Chapter 1: CH Extra

Extra chapter: Loquats

This year's hot midsummer came early, and abundant with thunderstorms –– the rain fell relentlessly from the skies, and drizzles could occur up to three times a day, with no end in sight.

The stone-paved streets of the towns would get wet from the rain, but would dry in no time, too, so it was no bother. But in the mountains, it was unbearable: the wet mud reached up to one's shins, and the paths were riddled in deceptively shallow-looking puddles that could splash one's face full of dirt if one wasn't careful. On days like these, no one ever went into the mountains –– those that did were psychopaths.

For instance, those on Mt. Jiangsong.

"This is the last time," Tongdeng warned as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching Xuanmin use a talisman to help Xue Xian clean his robe. "Don't come tomorrow. Give me a day of peace, please."

Xue Xian twisted around to peer at the back of his robe and stuck out a leg to let Xuanmin slap a talisman onto it, saying to Tongdeng, "I'm not here to see you. I'm here to take care of my baby loquats. It's been so hot these days that I'm worried you'll get greedy and steal them from me."

Tongdeng had always been a highly restrained person, and in all his years floating around as a spirit, he had never 'gotten greedy'. The insult made him almost laugh with anger; he turned to Xuanmin and snapped, "What are you going to do about this?"

Xuanmin said nothing.

If I could do something about it, do you think we'd be here right now?

Xuanmin had long gotten used to scenarios like these. With a neutral expression on his face, he stood between the two and seemed completely unperturbed by their quarrelling. He continued to clean Xue Xian's robe for him.

Whenever the dragon visited Daze Temple, he always had to make a scene of it, and never looked where he was going. By the time he strode in to the temple, his robes were covered in so many dots of mud that he looked like a peacock, so Xuanmin had forced him to stay at the doorway while he cleaned him up.

"Hey, it's fine now," Xue Xian grumbled as he looked himself over once more. "This robe is super thin. If you keep patting away at it, you'll rip it. Why do both you and your shifu have this obsession with hygiene..."

"Stop moving," Xuanmin said.

Tongdeng turned around and walked back into the temple.

Xue Xian felt that he had been so thoroughly cleaned that there was no longer a speck of dust on him. He clicked his tongue and began to stride inside, making sure to lift up the bottom of his robe as he stepped over the threshold so as not to waste Xuanmin's efforts and get himself dirty again.

Xuanmin stood behind him and, seeing that he was standing frozen over the threshold, patted him, indicating for him to hurry up.

Xue Xian looked at him. "Did you just slap my ass?"

"Are the two of you going to have a go right there?" Tongdeng asked as he sat cross-legged onto a prayer mat in front of a desk and picked up a brush. 

Xue Xian walked idly over to him and watched with his head tilted as Tongdeng began to write something on a sheet of paper. "You're doing more writing for the dark-skinned kid?"

Tongdeng sighed and stopped his brush. Glaring at Xue Xian, he said, "You call my disciple 'bald donkey', and now you call Yunzhou 'dark-skinned kid'. Can't you have manners for once?"

"No," Xue Xian said.

Tongdeng sighed again.

The 'dark-skinned kid' that the dragon was referring to was none other than Mt. Jiangsong's mountain guardian. When he'd first arrived on the mountain, he'd been a youth of fourteen or fifteen, without even a proper name. Now, he was about twenty, and the name Yunzhou had been given to him by Tongdeng.

Ever since he and Tongdeng became friends, he would come to Daze Temple every day after his patrols, sometimes having Tongdeng teach him how to read and write, other times simply making a pot of tea for Tongdeng and chatting the hours away. Tongdeng couldn't drink the tea, but he liked to smell it.

And after having run into Xue Xian and Xuanmin several times, he became close to them, too.

Xue Xian dug around in his sleeve pocket until he found a high-quality inkstick and slammed it onto the desk. "I noticed that you're almost done with your current inkstick," he said, "so I carved you another."

Tongdeng picked up the inkstick and examined it, then nodded. "It's good ink. Go visit your loquats."

Xue Xian pulled at Xuanmin's hand and led him past the Buddha statue and out the hall's back door.

Back in the day, the back courtyard of the temple had been a beautiful garden that bloomed with scent and color every summer, and had been the perfect place to shelter from the heat –– but the fire had turned it into a patch of dead soil, with broken branches sticking out of the earth, a desolate place.

The previous year, something had gotten into Xue Xian and he'd suddenly begun craving loquats. The poisonous fog around their bamboo building was too strong and killed their loquat tree both times they tried to plant one, so instead he persuaded Xuanmin to let him plant one at Daze Temple –– in any case, Daze Temple was beginning to feel like their summer home.

Xuanmin always indulged Xue Xian's wishes. He'd immediately gone to buy a loquat sapling and had planted it in the temple garden.

At the time, Tongdeng had glanced at it and said nothing apart from, "It's nice." The sapling had been so small and frail, and would take enormous amounts of effort to grow into a fruit-bearing tree. He'd figured they could try if they wanted.

But Yunzhou had caught wind of the plan and somehow become excited by it. Within a few days' time, he'd gone somewhere deep into the mountain forest and come back with three full-grown loquat trees, already blooming with gorgeous green leaves. He'd planted those in the back garden, too.

Wild loquats were resilient plants –– they'd barely needed to pay attention to the trees for the loquats to begin growing as soon as the season was right. First they were green, and then they turned a brilliant yellow, becoming sweeter and sweeter as the days matured.

