Half a Cup of Wine - Chapter 1
Part One: Old Friend
I dreamt of Master last night.
We stood side-by-side in a desolate field, a bleak wind howling around us.
It has been over ten years since the old man died. This was the first time I dreamt of him.
He looked the same as always, a scruffy old rogue. He wore a tattered conical hat and leaned on a rickety wooden staff. He tilted his head back, drinking from a grimy wine gourd, his face flushed crimson. The wind whipped his messy white hair into a bird's nest.
The only thing different from my memory was his eyes.
Those eyes, clouded for so long, were startlingly bright. A brightness I hadn't seen even in the old man's final moments.
A flock of geese flew across the horizon.
It was dusk. Crimson clouds, like a raging fire, burned across half the sky. The world felt vast and empty, as if it held only us and the geese flying leisurely overhead.
Master raised a finger, pointing at the geese in the sky, and grinned. "Girl, do you know why I named you Yan Jiu?"
They say things that happen in dreams are unusual, but this conversation actually happened. The season, the place, everything was exactly the same.
Recalling the scene, I replied, "Why?"
"You know you were an abandoned child. I found you around this time of year. A flock of nine geese happened to be flying south overhead. I slapped the table, made up my mind then and there, and declared, 'This girl will be called Yan Jiu!' "
After saying this, Master threw his head back, hands on his hips, and roared with laughter, thoroughly enjoying his drunken antics.
Even though this was the second time I'd heard Master tell this story, I was still deeply grateful that it hadn't been a pair of stray geese eloping across the sky. Otherwise, I would have been stuck with a name like "Yan Er" or "Er Yan," a name to be mocked for a lifetime.
After laughing, Master started to recite a poem, swaying and slurring his words:
“Life in this world, filled with meetings and partings, like drifting duckweed. When by chance we meet, we must share a drink. Speaking of true human connection, entering a realm beyond description, only wine is a true confidant. Especially with a pleasant breeze and moonlight—let us fill our cups again and again!”1
Master stopped abruptly, turned to me, and stared. His drunken face was flushed, but his clouded eyes were now clear and bright from the strong liquor. "Yan Jiu, do you understand?"
He stared intensely, as if trying to stare a flower onto my face. After a while, he sighed, seemingly both disappointed and relieved. "You don't understand… you don't understand…"
Master leaned on his rickety staff, as unsteady as he was, and slowly walked away, humming an unfamiliar tune: "Love is like chasing the wind, hate is like the morning dew, love and hate are like dew…"
Geese scattered in flight, the setting sun cast a lingering glow, momentarily dazzling my eyes.
I woke up to a pair of almond-shaped eyes, their expression somewhere between a smile and not a smile.
Xue Wuyi leaned against the window, holding a pot of plum wine in his arms, along with his saber. Behind his tall, straight back was the eternal sky of Chang'an. A hawk soared, its black wingtips slicing through the blue.
“Nightmare?” he asked.
“I dreamt of an old friend,” I replied.
“An old friend? You have old friends?”
I didn't answer, and he didn't press further.
The good thing about Xue Wuyi was that he always knew when to stop.
Outside, the rain fell steadily.
The rain in Chang'an, like the people of Chang'an, is accustomed to concealing its true nature. It either doesn’t rain at all, or it pours. It had been raining for a whole month after a long drought. The faces of Chang'an's people were washed pale, bloodless, by the rain.
Xue Wuyi said that even Heaven must be disgusted by the extravagance and debauchery of Chang'an, wanting the city to lose its way, even for a little while.
I've met many people, remembered few, and even fewer could be called friends. Xue Wuyi was one of them.
Xue Wuyi was one of the few lone assassins in Chang'an.
Every time he killed someone, he came to my place to drink. Three jars of plum wine, a tradition for ten years. He liked to drink in large gulps, as if there would be no tomorrow. He never allowed himself to get drunk. Trembling hands couldn’t hold a killing blade.
The brocade bag Xue Wuyi placed on the table was as heavy as usual, at least fifteen hundred taels of silver.
In the Jianghu, he had a chilling nickname: Blood Saber. Once Xue Wuyi drew his blade, it meant a swift, clean kill. Never a miss.
Lone assassins often had meager business. Employers wouldn't want a disobedient executioner who might abandon the job at any moment. Only dead-end situations, the ones even desperate outlaws wouldn't touch, were handed over to lone assassins—naturally, the rewards were substantial. There are no true desperadoes in this world, only the distinction between whether something is worth betting one’s life on.
