The armored man lifted his face from his hands. His teeth were gnashed. There was something more than sorrow on his gaunt face. Fury wrote songs through the shadows of his wrinkles.
But when his eyes met the visage of the little monkey, the dark contours of his face softened. He answered sincerely – albeit indirectly – shedding away his previous abrasion.
"Vaguely. Just vaguely, I can remember it. I remember… Wei Fang must have been a little brighter back then. There was no snow, and this damned pit was no pit, and it wasn't impossible to cross," the phantom said. He hung his head, still on his knees on the air.
"My older brother and I were still getting used to this world. We were hungry. It had been days since our last meal. The creatures here were hard to catch and kill, even with our hard-earned powers. But one day, fortune shone upon us. We found two hares – a silver one the size of a toddler, and a yellow one only about as large as a rice bowl. I tried to shoot the silver hare with my arrow, but my brother argued that he had seen it first and that besides, he was older and he needed more food. So, in the end, I relented and settled for the yellow hare."
Yun Jieshi had opened his mouth to ask a series of questions, but noticing how the phantom had no intention of giving a dramatic pause that allowed interrogation, he held back. He could only listen in silence.
Hua Dongmei had a similar reaction to his. She jerked at the mention of the hares.
"We went back to our shabby camp after catching the hares and my brother immediately killed, skinned, and gutted his. I hesitated with mine. It was so small. I thought it would be better to let it grow first, but I wasn't sure if that would serve me well. I didn't even know what to feed it, and even if I did, I didn't have a lot of confidence in my brother restraining himself once it had grown. He would have us share. Just when I decided to kill it and be done with the day's hunger at least, the hare spoke to me."
'Of course, it did,' Yun Jieshi thought with a sigh.
"It begged me to spare it, promising to offer me something far more valuable than its life and flesh. I swear, you will regret wasting me like this, it said. I have an offer. But please, let us speak far away from your greedy brother, I remember it saying. I was bewildered, but I obeyed and searched for a secluded space. I don't think you came to this perilous place just to find riches to sell among the other humans back in the natural world. I can smell it in your heart, the yellow hare said once we were far away. If you let me, I'll show you something that will leave an impression on you even after death. Those words still shake me to this day."
Yun Jieshi had sat down on the snow. He allowed his questions to pile up while listening closely. If he closed his eyes, he felt as though he'd forget where he was and begin to see himself lying on his bed, listening to an audiobook about old fables with lessons for children.
"The hare was right," the armored man continued. Even his sniffle sounded ghostly. "My brother had forced me to come here because I complemented his strength very well. He was very ambitious. He wanted to use his strength to devour all that money could buy, while I…I cultivated my strength in anticipation of meeting something or someone special. Someone once promised to me by the deity of the Wailing Sea – someone that I would love so dearly that my strength would be expended for their every whim till my dying death. The yellow hare showed that to me," the phantom said and his gaze fell on Hua Dongmei again.
For the first time, he smiled. His dry ghostly lips cracked all the more, chipping like old paint. His passion soared as he said, "She was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. None of the fourteen wonders of my world could ever hope to be mentioned in the same sentence as her. Her smile was as modestly astounding as the Spring, and her voice was like a rare warm breeze in cruel Southern Winters. I could have lived off her words alone for days."
Yun Jieshi wore a sheepish smile. He couldn't imagine himself giving Li Chyou or any girl he had dated before such high praise. Hua Dongmei blushed with an, "Oh" as she placed her tiny hands on the sides of her face. She and Yun Jieshi noted that the unnamed woman the phantom was referring to as her and she was likely a fairy. The signs had been quite obvious.
But the phantom then turned somber. The depth of his sorrow might have conjured a chillier wind near the edge of the Great Gap.
"But the yellow hare had made a cruel jest. While I was entranced by her beauty, it fled, neglecting to tell me that she was trapped in a cage of ice. I wasn't even strong enough to see it. I only managed to sense it after getting too close and being restricted by an invisible barrier of frigid cold. I was furious. She never begged to be freed, but I could see the yearning in her eyes. I knew then that she knew I did not possess the strength to free her. I aimed to change that."
