Chapter 11: The More One Nears Home, the Greater the Fear
"Borrow Longevity from Heaven - the Twelve Perpetual Lives..."
Li Shun turned the eight words over and over in the depths of his mind, probing at their possible meaning.
The first half was not difficult to parse: when a mortal's allotted years draw toward their end, one goes to borrow from heaven itself. Heaven and earth are without limit, time without end — even to steal the tiniest sliver of their providence would be enough to return a person to the bloom of youth.
But the latter half, the Twelve Perpetual Lives, what did that refer to?
And the word borrow itself carries a subtle nuance.
As the saying goes: what is borrowed must be repaid. For a technique as heaven-defying as this one, something the imperial house of Great Qian used to reverse the aging of mortal bodies, what exactly was the price of repayment?
Li Shun's thoughts churned, the light in his eyes flickering unsteadily.
Feng Guan, for his part, had not noticed Li Shun's deep absorption. Brimming with energy he seemed unable to exhaust, he gesticulated enthusiastically and chattered on: "Cripple, you have no idea! With a Gongshi title to your name, everything changes. When has the county magistrate ever deigned to look at us twice? But just yesterday, His Lordship not only offered me personal words of encouragement, he actually called me by my name with a kind expression!"
"And that's not all, His Lordship even granted me a courtesy name! Jianwei! 'See the minute to know what is germinating; see the beginning to know the end'..." Feng Guan recited the phrase with a theatrical sway of his head, clearly having no idea what it actually meant, his eyes and brows overflowing with barely contained elation. "I don't really understand all that bookish language, but I just find it feels profound and pleasant to the ear!
"Jianwei, Feng Jianwei... Cripple, this old Feng finally has his own courtesy name in this lifetime!
He paced back and forth in excitement, full of himself: "You should have seen it today, walking through the market streets, those constables Zhao Xu and Deng Hong, who used to snap at us and bully us whenever they felt like it, they scattered like mice at the sight of a cat the moment they saw me! Ha! What a relief. What a genuine relief!"
When the laughter subsided, he seemed to catch sight of Li Shun's lame leg and the state of the room, and his fervor dimmed slightly. He stepped forward and gave Li Shun a firm clap on the shoulder. "Don't be disheartened, Cripple. You may not have received a title this time, but merit in Great Qian accumulates over a lifetime. The next time you do anything worthy of note, moving up to a First-Rank peerage will be easy as breathing!
"When that day comes, the two of us brothers will both have our youth back, eating well and living large!
"I still remember the day we first met, thirty years ago..."
He rambled on, as though he had an inexhaustible reservoir of old memories to pour out. Li Shun did not interrupt. He only leaned back against the headboard, smiling quietly, and listened.
Just like that, over an hour passed. The noise inside the room halted without warning.
Feng Guan fell silent mid-stream. The joy and triumph that had flooded that young, handsome face receded like a tide. He stared blankly at Li Shun, lips trembling several times before he finally managed, in a hoarse voice: "Cripple... I have to leave."
Li Shun's expression remained calm, he had clearly seen this coming. He said softly: "Once you receive your title and are freed from the degraded registry, Great Qian law requires you to return to your place of origin. That is how it should be."
"Return... to my place of origin..."
Feng Guan did not look as happy as one might have imagined. Instead, it was as though all the strength had been drained from him at once. He trembled slightly, repeating those four words over and over, a strange compulsion in his voice.
After a long silence, he suddenly looked up and the smile that broke across his face was a hundred times more painful than weeping. "But... but I feel like this is my home. Lengshan County is my home.
"I've spent almost my entire life here.
"And that so-called 'place of origin'... Yunguan County, I haven't been back in decades. There, I have no parents, no family, not a single person I can talk to..."
The more Feng Guan spoke, the more his voice cracked. By the end, this "young man" with the bright, seventeen-year-old face was sobbing openly, as helplessly as a lost child.
"Cripple, I don't want to go. I'm scared."
