The First Lesson

The cotton wads that had been stuffed deep in his ears for so long were finally pulled out. With a muffled whump, a torrent of sounds flooded into Li Huowang’s ears. The murmurs from the neighboring guest room. The hawkers shouting outside the window. Even the beating of his own heart was now unbearably clear and loud. Li Huowang winced, squeezing his eyes shut as he fought to separate the noise. Almost a full incense-stick’s worth of time passed before he finally managed to pick out, from the chaotic jumble, the Black Tai Sui’s distinctive, halting voice. "I’m talking to you! Can you hear me?!" Li Huowang shouted at the top of his lungs, straining to be heard over the din. Soon enough, the Black Tai Sui answered. But it wasn’t the terrifying whispers, or the dark, alien languages. It was still just simple, barely connected words. "Open… mouth… sky… Wu…" "What the hell are you saying?! Can you understand me or not?! If I die, you die too! Let’s talk!!" This thing could crawl out of his nose or his throat whenever it wanted. He couldn’t just ignore it. He had to find a solution. At first, he’d tried to negotiate. Whatever its goal was, it could be discussed. But reality didn’t follow his script. In response to his questions, the Black Tai Sui only answered with those same simple syllables. Hearing those overly simplistic, single-syllable sounds, Li Huowang was struck by the impression that he was talking to a child just learning to babble. "A child? A child?!" A thought suddenly clicked. He scrambled out of bed, called for the innkeeper to bring him paper and ink, and began to write down the Black Tai Sui’s words, enduring the ever-louder noise. "Open… wood. Water. Fire. Field. Script…" One by one, the simple, stroke-simple characters were written on the paper. Looking at the sequence, at these familiar words, a flash of understanding lit up Li Huowang’s eyes. "I knew its words sounded familiar. It can only say what I taught Xiucai earlier!" The truth was clear. That’s why the Black Tai Sui only used these simple-sounding words—because those were all it knew! It had only managed to overhear and learn a few things while Li Huowang was teaching the scholar. "The Black Tai Sui can’t even speak. How am I supposed to communicate with it?" Li Huowang stuffed the cotton back into his ears and began pacing the room with his hands behind his back. He went through various ideas, but in the end, he dismissed them all. It was inside his belly now. To suppress the hallucinations, he couldn’t drive it away. The only way to solve this problem was to think of something else. After much deliberation, he found he could only resort to the clumsy method: teach the Black Tai Sui to read and speak. Once it could talk, he could communicate with it. Its appearance during the last fight with the Zuowandao had been a complete surprise. If he could get it to understand him, it might even be usable as a kind of hidden weapon. He had no idea how long it would take to teach a blob of tentacles to speak, but he knew it wouldn’t be short. Which made it the clumsy way. "Alright. If I have to teach, I’ll teach. It’s better than having no plan at all." Li Huowang sat down with a sigh and spread out a fresh sheet of pale yellow paper. He knew that teaching the Black Tai Sui to speak was not going to be a short-term task. He could take it slow. Compared to that, he had other, more important matters to attend to. He needed to go collect his payment from the Big-Headed Doll. This was the first job he’d taken on from the Supervisory Heavenly Office. Feeling that his wounds had mostly healed, Li Huowang told the others to pack up and get moving. No amount of persuading could change his mind this time. Bai Lingmiao argued with him for a bit, but in the end, Li Huowang compromised. He bought a horse-drawn cart, and during the journey, he would just lie in it. After a long, bumpy ride, when Li Huowang finally arrived back at the bustling, vibrant city of Yinling, the wound on his chest had completely healed. But the missing eye and the two broken ribs hadn’t grown back. For some reason, compared to flesh, skin, and nails, his bones and eyeballs healed very slowly. "Brother Li, according to this map, we don’t have to enter the city. Taking this side road is faster. Bandmaster Lü’s troupe performs wherever they go, so maybe they haven’t even caught up yet," Gouwa suggested, pointing at a path as they stood at the city gate. "Less talk. We’re going into the city. Same inn as before. Go book the rooms." Li Huowang, of course, wasn’t going to tell this big mouth that he was here to collect his pay from the Supervisory Heavenly Office. Wasn’t this the whole reason he’d gone through all that hardship? Li Huowang had figured that if the other party didn’t come, he’d just stay a few more nights. But it was clear that the other party had eyes all over Yinling. In the second watch of the night, when Li Huowang arrived at the stables, the Big-Headed Doll was already waiting, sitting on a pile of horse fodder, holding a yellow cloth sack. Before Li Huowang could speak, the Big-Headed Doll flipped off the fodder and walked up to him. His tone was noticeably warmer than before. "Heh. I have to say, you’ve got some real skill, kid. You did a fine job at Gan Yuan Village. Not a single one of them died." Hearing this, the stone that had been weighing on Li Huowang’s heart finally dropped. The test was over. He had officially joined the Supervisory Heavenly Office. "Oh, it was nothing. I was just lucky." "Ai, luck is a kind of skill too. Don’t sell yourself short, kid. By the way, are you hurt? If you have any injuries, internal or external, the Office has people who can fix you up." Li Huowang shook his head. The Big-Headed Doll grabbed the doll mask on his head and pulled it off. Li Huowang saw that underneath the mask was an exceptionally kind, plump face. His beady little eyes blinked in a very amusing way. This smiling, rotund middle-aged man clasped his hands together and gave Li Huowang a polite salute, a wide grin on his face. "My apologies, but I had to test you out and get a clear picture before I could bring you into the Office." He reached into his sleeve and pulled out five Life Span Pills, still wrapped in yellow talismans. "Here. These are the ones you gave me. I’m returning them now." "Senior, what is this? Once a gift is given, it can’t be taken back." Li Huowang moved to push them back. "Take them. Take them first, and hear me out." The man forced the pills into Li Huowang’s hands and then spoke slowly. "You know, since I’m the one who brought you in, if anything were to happen to you in the future, it would cause me trouble. This was like a security deposit. But since you truly want to join the Supervisory Heavenly Office, we don’t need the deposit anymore, right?" The fat man spoke with his perpetual smile, making it very hard to refuse. "I’m a few years older than you. My full name is Tuoba Danqing. Brother Erjiu, if you don’t mind, you can call me Brother Tuoba." This was the first time someone had willingly told Li Huowang their surname. The implication was clear. A wave of emotion washed over Li Huowang as he bowed respectfully. "Thank you, Brother Tuoba." "Ai, consider this my congratulatory gift. From now on, we’re all family. I wish Brother Erjiu a bright and prosperous future!" Li Huowang looked at the Life Span Pill in his hand, feeling a warmth spread through his chest. It wasn’t the value of the pill that mattered, but the man’s attitude. Ever since he crawled out of Qingfeng Temple, aside from that dead abbess, everyone else he’d met was either trying to kill him or trick him. Not a moment’s peace. Li Huowang wasn’t naive. Of course, he knew this was probably just an act. But after all this time, he hadn’t even gotten a fake display of goodwill. Tuoba Danqing reached out and took Li Huowang by the arm, leading him out of the stables. "Come, come, Brother. This isn’t the place to talk. Let’s find somewhere more comfortable."