"I decided that this place could take me beyond the limits of what humans back home could achieve. I sought strength bred for the sake of someone precious, and I was in a land tailor-made for breeding such strength. So I urged my brother. We starved because we were yet to adapt. We slept under piles of hard wood instead of beds because we had entertained weakness. We had to get stronger. And we did. We hunted the fiercest monsters and feasted on them. We climbed perilous peaks and used their crevices as beds. In time, our rotations grew quicker and broader – stronger."
Yun Jieshi's eyes narrowed but he said nothing.
"I always found time to visit her still. She would smile brighter each time I returned to her, stronger. In time, I could see her cage. It was a complex sort of prison. I was convinced it could have been the work of an Immortal, but I did not care. I would set her free. But little did I know, I was looking too far into the future for tribulation. My brother had found out where I went during the interspersed periods I left him. He confronted me one day when I was with her."
Yun Jieshi could almost guess where this was going. The fact that the phantom only ever referred to the fairy he was in love with as her and she spoiled the ending.
"I had encouraged my brother to grow his strength, and as he became stronger, his ambition also grew as vast as the skies themselves. Where he had limited his greed to only stealing the fatter hare from me before, now he would not hesitate to fight me for ownership of her. Our desires clashed."
"Where I would have surrendered a hare, I would not give her up. I fought my brother while she cried for us to stop. I don't know what happened after that. I only remember suddenly waking up on this side of this pit. But I have to get back to her. This damned pit keeps getting in my way! I have to cross. I know she is just beyond it! She's waiting for me! She has to be!"
The phantom had lost it again. He removed his helmet and started pulling out his tangled mess of surprisingly dark, grizzled hair, his eyes narrowing with insanity. They leaked foggy tears and as he trembled.
Yun Jieshi felt a tug at his soul. He subconsciously tried to pluck a string on his ruan. It resisted him.
He secretly gritted his teeth.
'Of course.' He let a warm breath escape his lips.
During the man's account, he remembered where that feeling of having heard and experienced his (the armored man's) sorrow came from. Recalling it filled the little monkey with both guilt and anger. For a moment, he blamed the him from his previous life on Earth as though he were some diseased fiend far removed from the current him.
But it was he, Yun Jieshi, who had done nothing – nothing whatsoever – when his father wept bitterly for his wife, Jane Stock. She had disappeared one night, never to be seen again by her husband and son.
'But I was also angry and sad! How could I have taken care of a whole grown man as a child?' Yun Jieshi defended himself with a scowl.
Indeed. He had also been grieving Jane Stock's inexplicable disappearance, but he might have seen it through a different lens than his father's. To Yun Jieshi, she simply didn't love them both anymore and decided to leave. But perhaps Yun Muyang couldn't believe that.
Perhaps he had been waiting for her to return.
'I couldn't convince him otherwise. I couldn't comfort him.'
Indeed.
…But what about when Yun Muyang had been betrayed by yet another woman he loved? Yun Jieshi had seen his father fall apart once again, but he did nothing as an older more mature young man. He buried himself in his obsessions and cast aside all distractions.
And when yet another woman and another besides, crushed his father's heart ruthlessly, Yun Jieshi still did nothing.
Yun Muyang had stood on the other side of a Great Gap four times, seeking some treasure on the other side that would ease the searing pain in his soul, but even his own son did nothing.
'Why is that all on me? He got people to help him. His friends at the temple. He didn't do much for me!' Yun Jieshi felt tears run down his cheeks.
His justifications felt shallow, even to his own soul.
For a moment, he saw his father behind the brigandine armor the phantom wore. It didn't shield him from the hurts of the heart and soul, the little monkey knew. No sort of armor could have done that for Yun Muyang either.
Yun Jieshi drew a sharp breath.
'Is that why I'm here then?' he thought, wiping away the tears. No answer came.
But then he focused on the situation at hand.
'Well, whether or not I'm here because I failed at something or not, the fact remains – I neglected my father, but maybe this little Sage can help this ghost cross,' he thought, gathering up courage, inspiration, and just a twinge of insanity.