For a long while after that, the Lin clansfolk gathered about the memorial archway held their peace, struck dumb. No one spoke. No one stirred.
The air was low and choking.
"Are we truly to let him walk away just like that?" Lin Zhengli spoke up. "Let a ninth-rank fellow of the Roaming Meridian realm lord it over the House of Lin?"
"All of you." Lin Zhengren turned back. "Disperse."
One by one they scattered, and even Lin Zhengren's own father, Lin Duanxing, did not hesitate — proof enough of the sway Lin Zhengren held within the clan.
Old Master Lin cast a glance at Lin Zhengli. "Zhengli, come. Help your grandfather back to his room."
Lin Zhengli pulled his face into a smile: "Grandfather, let an attendant support you back instead. I still have a word or two to say to my elder brother."
Old Master Lin made as if to speak, then held back, and at last shook his head, leaving under an attendant's hand. In no time at all no one lingered near the archway, and nothing remained but a few fallen leaves of winter still spinning about in the wind.
"Brother!" Lin Zhengli was beside himself with grievance. "Are we truly going to let it rest at this?"
Lin Zhengren swept him with a glance: "What else, then? Will you chase him down and kill him?"
"Does the House of Lin have no Cycle-realm expert of its own!"
"That is the House's — not yet yours."
"Am I doing all this for myself? Do I not have the House's name in mind?"
"For our House?" Lin Zhengren regarded him with an uncommon coldness. "Do you think I do not know what you have been doing?"
"You seized Lin Zhenglun's stall, yet ran it into the ground. Grandfather bid you invite him back, and instead you humiliated him — and sought to worm your way at his wife on the side! Can you be so starved of women as that — so unable to keep your trousers fastened?"
"I only wanted him to know his place, to know exactly what he is!" Lin Zhengli said in a rush. "What good does it do to pamper a man like that? You saw it for yourself today — Grandfather held him in soft words, and what was his manner? He bit the very hand that fed him. Can such a man ever be tamed? Even if the Lin trade were to founder, we must never put him to use!"
Lin Zhengren pointed at Lin Zhengli and, for a time, said nothing at all.
"Brother, listen to me — send men to cut them down somewhere along the road!" Lin Zhengli pressed on. "So long as Jiang Chen lives, where is the Lin family's face to hang?"
Crack!
Lin Zhengren swung a backhand that knocked Lin Zhengli flat to the ground.
"The honor of the Lin family counts for little. My honor, Lin Zhengren's honor, counts!"
He pointed at Lin Zhengli, who glared up at him from the ground: "And because of you, I have lost mine."
Flat on his back, Lin Zhengli was at first dumbfounded, then blazed with fury, nearly leaping to his feet: "You could not defeat Zhu Weiwo — is that my fault to answer for? Very well! Tie me up, haul me to Maple City, deliver me to Zhu Weiwo to make my apologies — and let that fellow Jiang cut me down! I will not drag your honor down with me!"
He rushed up before Lin Zhengren, thrusting out his stiff neck and roaring: "Send me there!"
"I warn you!" Lin Zhengren seized him by the throat and hoisted him off the ground. "I warn you only this once, my dear little brother."
Watching Lin Zhengli's face slowly flush scarlet as his breath ran short, he said at a deliberate pace: "There is no need to play at being so shallow, so short-sighted, so hot-headed. There is no need to strut your childish incompetence before me.
The Lin patrimony I have already yielded to you, and I will never come to reclaim it. What looms before your eyes as an estate too vast to compass is, to me, nothing at all. And you needn't go to such pains to feign a duller wit, for fear that I should come to hold you in suspicion!"
He raised his hand, and only once Lin Zhengli's eyes began to roll back in his head did he ask: "Do you take my meaning?"
That said, without waiting for an answer, he let go and turned to walk away, leaving Lin Zhengli to slump to the ground, half on his knees, coughing without end.
...
It was deep night by the time they made it back to Maple City.
Huang Azhan was waiting for them at the city gate, a sleeping An'an cradled in his arms.
"You're back, at long last!" Huang Azhan lowered his voice. "That little tyrant of yours wept the entire day through; I argued myself hoarse and could not soothe her for a single moment! She would wait for none but you — it was only in the small hours, when at last she had cried herself tired, that she dropped off."
Jiang Chen took An'an from him with great care, and said to the others: "Make your way home for now. We can speak of everything else tomorrow."
They went their separate ways. Jiang Chen, holding the little An'an, returned to their home in Flying Horse Lane.
He did not go straight indoors, but climbed up onto the roof, let his legs dangle over the eaves, and simply sat there.
The night was cold as water. Wrapped in her padded little jacket, An'an slept heavily in his arms, her eyes still puffy, and even in slumber her small mouth was pinched with hurt.
A child of five understands more than one might think. Their world is simpler, true, but the pain in it is often all the more unadorned for that.
That night, for once, Jiang Chen did not cultivate. Looking out toward the direction of Phoenix Creek Town, he drifted into a daze.
For no reason at all, a great many pictures welled up within his mind.
It was not the first time he had known loneliness, yet at this moment a realization truly struck him: this world now held but he and Jiang An'an, shackled to each other, each the other's sole kin.
They no longer had a father. Nor any mother.
"Brother..." An'an had woken at some point without his noticing. Gazing at the line of his jaw through her slightly swollen eyes, she asked: "Did you go looking for Mother?"
Jiang Chen was silent for a while, then said: "Do you mind the stars I told you of? Father is there. And Aunt Song — she has gone there as well."
An'an gave a soft sigh, as if afraid of crushing some fragile thing: "So very far away."
All at once Jiang Chen felt the urge to weep. "Yes. So very far."
"Brother, will you ever be able to pluck down a star?" A light seemed to brim in Jiang An'an's eyes. "Mother said you might one day become an immortal."
An immortal...
Looking at An'an's small face, Jiang Chen had not the heart to tell her the truth — that the distance between him and immortality was longer still than the distance from them here to the stars.
She perhaps believed that, on the day he could pluck down a star, she would once again see her father and mother. What she did not yet understand was that some farewells are forever.
That "forever" in which, no matter how high one flies, no matter how mighty one grows, one can never again be reunited.
"In ancient times, when mankind first lifted its head and beheld the stars, it began to draw near to them." In the end, Jiang Chen said: "Crossing the deepest river, scaling the highest mountain, and once the road runs out entirely, building a ladder of one's own... that is cultivation."
"Even your brother does not know what lies at the end of the road of cultivation. But I think that plucking stars and seizing the moon can hardly be the final stop."
"Then I..." An'an bit her lip and asked, with great care: "Can I cultivate too?"
"Of course!" Jiang Chen ruffled her small head.
"I can fly too?"
"Of course!"
"Then I can pluck stars too?"
"Mm-hm!"
"I can go fetch Father and Mother?"
"...Mm!"
It was a beautiful lie. Even Jiang Chen himself wished to be deceived by it.
"Then from tomorrow on, besides your reading and your characters, you will also have to memorize the Dao scriptures..."
"No problem!" An'an brimmed with vigor.
"And you'll need to spare half an hour each day to practice the martial arts and build your foundation. It will be very tiring..."
"An'an is not afraid of the tiring!"
"Good, then let it be an agreement — on the day when you can pluck a star and seize the moon, the two of us shall go together, chasing the stars."
Jiang An'an clenched her little fist: "Chasing the stars!"