Early the next morning, Xi Yu joined a merchant caravan heading west.
The caravan leader was a Western Regions man with a thick beard and a heavy accent, though his Central Plains speech was fluent. Seeing that Xi Yu was alone and looked like a frail scholar, he charged him an extra two qian of silver and had him tag along at the very rear of the group.
Xi Yu didn’t haggle. He didn’t have much silver on him, but he didn’t care.
As long as he could keep moving.
The caravan traveled for three days.
Xi Yu sat on a camel-drawn cart, his legs dangling over the edge, swinging lightly.
The scenery along the way shifted from wheat fields to barren grasslands, and from barren grasslands to an endless expanse of Gobi desert that stretched beyond sight.
The trees by the roadside grew fewer and sparser, their leaves thinning out until only bare, withered branches remained—like skeletal claws reaching up from beneath the earth.
Xi Yu looked at those withered branches and thought they were beautiful.
On the evening of the fourth day, the caravan stopped at a relay station.
The station was built atop a mound of earth, with nothing around it but wind.
The wind came from the west, carrying fine sand that stung his face like tiny needles.
Xi Yu stood on the mound and gazed westward. The setting sun was sinking low, setting the entire sky ablaze in orange-red.
The clouds were orange-red. The sand was orange-red. Even the distant mountain ranges were outlined in gold.
In the Cold Palace library, he had read the line “the long river rolls with the setting sun round”—but he’d assumed it was poetic exaggeration.
It turned out such sunsets truly existed. And no words could capture even a fraction of it.
He stood there as the wind lifted his robes and sleeves, blowing cold into his collar.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The air was dry, carrying the taste of sand and dust. It made him cough twice.
But he breathed in again anyway.
The caravan leader called out from behind him: “Scholar! Come down and eat!”
Xi Yu opened his eyes, took one last look at the sunset, and turned to head down.
He walked slowly, because his legs were still savoring what his eyes had just seen.
When he sat down to eat, the caravan leader handed him a flatbread.
The bread was hard enough to kill a man—but when broken open, steam rose from inside, and it carried the natural sweetness of flour as he chewed.
Xi Yu took two bites and his cheeks ached from the effort, but he finished the whole piece anyway.
Seeing how heartily he ate, the leader tossed him another one, saying: “You’re too skinny. Eat more.”
Skinny.
Xi Yu paused.
Old Zhou had said the same thing.
That was only three months ago, but it felt like a lifetime.
Xi Yu lowered his head and continued chewing the flatbread, swallowing the words that had nearly risen to his lips along with it.
The caravan continued westward for another half month.
Xi Yu saw many things he had never seen before.
He saw camels for the first time—and learned that their cries sounded like curses. He tried camel milk for the first time and nearly gagged—but the caravan leader said it staved off hunger, so he forced down two more gulps.
He stepped onto real desert sand for the first time—his boots filled with it. He’d empty them out and keep walking, only for them to fill up again after two steps.
In the end, he simply took off his boots and walked barefoot. The sand, warmed by the sun, felt so good beneath his feet that he wanted to lie down right there.
The caravan leader turned back on his camel, shook his head, and muttered: “Definitely a madman.”
Xi Yu shouted something back at him, but the wind swallowed his words.
The leader didn’t hear him—but he saw Xi Yu laughing. He had no idea what was so funny.
The sand was soft. Xi Yu deliberately slowed his pace, letting the grains squeeze between his toes.
He looked down at his feet. The tops were pale—having been hidden away in the Cold Palace for eighteen years, they were white as paper.
Now, standing on golden sand, the contrast was almost blinding.
He took a few more steps, then suddenly bent down, scooped up a handful of sand, and brought it to his eyes.
The grains trickled through his fingers, fine and scattered, carried by the wind into a small golden haze.
Xi Yu thought of the moss that sometimes sprouted in the cracks between the Cold Palace’s stone slabs.
As a child, he used to crouch on the ground and pick at that moss with his fingernails.
It was the only “nature” he could ever touch.
Now, beneath his feet stretched an entire desert. Above his head stretched an entire sky. The wind swept in, carrying the scent of sand and camel dung—not pleasant, but vast beyond measure.
