Just as Xing Yan's fury boiled over and he clenched his fists, ready to throw caution aside and make that fellow's face blossom with bruises, he noticed that the gleeful jeering throughout the boat had begun to fade.
As the boy gradually recovered from his anger, he finally realized that the familiar world before him was undergoing a terrifying change:
The clear, bright sky had somehow become thick with black clouds. The waters of Poyang Lake, stirred moments ago by only a light breeze and gentle waves, now resembled a pot of water on the boil. The birds that had been hunting over the lake had vanished. Seeing this strange weather, the fishermen hurriedly hauled in their nets and headed ashore.
Now, across the pitch-black heavens above their heads, hundreds upon thousands of pallid lightning bolts darted wildly like slender snakes. Behind those heavy, brooding clouds came the faint rumble of wind and thunder.
At that moment, an enormous pot seemed to have been overturned above the whole of Poyang Lake. The heavens were black as ink, the waves roared like boiling water, and daylight abruptly became night. In an instant, the bright world had turned into a terrifying Asura Realm!
"Boatman! Row! Get us back!"
Everyone aboard was terrified, staggering about amid the towering waves, their shrieks and cries unending. Cursing, shouting, pleading, they all urged the owner to get the boat back as quickly as possible.
Xing Yan and Ju Ying were also stunned by this horrifying change, forgetting their earlier displeasure entirely. Ju Ying was, after all, a slight, delicate girl, and the panicked crowd shoved her this way and that. At this critical moment, the boy cast aside all concern for propriety between the sexes, pulled her close, and shielded her against his chest. After that, no matter how many heavy blows struck his back, he merely clenched his teeth and endured in silence, intent only on protecting Ju Ying.
"Ahhh! The boat won't move!"
A heart-rending scream came from the boat's owner.
The boatmen had been rowing desperately, only to discover that however hard they pulled, their oars seemed to be sweeping through empty air, gaining no purchase on the water. The pleasure boat could not move an inch! Its stern rudder now seemed welded fast with molten iron; however desperately the boatman heaved at it, it would not budge!
The owner's explanation, uglier to hear than weeping, instantly crushed everyone's hopes of escaping back to Nanji Island. They panicked like headless flies. Though desperate to flee, none dared leap into the water-with the lake boiling so eerily, no one dared imagine what horrors might follow once they entered it!
The shadow of death instantly fell across every heart.
Just as everyone aboard sank into despair, believing they could not escape this calamity, someone suddenly cried out, telling them to look south. There, amid the ink-black clouds in the southern sky, several crimson clouds had appeared. They gathered and entwined, linking together like fiery red characters!
Under the terrified gazes of everyone aboard, those character-shaped crimson clouds slowly drifted toward the pleasure boat.
Ever since that strange night on Horseshoe Mountain, Xing Yan's eyesight had unknowingly grown sharper and sharper. While the others were still struggling to make out the shapes of the red clouds, he could already see that those uncanny crimson masses had twisted into four crooked characters:
Xing Yan Ying Ju
To the boy, this was nothing less than a thunderbolt from a clear sky! Though he could not quite understand "Ying Ju," it most likely meant Ju Ying, since the sounds of those two characters were precisely reversed.
Who would have thought those tales of spirits and strange creatures I used to read would come crashing down on my own head today!
Inwardly lamenting, he was about to feign ignorance and conceal what he knew, when someone nearby unexpectedly shouted at the top of his lungs:
"It's those two! Those two have angered the lake god!"
Terrified, Xing Yan glanced sideways and discovered that the shouting man was none other than the spoiled young dandy who had insulted him earlier.
The fellow's goose-feather fan had disappeared somewhere. With his robe askew and his cap crooked, he flailed his arms and pointed at Xing Yan and Ju Ying, barking wildly like a mad dog.
Earlier, while eavesdropping on Xing Yan and Ju Ying's conversation, he had heard their names. Though he had heard the boy call the girl "Ju Ying," that was merely the reverse of "Ying Ju," so surely there could be no mistake. Those fiery red characters in the sky must refer to the two of them!
