Enduring the Winter

Seven.

The second floor was completely dark. While heading up, she could feel layers upon layers of chilliness that seeped into her bones from the air.

“This doctor really likes you.” When she stepped onto the last step, the person sitting behind a bamboo hanging screen suddenly spoke, his voice full of ridicule, “It’s only a pity…” His voice seemed neither masculine or feminine. When people heard it, they became cold from the inside out.

The sunshine outside the window fell through the bamboo curtains at the window, creating an orderly and distinct combination of shadow and light on her body. Ren Dong deferentially knelt and the light on her body followed her up and down motions, becoming bent.

“This one pays her respects to Sect Leader.”

“Mm, how strange, you [1] still remember you are one of the Shaman Sect.”

A burst of frigidness travelled along Ren Dong’s back as she looked down without a word.

“Just awhile ago, that doctor asked me if he could have you. I have agreed.” He spoke slowly, but this just made people feel as if they were receiving death by a thousand cuts. “However, you should also know that no one can walk out of the Shaman Sect alive.”

Ren Dong’s long eyelashes covered up all of her emotions in her eyes, making her look like a lifeless puppet.

“As per the doctor’s request to save you, I have agreed with him and allowed you to go. However… ”

Light suddenly burst through a crack in the bamboo curtains and broke through the black smoke that was emitted from the incense burner in the middle of the room, directly pointing at the space between Ren Dong’s eyebrows.

Ren Dong let out a smothered groan as her limbs suddenly went powerless and she limply lay on the floor. Following this, bursts of tightening pain, that felt like needles, stemmed from her chest, becoming increasingly intense.

“I have just activated the poison in your body. In the future, the gu insects will devour your heart every night. If you complete your last mission, I will give you the antidote, and give you your freedom.”

Ren Dong thought, How nice would it be if she could gouge out her own heart at this moment? She wouldn’t have to feel the pain of the gu, she wouldn’t’ have to be forced to do something against her heart, she wouldn’t have to feel these shackles around her freedom, as they manipulated her.

“Just now, when that doctor helped me feel my pulse, he saw what I looked like. Since things have come to this, I cannot let him live. I know he is not an extraordinary person. If other people want to kill him, it will not be easy. But since he clings to you so tightly, he will not put up his guard against you. For these types of people, the heart is their weakest point. Kill him and bring me his head.”

Ren Dong’s world solely consisted of the voice that was indistinctly yin or yang [2].The pain in her heart gradually vanished. Ren Dong lifted her head to look outside the window. She knew the man that looked like a child would be probably be waiting for her, extremely anxious.

The sunlight outside of the window fell onto Ren Dong’s eyelashes and pierced her eyes, making her eyes sting for a second.

She closed her eyes, her voice hoarse and unrecognizable.

[1] The Sect Leader calls Ren Dong 尚 (shang). As stated in the last footnote from the previous chapter, there is something called a Left and Right Protector. I think the Shaman Sect has its origins partly in Buddhism or something because “shang” is also the word that you use for the phrase “monk”. So instead of just calling Ren Dong “you”, the Sect Leader is really addressing her as someone in the sect.

[2] In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang describes how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. Yin and yang is a philosophy, not just a symbol or an idea. In the passage, Ren Dong is referring to how the Sect Leader’s voice is neither male or female.