They had been traveling across the grassland for two days. The trade route gradually widened and flattened, and the caravans they encountered grew more frequent.
Sometimes they’d run into three or four groups in a single day—people on horseback or leading camels, laden with silk, tea, salt, and dried fruit, traveling from west to east and east to west.
Xi Yu noticed that his Central Plains features were nothing unusual here—the trade route was full of every kind of face: blue-eyed Persian merchants, turbaned Turkic horse traders, Khotanese monks speaking fluent Han Chinese. His face, mixed in among them, was no longer so conspicuous.
He pushed his hat brim higher and stopped remembering to keep his face hidden.
This was the fourth day.
In the afternoon, a blurry gray outline suddenly emerged on the horizon ahead, growing larger with each step of the camels—a city wall.
Not tall, built of rammed earth, pitted and scarred by wind and sand. The city gate had no proper watchtower, only a faded flag flapping noisily in the grassland wind.
This was the first city on the border of Northern Shuo territory.
“Liangzhou,” Que Zhi said, his voice carrying a hint of relaxation that Xi Yu hadn’t quite heard before—not the relief of a traveler arriving at a relay station, but the feeling of someone who’d been away too long finally stepping onto familiar ground.
Xi Yu sat atop his camel, sizing up the city from half a li away.
A few fruit vendors squatted at the base of the city wall. At the gate, caravans waited in line to pay taxes and enter, camels and horses crowded together, copper bells on their harnesses jingling in a chaotic chorus. The air was thick with the mingled scents of hay, spices, roasted meat, and a faint, elusive sweetness of fruit.
“There are melons in Liangzhou,” he said, turning to look at Que Zhi.
“I can smell them.”
Que Zhi shot him a glance, said nothing, and simply guided his camel toward the city gate, heading straight for the row of vendors at the base of the wall.
The stall was small—a piece of coarse cloth spread on the ground, piled with a dozen or so yellow-green melons. They weren’t large, slightly longer than the fragrant melons of the Central Plains, their rinds covered in fine net-like patterns.
The melon seller was an old woman with dark, weathered skin, wrapped in a faded blue headscarf. She called out to them in her local dialect as they approached.
Xi Yu didn’t understand a word, but he could see her holding up a melon with her rough palm, tapping its rind with the back of a knife—a crisp, clear sound.
That sound, in this arid borderland afternoon, was especially pleasing—like a language that belonged only to oases.
Que Zhi crouched down and exchanged a few words with the old woman in the local dialect.
Xi Yu stood beside him, not understanding a single syllable. But he noticed that Que Zhi’s voice sounded different just now—more relaxed, faster, with occasional rolled syllables that turned over in his throat before coming out, completely unlike his Han Chinese.
His Han Chinese was clean, clipped, each word articulated separately. But when he spoke the dialect, it flowed like a river over stones—with rhythm, with warmth.
The old woman picked out a melon and handed it to Que Zhi. He took it, weighed it in his hand, then put it back and chose another one himself.
He was serious about choosing—lifting the melon to the light to inspect its color, pressing his thumb against the blossom end, bringing it close to smell it, and only then nodding and paying.
Xi Yu crouched beside him, watching him pay, and suddenly remembered that day at the inn entrance in that border town, when he’d tossed the bun into his arms.
Back then, he’d paid the same way—not with the hesitant caution of a Central Plains man counting coins from his sleeve, but pulling loose silver from his belt and handing it over directly, as if to say, “I’ll take this,” never asking the price.
Que Zhi split the melon open. Not with a knife—he pressed his thumb hard into the blossom end, and with a crisp crack, the melon broke cleanly in two, the jagged edges glistening as juice welled up and dripped onto his tiger’s mouth.
It was a very deep scar, stretched wide across his rough thumb, now gleaming with pale amber juice in the sunlight.
Xi Yu stared at his hand, and suddenly thought of all the things those hands had broken open—curved sabers, hardtack, shattered rocks from wind-eroded cliffs, frozen leather cords on Gobi nights, and that first mutton bun he’d tossed to him at the inn entrance.
And now, those hands were splitting a melon.
Probably, long ago, he’d crouched by the roadside just like this, breaking melons for others—for green recruits just joining the army, for fellow herders, for strangers at relay stations who’d shared their milk tea with him. He did these things so naturally, so practiced, that he never thought they were worth remembering.
Que Zhi handed half the melon to Xi Yu and kept the other half for himself.
The Liangzhou melon was perfectly ripe—flesh orange-yellow, juice running down Xi Yu’s chin and dripping onto the front of his blue robe, leaving a dark, spreading stain.
Xi Yu wiped his chin with his sleeve, but the sleeve was dirty too—wiping only made it worse.
“Hold still.”
Que Zhi put down his own half of the melon, pulled out the neatly folded cloth from his chest—the same one he’d used to wipe Xi Yu’s face back in the Gobi—and pressed it directly under his chin, cleaning off the juice.
“You drop food when you eat. Didn’t anyone ever tell you?”
“Yes. Someone did. They said I’d be laughed at for eating like this. I didn’t listen to them.”
“Will you tell me off for it?”
“No. If you drop it, I’ll wipe it for you.”
Xi Yu let him wipe, lifting his chin slightly, cooperating as Que Zhi cleaned the left side and then the right.
He was used to this posture—not being cared for like this for the first time, but being willing to be cared for like this for the first time.
—
After finishing the melon, Xi Yu washed his hands in a bucket by the stall and flicked off the water droplets. Que Zhi tossed the melon rinds into a sheep pen by the wall, stood up, adjusted the curved saber at his waist, and glanced toward the city center, as if getting his bearings. Then he turned back and asked, “First time in a Northern Shuo city—what do you want to see first?”
“The market.”
“Just now, when you bought the melon, was that the Shuo language?” Xi Yu asked curiously.
“More or less. But it’s the old tongue.”
“For the sake of external communication with other states, writing has been standardized in many places now.”
“Few people speak it anymore.”
“So—no need to worry.”
Que Zhi lowered his eyes briefly, then looked at Xi Yu. His tone was low and faint, but what he said landed like a promise—wordless, shielding him from all hardship, never letting any difficulty touch the other.
“I trust you,” Xi Yu answered softly, his brows and eyes smiling, his gaze filled with complete, unreserved trust.
With that, he walked briskly toward the bustling city, his back vibrant and soft.
The youth’s silhouette was lively and bright against the afternoon light, melting away all the coldness around Que Zhi.
His thin lips pressed together slightly. He said nothing, only quickened his pace and followed close behind, never straying a step.
Leave a Reply