Chapter 51: Eyes and Brows

There is a particular kind of frustration in thinking you understand someone, and then discovering that what you understood was only the surface of them, and the depths go in a different direction than you supposed.

Yan Dan tilted her head back and breathed out slowly.

Twenty years is not a short time. Somewhere in those twenty years, without any single moment she could point to, Yu Mo had become the person closest to her. She wasn't sure she could call it liking — she had thought about it and couldn't find the right word for it — but she knew that if she never saw him again, or even if they simply stopped speaking, it would sit in her for a long time. She considered herself someone who knew how to let go; when a thing was finished, she could finish it without dragging the ending out. If Yu Mo intended to keep his distance from now on, she wouldn't follow him. Some things were better left where they were, room left on both sides so that if they met again someday, there would be something still worth meeting.

She kept coming back to that night on the boat. Yu Mo at the bow, his face blurred in the moonlight: You don't want it, but you won't let me throw it away. What do you want from me? It kept returning to her. She didn't know why.

She turned and went back inside, and almost walked into Bai Ling.

Bai Ling's face showed a flicker of embarrassment, quickly smoothed over. Yan Dan saw it, made no acknowledgment, and smiled instead. "Bailing — how has Lord Yu Mo been lately? I haven't seen him in a while."

Bai Ling paused. "He's... he's all right. I don't actually see the Lord very often."

"That's good," Yan Dan said, and kept walking, brushing past her.

They knew each other, but not closely. Some acquaintances were like that — the closeness had a natural limit, and there was no particular reason to push past it. And Yu Mo himself had become, lately, more difficult to read. She was beginning to think she'd never read him properly at all.

---

Winter ended. Spring came in with flowers and butterflies and the kind of warmth that makes cultivation easier, and Yan Dan's progress improved considerably. The full moon periods of the past few days had been ideal, and she'd been going out at night to practice in the moonlight.

She had been counting the days: three months since Liu Weiyang entered the Underworld Palace alone, three months since she and Tang Zhou had parted ways in Nandu. She was beginning to think about going to Xiangdu to find him for a trip — Tang Zhou was the only Celestial Master in her lifetime who could manage her, and traveling together was always effective.

She was turning this over when she heard footsteps.

Two footsteps, light and even. She recognized them before she'd consciously processed what she was recognizing.

Yu Mo.

She moved immediately — grabbed the nearest tree, rode the wind up the trunk, and crouched on a thick branch above the path.

He came into view below her, moving at his usual unhurried pace. He stopped by the lake and began arranging pebbles on the bank, moving them around thoughtfully, adjusting, considering. Yan Dan watched from above.

He had lost weight. His black outer robe, which had once fitted him well, hung a little looser. His profile was clear in the moonlight — the straight nose sharper for the slight hollowing in his face, the line of his jaw precise. She had always thought of his features as gentle, which they were, but there was something in the nose, in the way the lines of his face sat together, that read as both handsome and animated, some suggestion of easy laughter always about to arrive even in repose.

She was still looking when he said, without looking up: "Yan Dan. What are you doing in the tree?"

The embarrassment was immediate. Hiding and then being found hiding was considerably worse than not having hidden at all. She pushed off the branch and came down from the tree — smoothly, at least. Her cultivation had improved enough that she felt lighter than she used to, a quality she was still getting used to.

She hadn't quite landed when Yu Mo reached out and caught her, settling her onto his arm with the ease of someone who had done this many times, which he had.

"You're still barefoot." His voice was quiet, slightly amused. "It's not warm enough for that yet. Aren't you going to catch cold?" He reached down and took hold of her ankle, then spread a fold of his robe for her to stand on.

Yan Dan felt obscurely touched by this. "I won't catch cold. I've been like this for days."

He glanced up at her. His eyes were deep and attentive. "These past few days," he said, and paused, something in the pause that she couldn't quite characterize. A smile began at the corner of his mouth. "I've been thinking about a great many things."

She chose her words with care. "And have you come to any conclusions?"

"Whether I've come to conclusions or not doesn't matter as much as I thought it did." He was quiet for a moment, then: "Yan Dan. Have you ever watched a play?"

"I've not only watched plays, I've written quite a few."

"The actors," Yu Mo said, "after performing so many stories — even knowing none of it is real — sometimes find themselves inside the story before they've realized it. And the people watching — even knowing it's not their own story — after enough time, the story becomes theirs somehow." He paused. "That's the principle of it."

