Snow Moon City. The Outer District.
Evening was settling in the way it only did in certain places — unhurried, golden, the kind of dusk that turned ordinary rooftiles into something worth painting. The setting sun laid its warmth across the buildings of Snow Moon City in long, honey-colored strokes, and the streets below moved at the easy, untroubled pace of a city that knew its own beauty and saw no reason to rush.
Beneath the city gate, two horses plodded forward with the resigned energy of animals that had been walking for a very long time and had opinions about it. Their riders were not doing much better. One wore a long blue robe and carried himself with the particular boneless slouch of someone who had graduated from tired into a more philosophical state of existence. The other, dressed in red, sat considerably more upright — which was less a reflection of his energy levels and more a reflection of his personality.
The red-robed rider squinted up at the characters carved into the gate plaque, then turned with a sudden, accusatory energy.
"Hey — Xiao Se!" He pointed at the sign with considerable conviction. "Have we taken the wrong road again? This says Xiaguan. Weren't we supposed to be going to Snow Moon City?"
The blue-robed man — Xiao Se, in this world known as Xiao Chuhe — tilted his face toward the breeze that was rolling in through the gate, and let it move over him for a moment. Something in his expression softened from lazy into something more quietly appreciative.
"Xiaguan wind," he murmured, to no one in particular. "Shangguan flowers. Cangshan snow. Erhai moon." A brief pause. "The romance of wind, flowers, snow, and moon."
(T/N: These are the four famous scenic wonders of the Dali region in Yunnan, China. Xiaguan — the lower pass — is renowned for its relentless winds. The reference establishes that they have arrived in the right general area, approaching Snow Moon City from the south.)
These two were the central figures of the world of The Legend of the Young Swordsman — Xiao Chuhe and Lei Wujie. They had parted ways with the monk Wuxin back in Khotan and set out once more for Snow Moon City, and the journey had taken approximately three times longer than it had any right to, owing to a shared navigational instinct that could most charitably be described as creative.
Nearly three months of wandering. They had arrived.
(Note: As this world's own protagonist is also named Xiao Se, our traveler will be referred to by his birth name, Xiao Chuhe, for the duration of this arc to avoid confusion.)
"What does that even mean?" Lei Wujie asked, staring at him.
"It means be quiet," Xiao Chuhe said, and rolled his eyes.
They dismounted and led their horses through the gate on foot.
Once inside, Lei Wujie's head swiveled in every direction with the unfiltered enthusiasm of someone who had been promised the number one city in all the land and was currently doing the accounting. Vendor stalls lined both sides of the road. Tavern signs hung at every other doorway. The crowds moved at an unhurried, comfortable pace. The architecture was clean and pleasant and utterly, resolutely ordinary.
"Are we absolutely certain we're in the right place?" Lei Wujie's voice carried the wounded note of a man whose expectations had been ambushed. "The number one city under heaven is — this?"
Xiao Chuhe didn't answer. He was already steering his horse toward the nearest tavern with the focused intention of someone who has identified his first priority.
"Hey—" Lei Wujie scrambled to follow, dragging his reins along. "Hey, don't just—"
He was still mid-complaint when a figure passed him on the street.
Lei Wujie stopped.
The figure was a young man — somewhere in his mid-teens, perhaps — dressed in a black robe trimmed with gold at the collar and cuffs, moving through the crowd with the relaxed, unhurried confidence of someone comfortable in their own skin. There was nothing unusual about this. People walked through streets all the time.
Except.
Lei Wujie looked at the young man. Then he looked at Xiao Chuhe's retreating back. Then back at the young man.
His mouth opened.
The resemblance wasn't approximate. It wasn't a vague similarity of the kind that made you do a mild double-take. It was the kind of resemblance that made you question what you understood about how faces worked — the same bone structure, the same features, the same particular quality of expression, with the only discernible difference being that the passing stranger's face carried a slightly younger cast to it, as though the same person had been set back a year or two.
Lei Wujie dropped his reins on a startled waiter's hands and broke into a run.
"Xiao Se — Xiao Se!" He caught up to Xiao Chuhe and grabbed his shoulder, breathing harder than the distance warranted. "There's someone back there who looks exactly like you. Exactly. I'm not exaggerating."
"Hm?" Xiao Chuhe's brows drew together, his drowsy expression sharpening into something more alert. The only people in his world who resembled him were his half-brothers, and they were nowhere near here. He turned and scanned the street.
The stranger was gone.
"You must have imagined it."
"I didn't." Lei Wujie pointed urgently. "There — black robe, gold trim, under that awning."
Xiao Chuhe looked.
The young man had settled himself at a table beneath the eaves of a tavern across the street. He was ordering with the ease of someone who had done this particular thing many times in many places — a pot of something, a few small dishes, nothing complicated. His posture was loose and unhurried. His face, in three-quarter profile, was—
Xiao Chuhe stared.
He would not have described himself as a man easily shaken. But the face across the street was his face, give or take the year or two of youth, arranged on a stranger's body in a stranger's clothes in a city he'd only just arrived in.
"Xiao Se — I was right, wasn't I?" Lei Wujie materialized at his elbow again, vibrating with the energy of someone who had just been vindicated. "They're basically identical. Could he be a brother you didn't know about?"
