The greed of Zi Kun receded, leaving Wei Fang's radiance to grace the world again.
Yun Jieshi not found it in him to sleep. But then again, there had hardly been any time for him to do so. Only a rough two hours had passed since the old hag had tucked into herself and slept on the floor.
Of course, this also meant that this sight had haunted Yun Jieshi for two hours, eating away at his decently well-mannered conscience. He kept thinking about his father, Yun Muyang, who consistently tried to explain to him the principles of folk region since they came back to China. He emphasized familial piety in particular.
Family and community is very important, Jieshi. Among hundreds of virtues, familial piety comes first, he used to say.
The little monkey shivered as he remembered it.
To distract himself, he had considered the amount of time that had passed during the day and during the night.
Bei Jun had been right.
The days were short, but the nights were even shorter.
According to the little monkey's estimation, which was helped by what Hua Dongmei had said earlier, Wei Fang shone for about nine hours before allowing Zi Kun to take over. The night then persisted for approximately six hours before the cycle repeated. Yun Jieshi included an estimation of the time he had spent crossing the blizzard-punished world, and his little nap after the hag had stolen him from death's clutch.
A full day was roughly fifteen hours in the Southern Plateau. The little monkey could hardly fathom why though.
The angry weather didn't get that much better with Wei Fang's emergence. The howling of wind and pouring of snow continued outside the cabin walls. But nestled in the warmth conjured by the coals, the sound of both, vividly clear to Yun Jieshi's ears, was a little soothing.
If his pit was still biting at him, the little monkey likely wouldn't have dreamed of describing the cold that had nearly killed him as such, but things were different now. The whispers also mixed into the cold winds.
'Are they a little louder?' Yun Jieshi thought. He wasn't sure and he didn't bother with that.
Instead, he enjoyed the relief of not being weighed on by an adversary and an enemy once again. He allowed himself some liberties.
Ten minutes after Zi Kun had shaken the world, the hag woke up. She blinked furiously (though it wasn't quite obvious with her thick eyelids), scanned the cabin, and coughed. She got up and waddled towards the right corner where the remnants of the ingredients used in yesterday's tea were sprawled messily.
She completely ignored Yun Jieshi once again. He wasn't too offended by that, really. He watched her carefully, wondering what her morning routine looked like. She didn't seem like the type to change it just because she had guests.
She sat in the corner and drew a crude stone bowl over to her.
Yun Jieshi reeled at what she did next.
The hag tore a strip from her hemp cloak and grabbed a root from the remnants of what looked like a snow-white ginseng. She bit into its end, or at least Yun Jieshi thought she did. He couldn't have been sure that she had teeth.
She then wrote a few characters on the slip of hemp and held it over the bowl. An instant later, the characters were suffused in a pale blue glow and the slip turned moist. Clear water then poured from it into the bowl until it was full.
The hag squashed the slip in her hand and the water pouring from it ceased at once. She cast the slip somewhere in the corner, where similar strips could be seen, and grabbed a smaller bowl. She used it to scoop some of the water in the larger one and drank.
Yun Jieshi gaped.
'What in the world was that?'
Just as he wondered, the hunchbacked old woman brought over the smaller bowl with more water inside it. She gestured for him to drink.
Yun Jieshi didn't hesitate for long. He did feel a pinch of thirst along with his growing hunger. He didn't quite feel the mood for Shuang Fingers; one could imagine why.
But… was it just water that was produced by that hemp strip?
'It's just water,' the little Sage thought as he downed the contents of the bowl. He was a little… disappointed.
"Thank you," he said, and the hag took the bowl back to the corner. She then – as neatly as she probably could – stacked the bowls and scooped the remains of yesterday's tea next to them.
Yun Jieshi had stood, aiming to offer her a hand, when she strode to the door, turned to him, and said:
"Little Sage… Stay." It wasn't a suggestion.
"What?"
The little monkey received no reply. The old hag had already gone out and closed the door behind her.
He was left with a duck face, standing stiff on the spot.
"I'm just supposed to wait here? Where is she going?"
He hesitated to walk to the door and check.
Clicking his tongue, he cursed the cabin for not having windows.
"Maybe it's for my own safety. I should listen for now," he said to himself.
Since he didn't have much to do, Yun Jieshi began touching everything he didn't understand within the small cabin. He started with the odd frozen meats hanging from the wall.
