Chapter 25

By day, aside from drilling the troops and missing her mother, Lin Yuanjiu’s most common habit was to stand silently facing home, fingers rubbing the hilt of the blade in her hand, Fu Guang.
Fu Guang was a sword entirely black from tip to guard, utterly unremarkable to look at.
In the first half of its life it had followed Lin Yuanjiu’s father; in the second half, it had followed Lin Yuanjiu. It was in Lin Yuanjiu’s hands that Fu Guang first awakened its own spirit.
After gaining awareness, Fu Guang couldn’t yet take on human form. All it could do was stay within the sword, keeping its master company day after day.
The sentence it heard most often from its master was: “Fu Guang, I want to go home.”
If she wanted to go home so badly, why didn’t she just go?
The next day, General Shen voiced the same question that had long been buried in Fu Guang’s heart.
“Do you want to go home?”
On the eve of the final battle, General Shen called Lin Yuanjiu in alone to ask her this. Outside the command tent, the wind howled, battle flags snapped in the gale, and in the distance came the neighing of warhorses and the shouted drills of soldiers.
Lin Yuanjiu said, “When the fighting ends and the border is at peace, that will be when this subordinate returns home.”
It wasn’t that she didn’t long for home. But she had seen too many frontier folk driven to utter desperation by war, forced from their homes; too many grown men who dared rise up against the barbarians only to be brutally beheaded; too many women and children wailing over the starved corpses of their little ones. The misery she had witnessed made her afraid to even speak of going home.
At first, Lin Yuanjiu had taken up arms to fulfill her father’s wish. Later, it was for the common people, for the sake of country and land.
Hearing this, General Shen looked down at the stack of urgent battle reports on his table, his brows knotting tight. At length he let out a long sigh. “In that case, I will permit you three days’ leave to visit your mother.”
Lin Yuanjiu’s ever-calm face showed a rare flicker of emotion. “Many thanks, General.”
“Go, then, child,” General Shen said.
When she returned home, Mother Lin was overjoyed. “Is the war over? Are you still going back?” she asked.
Lin Yuanjiu silently nodded.
At that, the corners of Mother Lin’s eyes, aged early by years of worry, drooped in disappointment. “So be it. Your father used to long for peace at the border… it’s almost here now. If his spirit in heaven knew his daughter had done so well, he’d surely be comforted.”
Her hands never stopped as she sewed. “The border is so bitterly cold all year. I’ll embroider more warm robes for my child,” she went on in her soft muttering.
Lin Yuanjiu set her sword on the table. “On this trip, your daughter leaves with no sure date of return. I shall leave Fu Guang here at home as something to remember me by. Forgive your unfilial daughter for being unable to stay at your knee and be dutiful.” She dropped to her knees as she spoke.
On the day she left, her mother quietly packed her kit, tears brimming but stubbornly held back.
Before she departed, Mother Lin gripped Lin Yuanjiu’s hands, her voice trembling but resolute. “Go, child. Protect our home. And don’t forget to come back.”
After Lin Yuanjiu left, Fu Guang could only stay with her master’s mother.
Day after day, Mother Lin repeated the same motions of embroidering clothes. When she wasn’t sewing, she sat alone in the house, staring blankly toward the border over the high courtyard wall. Her temples, like branches in late winter brushed by snow, slowly turned white.
When word came that the war on the frontier had been won and the generals were returning in triumph, someone also came to tell Mother Lin that her daughter had died horribly, her body lost. In her grief, her heart clenched violently in her chest, and one night, unknown to anyone, she slipped and fell into the well and died.
By the time Fu Guang, frantic with worry, finally managed to take on human form, it was already too late.
All it could do was drag Mother Lin’s body up from the well and hide it at home, then take on Mother Lin’s appearance, rush to the border, and, following the faint link between them, find where Lin Yuanjiu lay.
By some miracle, Lin Yuanjiu still clung to a single breath, but it wouldn’t last long.
Ignoring the stunned looks of everyone around, Fu Guang hoisted Lin Yuanjiu onto its back and carried her out of the desolate forest. Someone went searching for a physician.
