(4) THIS VENERABLE ONE'S COUSIN
HIS SHI MEI was not that kind of shimei. [4] Shi Mei was in fact male, and moreover, considering when he'd joined the sect, he was technically Mo Ran's shixiong. The reason he had such an unfortunate name was the leader of Sisheng Peak's lack of erudition.
Shi Mei was an orphan, and the sect leader had found him in the wild. The boy had been a weak and sickly child, and so the sect leader had thought to give him a humble name, as humble names bring an easier life.
The child had been astonishingly pretty, like a darling little girl, lovable and charming. After much thought, the leader had eventually come up with the name Xue Ya, a simple given name that just meant little girl.
As Xue Ya grew older and older, so too had he grown more and more beautiful. He possessed a slim figure, and the tips of his brows and the corners of his eyes were well-shaped, lending him a graceful mien. The overall effect was that of a striking and peerless natural beauty.
The crude, uncultured farmers of the villages wouldn't think it wrong to use a name like Xue Ya, but had anyone ever heard of a legendary beauty whose name was a homonym for "Dog Balls" or
"Steel Cock"?
[4] 师妹, shimei, a younger martial sister.
The boy's fellow sect disciples hadn't thought it appropriate and gradually stopped calling him Xue Ya. But since it had been a name bestowed by the sect leader, they hadn't dared presume to change it, and so they'd half-jokingly started calling him "shimei" instead.
It was shimei this, shimei that, until at last the sect leader shook out his long sleeves and kindly suggested, "Xue Ya, why don't you change your name to Shi Mei once and for all? What do you think of using the character 'mei' from the word meng mei?" [5]
He'd actually had the gall to ask. What normal person wouldn't abhor such a name? Nevertheless, Shi Mei was sweet-tempered by nature, and when he saw the sect leader watching him with excited cheerfulness, clearly thinking that he'd done him an amazing service, Shi Mei didn't have the heart to decline. Even if he felt aggrieved, he couldn't embarrass the sect leader, so he knelt and accepted the name with grace. From that day on, his name became Shi Mei.
The figure in the black cloak coughed a few times before finally catching his breath. His gaze fell on Mo Ran. "Hm? A-Ran? What are you doing here?"
Behind a thin layer of organza, a pair of eyes, gentle as spring water and bright as the night stars, pierced the depths of Mo Ran's heart. With this one look, the seal on Taxian-jun's long-buried boyhood feelings and tender affections was broken.
This was Shi Mei. There could be no mistake.
Mo Ran was a scoundrel. In his past life, he'd played around with many men and women. That he hadn't died from too much sex had come as a surprise even to him. But the only person he'd ever given his heart to was one he'd never dared to touch.
He and Shi Mei had been close, and there had been a faint hint of romance in their relationship. However, up until Shi Mei's death,
[5] 蒙昧, meng mei, meaning "ignorant/oblivious" or "concealed".
Mo Ran had only ever held his hand, and the one time their lips had brushed in a kiss, it had been an accident.
Mo Ran felt that he was dirty and sullied while Shi Mei was pure and sweet. In other words, Mo Ran wasn't fit to be with him.
In life, Mo Ran had treasured and cherished Shi Mei, and he had done so all the more after Shi Mei's death. In death, Shi Mei had become Taxian-jun's unattainable white moonlight, but no matter how desperately Taxian-jun had tried to cling to his memories of Shi Mei, the deceased belonged to the past, returned irretrievably to the earth with not a trace left behind.
But in this moment, Shi Mei stood in front of him, once more living and breathing. It was only with great effort and all of Mo Ran's willpower that he held back his emotions and restrained himself.
Mo Ran helped Shi Mei up and patted away the dust on his cloak, heart aching with an almost physical pain. "If I hadn't been here, they would have bullied you even more! Why didn't you hit back?"
"I wanted to try reasoning with them first..."
"You can't reason with these people! Are you injured? Where does it hurt?"
Shi Mei coughed. "A-Ran, I.. I'm fine."
Mo Ran turned to the cultivators, expression ferocious. "You dare lay hands on someone from Sisheng Peak? Some nerve you've got there."
"A-Ran... Let it go…"
"Didn't you guys want a fight? Come on, then! Fight me!"
The group of cultivators had taken only a single blow from Mo Ran, but that one blow had made them sufficiently aware that his cultivation skills were far beyond theirs. They only knew how to pick on those weaker than themselves, and so they retreated, afraid to brawl with him.
Shi Mei sighed. "A-Ran, cease this quarreling. It's best to forgive and forget."