I hefted the brocade bag and asked, "What important person did you kill this time?"
"No important person. That Minister of War was in the middle of a passionate tumble with his concubine when I killed him. He died without even a grunt—boring." Xue Wuyi tilted his head back and drained his cup, his eyes hazy as he looked at me, yet the depths were clear. "Do you know 'Green-Eyed' Shi Qiufeng?"
Of course I knew.
His name had recently become a sensation throughout the Jianghu.
Before being given the moniker “Green-Eyed,” a title shared with the famous Ruan Ji of the Wei and Jin dynasties, Shi Qiufeng was just an obscure outer disciple of the Plum Blossom Sect in the north. Half a year ago, he accidentally discovered that the Plum Blossom Sect was secretly engaged in murderous acts for profit. After escaping, he exposed their secrets, causing an uproar in the Jianghu. The Plum Blossom Sect was condemned by all, its leader fled, and the once-respected sect crumbled.
No one expected that this was just the beginning. In the following six months, Shi Qiufeng traveled the Jianghu, successively exposing the dirty deeds of four other established righteous sects. The Jianghu was in turmoil. Rumors of “the righteous path has fallen, chivalry is dead” spread like wildfire. Righteous disciples left their sects, choosing to wander the Jianghu to prove their innocence.
"Shi Qiufeng entered Chang'an yesterday. Now the city is teeming with people who want him dead.” Xue Wuyi stroked the saber that had been with him for ten years. His tone was playful, yet his eyes held no mirth. "Yan Jiu, I'll make a bet with you. This kid won't live past tonight."
His eyebrows were slender and sharp, like willow leaves when he smiled, and like unsharpened blades when he didn't. The blind fortune teller downstairs said that appearances reveal character. Those with sharp eyebrows are rebellious by nature, fond of defying fate. Their destiny is unpredictable; either great wealth and honor or self-destruction.
I looked down at the tea leaves floating in my white porcelain cup, rising and falling, on the verge of being swallowed by the green water. "Do both the righteous and the unorthodox factions want him dead?"
"Naturally. The righteous and the unorthodox are born from the same root. Flesh and blood cannot be separated," Xue Wuyi said.
"I bet he won't live past tomorrow night."
"…Why?"
"I hear this Shi Qiufeng is a prodigy in lightness techniques.2 How could he die so easily?"
Xue Wuyi scoffed. "Even if he wasn't injured when he entered Chang'an, even if he’s a prodigy, what of it? Has this cutthroat Jianghu ever spared anyone?"
"There are always exceptions." I looked up at him. "What are the stakes?"
He answered swiftly, "The reward for the Minister of War I just killed."
I glanced at the heavy brocade bag on the table. "Deal."
Xue Wuyi drained the last of his plum wine and vaulted out the window. "Yan Jiu, you're going to lose this one."
I thought so too.
Most prodigies in this world either die from revealing their talents too soon, or they are buried by former prodigies.
Xue Wuyi belonged to the latter.
In his youth, he had been notorious for his bloodlust, making a name for himself and becoming an outcast in the Jianghu. At the height of his career, he was ambushed by both the righteous and unorthodox factions. He survived, but lost his edge.
This was the story of Xue Wuyi, the lone assassin "Blood Saber," a story that had circulated in the Jianghu for ten years.
Few knew that ten years ago, Xue Wuyi’s beloved, Su Qiuchi, was murdered by righteous disciples for refusing to forge forbidden weapons for their sect. Xue Wuyi sought justice, but the sect denied everything. In his rage, he drew his blade and slaughtered them all, which led to that infamous massacre that shook the Jianghu.
A respected martial arts elder stepped forward and with a single sentence, covered up all their sins—no one would believe a fledgling newcomer, no one would believe the righteous sects were capable of such vile deeds.
Later, Xue Wuyi said to me, "Yan Jiu, killing is truly something only a madman would do. Knowing there's no hope, yet still clinging to the delusion of overcoming the odds."
"Did that devastating defeat teach you that?" I asked.
He didn't answer, only lowered his head and gently caressed the saber Su Qiuchi had given him, as if caressing the grass-covered grave of a departed lover.
I couldn't tell if it was my imagination, but there always seemed to be countless things withering and dying in his eyes, though I couldn’t discern what they were—fierceness, bloodlust, or perhaps, his pride.
I still remembered Xue Wuyi in his youth—a pale, unruly, and arrogant young man, standing alone, walking alone, with a disdainful look in his eyes, the corners of his mouth turned up in a sneer, and eyes as sharp as his blade when he drew his sword.