"I never would have imagined there were animals here. Well, except for the thing that left those huge feathers." He sighed. "I guess that was stupid of me to think."
To his surprise, Yun Jieshi found that the hanging carcasses – some intact, others not quite – were actually blocking a wide opening in the wall to the cabin. A frightfully cold wind was blasting them, keeping them cold. However, the heat from the coals kept that chill away from the rest of the cabin, in addition to preventing the meat from losing its quality because of the excessive cooling.
It was intriguing indeed, but the names the old, sagely voice used to identify the frozen meats grabbed his attention more.
Yun Jieshi placed his hand on what looked like a giant chicken thigh.
"A frozen thigh extracted from a Great Blight Wind Pheasant," his wise informer identified.
Yun Jieshi touched what looked like the beheaded corpse of a small, skinny cow.
"The frozen corpse of a Mournless Cow."
He touched something that looked eerily similar to a human but with patches of hair and scales on the bone joints.
"The frozen corpse of a Quan Seeker."
Immensely creeped out by the last, Yun Jieshi decided to try the ornaments and vessels next.
The material used to make the cups and bowls seemed special, given how the old, sagely voice identified them. Apparently, they were made from a certain rock called the Hard Weeper.
The little teapot the old woman used yesterday was also made from a special type of porcelain that incorporated equally special types of glass and crystals. Yun Jieshi imagined that was why it could withstand the heat from the coals without cracking.
The next interesting thing noted by the old, sagely voice, were the coals. Yun Jieshi was happy that he had been right. The fire was indeed supernatural, but as it turned out, that was only because of the coals that produced it.
"Coals extracted from the Complete Dear Treasure, Da Ya's Bleeding Hearth," said the sagely voice.
Yun Jieshi raised a brow.
'Complete Dear Treasure? Da Ya? Is that a name?' he thought. 'Big Tooth?'
He wished he could have understood what a Complete Dear Treasure was, but he didn't bother considering the term and the name Da Ya any more than he needed to.
Moving from the coals, Yun Jieshi turned his eyes to the cloak nailed on the wall. He hesitated for a few seconds. It looked rather precious, and though it beckoned to him with its beauty…
'Do I have a right to touch it? I'm just a guest, after all. I shouldn't be going around touching stuff,' he thought.
Too late for that! Besides, it's not like you're stealing anything, countered the part of him that really wanted to know about the cloak.
Yun Jieshi surrendered to it immediately. He touched the cloak expectantly.
"…"
The old sagely voice said nothing.
Yun Jieshi was taken aback. He adjusted the way he held the cloak.
Still, there was nothing.
"What?" This had never happened before. Yun Jieshi had already gotten used to the idea that the voice in his head was infallible. There was nothing it couldn't name…except for this, apparently.
Frowning, Yun Jieshi tried to think of why this was the case. Was the cloak something too profound then? It certainly looked the part, what with its unusually beautiful weave. Even by Earth's standards, it was a work of art only possible in fiction. In fact, it was beyond Earth's standards altogether.
'Maybe I can persuade that old woman to tell me more about it when she returns,' the little monkey thought before shaking his head. 'I'll probably have to get a name out of her first.'
After considering the cloak for a few more minutes, Yun Jieshi once again struggled against the temptation of going outside. He was left with nothing to do now, after all. He only lasted for an hour before convincing himself that a little peek wouldn't hurt. Also…
'With shelter, I can count on, I can track the source of that nearest golden light. I might just be able to see it from here if I take a look,' he thought, adding to the fuel of justification.
And thus, the little monkey rushed towards the door, his ruan in hand, just in case. He took a deep breath before pushing the door. Mounds of snow blocked its path, but it wasn't too difficult to open it. Yun Jieshi hadn't hoped to open it wide anyway. He only slipped half of his torso outside.
The brutish cold and the pelting snow walloped him at once.
…But there was also something else. Two things, in fact.
Both beckoned to Yun Jieshi's senses.
One was very loud, at least to Yun Jieshi's ears.
The other was very bright, at least to the little monkey's eyes.
Yun Jieshi turned to his right, and his eyes opened wide.
The snow avoided a little urn right next to the door. The little thing expelled a vicious golden light, but to the little monkey, it wasn't glaring at all. It was enticing.
The loud whispers that came from the little urn were also quite pleasant.