“Her Ladyship has already prepared a gift on Your Highness’s behalf. This is a joyous occasion.” The nurse smiled obsequiously, very cautious, speaking almost humbly to the small boy in front of her. “When it is time for the little Viscount’s ‘hundred year celebration,’ the weather will have warmed up, and Your Highness can go in person to the Marquis Manor to have a look…”

The boy ignored her, continuing to scrawl on drawing paper. The nurse accidentally caught a glimpse of the paper, gave a start, and forgot what she was saying.

The third prince Zhou Ying, child of Yuying Palace’s Imperial Consort Xi—everyone said he enjoyed particular favor.

Because he had been born frail and sickly, His Majesty sent someone to ask after him every few days. No matter what was being distributed in the palace, His Third Highness was sure to get the first share; even the crown prince had to get in line. Princes and princesses under ten couldn’t leave the palace at will; he alone had that freedom. He could say a word and have the Yongning Marquis Manor submit a tally and take him to stay in Dangui Lane. Having inadvertently caught a glimpse of him casually scrawling, His Majesty had invited Mr. Tanghua to come the following day, making the famous expert of the day entertain a child.

Zhou Ying learned drawing quickly. He copied still lifes with his teacher and soon had something to show for it. But when no one was watching, he drew and drew, and the clumsy trees and stones became surrounded by savage faces that coldly looked out at people through the drawing, like one vicious ghost after another inhabiting the drawing.

The nurse took fright each time she saw it. She thought that this child had an extremely evil disposition.

The third prince was as quiet as a dead person. He practically never cried, and he didn’t laugh, either. He plainly wasn’t deaf or mute, and he wasn’t simple-minded, but at four or five years of age, he didn’t speak. The Office of Imperial Physicians could find nothing wrong with him.

But quiet didn’t mean that he was easy to look after. The nurse had never seen such a ruthless and temperamental child. He might be as tranquil as a calm sea one moment, and without anyone bothering him, he would turn nasty the next.

Dropping paperweights and smashing cups and plates was nothing. Setting dogs to bite people, refusing to eat, harming himself—he could do anything until he got what he wanted. That was how he had obtained the tinderboxes he had on him.

This was the worst of it: he also liked playing with fire.

Other children had candies and pastries in their purses. His purse always contained a tinderbox; when he was bored, he would play with fire.

Once, when he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep, this young master had been inspired with some “marvelous idea” and lit his bed curtain on fire, nearly burning down Yuying Palace.

With such a catastrophe taking place, naturally it wouldn’t end well for the palace servants. The eunuch who had been keeping watch that night was going to be dragged out and flogged to death. He wailed, asking His Highness to “consider the many years he had served him,” be merciful and speak on his behalf. He kowtowed until his head was bloody. Zhou Ying stood by looking on indifferently. When he saw this person who had been with him since early childhood dragged away like a dead dog, he smiled.

The nurse knew then that a vicious ghost had reincarnated in this little prince.

He had no heart and no sentimental attachments. He didn’t consider consequences and knew no fear. He was like a snake that wouldn’t warm when you held it. No matter how you praised him or humored him, it wouldn’t win his good opinion. If you dared to be disobedient, you were asking for death.

Most horrifying of all, his expression would sometimes change suddenly while looking into empty space, as if communicating with some…invisible thing. Though he didn’t speak, his lips moved, and from the movements of his mouth, he clearly wasn’t saying anything nice.

The Imperial Consort had a weak temperament and couldn’t control him at all. His Majesty must have been bewitched; he didn’t think there was anything unusual about his son who seemed to have been possessed by an evil cultivator. If he heard gossip about him, he would have the gossiper beaten to death. Who would dare to be indiscreet?

The Yuying Palace servants could do nothing but carefully keep their eyes fixed on him twelve shichen a day, carefully attending on him with fear and trepidation.

Strange to say, only in front of the Marquis of Yongning could this evil child restrain himself somewhat.

Of course the Marquis couldn’t beat or scold a prince, but he never minced words with this precious nephew.

He would pour a cup of sugar water and say, “Would Your Highness please sit? This subject has no choice but to give you some counsel.” Then, stern-faced, he would deliver a long lecture. Once he started “counseling,” he could go on for at minimum most of half a shichen, and there was no upper limit. It would continue until the old lady or his wife came to the “rescue.”

