He could finally start a fire.
Not the kind that had set the cold palace ablaze with a single flint spark—but here, in a stone hut after a blizzard, for one person, to roast a piece of hardtack that could be eaten.
One side of that hardtack had been burnt black. Que Zhi still finished the whole thing, not even wasting the charred crumbs.
After Xi Yu had eaten his fill and drunk his water, he announced: “From now on, you don’t have to get my rations for me in the morning.”
Que Zhi stood by the doorway, buckling his curved saber back onto his belt, and asked casually: “How long is ‘from now on’?”
“A long time. Starting tomorrow, probably.” He paused. “Or maybe next year. Depends on my mood. Anyway, the one I roasted today wasn’t very good—I still need more practice.”
Xi Yu set the stick down on the stone, brushed the charcoal dust off his hands, and walked out of the stone hut wrapped in the heavy cloak. Standing at the entrance, he asked seriously: “So what are we eating tomorrow?”
Que Zhi swallowed the words that were already at the back of his throat and replaced them with: “Flatbread.”
“And?”
“Mutton.”
“Anything else?”
“…Dried grapes.”
“You said we ran out of dried grapes last time.”
“We’ll buy more when we reach the grasslands.” Que Zhi walked out of the stone hut and untied the camel’s reins, adding, “A few extra bags. So you won’t complain again about not getting any dried grapes.”
—
Once they passed the pass and headed downhill, the snow gradually thinned. After half a day’s travel, it disappeared entirely, replaced by grass pushing up through cracks in the rocks.
At first, it appeared in scattered clumps—gray-green, hugging the ground, as if testing whether spring had truly arrived. Then more and more of it appeared, forming small patches of meadow dotted with nameless wildflowers—yellow and white, tiny blooms that the camel’s hooves knocked askew only to spring back up.
As the altitude dropped, the air changed too. No longer the dry harshness of the Gobi, no longer the biting cold of the snow mountains—it was a gentle, warm wind, carrying the scent of grass and earth, blowing in from the mouth of the valley and brushing softly against their faces.
Xi Yu sat atop his camel, pushing his hat brim back, squinting at the valley growing wider and wider ahead.
The beacon tower was already too far to see. The snow line had retreated to the ridges behind them. The Gobi lay even farther away, hidden beyond layer upon layer of mountains.
Ahead was the grassland. Que Zhi had said the grassland had a hundred sheep and blue flowers.
He no longer needed a “direction”—because someone was ahead of him.
—
At dusk, they made camp on a relatively gentle grassy slope.
There were no wind-eroded rocks, no low shelters—just a flat stretch of meadow and the faint sound of a stream in the distance. Que Zhi said they’d see herders not far ahead, but tonight they’d stay here.
After washing up in the stream, Xi Yu spread out his blanket, knelt down on it, and looked up at the sky.
The sky over the grassland felt lower than over the Gobi, warmer than over the snowy peaks—but the stars were just as many. The Milky Way stretched from the eastern horizon all the way to the western ridge, hanging so low it seemed like he could reach up and scoop a handful of stars.
Que Zhi leaned back against the saddle beside him, looking up at the stars too.
He said, “Northern Shuo has a saying too. When people die, they become stars—but not in the sky. On the ground. The herders of the grasslands believe that the dead become wildflowers, blooming by the roadside. Even if they’re trampled in the spring, they stand back up the next year. That’s why the people of Shuo never pick wildflowers.”
“Then why did you say before that there were blue flowers by the snowmelt and you’d take me to see them?”
“Looking is fine. Just don’t pick them.”
A pause. “…Picking them is fine too.”
“Then I still prefer your version. Becoming a flower is better. Becoming a star—that’s too far away.”
Xi Yu reached into his sleeve and touched the dagger.
The leather sheath had been warmed by his body heat, the Western-region inscription still clear beneath his fingertips.
He still hadn’t asked Que Zhi what that line meant—maybe he no longer needed to. Some things remain the same whether spoken aloud or not.
Xi Yu let go of the dagger and stretched his fingers toward the sky, drawing a horizontal line through the air, as if marking a scale for some star up there.
“Finished carving. Today’s line.”
Que Zhi turned his head, pulled the thin blanket from under the saddle, folded it twice, and tucked it beneath Xi Yu’s blanket.
