Wei Xun entered the room, closed the door, and spent a moment letting his eyes adjust to the darkness.
Tomorrow was the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the Ullambana Festival. Tonight, the moon was gibbous, its silvery light bright. His ability to see in darkness far surpassed that of ordinary people; the little moonlight filtering through the window lattice was enough for him to move about without lighting a lamp.
Wei Xun took some clean water from the jar, pulled out the blue robe Baozhu had worn during the day, and soaked it in a basin, adding the salt used to brew tea earlier and the leftover tea leaves. Both salt and tea could remove odors. He always washed his clothes this way after robbing tombs, only then he had been washing away the smell of grave dirt and corpses. Now, he was washing away the fragrance from her body that seeped into his heart and soul.
A pity, but if he could not wash it out, he could never wear this robe again. Wei Xun sighed almost inaudibly.
He undid his topknot and stripped off his clothes, rinsed his body with cold water, then stepped barefoot into the hot spring pool outside. Warm water enfolded him, its long-unfamiliar heat gradually soaking into his cold, stiff body. He breathed out a chill breath and could not help thinking, Perhaps this comfortable warmth is what ordinary people feel all the time?
Sitting in the water, he examined the veins along the insides of his arms. Faint blue-black tracings crept toward his torso, now reaching the Central Treasury Acupoint where his shoulders met his arms. The bluish-purple veins were merely an outward sign. In truth, the malignant cold and diseased qi had already penetrated the three yin and three yang within