Borrowing a Touch of Rosy Cloud Light

In a low-walled thatched mud cottage in a village beneath the mountain, an old woman was making homemade earth incense.

Like Song You's setup at the Taoist temple, she had a wooden incense table roughly the size of a single writing desk. Atop it lay a flat piece of wood about a foot wide, and on this wood, an awl pinned a stack of red paper roughly three fingers wide and a foot long, meant for rolling incense. Below it sat an incense trough filled with spices. Looking closely at the spices, one could vaguely make out a few familiar raw materials ground down to the size of millet grains, showing a greenish-yellow hue.

The old woman used a bamboo strip roughly as long as the red paper to scoop up some spices, pouring out a neat, long strip onto the red paper. Immediately taking a bamboo stick, she folded the top of the red paper a few times to seal the opening, rubbed it with her hand, and rolled the entire stick of incense with practiced ease.

Then she pasted the bottom of the earth incense, and a single stick of earth incense was complete.

Rolling down a stick of incense like this took roughly ten seconds measured by the second, yet the old woman's movements were fluid and every ounce of strength was just right. Watching her truly was a pleasure.

Song You stood quietly to the side without making a sound.

The old woman's head was full of silver threads, and she was utterly focused.

The room was filled with the fresh fragrance of herbs, light slanted in through the window, and tiny specks of incense dust drifted in the air. Suddenly, both substance and light took on shape.

Even Three Flower Cat's heart was very still.

Thirty sticks of incense were rolled in no time.

The old woman counted them carefully, tied them up with thatch grass, and handed them to Song You.

"Young Mister."

"Thank you, old woman."

Song You respectfully took them.

Each stick of this incense was as thick as a finger, much thicker than the thin incense in the city, and holding a whole bundle in one hand was no easy feat. Yet in truth, thirty sticks only sold for six copper cash, and the most expensive part of the cost was still this crude, inferior red paper.

Song You paid a little extra money as a reward for the old woman previously telling him the ingredients of the earth incense, then expressed his thanks and left.

Don't let the cheapness and low selling price of this incense fool you; among the Taoist temples Song You had dealt with, quite a few Taoists loved using this kind of homemade incense, and the majority of them were especially fond of using incense they had personally blended and rolled.

Only after pouring one's heart and soul into it could one commune with ghosts and gods.

Leaving the village, Song You walked onto the broad road and turned back toward the village temple. He kept only three of these thirty sticks of incense, placing the rest before the statue of Wang Shangong.

Give and take; take and give.

With his mood lightened, he continued on his way.

Now the traveler had changed from a single man to a man and a cat.

At first Three Flower Lady was very well-behaved, perhaps owing to her unfamiliarity with Song You. She simply walked obediently behind him, maintaining a leisurely distance. Soon her nature broke free, and she began periodically sprinting forward a few steps, turning back to look at Song You, standing still in place from time to time to sniff the wild grass by the roadside, and occasionally pausing, captivated by butterflies or flying birds in the air. When Song You walked too far ahead, she would quickly trot to catch up.

With her making such a fuss, the journey was not all that boring after all.

They had not walked far when they encountered a checkpoint. Song You presented his Monk Certificate and successfully passed through.

As mentioned earlier, traveling merchants and martial artists each had their own methods, and people like Song You possessed their own special travel passes.

In this world, religion was also regulated by the imperial court, varying with each dynasty. To be specific about Great Yan, its management of religion was actually much stricter, with the biggest difference from previous dynasties being the reduction of privileges for ordinary temples and monasteries.

For instance, various tax exemptions were no longer granted.

However, this was after all a world with ghosts and gods, and those high-level cultivators possessing cultivation base still commanded respect.

Therefore, Great Yan had a two-tier Monk Certificate system.

An ordinary Monk Certificate was simply a piece of paper bearing an illustration of a talisman, the issuing institution, the Taoist temple, and personal information, stamped with a large seal. It needed to be kept pressed inside a box, lest it get ruined. Any proper monk or Taoist priest could obtain this kind of certificate.

The other kind was a booklet.

Obtaining this booklet proved that you were somewhat accomplished, or that your former master and elders had been somewhat accomplished, granting a certain tax-exemption quota. Considering that spirits and ghosts constantly emerged in the world and some practitioners had a rigid need to travel the four seas debating scriptures and discussing doctrines, this certificate also served as a travel pass. Aside from the bearer, it allowed them to bring along five disciples and attendants.