Seeing the crimson message and hearing that the lake god's anger was directed at someone else, everyone immediately felt reassured. Thank heaven and earth-we've finally found someone to die in our place! Since the venerable lake god had given such clear instructions, he surely did not intend to harm them by mistake. It seemed their little lives were safe this time. But once they returned unharmed, if anyone ever dared mention "taking a boat" to them again, they would beat him until he was hunting for his teeth across the ground!
Once their lives seemed secure, their wits returned, and they began guessing how these two had offended the lake god. Hadn't the boy mentioned a "dragon" in his poem earlier? Perhaps that had trespassed upon the sacred name of the lake's dragon god? They had also heard that, with nothing better to do, the boy had been babbling about some monster called "Wu Zhiqi." Could he have offended that venerable monster's spirit in heaven?
While everyone indulged in wild speculation, the thunder overhead grew louder and louder, seeming to roll barely ten feet above their heads. Only then did they remember that, whether a dragon god was angry or a monster sought revenge, the urgent task was to throw these two into the lake as sacrifices. As though acting on a prior agreement, they all advanced upon the boy and girl.
Only then did those in front discover that this unremarkable-looking boy possessed astonishing strength. Braced against the railing, he resisted with all his might, and for a time they could do nothing to him!
In fact, upon hearing the dandy's shouting, Xing Yan and Ju Ying had exchanged a glance:
Today, the two of us probably cannot escape this calamity.
The same thought arose in both their hearts: surely their unlawful abduction of an imperial official the previous night had enraged the gods and brought down this disaster. Truly, "Wrong done in a darkened room meets divine eyes like lightning; whispers among mortals reach heaven like thunder." Heaven's might was unfathomable-and terribly frightening!
As the boy struggled desperately against the crowd, nearing the moment when his resistance would fail and they would bid life farewell, Ju Ying's expression instead grew calm.
Everything from the past, everything from today, flashed before her eyes like lightning and sparks struck from flint.
Am I going to be buried here in Poyang Lake together with this boy?
At this perilous moment, looking at the honest boy fighting with all his strength to protect her, the girl felt a measure of peace and composure settle in her heart. She seemed no longer afraid of the approaching silence of death...
Xing Yan, however, was thinking of his aged father and loving mother at home. It was all his own reckless behavior that had brought this calamity upon him. If he died in the lake today, he could never repay his parents for raising him. Looking again at the girl before him, he felt as though ten thousand arrows pierced his heart, and cursed himself for dragging this innocent, lovely girl into his trouble.
At that thought, the boy suddenly shouted to the raging crowd before him:
"Good sirs, stop a moment and hear me out! My ignorance angered the venerable lake god today, but this girl had nothing to do with it! I beg you, uncles and elders, spare her life for the sake of her being a girl! If you agree, I won't resist any longer!"
He had not expected these heartfelt words to provoke only a storm of curses. Everyone wanted only to save his own life. The lake god had formed characters demanding these two as sacrifices; if they shortchanged him and the deity punished them afterward, that would be no laughing matter! Each was concerned only for his own survival. Who had time to waste words with this boy?
Seeing the crowd's fury, Ju Ying softly told the frightened, helpless boy:
"When we abducted that man last night, I said I wouldn't abandon you and escape first. Today, all the more, I won't watch you go to your death alone..."
Seeing the resolve on the young girl's face, Xing Yan felt his heart wrench with grief! But matters had reached this point, and there was no room left to turn. At that thought, he let out a long sigh, shoved away two people pressing desperately forward, and addressed the crowd:
"It seems neither of us can escape this calamity today! But please untie a little skiff for us, and let heaven decide whether we live or die. If you refuse this request, even after we become vengeful ghosts, we won't let any of you go!"