“The grass is damp at night. Use this.”
“You give me your blanket—won’t you be cold tonight?”
“Not cold.” Que Zhi leaned back against the saddle. “Watch your stars. Tomorrow morning, before you wake, I’ll take it back. You won’t even notice.”
“What if I wake up in the middle of the night?”
“Then you wake up. And when you do, I’ll tell you—I put a blanket under you.”
He said it so casually, as if tucking a blanket under someone was no different from feeding a camel—something that happened every day, not worth making a fuss over.
Xi Yu lay gazing up at the Milky Way. The grassland wind blew stray strands of hair into the corner of his mouth. He blew them away gently, suppressing the tiny tremor in his voice: “Que Zhi. I’ve never seen stars like this before. Don’t forget the things you promised.”
“What did I promise?” Que Zhi looked quietly at the person beside him.
“You said we’d see the snowy mountains—we did. You said we’d cross them—we made it halfway before you hurt your leg. You said we’d see the grasslands—they’re right ahead. And the blue flowers—you said we’d only look, not pick. And you said—’from now on.’”
“You said from now on you’d take me to see the blue flowers. You said you’d buy me dried grapes. You said ‘let’s go’ so many times—and every time, you walked ahead of me. You said no one in Northern Shuo would care where I came from. You said—when I’m cold, you’re not.”
Xi Yu counted out each of these “from now ons,” one by one, his voice soft, his pace slow—like he was reading from a list he’d been preparing for a long time.
He knew what he was saying. He was just telling this person—I remember every word you said, including the ones you never spoke aloud.
His heart had started racing the moment he heard the word “letter,” and it was still racing. But he wasn’t running anymore.
He was here, on the edge of this grassland only a few days’ journey from Que Zhi’s homeland, paying back eighteen years’ worth of trust in his own way, slowly.
Que Zhi sat up and turned to face him. His gray-blue eyes, under the starlight, were so pale they seemed to hold the reflection of the entire Milky Way.
He reached out and rubbed a smudge of dried charcoal ash from Xi Yu’s cheek with his rough thumb—left over from that morning’s fire, carried all day without Xi Yu even realizing it.
“Didn’t forget. Remember them all.” He chose a spot on the outer side of the blanket—close enough, yet not too close, just enough to block the wind from that direction.
“Sleep.”
Xi Yu pulled the blanket tighter and buried his face in the collar of the heavy cloak. The curve of his smile was hidden by the wool.
—
He woke in the middle of the night, frozen.
Not from cold—from dew. A fine layer of moisture had condensed on the grass blades, glittering under the starlight. The surface of his blanket had already grown damp, and the hem of his heavy cloak was misted over. The tip of his nose was red from the chill.
He curled his shoulders, considering whether to put his bundle on top of the blanket to keep out the damp, when he heard a sound.
Not wind. Not the stream. Footsteps.
Light and steady, step by step, pressing into the dew-wet grass with the faintest rustle.
Then a shadow fell over him—his own heavy cloak. No—it was Que Zhi’s.
The man lifted one corner of the cloak wrapped around him, took off his own, folded it over the top, and sat down beside him, placing his curved saber across his knees.
He didn’t ask, “You’re awake?” He just reached out and pinched the edge of Xi Yu’s blanket, felt that it was already damp, and repositioned his own cloak—half tucked underneath Xi Yu to block the moisture, the other half draped over the top to weigh down the corners. Then he returned to his spot and rested his saber on his knees again, as if he’d just been on a routine patrol.
After that, he rested his hand on the saber and looked into the distance.
In the distance, layer upon layer of mountain ridges rose, the snow line gleaming cold white in the moonlight. But the direction he was looking—was north.
Xi Yu lifted his head from the blanket, half his face still buried in the collar of the cloak. “Que Zhi. That tune you hummed in that broken-down hut last night—hum it again.”
Silence. Then the tune rose again.
Still low, still soft, wordless—just a long melody flowing from the depths of his throat.
On this grassland beneath the stars, between the stream and the night wind, this rough, silent man who would never speak first used the clumsiest way to gather all the stars and the vast grassland into a single tune, and gently pushed it toward him.
Xi Yu buried his face in the overlapping collars of the two cloaks, listening to the very last note.
When it faded into the sound of the stream, he said, “That was beautiful.” Then he closed his eyes.
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