Watching Feng Guan weep with his face to the floor, Li Shun felt something complicated move through him. That body belonged to a youth but the soul housed within it was still an old man battered raw by decades of hard living.
In the end, he could only let out a long, quiet sigh.
When Feng Guan's sobbing finally broke into intermittent hiccups, Li Shun reached out and patted his thin shoulder, speaking in a low, steady voice. "I know you don't want to go. But Great Qian's laws are unyielding, those who complete their labor service must return to their registered home county and are not permitted to remain. Would you really defy the court?"
The words the court fell like a bucket of cold water over the head. The deep-rooted terror of the Great Qian authorities that lived in Feng Guan's bones finally dragged him, forcibly, out of his grief.
He stopped crying, smeared his face haphazardly with the back of his hand, but the panic and bewilderment of facing the unknown was still written plainly across his young features.
Li Shun's expression became solemn. He spoke with the grave care of an elder giving instruction: "When you get there, remember to keep your head down and conduct yourself without any show. Yunguan County may be your birthplace, but time has passed and things have changed, it will be as unfamiliar to you as foreign soil. Do not believe everything anyone tells you. When something happens, watch more, think more, and never push yourself to the front of things..."
Feng Guan listened like an earnest student learning a lesson, eyes still rimmed red, burning every word into his memory with heavy, repeated nods.
...
The seventeenth day of the second month. An auspicious day for travel.
Outside Lengshan County's city gate, Feng Guan changed into a presentable set of clothes, shouldered a simple pack, and set out along the official road toward his hometown, accompanied by two government-appointed courier escorts.
Li Shun dragged his lame leg and disappeared into the crowd. He watched Feng Guan's silhouette turn back again and again in the morning mist, growing smaller with each look, until it finally vanished entirely from sight.
At nine o'clock that evening, word arrived without warning.
Feng Guan was dead.
The two courier escorts who had been accompanying him were also dead, killed by unknown hands.
Li Shun sat motionless inside the house for a long while after hearing the news. Feng Guan's face, first aged and hollowed then young and frightened in those final days, surfaced over and over in his mind, one image layering over the other.
Li Shun spared no expense in prying out more information.
"It was revenge from the Great Xiang remnants.
"The vast majority of the rebels who attacked the city that day were captured on the spot, but a small number slipped through the net and remained at large.
"And since it was Feng Guan's report that caused their operation to fail and their leader to be captured, they naturally came looking to settle the score."
Li Shun's gaze grew distant, the cold within him deepening.
As the day drew toward its close, Li Shun's primary consciousness descended into the Fangcun space and came to stand before the half-ruined stone statue.
Without hesitation, he intoned in a clear and measured voice:
"Three times a day, I reflect upon myself."
In an instant, the words became law and time reversed once more.
...
He was returned to the morning of the seventeenth day of the second month.
Feng Guan was humming a little tune to himself and packing his belongings when Li Shun, who by all rights should still be bedridden, shoved open the wooden door and strode in.
"Cripple, what's wrong?" Feng Guan paused in surprise.
"I just thought of something. If you travel alone today, is there not a risk the Great Xiang remnants will take their revenge on you?" Li Shun came straight to the point, his words rapid and direct.
"The Great Xiang remnants? Weren't they all arrested?" Feng Guan blinked in confusion.
Li Shun said nothing. He simply fixed Feng Guan with a cold, piercing stare. That gaze, sharp as a blade, made Feng Guan's mind snap to attention and he realized, with a jolt, just how serious this might be.
"Then... then what do we do?!" The healthy flush drained from Feng Guan's face in an instant, cold sweat soaking through his back.
"Two options. Either you travel in disguise to avoid notice or you choose a more reliable method..."
A flash of shrewd light moved through Li Shun's eyes. He said, in an unhurried tone: "Go and ask the county magistrate for assistance. After all, he certainly wouldn't want to see a freshly minted First-Rank peer from his own jurisdiction die before he's even left Lengshan County."