After Xue Wuyi left, another guest arrived.
Butcher Fang wore coarse hemp clothing. The joints of his fingers were thick and calloused from years of wielding a cleaver. He sat at the table, nervously rubbing his hands. "Miss Yan, my son drowned in the river the other day. I'd like to trouble you to carve a tombstone for him."
Xue Wuyi and I both dealt in the business of the dead. He killed, and I buried the deceased's past, a tombstone carver. Where there are people, there are dead. The business of the dead—it never ends.
"The price of the tombstone is negotiable. He was my only son, I don't care much for the money, but…" Butcher Fang looked up at me, his face weary, but his back still ramrod straight. "I discussed the epitaph with my wife all last night, but we couldn't come to a decision. Miss Yan, could you give us some advice?"
I looked at him. "This is your son's final affair. It's best that you decide yourself."
Butcher Fang hesitated for a long time before finally making up his mind. "Besides his life story, add the phrase 'May he have peace in every lifetime.'"
An extremely ordinary, yet also extremely sincere wish.
Most of the guests who came to me for tombstones were like this. Whether they were the deceased's relatives, loved ones, or even enemies, after much hesitation about the epitaph, most settled on something simple—peace and joy, that was all.
“Death is one of the few things in this world that can inspire kindness,”
Master once said to me, in a rare moment of sobriety.
“Whether it’s a dead person, a dead thing, or even a dead city, they’re all the same. They are things that can evoke instant grief. It's just that we're in the business of the dead. A little more special, a little more valuable.”
When he said this, he wasn’t drinking for once. He held a carving knife, slowly etching the tombstone on his lap, his gaze calm and indifferent.
Master was an exceptional tombstone carver. It was said he was once dashing and carefree in his youth. Later, for some unknown reason, he began to wander, barely making ends meet with his carving skills. Along the way, he developed a drinking habit.
For as long as I could remember, he would drink himself into a stupor almost every night. I usually went to bed at 10 pm and got up again at 4 am, groping around in the dark to find the drunken old man, helping him to bed. As I left, I would hear him let out a loud belch, and then I would return to sleep in the dark. Every night, the same routine.
Once, I asked him, "Master, is wine really that good?"
Master seemed to have never considered this question. He paused for a moment before replying, "I can no longer taste the flavor of wine."
"Then why do you drink so much?"
He didn't answer, only patted my head, and after a while, said something inexplicable: "If there truly were such a thing as drunken oblivion in this world, how wonderful that would be."
I looked up and saw only a face prematurely aged and loose from years of drinking, and a pair of eyes as cloudy as cheap wine.
In the end, Master died because of wine.
One day, as he went to get drunk as usual, he died suddenly in the tavern. When I found him, his face was still flushed, a drunken smile lingered on his lips, but his body was already cold.
After Master died, I came to Chang'an. Not for any particular reason, only because people died here the most, and the quickest.
The rain fell endlessly through the night. Outside, the plums ripened and fell, wave after wave.
I’ve never liked the rain during the plum rain season. The dampness carried the stench of decay, reminding me of the pervasive smell of corpses I encountered as a child, when Master forgot me in a desolate graveyard.3
I slept soundly, without dreams, as usual.
In the twilight between sleep and waking, it seemed as if a drunken woman returning home late at night was softly singing a mournful tune outside my window:
“The kudzu vine grows thick, the creepers spread across the fields. My beloved is gone, with whom shall I dwell alone?
The kudzu grows among thorns, the creepers spread across the boundaries. My beloved is gone, with whom shall I rest alone?
My patterned pillow is bright, my embroidered quilt is tattered. My beloved is gone, with whom shall I greet the dawn alone?”4
1 This poem speaks to the ephemeral nature of life and the importance of cherishing moments of connection, particularly with the aid of wine.
2 轻功 (qīnggōng): Literally "light skill," refers to martial arts techniques that emphasize agility, acrobatics, and the ability to perform seemingly gravity-defying feats like running on walls and leaping across rooftops. A common trope in wuxia fiction.
3 乱坟岗 (luànféngǎng): A desolate graveyard, often used for burying the poor or unidentified. A term oftern used for evoking a sense of loneliness and abandonment.
4 This is a modified excerpt from the "Book of Odes" (诗经, Shījīng), a classic collection of Chinese poetry. The poem, titled "葛生" (Gěshēng), laments the loss of a loved one.
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