It was considered preferential treatment for high-level cultivators.

However, as the years passed, this kind of certificate inevitably proliferated, and by now it no longer proved much.

Having passed the checkpoint, the scenery along the road changed considerably. The mountains on the left were no longer gentle, turning towering and steep. The right side remained just as before, with the road winding through the mountains alongside a stream. Every time Three Flower Lady wanted to look at the mountain peak, she had to tilt her head all the way back.

"So high!"

Three Flower Lady said.

"Has Three Flower Lady ever seen such a high mountain?" Song You sat on a rock, eating a steamed cake, and asked.

"No."

The Three Flower Cat turned her head to look at him.

Only then seeming to remember, Song You hurriedly broke off an unbitten piece from the steamed cake in his hand, bent down, and offered it to the Three Flower Cat's mouth.

Yet the Three Flower Cat merely stared at him in a daze.

Just at that moment, an insect buzzed past right in front of her. The Three Flower Cat simply lifted a front paw and steadily caught the flying insect in her palm, immediately bringing her paw to her mouth. By the time Song You saw clearly, only the insect's translucent wings were visible near her mouth.

The Three Flower Cat ate while eyeing Song You.

"..."

It was my ignorance.

Song You silently withdrew the hand holding the steamed cake.

"Do you want to eat?" The Three Flower Cat asked him. "Three Flower Lady will go catch two more for you."

"No need, I don't eat bugs."

"They're very delicious."

"I appreciate the thought."

"What about mice?"

"No thanks either, appreciate it."

"Mm..."

"Has Three Flower Lady ever heard of it?" Song You ate his steamed cake and asked again. "There's a place up ahead called Hand Crawl Rock. It's exceptionally perilous, but the scenery is superb."

"What is Hand Crawl Rock?"

"It means a section of carved cliffside path where you have to crawl to get across."

"How do you know?"

"I stayed at the temple the past few days and heard those martial artists talking about it."

"I rarely listen to them talk."

"It's quite interesting."

"Are we going there?"

"I want to go."

"Mm..." The Three Flower Cat suddenly leaped up again, precisely catching an insect. This time Song You saw clearly: it was a locust. She simply said to Song You, "Anyway, Three Flower Lady will follow wherever you go."

Song You nodded.

The sun sloped westward.

When Song You inquired at the third local household, he had finally arrived below Hand Crawl Rock.

An old man weaving lanterns wore a bamboo conical hat, stood at his doorstep, pointed high toward the cloud-reaching mountain cliff on the left, and said to Song You, "Right above here is Hand Crawl Rock."

Man and cat tilted their heads high to look.

A thousand-foot precipice seemed to press right against them. Being too close, for a moment their eyes beheld nothing else besides this towering mountain precipice.

"Hand Crawl Rock is indeed a shortcut, but not many people have walked it for a long time now. The path is terribly dangerous, wet, and slippery. The mountains also frequently suffer from demons and ghosts making trouble, wailing like ghosts and howling like wolves every night. People do often go up to play, but they all go in the day and return in the day; no one dares spend the night up there." The old man kindly said to the young young Taoist priest. "It's too late now. If you want to see the scenery, you'd better go up tomorrow. If you're heading up there, you must return before dark."

"May I ask, old man, how long does it take to climb up?"

"It takes an hour to climb up, another hour to come back down, and if you walk down through the other side all the way to the end, it takes two hours."

"An hour..."

Song You calculated; there was still time.

Instead, the old man glared at him with dissatisfaction. "You're going up tonight? Then you'll have to grope your way through the night path in the dark. There really are ghosts on this mountain."

"It's no obstacle."

When people die they become ghosts, and ghosts are naturally weaker than humans.

"Even if you aren't afraid of ghosts, walking the night path is still terribly dangerous," the old man continued. "For thousands of years, countless people have tumbled to their deaths up there."

"Old man, sell me a lantern."

"All I've got here are lanterns, no candles."

"No matter, no matter."

"You Taoist priest don't listen to advice!"

Song You merely smiled. He spent sixteen copper cash to buy a simple lantern from the old man—a common shape with a slender, lightweight bamboo-strip frame pasted with a layer of off-white paper that leaned slightly yellow, devoid of any other decorations.

Man and cat headed up the mountain along the trail.

"Dark sky and rain, ghosts weeping at night..."

Song You murmured, a smile appearing at the corner of his mouth.

This was how the world described Hand Crawl Rock.

