The ruan was quality if quality ever looked itself in the mirror.
It was larger than the one Yun Jieshi had just left behind; it was a daruan.
Yun Jieshi, for a few moments, couldn't bear to touch it. It seemed too precious, too good for a lowly monkey like him.
Its long neck, scarlet and polished, was half caked by the snow, as were the ebony-coloured turning pegs piercing the sides of its head. Its fat round body was pristine white, embossed with shockingly intricate patterns of delicate daffodils. The four strings running along the ruan from its belly to its head were strange though.
Three were colored the same as the pegs – in ebony – looking dull and lifeless, while the last, at the end, was tinged with a vibrant yellow glow.
Yun Jieshi released a blow of hot air.
He was taking all of this outrageousness well so far, much to his own surprise. Well, he imagined it hadn't all hit him with the right impact just yet, but the sight of the ruan was the first strike.
Why was a ruan here?
Did it have something to do with the fact that it was the instrument he was most fond of, and better yet, the one he was best at, out of all his collection?
If the reason was anything to do with this, then…
'Either this is a very, very potent dream, or some deity was really paying attention to my interests and incorporated them into the afterlife,' Yun Jieshi thought.
He didn't resist the temptation any longer.
He reached down and grabbed the ruan by the neck.
To his surprise, the old sagely voice didn't identify the ruan by some mystical name. Yun Jieshi had certainly been expecting it. He was a little disappointed. In his fondling of the ruan, trying to get a reaction from the voice in his head, he noticed just how light it was.
It might have been as light as a hummingbird's feather, and its bulbous belly was larger than he was. It reminded him of a washbin, or better yet, two of them fused together.
Everywhere he touched, the ruan pulled at his hands, like a magnet. It was as though it didn't want him to let go. Releasing it was easy though, but at the moment, Yun Jieshi wouldn't have let go for a thousand Li Chyous.
Yun Jieshi held it as if to play, a small smile appearing on his lips. It was larger than he was, but he managed. He placed a finger on one of the ebony strings.
"Hm?"
Yun Jieshi exerted all the effort he could to pluck the string, but it didn't budge.
"Huh? Why won't it…?"
He tried with all the ebony strings. It was all the same. Irritated, he tried with the yellow string. He felt it buckle slightly to his thumb. He could pluck it… only if he stomped on the daruan's neck and pulled the string with all ten fingers… maybe.
"Harmonising Psalm of Zhan Hao," the old voice came.
"Oh. You only reacted to the yellow string," Yun Jieshi said before turning contemplative. "Harmonising Psalm of Zhan Hao? Who is that?" Of course, there was no answer, much to his frustration.
The little monkey turned to the ruan's turning pegs. He had been doubting it from the start, but he finally decided to turn them and see if there would be any changes to the strings. To his utter shock, after turning one of the pegs, it loosened and fell out of its socket.
Yun Jieshi recoiled. The string, he feared.
But it remained intact, fully drawn…somehow.
Yet, that mystery paled in comparison to the look of the turning peg itself. The bit of it that screwed into the head of the ruan was fitted with a small, doubled-edged red blade. The blade, Yun Jieshi was sure, was far too long to fit inside the ruan's head, but it did somehow.
He studied the other pegs. They were the same. The old voice said nothing about them.
"What kind of ruan is this?" Yun Jieshi wondered aloud.
He turned away from it and focused on the other item that had spilled from the peach-shaped rock. It was far less sophisticated at a glance.
It appeared to be some kind of wineskin. It had short rough, brown hairs on its curved body, a strap, and a cork fixed on its end. It was rather large and tall. It was two-thirds of Yun Jieshi's height from the looks of it. When he bent over and picked it up…
"Sap for the fiends, sap for the living. Fiends and shadows plead with stretched paws. Let four lap to contentment, and save a sip for the ailed lord at the edge, at the end of tall hills with faces – the halls of Tsang Shan."
Yun Jieshi frowned. He held the neck of the wineskin and touched it again so that the voice could repeat what it had said.
Sap? Fiends? Sip?
What could this mean?