The nurse, to her amazement, had watched the third prince “sit upright” in a grown-up’s chair, his two short legs dangling in midair, his head drooping, the cup of warm sugar water clasped in his hands, not daring to drink and not daring to put it down. He really did seem somewhat chastened.

But however stern and inflexible the Marquis might be, His Third Highness was always willing to go to the Marquis Manor to be reprimanded. As long as he wasn’t sick in bed and unable to leave the palace, he would spend around ten days out of every month in Dangui Lane.

This continued until it was discovered that the Marquis of Yongning’s wife was pregnant.

After the third prince heard this, he stared blankly for a long time and didn’t go out all winter. He only went to the Marquis Manor when he was invited for the Lantern Festival. He went there and back in a hurry, as if calling roll in the morning; he didn’t stay the night.

That day, when the nurse was lifting him out of the carriage, she trembled when she touched his icy little hands. For some reason, Zhou Ying hadn’t used the heater. His whole body was tense. His pitch-black eyes were focused on emptiness as he met the gaze of some unknown monster.

The nurse didn’t dare to breathe loudly. She carried him back and offered him up as if she were carrying a bomb, thinking that the Marquis Manor’s little Viscount was in danger. If he died in the womb, it would almost certainly be because this prince had cursed him.

The Imperial Consort had been pregnant last year. As soon as word got out, the people in Yuying Palace had felt insecure. The shrewd people said that while His Majesty loved His Third Highness, this child was peculiar and seemed unlikely to live to adulthood; the future of Yuying Palace would lie with the little one.

Unexpectedly, a dog in the palace, not watched carefully, had peeled off a section of a vibration repelling inscription in a corner while no one was paying attention. That section just happened to be struck by lightning during a stormy night, immediately bringing down half the courtyard wall. That night, the third prince out of nowhere ran a high fever that wouldn’t go down, and the Imperial Consort went out in the rain to see him. She was struck head-on by the explosion and spiritual wind from the inscription and lost the child.

Not long after this was the incident of the bed curtain being lit on fire. All the restless “shrewd people” anxious to go elsewhere were sent by this fire to the torture chamber. Their “wishes were granted,” and they went to join that little prince or princess.

The bloodless smile on the third prince’s face that day gave the nurse nightmares for a month.

The third prince wasn’t close to the Imperial Consort. The nurse had seen that he was even a little impatient with her. And even so, he couldn’t tolerate another child, so if one arrived in the Yongning Marquis Manor, where he was “close,” what would become of him?

The nurse was on edge. She gave secret instructions to the palace servants, telling them to stay alert, not let that demon incinerate Guangyun Palace.

In the third month, with the Southern Sage’s blessing, the child in the Marquis Manor wasn’t killed by the demon. He was born without a hitch.

Rip. Zhou Ying had torn the drawing paper in his hands.

The nurse watched him tear the scrawl with the ink not yet dried into strip after strip. Then he raised a hand and pointed.

“W-would you like to see…the gift list?”

Zhou Ying took the gift list and glanced over it expressionlessly. He raised the brush he had just used to draw ghastly faces and made some strokes on the list.

The childish handwriting bore a trace of the rough edges of the brush being wielded unsteadily, but the structure of the characters was very correct. The writing said: One congratulatory drawing.

Part of the word “congratulatory” was written in a now rare ancient Wan character. It not only didn’t seem joyous, it looked a little horrifying.

This was another peculiarity that no one dared to mention. The third prince was literate—he hadn’t started his schooling. He could read and write without anyone having taught him, and all he knew was ancient characters.

Born with knowledge—if he wasn’t a reincarnated vicious ghost, then what was he?

The nurse shuddered, but Zhou Ying ignored her. He turned and took out a rolled up drawing, already mounted, and put it in a brocade box, indicating that she take it away.

The nurse’s lips moved. She wanted to say that this was after all a joyous occasion, so it wouldn’t be too appropriate for His Highness to send a ghastly scrawl like a gift to the bereaved, would it? Even if the Marquis didn’t make a fuss of it and the child wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t it cause problems later? She took a look at Zhou Ying’s expression and didn’t make a sound—it wasn’t her business.