Yan Dan thought about this honestly. "I still don't quite understand what you mean."

He laughed softly, just once, and turned to look at the formation he'd made with the pebbles. "This arrangement came to me recently. With my skill alone I could only extend a barrier to cover half of Yelan Mountain at most — but with this formation, the reach expands considerably further."

She followed his line of sight. "If the barrier expands that much, all the force that strikes from outside will rebound back onto whoever set it. The person who built it would bear the full cost."

"My grandfather built a barrier to protect our entire clan once. Everyone inside came through without harm. He didn't survive his injuries." Yu Mo said this matter-of-factly, the way one states something that has long since become simply true. "I think the price of protecting someone important is worth paying."

Yan Dan was quiet for a moment. "I think," she said, "it would be even more worthwhile to live well for them."

---

After that night, the subject was set aside between them without being formally closed. Yu Mo treated her much as he had before — not close, exactly, but no longer absent. The avoidance had ended.

Yan Dan, who knew she wouldn't get the truth from Yu Mo directly, went to Bai Ling.

"Do you think it's possible that Yu Mo actually dislikes me but is too embarrassed to say so, and is trying to find some way to ease me out?"

Bai Ling was pressing Yu Mo's outer robe on the table, pouring water with her other hand. She considered the question. "If the Mountain Lord genuinely disliked you," she said, "he would have dismembered you and deposited you somewhere long ago."

"Then I truly cannot explain it." Yan Dan spread her hands.

Bai Ling looked at her for a moment with an expression that held something she wasn't quite saying. "Sometimes," she said softly, "we can't know what the Mountain Lord is thinking. If we can't know, why exhaust ourselves trying?"

Yan Dan was about to answer when the sound of screaming reached them from outside — high, sustained, the specific register of Dan Shu encountering something that had frightened him badly.

She went out to find him tumbling over himself, landing at her feet with tears already streaking his face and a small fox clinging to the top of his head. "Oh no, oh no, Sister Yan Dan — that ghost — the ghost—"

Yan Dan crouched. "What is it? Slowly."

Dan Shu shook. Tears and half-sentences competed for space. A mortal, he said — a ghost — the Mountain Lord's restriction was on him — he was a mortal — he was a ghost—

Yan Dan had been thinking about Tang Zhou for days. The image assembled itself: a mortal with a restriction on him, who registers as a ghost. She stood, took a few steps toward the sound, and found exactly what she'd expected: a group of demons gathered at a nervous distance, watching. Tang Zhou standing in the middle of them with his back to her.

"Senior brother!" She went toward him, the brightness in her voice genuine. "You actually came—"

He turned. His brows were slightly furrowed, the expression of someone working something out. "This is the first time I've been surrounded on all sides by monsters. I find I'm not entirely accustomed to it." The moment he turned, the assembled demons scattered — some upward, some into the ground, all of them relocating to a further distance to continue watching from there.

"They're just curious. It's probably the first time they've seen a Celestial Master. They'll get used to it."

Tang Zhou's eyes settled on her. "Your cultivation has improved."

"More than a little — at least three or four points."

He sighed softly. "Even if you improved ten more points, I still wouldn't care in the slightest."

"Tang Zhou." Her voice sharpened. "What did you come all this way for? Not just to insult me, I hope."

He looked around at the landscape with the expression of someone making a genuine geographical observation. "I was wondering — this is the North, near the desert. There shouldn't be a place like this here. It's warmer than Jiangnan. More comfortable."

"I wondered the same thing when I arrived. There's apparently a treasure buried somewhere in Yelan Mountain that draws and concentrates qi into the landscape."

"Treasures don't interest me particularly." His smile arrived, changing the lines of his face. "I've come a long way. How do you intend to receive me?"

---

Tang Zhou had a remarkable capacity for adjustment. Within a day of arriving at Yelan Mountain, he was already indifferent to the demons watching him from the trees, eating and sleeping without apparent difficulty, and — Yan Dan heard from Bai Ling, with some disbelief — had paused his morning sword practice to politely return a dropped embroidered handkerchief to a lizard demon. The storeroom's supply of handkerchiefs began to noticeably decline.

Spring was moving toward summer. Yan Dan, determined to be a good host and also to conduct a thorough investigation of Tang Zhou's swimming ability, managed to get him to the lake.

Tang Zhou was clearly not comfortable in water, but maintained his composure with effort. "This isn't appropriate. There are rules of propriety between men and women, and this violates several of them."