Yun Jieshi sat down. Admittedly, he wasn't at all displeased with how vague and pretentious the identification of this wineskin was. He readily dived into speculation. After listening about a dozen more times to the words, he came to a few conclusions.
"The sap is definitely what's inside," Yun Jieshi said while fondling the wineskin. Its contents were quite thick. It couldn't have been something like water inside. Sap fit the bill.
"Whatever this sap is, I'm guessing many people will be after it. It's something precious. Fiends and shadows… I'm pretty sure that's meant to warn me of some pretty… unfriendly characters. But it appears I can let four people drink, I think. Four, and then leave some for someone else. Tsang Shan. I bet it's someone important, but as to who that could be…"
As he said it, Yun Jieshi felt stupid. Was he really already immersed in this new reality to the point of accepting the terms of some journey?
But what could he do other than accept?
Whatever part of him had challenged his adaptation had no answer.
"This is so strange," Yun Jieshi said and he peered back at the broken peach-shaped rock. Something seemed to click right then. It made him feel even more stupid.
A rock.
A monkey born from a rock.
No. No, no, no, no.
Yun Jieshi couldn't bring himself to say it aloud, but he did anyway.
"Could I be… the monkey king?"
He shivered with cringe.
Since when did the monkey king start walking around with a daruan?
Besides, the monkey king was a stone monkey, born with nothing in his grasp. His birth made a mark in the Jade Emperor's eyes. Well, sort of.
Yun Jieshi didn't see any sort of brilliance marked anywhere as a result of his birth.
He deflated.
'I'm probably not him.'
In fact, it appeared he was some kind of monk tasked with delivering some medicine to a faraway Immortal.
The thought made Yun Jieshi scowl.
He gripped the wineskin tight and uncorked it.
…And that was a dreadful mistake.
Right then, an overpowering smell exploded from the wineskin's mouth. It was carried by a gust that nearly pressed Yun Jieshi flat on the ground. The smell wasn't unpleasant, however. As he gasped in surprise at the gust, he also reeled at the fragrance that filtered into his nose. It appeared his sense of smell was also supernatural. He managed to isolate distinct components of the smell.
There were hints of Freesia and also honey, Yun Jieshi discerned, but he couldn't fathom what the other complimenting mixtures of sweet smells could be. He almost lost himself in the fragrance, his mind spiraling in reminiscences of some of his favorite sweets from America. He swiftly pulled himself back to his senses, however, and plugged the wineskin shut with its cork.
'That's… not natural,' Yun Jieshi thought, a sheepish smile on his face. He narrowed his eyes mischievously.
He had begun to contemplate opening the cork again, hoping to get lost in a dream of sugars one more time, when the rock pillar shook lightly.
A horrible shriek came from below. Or was it several? Yun Jieshi found it hard to tell.
He suddenly dropped his ruan and clapped his hand over his nose.
A horrendous smell wafted through the air right then, and it might have had a physical quality to it. It was familiar – a disgusting odor akin to the combination of blue cheese, durian, sulfur, and piles of rotten fruit. Because of Yun Jieshi's new sensitivity with every sense, the stench was even fouler than he remembered.
'Again? Even here?' he thought, terror in his blue eyes.
The rock pillar shook again. Instinctively, his ears pricked to identify the cause.
Yun Jieshi finally confirmed it. There were multiple shrieks and screams coming from below – from where he heard the rushing water. There were creatures below him. If he had to guess, they were probably unfriendly.
Fiends, Yun Jieshi recalled.
The smell of the sap in his wineskin, traveling in a fierce gust of wind, must have called enemies to him.
The scraping and scratching he heard around the rock pillar, growing more and more intense by the second, told him of the large number of these creatures. They were climbing up and soon they would be upon him.
Yun Jieshi did his best to ready himself. His diminutive size gave him very little confidence, but he wasn't about to lie down and succumb. He weathered the potency of the stink and started looking around him. He identified where the scratching and scraping were loudest. His eyes fixed on it and sure enough, one of the creatures was revealed to him. It grabbed the edge of the rock pillar and pulled itself up.
Yun Jieshi, balled his little hand into a fist, a ball of saliva sliding down his throat.
It was an enemy indeed, an ugly one.
It was an entity unknown.