After examining Lin Yuanjiu, the physician said to Fu Guang, “Her pulse is empty and rootless, like a lamp guttering out, like a spider thread about to snap. Her vital essence is spent, her organs are failing. Even if Hua Tuo were reborn or Bian Que returned to life, they could not drag her back from death.”
Fu Guang didn’t understand. Eyes reddening, it only asked, “Are you going to write a prescription or not?”
With a sigh, the physician wrote out a prescription for her.
Everyone else knew perfectly well that the medicine on that slip of paper was nothing more than comfort, a ritual for the living. When a person is at the brink of death, there is no way back.
Fu Guang clutched the prescription and ran to the pharmacy in a panic, eyes full of urgency and hope. Once the medicine was ready, it boiled it itself; the thin smoke from the decoction rising into the air was like its last, fragile hope.
However, even after Lin Yuanjiu took the medicine, there was still no sign of improvement. Her breathing grew weaker and weaker, and her face turned even paler.
Yet Fu Guang had clearly seen her master fall ill before, back then she had also taken medicine, and a few days later she’d been right as rain. Why, this time, did the medicine do nothing at all?
When Lin Yuanjiu’s consciousness grew muddled and she hovered on the brink of death, she pulled over Fu Guang, who was disguised as Mother Lin. The face that had always been steady and composed was, for once, tinged with fragility and helplessness. Perhaps she knew, deep down, that she was going to die; perhaps it was because her Mother was at her side that she dared to show her weakness so freely.
Lin Yuanjiu’s eyes, swollen and bloodshot from her injuries, brimmed with tears as she choked out, “Mothee, I want to go home.”
She wanted to go back to those days when Father laughed as he pushed her on the swing, and Mother sat off to the side, looking helpless as she added another winter layer over her clothes.
Fu Guang cried as well, answering her, “We’ll go home!”
Even though the physician had earnestly warned her again and again, “Her internal injuries are deep and hard to heal, under no circumstances should you move her and put her through more suffering,”
Fu Guang still carried Lin Yuanjiu back home.
After turning away all visitors, she decocted medicine for her day after day.
She didn’t know exactly which night it happened; only that, all of a sudden, her master stopped making even the slightest movement. She no longer spoke, no longer drank her medicine. She just lay there, utterly still, like a wooden puppet.
Like a dead tree whose soul had long since left it.
What else could Fu Guang do? All she could manage was to lie to herself, using her spiritual power to shield the bodies of Mother Lin and Lin Yuanjiu, boiling medicine every day, foolishly praying that there would come a moment when Lin Yuanjiu would open her eyes again.
Fu Guang’s sobs were shrill and raw, like they might tear the sky open, as if she were venting all the resentment and grievance she’d pent up these days in one long cry.
Hearing all this, Shen Qing’s heart gave a violent jolt. She realized that her earlier guess had been completely wrong. It wasn’t that some demon had possessed Mother Lin; Lin Yuanjiu had long since died as well. The only thing that had kept smoke rising from the Lin household these days was a sword spirit that had been left behind in the world.
As for why, months later, Lin Yuanjiu suddenly “disappeared,” leaving only Mother Lin’s corpse to be discovered,
Shen Qing tentatively lifted Fu Guang’s hand and checked it, then looked at the inside of Lin Yuanjiu’s wrist on the bed. On both their inner wrists, there was the same faint blue mark.
This mark was a soul-seal, a life-bond between a spiritual being and its master.
Once the master bound by the soul-seal met with misfortune, and the body was kept too long, it would skip the usual process of decay and vanish all at once. The linked spirit bound to that contract would likewise be erased along with it.
Previously, the reason Mother Lin’s corpse hadn’t rotted was entirely because the sword spirit was using its power to preserve it. Once the sword spirit vanished and its spiritual power dissipated, Mother Lin’s body finally began to decompose. The stench that followed naturally spread out, making it easy for the neighbors to notice.
In this way, that rumor about Lin Yuanjiu being unable to bear her disfigurement, killing her mother, and fleeing in disgrace was sheer nonsense born from thin air, and it spread like wildfire.