Mo Ran turned back to Shi Mei and couldn't help but feel a forlorn sort of distress in his heart as the corners of his eyes got all hot. Shi Mei had always been kindhearted. He'd held no resentment, no hatred, not even in his last moments. He'd even tried to persuade Mo Ran to not hate their shizun, who could clearly have saved Shi Mei's life but who had instead chosen to stand there and do nothing.
"But they..."
"I'm okay, though. See? Nothing happened. Having fewer problems is better than having more. Please, listen to this shige."
Mo Ran sighed. "All right, I'll listen to you. I'll listen to everything you say." He shook his head, then shot a glare at the cultivators.
"You hear that? My shige has pleaded for leniency on your behalf! Hurry up and get lost! What are you still here for? Are you waiting for me to escort you away?"
"Yes, yes! We're leaving, we're leaving!"
"Hang on," Shi Mei said to the group.
The cultivators assumed that Shi Mei wasn't about to let them go easily, given that prior thrashing. Thus, they knelt on the ground and bowed. "Xianjun, Xianjun! We were in the wrong. We were ignorant. Please let us go!"
"You didn't listen to me earlier when I tried to reason with you." Shi Mei let out a sigh. "You kidnapped someone's child and broke their parents' hearts. How can you live with this on your conscience?"
"We're sorry! We're sorry! Xianjun, we made a mistake! We will never do it again! We will never do it again!"
"From now on you must live honest lives. No more evil deeds, do you understand?"
"Of course! You've taught us a great lesson! We— we've learned our lesson! We've learned our lesson!"
"If that's the case, then please apologize to this madam. And make sure her children get the treatment they need."
With the incident thus concluded, Mo Ran helped Shi Mei on to his horse, then rented another one from a stable. The pair headed back to their sect, riding side by side.
The moon shone high in the sky, its light piercing through the leaves to scatter onto the footpath. As they went, a euphoria began to grow within Mo Ran. He'd initially thought he wouldn't be able to see Shi Mei until he was back at Sisheng Peak— he hadn't expected Shi Mei to come down the mountain to right this wrong and run into him by chance. This only cemented Mo Ran's belief that he and Shi Mei really were meant to be.
Even though he and Shi Mei weren't technically an item at present, they'd already kissed in their past life. All signs indicated that it was going to be smooth sailing in this lifetime as well; it was all just a matter of time.
The only thing he needed to worry about was protecting Shi Mei.
He would make sure that things didn't happen like they had back then, when Shi Mei died in Mo Ran's arms...
Shi Mei, who had no way to know Mo Ran had been reborn, chatted with him as he usually did while they returned. Soon, they arrived at the foot of Sisheng Peak.
Who would have thought that, in the dead of the night, a person would be standing in front of the mountain's gate, glaring at them with a thunderous gaze.
"Mo Ran! You finally remembered to come back?!"
"Eh?" Mo Ran looked up. Oho, such an angry little darling of the heavens.
It was none other than a youthful Xue Meng.
Compared to the one Mo Ran had seen before his death, this fifteen- or sixteen-year-old version was much more haughtily dashing. He was dressed in a set of light armor with a black base and blue trim, his high ponytail tied with a silver hairpiece. A belt decorated with a lion's head was fastened around his strong, slender waist, and gaiters were wrapped about his wrists and ankles. The slim scimitar on his back gleamed with a cold light, and the quiver by his left arm glittered silver.
Mo Ran sighed to himself, rendering judgment in his head: Hm, flashy.
Xue Meng, whether a teen or a grown-up, really was just flashy.
Just look at him: Instead of sleeping, he was dressed in full armor.
Whatever for? Was he here to spread his tail feathers for a peacock mating ritual?
For all that Mo Ran disliked Xue Meng, the feeling was entirely mutual.
Mo Ran was an illegitimate child. When he was little, he hadn't even known who his father was. He'd gotten by working odd jobs at a pleasure house in Xiangtan. Only when he was fourteen had he been found by his relatives and brought to Sisheng Peak.
Xue Meng, on the other hand, was the young master of Sisheng Peak, as well as Mo Ran's younger cousin. Xue Meng had been a prodigy from a young age, hailed by everyone as the darling of the heavens, son of the phoenix. An average cultivator spent their first three years learning cultivation basics and took at least ten years to form a spiritual core. With Xue Meng's innate talent, it had taken him only five years to achieve all that. The accomplishment had delighted his parents to no end and garnered him much praise from everyone else.