Yan Dan smiled her most helpful smile. "Look — I don't mind at all, so why should you?" His sudden remembrance of the rules of propriety, at precisely this moment, was highly suspicious. She stepped into the lake and took hold of his sleeve. "The water isn't deep. Only five or six times your height."

He let himself be pulled, swaying as the water reached him. "I'm not a strong swimmer. If we're both struggling, isn't that a problem?"

"No one has ever drowned here. No demon has ever drowned here. You absolutely won't be the first to—" She had barely formed the thought — at most half-drowned — when Tang Zhou stepped decisively forward and pulled her down with him.

The lake closed over her. She thrashed, found her feet on something slippery, and a rush of muddy water came straight at her face. She came up sputtering.

Tang Zhou surfaced nearby, moving through the water with some difficulty but staying afloat. "How is it?"

Yan Dan was wiping mud from her eyes when she looked at him properly — wet hair, water-darkened features, his eyes and brows as the water ran through them — and felt something she couldn't immediately locate. A recognition. As if she had seen this face, exactly like this, at some distance of time she couldn't measure.

She was still reaching for it when the lake lurched.

A sound from the center — a rush of displaced water, and then a whirlpool opening from the bottom upward, the water level dropping rapidly until she could feel the lake bed beneath her feet. Something rose from the dark of it: a square object, dense with moss, its original form almost entirely obscured.

Tang Zhou's expression had changed. He picked it up, turned it in his hands. His voice came out barely above a whisper. "This is... Di Zhi?"

The light that came from it was blinding. The object in his hand blazed, and a column of brilliance drove upward into the sky. The ground moved. The remaining water in the lake churned and fled. Wind and thunder came from nowhere, the kind of force that seemed to be trying to tear the mountains apart at their seams.

Tang Zhou's face said that he wanted to let go of Di Zhi. His hands said he couldn't.

Blood came to the corner of his mouth. Then more, and he couldn't hold against it any longer.

The impact knocked Yan Dan sideways. She was still finding her footing when she felt it — sword aura, cold and precise, coming from behind, aimed past her at Tang Zhou.

She stepped in front of him.

Yu Mo's short sword stopped just before her throat. The spine of the blade put out a cold blue light, something between a dragon and a fish in its movement, and the edge of it rested against her skin without breaking it.

His expression was empty. His hair and sleeves moved in the impossible wind. The cold in his eyes was not indifference — it was something pressed down very hard. "Get out of the way," he said. "It's not too late to kill him now." A pause. "If you don't move, I'll kill you too."

Yan Dan looked back at Tang Zhou once, briefly, then faced Yu Mo again. The sword had come up further; she could feel it at her throat. His killing intent was nearly a physical thing.

"Yan Dan." His voice was very quiet. "I'll say it once more. Move."

She didn't.

Some things could be retreated from. Some things could not.

She held his gaze, looking for what was underneath the cold. She found it: dark and layered and genuinely divided, not the blankness of someone who had made up their mind but the expression of someone in a conflict they had not resolved.

The killing intent receded.

He flicked his sleeve, and from him came a surge of dark bluish-black demonic energy — large and controlled, spreading outward to enfold all of Yelan Mountain in a faint bluish-green light, bracing against the tearing force. The mountain demons and water creatures fled and scrambled in every direction, a noisy chaos.

And then, through the chaos — light from above. Seven colors, descending in a slow column. A group of celestial beings landed in the mud with the grace of people who had come prepared for ceremony. One of them, in a snow-white silk robe, stepped forward, bowed her head once, and knelt — without any hesitation, without regard for the pristine white of her garment meeting the mud.

"Welcome back to the Heavenly Court," she said, "Emperor Qingli Yingyuan of the Eastern Pole, after passing through seven lifetimes of tribulation."

She lifted her head slightly.

Her face was almost identical to Yan Dan's.

The name came out of Yan Dan without air behind it. "Zhixi..."

The fairy did not turn to look at her. She remained kneeling, composed and exact. "Zhixi, Lu Jing, and the Head Scribe welcome the Emperor back to his palace."

Emperor Qingli Yingyuan of the Eastern Pole.

Yan Dan turned, slowly, to look at Tang Zhou.

She understood, now, what the recognition had been — the wet eyes and brows, that sense of something long-familiar finally surfaced. She had been looking at him for years. She had simply not known what she was looking at.

She found, after a moment, something appropriate to say.

"Congratulations," she said, softly.