Decades later, before handing over the Yongning Marquis Manor to the Kaiming Department, Xi Ping returned home to tidy up old possessions and turned up that old congratulatory drawing, then invited Bai Ling to help him sort out having it removed and mounted, prepared to take it back to the Xuanyin Mountains.

This wasn’t a “ghastly scrawl.” It was a drawing of the Marquis Manor’s courtyard, decked with lanterns and colored streamers. The kindly old lady was seated in the center of the courtyard, the solemn Marquis was welcoming guests for the joyous occasion, and Madam Cui had a baby in her arms. The colors were extremely warm, full of joy.

Xi Ping glanced over this sign from the past and asked in surprise, “Did san-ge draw this when he was little? How old was he?”

Bai Ling said softly, “This was a congratulatory drawing for the occasion of the Viscount’s birth.”

Xi Ping blurted out, “Oh? Was he a prodigy whose talent came to nothing through lack of education?”

Bai Ling: “…”

Would you dare to ask such a question to his face?

Zhou Ying had been taught by experts. Naturally he was skilled at music, weiqi, drawing, and calligraphy—but only at the not completely incompetent level societal norms required for noble children; it didn’t amount to any particular talent. He had no inclination toward the arts.

The scenery and composition of this congratulatory drawing were very childish. The stones, flowers, trees and other such things drawn as embellishment were very stiff, and showed signs of having been copied; only the people in the drawing were stunning. Naturally people were harder to draw than objects; he might not have learned to do it yet at the time. Each person was drawn vaguely, with a few strokes. But in just those few strokes, which didn’t even fully describe their figures, seemed to be an impression of their vital beings. Anyone who was familiar with them would know who they were as soon as they saw the drawing, could even imagine the expressions of the people in the drawing.

Xi Ping considered it briefly. “These people weren’t drawn, I think. How did the two of you manage it?”

“You can tell, Viscount?” Bai Ling said, smiling. “Actually, I helped him make an ‘impression’ for this. I had only a paper body then. I connected to his consciousness and helped him make an impression of the images in his consciousness on my paper body, and then he went back and copied it onto the page.”

Xi Ping stared. That really was a method that only a child would think of, circuitous and clumsy.

It was said that a paramount spiritual sense could see through a person’s soul at a glance. Indeed, the impression on the paper was of their souls.

But then, Xi Ping noticed that there was something about the old lady in the drawing. To one side of her were lively maids, but to the other, there was nothing. There was clearly a blank part of the drawing.

The joyous page was missing a person.

“He was having a fit of temper.” With his deftness at judging people’s feelings from their words and gestures, Xi Ping understood the meaning behind this drawing at a glance. “My dad said that because of me, he didn’t come visit for over a year? Abominable. I don’t remember any such thing. If I’d known he loathed me so much, I never would have gotten close to him. He disliked me on sight?”

Bai Ling smiled.

“Hey, Lao Bai, have you ever thought that my brother is especially like my dad in this way? He didn’t pick up any of his good qualities, but he learned inflexibility from the old man. He couldn’t accept new things.” The once-rejected “new thing” said, dissatisfied, “Every year he had new clothes made for him that looked just like the last year’s, wouldn’t try anything he hadn’t eaten before… Even when it came to growing flowers, it was the same—over and over it was just a few varieties. What do you say, didn’t he have the slightest curiosity?”

“He did,” Bai Ling answered mildly. “He always wanted to see what it would look like when the sky fell.”

Xi Ping: “…”

Was this human curiosity?

“But I don’t remember him being ‘mute.’”

Not only had he not been mute, he’d had quite a bit to say. Words came to him especially easily when it came to chiding and telling ghost stories.

“Yes, this was before you were born, Viscount,” Bai Ling said. “When he was little, he couldn’t tell the Impassable Sea and Jinping apart. The demon host varied in intellect. Some could only shout, and there were those like the heart demon, who knew all mortal languages. A majority of the rest would go on and on repeatedly in some place’s ancient local dialect. He started hearing that at birth. Though he could understand speech, when the words came to his lips, he mixed them up. After he scared the Imperial Consort to tears once, he simply stopped talking.”