But in Mo Ran's eyes, whether you were talking about a phoenix or a chicken, a peacock or a duck, in the end, they were all birds. The only difference lay in the length of their feathers.
Thus, Mo Ran thought of Xue Meng as a squawking bird while Xue Meng thought of Mo Ran as a dumb mutt.
Perhaps it ran in the family, but Mo Ran was shockingly gifted as well, even more so than Xue Meng. When Mo Ran first arrived, Xue Meng had considered himself superior by far. He was more re-fined, better educated, better at martial arts, and more handsome— nothing like his illiterate, half-assed, hooligan of a cousin.
Thus, this narcissistic little phoenix ordered his attendants,
"Listen up, this Mo Ran is an incompetent slacker, a total freeloader off the streets. You are not allowed to pay him any attention. Just pretend he's a dog."
The attendants toadied right up to him, saying,
"Young master is right. That Mo Ran is already fourteen years old. If he starts cultivating now, it'll take him ten years to grasp the basics, twenty to form his spiritual core. By then, the young master will have ascended, and he'll just have to watch from the ground."
Xue Meng sneered, quite pleased. "Twenty? Hmph, I doubt that useless piece of trash will be able to form a spiritual core at all, even if he spends his whole life trying."
Nobody could've predicted that this "useless piece of trash" would gain his spiritual core after a single effortless year of studying with his shizun.
The little phoenix felt like he'd been struck by lightning. Such a harsh truth was hard to swallow. And so, he'd stuck needles into a voodoo doll of Mo Ran, secretly cursing the other to slip and fall when traveling by sword and to trip over his words when reciting incantations. Every time he saw Mo Ran, the little phoenix Xue Meng made sure to roll his eyes and hmph loud enough to be heard three miles away.
As Mo Ran recalled these childhood memories, he couldn't help but narrow his eyes in amusement. It had been so long since he'd been able to enjoy such trivial things. After ten years of loneliness, even past unpleasantness was delightful to him.
Noticing Xue Meng, Shi Mei dismounted his horse and took off his black-veiled bamboo hat to reveal his peerlessly stunning face. It really made sense that he dressed that way when he went out by himself. Just one sideways peek and Mo Ran could already feel elation and desire coursing through him. This person was simply too alluring, possessed of a beauty that was out of this world.
"Young master," Shi Mei greeted Xue Meng.
Xue Meng nodded. "You're back? Did you take care of the man-bear incident?"
Shi Mei smiled. "It's been taken care of, all thanks to A-Ran's help."
Xue Meng's proud and lofty gaze, sharp as a blade, swept over to Mo Ran before flicking away. He furrowed his brow, face twisting in disdain, as if looking at Mo Ran for even another moment would sully his eyes. "Shi Mei, go back and rest. Stop associating with him; he's a ruffian with bad habits. You'll only learn awful things, hanging around him."
Mo Ran didn't take this lying down. "If Shi Mei shouldn't learn from me, then is he supposed to learn from you?" he asked mockingly. "Dressed in full armor in the middle of the night, strutting about with your tail feathers all fanned out like a bird. Darling of the heavens? More like princess of the heavens, ha ha ha!"
Xue Meng flew into a rage. "Watch your mouth, Mo Ran! This is my home! Who do you think you are?!"
Mo Ran contemplated this for a moment, counting off on his fingers as he did so.
"I'm your older cousin. If you think about it, I'm higher ranked than you, actually."
It was like Xue Meng had been splattered with a face full of dog shit. He scowled disdainfully. "Who wants a cousin like you?" he snapped. "Don't flatter yourself! In my eyes, you're nothing but a dog rolling in the mud!"
Xue Meng was someone who really liked to call other people dogs. Whelp, mutt, son of a bitch, raised by dogs— such insults came to him with ease.
Mo Ran picked his ear nonchalantly; he'd long since grown used to these things. But next to them, Shi Mei was feeling rather awkward. He said some soothing words in a low voice, and with a sneer, Xue Meng finally shut that eminent beak of his.
Shi Mei smiled. "Young master, it's so late," he said gently. "Are you waiting for someone?"
"What else would I be doing? Moon-viewing?"
Mo Ran burst out laughing. "No wonder you're all dressed up— you're waiting for a date! Ay, who's the unlucky one? I pity her. Ha ha ha ha ha."
Xue Men's expression grew so dark that it could've passed for charcoal. "You!" he snapped.
"Me?"
"I'm waiting for you! What now, huh?"
Mo Ran was shocked silent.