t make others feel old though he was old.

“How about chatting for a while?” Ning Que asked.

The tall old man shook his head, and lifted the urn in his hand and said, “The first thing I do when I come back to Chang’an is to drink three urns of fresh liquor from the Building of Pines and Cranes. I won’t waste my time chitchatting before I finish my liquor.”

Ning Que ignored him and sat back in his chair to watch the stars in the sky above Chang’an, drinking his liquor slowly.

The old man was sitting there, watching the firmament behind the stars as well, drinking liquor at his own slow pace.

Ning Que’s drinking capacity was ordinary and far smaller than Sangsang’s. Especially when he was injured and fatigued, he fell into the dazed state soon.

The old man looked extraordinary like an unfathomable hermit in the Jianghu world. However, his drinking capacity was also very poor and got drunk after a short while.

Drunken men could be divided into many kinds. For example, the so-called martial drunkenness which was to vent anger, hit people, kick trees, and smash the wall; and the so-called literacy drunkenness which was to write poems, transcribe poems, and brag about their poems. Ning Que didn’t belong to these types, so he was just mumbling to himself in the effect of drunkenness.

The old man looked very funny after he was drunk; he was whispering continuously with his bright eyes staring at the firmament over the stars, as if he were talking to the sky. However, telling from the gloomy expression on his face, those words from his mouth would most likely be dirty words.

The elder and the youth were drinking liquor next to each other, and both sighed.

Ning Que was sighing about his life.

Though he had lived in the Tang Empire for no more than twenty years, he went through a lot, even experienced death. There were so many things for him to recollect. For example, the men of Hebei County were more vicious than ghosts during the dry season; the men in the Min Mountain were more vicious than beasts, the men on the grassland were more vicious than wolves, and the most enjoyable thing was the love from a beauty which was a thing that never should be given up, etc.

While the old man was complaining about more specific things under the theme of “the moral degeneration of the world is getting worse day by day”. For example, an unscrupulous manager of a liquor shop added water into liquor; and even the Building of Pines and Cranes tried to fool the guests by faking the beancurd sprouts mingled steamed pork with other meat instead of black pig meat from the south suburb of Chang’an. Even the clay of the spring clay urn was changed, and there was a smell of Huangzhou clay in the liquor.

“The urn is used to hold liquor, not to grind the ink with it for writing. How could they use Huangzhou clay!”

The old man angrily waved his arm, his white beard shaking in the night wind.

As the old man’s voice was getting louder, Ning Que turned his head toward the old man and sighed, “You really take a serious attitude about life, but aren’t you tired?”

The old man frowned unhappily, then looked at Ning Que and replied, “One shall live properly while he is alive.”

After a momentary silence, Ning Que smiled and said, “That’s because you have lived a happy life, so you may never know that sometimes, it can be called the luckiest thing to just be alive.”

The old man waved his hands like driving away mosquitos as if he were to expel Ning Que’s cliché and self-remorse out of the veranda.

Ning Que was nearly drunk now, and he didn’t realize that the old man despised his subconscious expression of emotions.

“I once thought I would be an ordinary man in a fortified mountain village, seeking neither fame nor wealth. When the situation was getting better, I had the fancy that I could become someone with the power to determine the fate of others and to garner great accomplishments. But now, I finally realize that I am just a man playing house in the mortal world.”

“Life is just like playing house. When you have immersed in the game for a long time, you may take it as real. The original indifference would turn into responsibilities or habits, which I formerly disdained the most with the influence by daily necessities such as fuel, rice, cooking oil and salt. It’s probably because I have been thinking since childhood about what she would do without me, then I change my thoughts to what I would do without her. Of course, I could still live, or could I live an easier life? Then what is easiness? There couldn’t be any easiness if the habit is broken. You would always have the feeling that something very important is missing from your life and some part of your body is gone too.”

Ning Que turned his head to the old man in the chair and then said smilingly, “Don’t judge me because of these sentimental words. Do you know why there are always sayings like this? Because people would always find a way afterwards to demonstrate that these things are of great significance.”

He raised the spring clay urn, looked at an imaginary moon and said, “I would feel uncomfortable if these valuable things were gone. Taking the night sky as example, I would be unhappy as long as there was no moon, no matter if it was the night sky fourteen years ago or that of the City of Wei, or Chang’an’s.”

The old man found this interesting, so he looked at him and asked, “Moon? What is it? Is it in the sky? I have never seen it or heard of it before.”

“The moon is a thing which can give out light. Sometimes it is round, sometimes it is curved. It looks very beautiful when it shows up during the night or during the day. The moon has its own uses, such as sheltering the sunlight, causing the tide and transforming werewolves…”

Looking at the old man, Ning Que sighed and said, “I know that you won’t believe this. You can just take my words as the wild talk of a drunkard.”

The old man replied, “If I were not drunken as well, I would take you to the Imperial Astronomer and force you to search for it with the instrument there in the night.”

Ning Que sneered, “Never mind, a wealthy landlord like you would not know about these enigmatic things.”

The old man became furious and reprimanded, “The older, the wiser!”

Ning Que replied dismissively, “The younger, the more welcomed.”

The old man was speechless.

Ning Que suddenly said, “Let me tell you one thing seriously and don’t be afraid, I want to kill someone now.”

The old man was shocked and said, “You have just killed two men during the day, and you want to kill more right now?”

Ning Que was drunken at the moment and didn’t hear the old man clearly.

He looked at the stars over the night sky with a sigh and said, “Sometimes a thought flashes in my mind that there might be some defects in my character, for each time when I am unhappy, the lust to kill would arise in my mind.”

The old man looked at him and said solemnly, “There is nothing wrong with your character.”

Ning Que was stunned, then stared at him and said joyfully, “Do you really think so?”

The old man sneered and said, “But there is something wrong with your brain.”