Passing upward through the mountain forest, following the two-foot-wide cliffside path obliquely upward, and walking to the very top, one reached the renowned Hand Crawl Rock.

This section of the cliff was perpendicular to the ground, and the path was entirely a trail less than human height, formed based on natural fissures on the cliff and artificial excavation. The wider spots might be three or four feet across, while the narrowest spots only allowed a person to hug the cliff face and barely edge past. One had to hunch over the entire way, or else resort to using both hands and feet.

Three Flower Lady was relaxed; this had zero impact on her, whereas Song You had to walk with much greater difficulty.

Not only did he have to hunch forward, but he also had to worry about misstepping and falling.

For the trekker who fears neither towering mountains nor distant roads, the mountains and rivers repay them with the most wondrous scenery.

Viewed from this angle, the mountain ravines below were covered by greenery like a dark blanket. On the cliff, occasional nameless trees grew, rooted heaven knows where, stubbornly clinging to the precipice. Blasted by years of mountain wind, they leaned toward a single direction, seemingly welcoming the brave mountaineer.

What was astonishing was that in such a perilous place, predecessors had not only chiseled out this path but had also carved countless cliffside inscriptions overhead and on the precipice.

There were scriptures for delivering souls from purgatory and statues of deities subduing evil spirits, many of which were beginning to blur. Time flowed across them trace by trace, and for a thousand years they had witnessed batch after batch of people passing through here, wondering if they could continue for yet another millennium.

Song You walked very slowly, not only out of caution but also to leisurely appreciate the perilous scenery below or lift his head to gaze into the eyes of the deities on these stone carvings.

These cliffside inscriptions spanned a vast range of eras, and thus featured different artistic styles. Some deity portrayals were bizarre, some were gentle, and some deliberately accentuated robust physiques. These were all the common folk's fantasies regarding the imagery of deities, reflecting the social ethos and popular preferences of different periods, from which one could roughly deduce which dynasties these carvings came from.

The oldest ones likely dated back a millennium.

Song You observed them closely, looking not only at the artistic styles and craftsmanship but also at the brows and eyes of these deities, seemingly catching a glimpse of a corner of those bygone eras.

Perhaps in some era, when this path had not yet been abandoned and people still frequented it, countless demons and ghosts truly borrowed the terrain here to block the path and demand lives, while the deities on these stone carvings, bolstered by the gathered willpower of the masses, genuinely overawed the monsters and demons of these mountains.

Suddenly a thought arose in his heart: perhaps crawling on hands and feet and advancing hunched over was not only due to the difficulty of excavation, but also meant to force those passing through to bow down before these statues of deities that suppressed demons and evil spirits, maintaining a shred of reverence.

The sky grew darker and darker.

Song You stopped at the highest point, sitting right on the edge of the cliff with his legs dangling naturally, letting the mountain breeze blow as he resolved to spend the night right here today.

Today happened to be free of gloomy rain; instead, the setting sun was like blood and the rosy clouds filled the sky.

In this era, quite a few people loved traveling, and many scholars and literati were passionate about natural landscapes. According to the old man down the mountain, people were often attracted by the perilous and absolute scenery of Hand Crawl Rock, braving the danger to climb and wander about, yet very few dared spend the night up there.

In Song You's view, they truly missed out on a great deal.

Yet the even more breathtaking sight was not the setting sun, but the dreamlike colors presenting themselves at the edge of the sky when the sunset's afterglow faded and the overhead vault grew dim.

Neither quite blue nor purple, resembling red yet pinkish-white, they gradually transformed into a gentle dusk glow.

The darker the sky grew, the more beautiful the horizon became.

Song You stared blankly, lost in fascination.

In this world, pure natural scenery and ghosts-and-gods magic were rare things that could captivate him, because only these very few things felt to him like proof that this world was not more dry and uninteresting than another.

"Taoist priest, are we not going down?"

"We are not going down."

"It's dark."

"Mm."

The mountain breeze blew somewhat chilly.

Song You remained seated on the cliff edge, appreciating the colors at the horizon and the silhouette of the mountain ranges beneath his feet. Suddenly seeming to remember something, he reached out to lift the newly bought lantern, raised the lantern high with one hand, and with his other hand made a distant, remote pinch toward the horizon, plucking a sliver of the void to cast into this lantern.

In a split second, a radiance just as dreamlike as the horizon at that moment lit up inside the lantern.

Borrowing a touch of Rosy Cloud Light to dispel the long, cold night.