Now, everything finally made sense.
The bite marks on Shen Qing’s wrist still throbbed with pain. Grimacing, she bared her teeth and asked, “So what exactly is your plan? Are you really going to sit here and watch the two of them lie like this?”
Fu Guang shook her head, crying. “I don’t know! I don’t know! I just want Master to wake up. I only want to follow Master. She was fine, why is a living person suddenly just… gone?”
For a sword to gain a spirit was something exceedingly rare. If she were to vanish along with her master just like this, it would be a terrible waste. Shen Qing pointed at the soul-seal on her wrist. “How about I help you dissolve this, hmm? Yes or no?”
Fu Guang yanked her hands back at once. “No! Go away! Don’t you dare try to break my bond with Master!”
“Heh.” Shen Qing folded her arms. “Fine, have it your way. I don’t care what happens to you, but Lin Canjun and her Mother must be laid to rest.”
“There’s an old saying: when a person is about to die, if they cannot be buried in peace, then after death they can never know rest. Their soul cannot enter the cycle of rebirth and can only wander between yin and yang, suffering loneliness and abandonment. Are you truly willing to stand by and watch their souls drift without a home?”
Fu Guang bit her lip and looked at Lin Yuanjiu on the bed. “Is… is that really true?”
“Of course it is,” Shen Qing said. “Why would I bother lying to you?”
At that, Fu Guang finally relented. “Fine. I agree.”
Shen Qing repeatedly explained the effects of the soul-seal to her, but Fu Guang still refused to dissolve it. Since the other refused to listen, Shen Qing chose not to meddle further in someone else’s fate.
In the end, Mother Lin and Lin Yuanjiu’s bodies were discovered by two children who had “accidentally” strayed into the Lin residence.
Afterward, it was Shen Qing’s Father who personally sent men to arrange their burial. Among the grave goods buried with them was Lin Yuanjiu’s most cherished sword in life. Sword and master went into the tomb together, never to see daylight again.
Whether she had actually managed to do a good deed and accumulate merit, Shen Qing had no way of knowing. Listless, she went home, and the very next day, the magistrate of Wannian County arrived at their gate.
The magistrate was a tall but rather frail middle-aged man. His wife was a woman with delicate features and gentle brows.
The couple was nothing like what Shen Qing had imagined, neither harsh nor petty. On the contrary, the magistrate’s manner was mild, even a little awkward and tongue-tied, and a kind of ingrained timidity seemed to cling to him. His wife sat demurely at his side, hands folded on her knees, head slightly bowed, her expression full of unease.
Everything in their bearing spoke of the honest, peaceable character of people who went through life without competing with others.
With such a simple, down-to-earth couple, how had they ended up with a daughter like that? Shen Qing couldn’t figure it out no matter how she turned it over in her head.
Tentatively, the magistrate asked, “I do not know, madam, whether you called us here today… is it on account of my daughter Yerong?”
Yerong was Shen Ling’s childhood name.
Mother Shen smiled faintly. “Lord Shen is too polite. Indeed, it is.”
With that one “Lord Magistrate,” the distance between the two families was clearly drawn.
At these words, both husband and wife visibly tensed. The magistrate asked in worry, “Has Yerong committed some offense, to anger madam?” Not long ago, Shen Zongzhi’s family of three had benefitted from the general’s kindness and moved from the ancestral house to Wannian County. Soon after, Shen Ling pestered her parents to take her to Shen Manor to see the elder cousin she’d never met.
Magistrate Shen had thought that, though his younger cousin was now a great general far above him, the two girls still had a sliver of shared blood. Perhaps the two cousins might grow close and play together.
So he had agreed to send his daughter to Shen Manor to acknowledge her kin. Thankfully, although General Shen and his wife had risen high, they hadn’t forgotten old ties, and readily received his daughter for a short stay.
He’d never expected that, after only a few days, his daughter would somehow cause trouble serious enough that Madam Shen would personally summon the county magistrate and his wife.
Now both of their hearts hung in their throats.