On any ordinary day, these people would have scoffed at such threats of vengeful ghosts. But after witnessing all the strange happenings on Poyang Lake today, perhaps talk of gods and ghosts was no idle fancy. Though each secretly cursed the boy for having so much to say instead of quickly jumping in to save their lives, since the pair were willing to leave the boat and become sacrifices, giving them a little skiff was a trifling matter. Amid these surging, boiling waters, how was a skiff carved from a piece of wood any different from a single reed? Better to grant the boy's request and send these two bringers of disaster away quickly, before a long night bred more nightmares.
Now everyone aboard was of one mind. They hurriedly opened a broad passage for Xing Yan and Ju Ying to go to the stern and untie the little skiff. All held their breath, watching the pair's every movement intently. Only after seeing them board that solitary little craft did everyone on the pleasure boat breathe a sigh of relief.
Amid the wind and waves filling the world, two pairs of hands clasped tightly together!
The instant Xing Yan and Ju Ying boarded the skiff, the muffled thunder long brewing overhead seemed finally to find an outlet. A thunderclap cracked beside everyone's ears, shaking the black clouds across the sky. A rent seemed to open where the fiery crimson clouds lay, and suddenly a savage streak of blood-red lightning appeared, shaped like a dragon or serpent, hurtling straight toward the little skiff!
That earth-shaking thunderbolt from the clouds, that dazzling divine lightning, struck with matchless speed. Whether Xing Yan and Ju Ying, who believed themselves unable to escape heaven's punishment, or the people aboard the pleasure boat, smugly certain they had escaped with their lives, all stood stupefied before this upheaval of heaven and earth, unable to react.
Before an eye could blink, all was over, and the living and the dead had taken separate roads.
Rain poured down in torrents.
The tumult of Poyang Lake seemed to have receded far away, and heaven and earth sank once more into eternal silence.
...Am I dead already?
Is-is this the Yellow Springs Road?
After a long while, Xing Yan, stunned unconscious by that soul-shaking display of heaven and earth's might, seemed slowly to regain a trace of awareness. In his daze, he vaguely sensed a hazy figure before him, anxiously calling something to him.
After struggling for a while, he finally opened his heavy eyelids, only to see an unfamiliar face as lovely as flowers and snow.
"Ah!"
The boy had barely glimpsed a little light before everything seemed to go dark again:
It's over! I couldn't escape this calamity after all! I've reached the Underworld so quickly, and here's Ox-Head and Horse-huh?
Only then did the boy realize something was amiss:
Does the Underworld have such beautiful Ox-Heads and Horse-Faces?!
He struggled to open his eyes again-and so, at the age of sixteen, the boy beheld one of the most beautiful pictures he would ever see in his life:
Beside misty waters beneath a blue sky now cleared of clouds and rain, a girl of exquisite, ethereal beauty, dreamlike and unreal, gazed at him with a sorrowful expression. That wistful look, soft as apricot blossoms veiled in mist, made her all the more delicate and lovely, her grace overflowing.
Seeing Xing Yan awake, the fairy-like girl brightened and broke into a radiant smile. In that instant, to Xing Yan's eyes, the divine light shifting within her gaze seemed to illuminate the entire blue sky, green waters, white clouds, and distant mountains before him, shimmering and swaying together with the autumn ripples of Poyang Lake.
In that instant, as though sensing an aura not belonging to the mortal world, the long-absent moonlight flow within Xing Yan seemed drawn by the girl's moment of peerless beauty, circling and rippling together with that shifting divine radiance...
Following the rhythm of that flowing current, Xing Yan's mind drifted into a haze. Having just passed between life and death, the boy suddenly beheld this incomparable beauty, this immortal grace; his heart wished to think, yet forgot thought, his mouth wished to ask, yet forgot speech. Nothing else could fit within his mind. Only one passage from his school lessons circled there again and again:
"Vaguely, like light clouds veiling the moon; floating, like drifting wind swirling snow... Vaguely, like light clouds veiling the moon; floating, like drifting wind swirling snow..."
"Ah!"
Only when a wash of cold lake water suddenly soaked him did the entranced boy regain his senses and return to the mortal world before him.
