The Nuo Opera

The border pass of Siqi came into view sooner than expected.

It was both surprising and entirely predictable—the pass was blocked by government troops, apparently on the lookout for spies. The entire fortress was heavily guarded, and there was scarcely a smile to be found on anyone entering.

With the aid of silver, however, both groups slipped through without issue.

Beyond Siqi, with its rivers and lakes, everything turned barren. Trees thinned out, gradually swallowed by the Gobi.

By the night of the tenth day, there was not a single tree in sight.

The deeper they went, the more desolate it became. Li Huowang had already guessed—this was probably what Later Shu truly looked like.

"Hoo—" Zhao Wu, keeping watch, breathed out a plume of white mist.

He rubbed his numb, frozen hands together and kept blowing warm air onto them. It was almost summer—it shouldn't have been this cold. But out here in the wilderness, there wasn't even a rock to block the wind, and without firewood to build a fire, the cold was brutal.

He glanced back. By the cart, Li Huowang was asleep with Bai Lingmiao in his arms. Deep envy flickered in Zhao Wu's eyes.

He looked down at his own frail body, and shame filled his gaze.

He wanted a wife too. But a waste of a man like him—no woman would ever want him.

He sucked in a lungful of dry, cold air to dull his drowsiness, then forced himself alert, practicing characters with a pebble on the ground.

Some of them were characters Li-shixiong had taught him. The rest he'd pestered Gao Zhijian into teaching him.

I will learn to read, Zhao Wu thought, his eyes fierce with determination. I will.

He would prove to his father that he was no good-for-nothing.

If he learned to read, he could earn a living writing letters for others, just like the blind fortune-tellers at the temple fairs.

And if he learned to read, and then studied enough, maybe he could even sit for the imperial exams and become a great official!

Then... Just as he was lost in his fantasy, he suddenly felt someone behind him.

The sudden change sent a chill down Zhao Wu's spine.

His body began to tremble uncontrollably. Bracing himself, he was about to shout a warning to the others when a hand with no fingernails clamped over his mouth. "Don't make a sound—it's me!"

Li Huowang's voice instantly relaxed Zhao Wu.

He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Li-shixiong, what's wrong?"

His eyes swept the surroundings. There was nothing but the pitch-black Gobi.

"Shh—something's creeping in. Let me test whether it's human first."

Staring into a fixed patch of darkness, Li Huowang cleared his throat and suddenly shouted toward it: "Three elders, four youths, lean on the way—a dragon stirs the sea, comes out to play. What school's new tricks have come today?"

Li Huowang's voice traveled far across the open plain, and it woke the others.

"Does the spring canon open or not?" A voice, even raspier than Li Huowang's, came back from a distance.

"The spring opens!"

"Shoulder-to-shoulder, what's your vine?"

Li Huowang made a ritual gesture toward the voice. "A jeweled pagoda tower! Face to the green stockade, back to the sand! The hand-copier vine!"

"So it's Daoist Li. Passing through, or staying?"

"Just passing through, storekeeper. What's your honorable surname?"

After these words, there was no further reply.

They waited until the first light of dawn. Only then did Li Huowang realize the man was long gone.

"The code talk that Chief Zhao taught me—didn't expect to use it so soon," Li Huowang murmured to himself.

The night before, though he had sensed the man's approach, he couldn't tell if it was one person or a whole group.

If a few words exchanged could settle the conflict, that was the best outcome.

After all, you never knew what hidden tricks bandits of unknown origin might have up their sleeves.

When Lü Zhuangyuan learned of the night's close call, he was shaken.

"Well, damn. We've only been here a hot minute and we're already getting highwaymen. Turns out Later Shu isn't peaceful either."

Li Huowang picked up his odds and ends and sat up.

"Peaceful or not, we're just passing through. Let's move. We push hard today, we should make it to a town by nightfall."

The road after that was uneventful. The land was still barren, but at least there were no more bandits.

Just as Lü Zhuangyuan was showering Li Huowang with flattery, they finally saw signs of human habitation.

"Dad, why do those horses look so weird? Why are there two humps on their backs?" Lü Xiucai asked.

"Are you stupid? Those are camels!"

Jingle-jingle— Camel bells rang steadily as a caravan of camels trod the hard road, moving slowly forward.

Li Huowang glanced at the camel driver. The man's face was covered, likely to keep out the sand and wind.

The camels seemed to be a signal. Soon, more and more people began to gather.

Finally, Li Huowang's group reached the first town in Later Shu before dusk.

The moment they stepped into town, Li Huowang noticed the difference from Siqi. Both the buildings and the clothing were rougher, more rugged.

Maybe it was to keep out the sand and wind, but a lot of the townspeople had their faces covered.

That had its advantages, though. The other martial brothers in their veiled black hats no longer stood out so much.

"Let's go. Find an inn and settle in. We've been on the road for over ten days—everyone needs a break."

The travel-worn group all showed looks of relief.

Days without fire or running water were no way to live.

They joined the flow of people and merged into the town's current.

Nearby stalls filled the air with the scent of roasting meat and noodle soup, teasing everyone's appetites.

As they walked, they came to an open space that seemed to be the town's center.

The sound of drums and gongs drew everyone's attention, and they turned toward the crowd.

"So this is Nuo opera?" Li Huowang murmured, watching the three figures leaping and twisting in the crowd.

Shaking heads, twisting bodies, crouching tremors, circling wrists, stamping feet, jumping and bounding.

The three men, their heads wrapped in red cloth and wearing grotesque wooden masks, moved in bizarre, impossible-looking postures.

Accompanying these strange dances were drums and gongs in chaotic, arrhythmic patterns.

And every so often, an instrument that sounded like a horn joined in.

The sound that came from the black ox-horn was like a woman's ghostly wail.

Drums, gongs, ghostly cries, and those twisted dances—the more Li Huowang watched, the more uncomfortable he felt.

But the people around him didn't seem to mind. They sat there, utterly captivated, watching with rapt attention.

"What the hell is this? You call this opera?" Lü Zhuangyuan, a fellow performer, commented with a sneer of contempt.

The moment he spoke, the three dancers writhed even more violently.

As they writhed, sharp white fangs began to grow from the mouths of their wooden masks, like roots sprouting from soil. Not one or two—a full sixteen of them.

Sixteen fangs trembled in time with their Nuo dance, clicking and clattering against the rhythm of the drums and gongs.

"Is that... the 'teeth-manipulation' skill?"

These three were very skilled at it. Watching the white fangs slide in and out of their mouths, Li Huowang almost believed they had really grown there.