"I don't have a brother like that," Xiao Chuhe said flatly, and removed Lei Wujie's hand from his shoulder.
He sat down at a nearby table and ordered a pot of Wind, Flower, Snow, and Moon liquor. His gaze drifted back across the street of its own accord and stayed there.
"He's too similar for it to be nothing," Lei Wujie pressed, dropping into the opposite seat. "Do you know him?"
"No."
"Then let me go over and ask him. Maybe he really is a long-lost brother or something." Lei Wujie was already half-rising from his seat.
"Sit down." Xiao Chuhe's voice didn't rise, but something in its quality changed — the lazy drawl replaced by something considerably more measured. "I'd strongly advise against it. That person gives me a very uncomfortable feeling." He set his cup down and looked at Lei Wujie directly, which was notable because Xiao Chuhe did not often look at people directly. "More dangerous than the Gun Immortal Sikong Changfeng."
Lei Wujie sat back down. "No way," he said, but his voice had lost a full register of confidence. "The Gun Immortal? That man is a living legend. And this guy looks younger than us — how is that possible?"
"Did you see the tattoo on his right hand?" Xiao Chuhe asked.
Lei Wujie glanced over, squinting. "His sleeve covers most of it. I can only just make out the shape — looks like a sword, maybe."
Xiao Chuhe nodded slowly. "Tell me what you know about the Snow Moon Sword."
The effect was immediate. Lei Wujie's small eyes lit up with the particular brightness of a man whose favorite subject has just been introduced. He straightened slightly, adopted the expression of someone about to deliver expertise, and stroked his chin.
"The Snow Moon Sword — the signature blade of Li Hanyi, the Snow Moon Sword Immortal. First among the five great Sword Immortals of this era." He counted off on his fingers with the enthusiasm of a seasoned Jianghu gossip. "A treasured sword said to generate icy sword energy on its own, without the wielder's input. Ten years ago it was completely unknown — nobody had heard of it. Then it came into Li Hanyi's possession, and within a short time it had knocked the Great Ming Vermilion Bird down from second place in the Peerless City Sword Manual and taken that ranking for itself." He paused for effect. "The only reason it didn't take first is because whatever holds that spot is in a different category entirely. If not for that, the Snow Moon Sword would be at the top of the list without any argument."
"I'm surprised," Xiao Chuhe said, with what passed for him as genuine approval. "You're occasionally useful."
Lei Wujie accepted this with a magnanimous nod.
"The legend goes," Xiao Chuhe continued, his voice dropping into something more contemplative, "that the Snow Moon Sword came into Li Hanyi's possession the day she went to Mount Qingcheng to challenge the Dao Sword Immortal, Zhao Yuzhen."
"Qingcheng Mountain!" Lei Wujie leaned forward immediately. "So the sword originally belonged to Qingcheng Mountain? And Li Hanyi won it by defeating the Dao Sword Immortal in a duel?"
The questions came out in a single breathless rush. Jianghu gossip was, for Lei Wujie, a spiritual nourishment.
"Do you want to hear the rest or not?" Xiao Chuhe gave him a measured look.
"Yes — yes, absolutely. I won't say another word. Not one." Lei Wujie pressed his lips together in a performance of restraint.
Xiao Chuhe took another long look at the young man across the street — that too-familiar face, unaware of being watched, lifting a cup with the idle ease of someone with no particular place to be. He exhaled quietly.
"The Snow Moon Sword Immortal didn't actually fight Zhao Yuzhen that day," he said. "In all likelihood, she wouldn't have won if she had. The person she actually crossed blades with was someone else entirely."
"Then who—"
The answer came from neither of them.
"A young man named Xiao Se." The voice was light and pleasant, arriving from just behind them. "He appeared from the sky without warning. The Snow Moon Sword Immortal mistook him for the Dao Sword Immortal. They fought — and the young man shattered her Listening Rain Sword with a single strike. He compensated her with a replacement." A small pause, tinged with quiet amusement. "The replacement became what is now known as the Snow Moon Sword."
Xiao Chuhe and Lei Wujie both turned.
A young scholar was settling into the seat across from them with the comfortable manner of someone joining a conversation he'd been listening to for a while. A peach-wood sword was slung across his back. At his heel, a slightly round-faced page boy was handing their donkey's reins to a delighted-looking waiter and patting the animal's nose farewell.
The scholar caught Xiao Chuhe's eye and pressed his hands together in a small, easy bow. "You don't mind sharing the table, I hope, Brother?"
"You're already sitting," Xiao Chuhe said. "What exactly would minding accomplish?"
"Hello!" Lei Wujie turned the full force of his curiosity on the newcomer immediately. "Lei Wujie. And — did you just say a young man named Xiao Se defeated the Snow Moon Sword Immortal?"
"I did," the scholar said pleasantly.
Lei Wujie swung back to Xiao Chuhe with enormous eyes. "Hey — Xiao Se. That wasn't you, was it? The one who—"
"Use your head," Xiao Chuhe said, with the patient resignation of a man who has answered this type of question many times. "That was ten years ago. How old was I ten years ago?"
"Oh." Lei Wujie processed this. "Right." He laughed sheepishly and rubbed the back of his head. "Right, obviously."
(End of Chapter)
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