The girl had called several times without receiving an answer, so she gave him a push. But the boy had been reclining at the edge of the shallows, and in his daze he tumbled into the water. Fortunately, the water near the bank was shallow, and after a brief, bedraggled struggle, Xing Yan quickly climbed back onto shore. Amid his flailing, he heard:
"Whose frivolous boy is this, with eyes blazing like a thief's?"
That voice, like an immortal decree, perfectly matched her face, lovely as a celestial blossom.
Ah-surely I stared too hard just now, offended the beauty, and got taken for a lecher. But... why does her voice sound so familiar?
Having seen so many strange things today, Xing Yan dared not act rashly, and cautiously asked:
"May I ask whether this fairy knows me?"
"Xing Yan! It's me, Ju Ying!"
Even in her mild displeasure, she remained charming and radiant, her beauty aglow.
"Uh..."
It seemed everything that had happened today truly was a dream-and even now, he had yet to awaken.
Seeing Xing Yan behave this way, the girl also realized something was wrong and looked at her reflection in the water. Once she saw her own appearance clearly, she covered her mouth and gasped!
Afterward, it took the girl considerable effort to convince Xing Yan that she really was "Ju Ying." Fortunately, the simple-hearted boy finally accepted her explanation: "My father strictly ordered me to conceal my looks before I could go traveling." This account was reasonable enough. With beauty such as hers, if she did not disguise her face, she could never venture lightly into the dangers of the wider world, but could only remain locked away in secluded chambers.
After all, he was an inexperienced country boy. It never occurred to him that such an exquisitely convincing art of disguise was hardly something a merchant's family could command!
Though the honest boy believed Ju Ying's explanation, he had seldom had opportunities to see beautiful women, and the sudden revelation of her astonishing beauty still left him deeply awkward. The girl apparently had not expected this situation either, and for a time she was rather embarrassed, no longer as at ease as before.
After a long while, perhaps remembering how they had shared life and death amid those unfathomable supernatural forces, the boy suddenly raised his head, looked at the girl, and smiled:
"Ju Ying!"
Hearing him, the girl smiled brightly in return:
"Xing Yan!"
With those two calls, their old understanding returned.
The pale-yellow ribbon that had bound Ju Ying's hair had been loosened and lost in the earlier downpour. Her long hair, smooth as silk, cascaded down like a waterfall. There beside the autumn waters, the girl used the lake as her mirror and her hands as her comb, smoothing those flowing tresses.
Not far from her, the boy watched Ju Ying's graceful silhouette, yet felt strangely ill at ease, unsure where to put his hands and feet. After a while, Xing Yan found the silence rather awkward, and searched for something to say:
"Uh, Ju Ying, look south. Those faint mountains in the distance look like that part of you..."
Ordinarily quick-tongued, the boy now stammered, feeling awkward and clumsy all through.
Hearing him, the girl looked up toward the distant mountains, where she could faintly make out two curving peaks facing one another.
At first sight, she froze. Then, suddenly thinking of something, she lowered her head and looked toward her chest. Her cheeks flushed crimson, and with a soft sound of disdain, she reached out to shove Xing Yan:
"Ah! So you really are a frivolous boy!"
Thus the unsuspecting, innocent boy fell into the water yet again. Immersed once more in the cool lake, he remained bewildered, wondering:
I was praising the twin arches of her dark brows for resembling faint autumn mountains. Why did she suddenly get angry with me again? Don't the books say, "The water flows like a glancing eye; the mountains gather like arching brows"?
Suffering this undeserved misfortune, the boy sighed inwardly that a young girl's thoughts were indeed the hardest things to fathom!
There at the edge of the shallows beside Nanji Island, while the girl was irresistibly bashful and the boy bewildered and aggrieved, the sun gradually sank toward the western end of Poyang Lake without their noticing.
The autumn sun's lingering glow lit the clouds across half the western sky. Amid the reflected sunset, deep in the vast, dim waters of Poyang Lake, a little skiff drifted with the waves, sinking and rising. And as night approached, the cold lake water, already darkening in places, swallowed the last fragment still faintly recognizable as part of the pleasure boat's painted railing...
Another day had passed, just like that.
Before you continue