He lifted his face, the firelight casting sharp contrasts of light and shadow across his features. His peach-blossom eyes reflected two flickering flames, and the tear-shaped mole at the corner of his eye glittered like a black obsidian lit by the fire.
He curved his lips into a smile. “I’m not afraid of a sandstorm, so why would I be afraid of you?”
Then he pulled the blanket tighter around himself, shifted into a more comfortable position against the rock wall, and tilted his head back to continue stargazing. After a few breaths, he added lightly, “Anyway, you’ll stand in front of me. You did a good job blocking. Keep it up.”
Que Zhi lowered his head and took the curved blade back in his hand.
The steel reflected his eyes—and in them was not the creed of the dying, not the weariness of resignation, but something more certain than the edge of a knife.
He said to himself: Fine. I’ll keep it up.
Night deepened. The fire gradually dimmed, and after the saxaul wood burned out, it left behind a pile of pure white ash. Occasionally, a gust of wind stirred the surface of the ashes, revealing the dark red embers still smoldering beneath.
Xi Yu lay wrapped in his blanket at the base of a wind-eroded rock. The stone wall above him tilted slightly, blocking out half the sky. He turned on his side and looked into the distance—the hoodoo rocks stood in silent formation under the starlight, like ancient sentinels of this land.
He closed his eyes and listened to the wind passing through the holes in the weathered rocks, producing a low, drawn-out moan. It was a song these stones had been singing for tens of thousands of years.
Xi Yu heard Que Zhi turn over on the opposite side, the soft clink of the curved blade being set down on stone, and the occasional tiny crackle from the dying embers of the campfire.
These sounds were all very faint, but in his ears, they were more real than the water-clock drips in the cold palace, more beautiful than the silk-and-bamboo music within the palace walls.
He reached into the blanket and pulled out the dagger, holding it in his hand. The Western Regions carvings on the leather sheath had grown smoother and smoother from his touch—that was Que Zhi’s name. Though he couldn’t read it, he knew it was his name.
He pressed the dagger against his chest, moved his lips, and said something to himself.
His voice was too soft—carried away by the wind before even he could hear it clearly.
The next morning, Xi Yu woke first. The fire had long gone cold, and a scrap of cloth that Que Zhi had used to wipe his curved blade the night before still stuck out of the ashes, its edges blackened and curled where the flames had licked it.
Que Zhi was still asleep, leaning against the rock, his breathing long and even. A stubble of dark beard had sprouted on his chin. His curved blade rested on his knee, his fingers still resting at the edge of the hilt. He hadn’t gotten up to start the fire as he had in previous days—the exhaustion from last night’s sandstorm trek, compounded by the wound on his arm, had made him sleep more heavily than usual.
Xi Yu crept quietly to his feet and walked over to his camel, retrieving a small cloth pouch. Then he went to the nearest hoodoo rock—one with a relatively flat surface, about shoulder-height to him.
He glanced back at Que Zhi—still asleep. The camel let out a snort, conveniently masking the faint scraping sound against the rock.
Xi Yu pulled a sharp-edged stone fragment from the pouch, stood on tiptoe, and carved a horizontal line into the rock surface with effort. The stone was hard, and he struggled—the sharp point slipped across the surface several times, leaving a few crooked white scratches, and stone dust showered down onto his sleeves.
He stopped to shake out his aching wrist, found a new angle, and finally managed to carve a clean, distinct horizontal line.
That single line stood alone on the rock face, facing the early morning light rising in the east. The mark was fresh, with unbrushed stone powder still clinging to its edges—as if the rock itself had opened one eye.
Xi Yu stepped back two paces, surveyed his work, and dusted the stone powder off his hands with satisfaction. He was about to turn and go back when his peripheral vision caught something on a larger rock to his left—at the base of that rock, there were several marks that had been carved by human hands.
He crouched down and leaned in for a closer look.
The marks were very old, worn blurry by wind and sand, their edges softened—but the shapes were still discernible. They were strokes of script, not Chinese characters, in the same script as the carving on the dagger’s leather sheath.
There was more than one line.
He made out several horizontal and vertical strokes among them, identical in outline to the one on the dagger.
His finger traced along the old marks, his fingertip feeling the rough, sand-polished texture of the rock. The characters carved into this rock and the ones on the dagger were from the same hand.
He couldn’t read this script, but he recognized the direction of the blade—the habit of pulling slightly left at the end of each stroke, so that every vertical line ended with a faint hook.
Que Zhi had been here before. A long time ago. He had carved words into this rock—with the same hand that had carved the name on the dagger for me.
He pulled his fingertip back from the old marks, stood up, and looked down at his hand—his fingertip was dusted with iron-gray stone powder, the same texture as the powder that had fallen when he carved his own horizontal line. Only this one was fresh, while the other had been worn by wind and sand for who knows how many years.
He turned around.
Que Zhi was already awake, sitting by the ashes of the dead fire, watching him.
Their eyes met in the morning light—Que Zhi’s face was mostly obscured by the rock wall, but the dawn light spilled up from his feet, tracing a golden edge along the stone and illuminating his amber eyes until they gleamed.
Xi Yu instinctively hid his stone-dusted hand behind his back—but he stopped mid-motion. Because he saw that Que Zhi’s gaze had already fallen on the base of the rock beside him—on those old carvings.
Que Zhi had seen the words. Then he lifted his eyes, shifting his gaze from the old marks to Xi Yu’s face, from those worn characters to Xi Yu’s slightly widened peach-blossom eyes, to his fingertips still dusted with stone powder.
He knew Xi Yu had found them.
Something heavy stirred in his gaze—like a spring buried for years deep in the Gobi, suddenly unearthed, water seeping upward in silence.
Then he looked away, stood up, walked to his camel, dipped a cloth into half a ladle of water from the waterskin, wrung it dry, and handed it to Xi Yu. “Your hands are dirty. Wipe them.”
His voice was still that flat.
But when Xi Yu took the cloth, his fingertips accidentally brushed against Que Zhi’s fingers.
That hand was burning hot.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say something—to say “You carved these,” to say “You’ve been here before,” to say “Your blade always leans left at the end.”
But Que Zhi had already turned away, bending down to return the waterskin to the camel saddle, his back to Xi Yu, leaving only the nape of his neck with its trailing ends of hair.
Xi Yu watched his back—watched him loop the waterskin’s leather cord twice and pull it taut, his knuckles white from the strain, the knot tied into a deadlock yet he kept pulling, not stopping.
Xi Yu lowered his head and wiped his fingers with the cloth, one by one, very slowly, cleaning the stone powder from his fingertips. The new horizontal line he’d carved gleamed small and tiny in the morning light, insignificant next to the worn old marks beside it.
But he felt that one day, this rock would be completely covered with his carvings.
He rubbed the last bit of stone powder into his palm, clenched the cloth in his fist, and ran toward Que Zhi.
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