Xi Ping was silent for a while. “My aunt wasn’t crying because she was scared.”

Bai Ling agreed—the two of them knew, but a child wouldn’t know.

Once he knew, he wouldn’t be a child anymore.

“Actually…” Bai Ling took a look at the obtrusive blank space in the drawing. “It might not entirely have been because of a fit of temper.”

“Hm?”

“He had never seen himself, so he couldn’t draw himself.”

There was a kind of person in the world who, despite having all his faculties intact, couldn’t speak his mother tongue and had “never seen” himself.

There was an ice mirror in Guangyun Palace that could reflect a person’s pores, clear as if it had absorbed their soul. Many people didn’t dare to use it. But even standing in front of the ice mirror, Zhou Ying still couldn’t see himself clearly.

In his eyes, countless threads of karma incomprehensible to him were wound around each person, and their surging thoughts were always churning at the centers of their brows. When he was little, he couldn’t distinguish the subtle differences between sadness and anger, malice and fear. He would only roughly and ignorantly separate “good” from “bad,” and the vast majority of people were “bad,” including himself.

He was wrapped up in billowing blackness, his face blurred. For many years, Zhou Ying hadn’t even been able to work out whether he was a person or a skeleton.

When he was little, he had been unable to control his consciousness. When his surroundings constrained him, it was easy for him to skip into the Impassable Sea. A child’s memory wasn’t so long. When his body and mind fell out of sync, he was likely to be confused when he returned. And by coincidence, just when he was at his most bewildered and helpless, the people around him would become more frightening. They would do their utmost to pretend nothing had happened, not daring to look him in the eye.

In the vastness of Guangyun Palace, even the milky white light of the gas lamps rejected him.

He was immersed in this loneliness, enduring it day after after. Only when he went to the Marquis Manor did he have a chance to relax.

In his grandmother’s courtyard was a little room with a blue window screen. It was his. When he opened the window, there was the old lady’s garden, with cluster after cluster of tuberoses planted at the foot of the wall.

There was an inexhaustible store of legends in his grandmother’s belly, and inside the room were new toys that Cui Ji had collected from all over, hunting high and low. If he only went there, she wouldn’t do anything else all day, only play with him, cherishing this first grandchild like a pearl, often saying, “If the old man could see A-Ying, he would be so happy.”

As if this “vicious ghost reincarnated,” this freak, were some…some great treasure that, if you missed seeing it, you would take that regret to the underworld.

When she occasionally saw his gaze become empty, she was never surprised, only gently patted him on the head, pulling him back from the den of demons, then slowly continuing what she had been saying—and this was also extremely rare. When Zhou Ying came to the Marquis Manor, as if he now had a foothold in the human world, his consciousness would hardly ever be drawn by the Impassable Sea. Apart from the old lady, who was always with him, no one else had seen it happen.

Even when the “wind rose” and his marrow was sucked by the demon host, and the pain came through his spiritual bones to the human world, his youthful consciousness would always be gently led by a pair of warm, dry hands.

The old lady wasn’t very learned, but she knew how to do everything. Though the Xi family hadn’t wanted for money, they still weren’t notably rich, and naturally the appropriate match hadn’t been with some grand family’s young mistress. She had had to attend to household affairs and do needlework when she was young.

She could make a kite, a big swallow with several long tails behind it, which flew up more steadily than those made in the palace workshop; she could make imposing tiger head hats and all kinds of clever rag dolls; she could also turn the hidden demons in Zhou Ying’s drawings into silly faces, stitch them onto little sandbags, and give them to him to play with…

It will end now, Zhou Ying thought when he asked his paperman friend in the Impassable Sea to make an impression for the drawing.

The tuberoses and the evening breeze, the sweet soup and the opera highlights, the roomful of rag dolls, the big kite hanging on the wall… These things weren’t his to begin with.

That was the Marquis Manor, and his surname wasn’t Xi. He had always been an outsider.

Luckily he had already “grown up.” He could split his attention to interact with both sides simultaneously, and he had gradually learned to distinguish the human world from the sacrificial altar, could even carefully speak complete sentences in Jinping dialect. He no longer needed to go to that little garden to “take refuge.”