Ever since they'd planted that first loquat sapling, Xue Xian had made Xuanmin come to the temple with him every single day, just to make sure the loquats were growing well.

In all his years of life, Tongdeng had never met such a glutton. A divine dragon, one that nobody could mess with, who had somehow ended up with his own disciple. What a trainwreck.

Tongdeng picked up his brush once more, intending to finish copying this text, but soon the doors to the temple creaked open again.

He sighed; he would definitely not be finishing his task today.

He did not need to look up to know who had come in. And yet he looked up anyway.

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He watched as Yunzhou carefully closed the doors to the front courtyard and began walking toward the hall. He'd grown rapidly in the past few years; he was now tall and strong, and the sleeves to his tunic were rolled up to reveal the sinewy muscles on his forearms.

And he wasn't as dark as Xue Xian said; his skin was more like the color of wheat. 

"The sky's overcast. It's going to rain soon," Yunzhou complained as he entered the hall, as natural and casual as though he were returning to his own home after a long day.

Tongdeng hummed in agreement and made to pick up his brush again, then suddenly stopped again. He peered over at Yunzhou and asked, "What's that you've got with you?"    

"Tea," Yunzhou said, lifting up the bundle to show him. Then he smiled. "And wine."

It was just what his old friend used to do, all of those long years ago. The resemblance knocked Tongdeng into a daze, and he automatically replied, "You want to trick me into drinking wine again?"

As Yunzhou bent down to place the teapot on the desk, he laughed and said, "Trick? This isn't even Qiulubai."

Then he froze. He looked up at Tongdeng, and found the monk staring at him, frozen as well.

Tongdeng stammered, "You..."

A cloud of confusion crossed Yunzhou's face as he said, "I... also don't know why I just said that."

"Oh," Tongdeng said, then smiled. "Never mind. Put the tea here, but take the wine as far away from me as you can. Don't distract me from writing your texts."

Yunzhou nodded. He propped his face up by the desk and watched Tongdeng write his calligraphy, then couldn't help but ask, "Is my writing... getting better?"

Tongdeng glanced at him and said, "Sure. Your progress has gone from crawling like a snake on your belly, to crawling on all fours."

Yunzhou rolled his eyes.

Tongdeng did not look at him, yet his lips were curved in a smile.

Yunzhou sighed and picked up the pot of wine, standing up and peering toward the back door.

Xue Xian stood leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, admiring the loquats in the garden while chatting about something in a low voice with Xuanmin. Seeing that Yunzhou was here, Xue Xian jutted out his chin and said, "We were talking about you just now. What's that you've got with you? Wine?"

Yunzhou raised the pot to show him. "I plucked a loquat this morning. They're ripe. If you want some, you can have it with some wine."

Xue Xian blinked. "That's the first I've heard of drinking wine with loquats."

But Yunzhou had already disappeared behind the Buddha's statue again –– he had gone back to study writing with Tongdeng.

Xue Xian's sense of smell was excellent. Although Yunzhou had taken the wine away, he could still smell its scent. He leaned into the hall and gave the air another sniff before Xuanmin grabbed his chin and brought him back. "Have as many loquats as you want, but no wine."

Xue Xian squinted at him, then stuck his neck back into the hall and shouted, "Monk! Your insolent disciple is forbidding me from having any wine!"

Tongdeng was in the middle of practicing writing with Yunzhou. Without stopping, he simply replied, "What does that have to do with me?"

Xue Xian was just messing around, and hadn't really expected Tongdeng to do anything. He turned back and reached out a hand to pat Xuanmin's face. "Why can't I drink?"

Xuanmin grabbed his wrist and peeled his claw away from his face, then calmly said, "Last time, you drank a flask of Luofuchun and took me to the snowy peaks of Taihang Mountain. Before that, you drank a flask and a half of Zhuyeqing, and we fell into the East Sea. Before––"

"Oh, stop it with the befores!" Xue Xian complained as he sealed Xuanmin's lips with a kiss, then, with an evil grin, licked Xuanmin's lips. He immediately went back to leaning against the doorframe as though nothing had happened. 

Xuanmin sighed.

Xue Xian pushed his face away. "Don't look at me. Look over there. It's raining."

Xuanmin sighed again.

It was indeed raining outside.

The summer rain came without thunder, but was instead comprised of a dense drizzle that came down into the courtyard with a susurrus. As it fell, it was as though it had the power to render the whole world quiet and utterly still.

In town, the market sellers hurriedly cleared away their stalls and brought their wares back into their shops. Passersby in the streets raised their hands to cover their heads, and housewives quickly brought in the laundry hanging on the washing lines.

The rain made the noises of the chickens and dogs in the nearby village seem a world apart, too, as well as the sound of horses' hooves galloping along the county roads.

At the front of the hall, Xue Xian could hear the murmurs of Tongdeng and Yunzhou, blurred and indistinct as they talked about the mundane things in life.

Xuanmin looked out at the fruits in the garden: after half a month of daily doting from Xue Xian, the sheet of rain was now making them glisten and shine like so many suns, clinging enthusiastically to the branches.

He shifted his gaze, and looked back at Xue Xian, who was beaming.

Xuanmin watched him for a while, then bent down and kissed him. 

If every day were like this, that would be nice.

Loquats and light rain, and peace on earth.

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