Xi Yu let the sand in his hand scatter, brushed his palms together, and quickened his pace to catch up with the caravan.
Half a month later, the caravan reached the last trade town on the frontier.
The leader told him that beyond this point lay the Western Regions proper. His travel permit would still be valid there, but camels would grow fewer—and horses, more.
Where are you headed?
Xi Yu thought for a moment, then said: “I don’t know either.”
The leader blinked, then burst out laughing. He clapped Xi Yu on the shoulder and said: “Not knowing is exactly right! I didn’t know when I was young either. Just keep walking—walk far enough, and you’ll figure it out.”
Xi Yu was moved by those words. He nodded.
He found an inn in town to stay at.
The inn was even more run-down than the last one—mud walls, a thatched roof, a door that wouldn’t close properly, wind whistling through the gaps with a low moan.
But he felt perfectly at ease.
He set down his bundle, walked to the inn’s entrance, and sat down on the threshold.
Outside lay a yellow-earth street lined with vendors selling flatbreads, clay pots, and furs. A few Western Region merchants led their camels past, the bronze bells around the animals’ necks jingling as they walked.
Across the street sat a blacksmith’s forge. The clang of hammer on metal rang out from morning till night, its rhythm different from the rest—heavier, deeper, as though each strike was hammering at fate itself.
Xi Yu sat on the threshold, legs stretched out, hands folded over his knees, chin resting on the backs of his hands, watching the bustle of the street.
His long hair was loosely tied behind his head with a cloth band, a few stray strands falling by his cheeks, swaying gently in the wind.
The natural flush at the corners of his eyes deepened in the sunset light—as if stained by the Gobi’s dying sun.
His eyes were bright. Not the calculating brightness of the Cold Palace, but another kind of brightness entirely—as if someone had lit a lamp inside them. The wick had just caught, the flame still unsteady—but it was truly alight.
The innkeeper came out from inside—a local woman in her fifties, her skin rough and reddened by wind and sand, with a booming voice: “Scholar! You’ve been sitting out here all afternoon—aren’t you hot?”
Xi Yu turned his head to look at her. His face was still covered, but he’d taken off his bamboo hat. He curved his eyes in a smile: “Not hot. The wind here is cool.”
The innkeeper was momentarily taken aback by the warmth in his eyes. She muttered to herself that this young man really did have a nice smile, then went inside and brought out a pot of cold tea, setting it beside him. “Pour yourself some if you’re thirsty.”
Xi Yu looked at that pot of cold tea and thought of the half-worn cotton quilt Old Zhou had brought him in the Cold Palace.
In this world, there were still people who would pour tea for a stranger.
How wonderful, he thought.
That night, he lay in bed but couldn’t sleep.
Not because the bed was hard—the Cold Palace’s bed had been harder—but because it was too quiet.
The nights in the Cold Palace were dead silent, broken only by the sound of rats gnawing at wood or the distant drip of a water clock, coldly marking the hours.
But here, the night was alive. Outside the window came the sound of wind, camel bells, a huqin being played somewhere, and the raucous clamor of merchants drinking and playing finger-guessing games at the neighboring inn.
Xi Yu rested his hands behind his head, listening to these sounds, and felt a deep sense of peace.
He closed his eyes.
In the darkness, he saw a map.
Not the kind drawn on paper—the kind he was drawing himself, the kind where every mountain and every stretch of desert was measured by his own footsteps.
This map started at the capital. Its destination had not yet been marked.
Xi Yu murmured in his heart: West. Further west. Keep going until I can go no further.
Then he fell asleep.
He dreamed of nothing.
The next morning, Xi Yu was woken by the sound of hammering.
The blacksmith’s forge had started its day’s work.
Xi Yu opened his eyes and lay in bed for a while, listening to that distinctive rhythm. He found it oddly delightful.
He got up and pushed open the window. Daylight flooded in, so bright it made him squint.
On the mud wall of the courtyard, a lizard lay basking in the sun, limbs sprawled out lazily, its tail too languid to even twitch.
A new day had begun. He still had further west to go.
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