Yin Wujou put away the remaining half. He sat down against another pillar, three steps away from Snow Empress, each munching on dry biscuits and drinking cold water. A section of the crossbeam remained on the half-collapsed roof of the teahouse, the old paint on the beam peeling off in the wind and falling sparsely. The western sky was a mixture of crimson and orange-red, the clouds looking as if they had been smeared with a wide brush, the edges all rough and white.
"Shall we travel tonight or rest?" Yin Wujou swallowed the last bite of the biscuit and drank some water to clear the dry bits from his throat.
"Let's rest until the moon rises before we continue." Snow Empress stuffed the stopper back into the water pouch, glanced up at the fading sunset in the west, and said, "Make sure the horses get a good rest before nightfall. The next three days are all remote inns with no places to resupply."
She leaned back against the pillar and closed her eyes. Yin Wujou sat beside her, watching her profile—the last rays of the setting sun lingered on her face for about fifteen minutes before sinking completely, the sky changing from crimson to indigo to Mo Lan. Stars appeared one by one, first the brightest ones at the zenith, then a dense cluster of tiny stars filled the entire dome. A cool wind blew from the northwest, carrying the last dry chill before the frost.
As the moon rose above the eastern horizon, Snow Empress opened her eyes. Her pupils shone faintly in the moonlight for a moment—the underlying color of her Spirit Vision would gleam with a bluish-white light when filled with watery spiritual energy. She stood up, dusted off the hem of her clothes, untied the reins of her horse, and mounted it.
"They're gone."
Yin Wujou mounted his horse. The official road under the moonlight was more beautiful than during the day—the ruts on the road surface showed a very deep, etched effect in the slanting moonlight, the withered grass on both sides was bleached to a silvery-gray by the moonlight, and the fields and forests in the distance turned into a patch of dark blue in varying shades. He looked at the road with his Spirit Vision half open—the moonlight itself was a very faint silvery spiritual light spread over the surface of everything, like mercury being ground into powder and sprinkled down, making his Spirit Vision a little clearer.
The two horses continued galloping eastward along the official road under the moonlight. The sound of their hooves carried exceptionally far across the night wilderness, the clattering rhythm amplified by the open terrain into an echo similar to drumbeats, bouncing back and forth between the low hills and withered trees on both sides, layering into increasingly thinner and thinner reverberations.
Snow Empress rode ahead, her back straight, the wind whipping the hem of her outer robe backward. Moonlight cast a silvery glow on the healing pink line on the side of her neck, making it look from afar like a fine decorative line embedded in the panel. Yin Wujou rode behind her, watching that silver line, his fingertips involuntarily touching the hilt of the willow-leaf blade in his sleeve—the cold, hard metallic touch and the soft, rough edges of Daoist Yun's stack of mugwort paper simultaneously left two completely different memories on his fingertips.
He recalled the arrangement of the twelve star-shaped nodes on the stack of paper, the blank space in the center, and the deep, weathered voice of Daoist Yun when he said, "Write the array pattern along the blade according to this diagram." He suddenly felt that the weight between the knife and the stack of paper was far more than the objects themselves—something heavier than the objects seeped from the paper and the metal, traveling upwards through the warmth of his palm, until it stopped inside his chest.
" Yin Wujou," Snow Empress called out to him from ahead.
"Um."
"Look at that grove of trees on the left side of the road." She raised her whip and pointed in the direction of northeast. Yin Wujou looked in that direction—the grove of trees was just a blurry dark blue outline from a distance, but with his Spirit Vision, he could see a small, very faint warm yellow light slowly moving deep in the grove, like a lamp being carried around.
"Someone is traveling at night," said Snow Empress. "They're taking the same official road as us, but two miles north, using a shortcut through the forest. Anyone still traveling at this hour can't be an ordinary person."
Should we avoid it?
Snow Empress thought for a moment, then slowed his horse to a trot. "Don't avoid him. Follow him for a while and see which way he goes. If he goes the same way as us to the next post station, it's a coincidence; if he changes direction halfway and heads towards us, then he's targeting us."
Yin Wujou pushed his Spirit Vision another layer in that direction. The warm yellow light continued to move slowly through the forest, at a moderate pace, maintaining a horizontal distance of about two miles as it advanced eastward. He discerned finer outlines in that light—not just one person, but a second, dimmer bright spot within the shape of the light cluster, right next to the first, like two people walking side by side.
"Two people," he said.
"Hmm. I see them." The tip of Snow Empress's whip trembled slightly in the moonlight. "If there are two of them, they're most likely traveling together as independent cultivators. Don't worry about them. Keep going at this pace and don't stop until you reach the next inn."
They quickened their pace. The packhorses, having run all day, seemed to find themselves more energetic at night, their hooves digging deeper into the ground than during the day, their pace quickening by half a beat. The night wind, blowing through the withered grass on either side of the road, mingled with the dust kicked up by the horses' hooves, chasing after them from behind. The warm yellow light moved parallel to them through the woods for a while before gradually slowing down, the two-mile distance slowly widening to three, four miles, before finally disappearing into the shadows of the trees.
When the moon was high in the sky, they arrived at a tiny post station—just two mud houses and a drafty stable. The post station was empty, and the register behind the counter was covered in a thick layer of dust. Snow Empress reined in his horse at the door, paused for a moment, and listened to the sounds around him—the wind, the chirping of insects, and the short cry of a night bird in the distance; other than these, there were no other human voices or the sound of horses' hooves.
"Let's rest here for two hours," she said. "The horses need water, and we need to sleep. We'll continue our journey in the latter half of the night."
Yin Wujou dismounted and led the two horses into the stable, pouring some water into the trough. Snow Empress went into one of the two earthen houses, and a moment later came out with half a bundle of hay to feed the horses. The moonlight shone on her, enveloping her in a cold, white halo. She squatted at the entrance of the stable, breaking off hay with light, quick movements, her fingers picking through the bundle, pulling out the moldy parts and throwing them away, leaving the clean ones to feed the horses.
Yin Wujou leaned against the wooden pillar of the stable, watching her. He realized that since last night, he no longer needed to sleep through the night—after his Spirit Vision was activated, his body seemed to have been calibrated, his awake time had lengthened considerably, and when drowsiness came, it was very light, like a layer of oil floating on the surface of water, which could be dispelled with a little movement. He took out the stack of mugwort paper again and looked at it once more, rereading every line and annotation of the array diagram under the moonlight.
After Snow Empress finished feeding the grass, she walked over, squatted down next to him, and glanced at the picture as well.