For the Marquis Manor’s little Viscount’s Hundred Day Celebration, he sent a gift but didn’t go. In the seventh month of that year, when the old lady’s birthday came, Zhou Ying had already started schooling. He only went over with the Imperial Consort’s gift to pay his respects. He was gone before his tea was cold. During the Double Ninth Festival, he was sick again, confined to Yuying Palace… Anyway, he could always find an excuse.

It wasn’t until the following year’s Dragon Boat Festival that the old lady, bringing wrapped up zongzi and an embroidered purse, came in person to see the Imperial Consort and, brooking no argument, took Zhou Ying back with her.

That was the first time he saw Xi Ping.

When Xi Xiaobao was fourteen months old, the swift feet that would easily take him climbing over walls when he grew up already existed in a fledgling stage.

As soon as Zhou Ying walked into the courtyard, before he could find his bearings, a “ball” rolled out and bumped right into him.

The “ball” himself plopped onto the ground and knocked Zhou Ying, whose soul wasn’t at home, into the old lady’s arms.

“Hey, you naughty little thing, go, go, run along.” The old lady, in a “tie him up and lead him away” tone, called over the nurses and directed a group of people in carrying away the kid trying to climb Zhou Ying. “Rude little darling, he can’t take you bumping into him…”

The threads of karma on the child were shallow and faint, and his mind was incomplete. Zhou Ying didn’t see anything extraneous on him, only a plump dumpling with unwiped drool on his face, clucking “gege, gege” like a hen while reaching out his dirty paws trying to throw himself at him.

What was this? Zhou Ying was alarmed. He was frozen in place, unmoving…and then he saw Xi Xiaobao’s eyes.

Xi Ping’s eyes weren’t small after he grew up, and when he was little, he had been all eyes. In the huge black eyes was Zhou Ying’s reflection. He was startled. For the first time in his life, he saw his own face clearly.

Only a child’s eyes could reflect such a limpid view. For those couple of years, Zhou Ying, relying on his eyes, understood what the world must look like in the eyes of others, refined himself until there was no fault to be detected.

Later, Zhou Ying learned that the ball on legs had already ploughed through the Marquis Manor, inside and out, several times; only the little room in the old lady’s courtyard had been locked so he couldn’t get in.

“Because that’s your cousin His Third Highness’s room. When gege comes, you have to ask him for permission to go in.”

The more he wasn’t allowed to go in, the more he wanted to, especially since you could see the little swallow kite hanging on the wall of the room from out the window. Xi Xiaobao made a circle outside every day, longing day and night for his cousin to come. As soon as he saw him, he was as ardent as if they had known each other in a past life.

In Xi Xiaobao’s childish heart, his cousin was a door god with great power in his hands. In order to win the right to come in and play for a while from the door god, he would sing or roll around, whatever was asked. Zhou Ying’s words were more effective even than the Marquis’s discipline rod.

Later, san-ge became a symbol for Xi Xiaobao that he “could eat Grandmother’s hidden candy,” “could get out early from being grounded,” “could skip out on a beating,” “could not have to study for a day.” Without saying a word, their grandmother had turned A-Ying into Xiaobao’s holiday, charging him with a heavy responsibility, so he would have to come, couldn’t get out of it if he tried.

The moment he escaped the spiritual mountains, Zhou Ying at last saw the true, free and unobstructed heaven and earth—what he had wished for all his life.

And, in the stone that was as reflective as a mirror, he saw his own soul.

Spotless, complete, unencumbered.

Zhou Ying met his own eyes briefly, then traced his own image on the surface of the stone—the drawing he had given many years ago had been missing a person.

He had to make good the omission.

He had used up all his tricks just to see himself again. So when the old woman had let him see himself for the first time, how much painstaking effort had it cost her?

“A-Ying is wonderful.”

“If the old man could see A-Ying, he would be so happy!”

His wish in life had been fulfilled. Looking back the way he had come, every drib and drab of it turned out to have flavor to it.

The journey had not been made in vain.

The drawing was complete and a line of small writing left beside it. The artist’s whereabouts were unknown. Presumably he had lost interest and returned.