CHU WANNING was too full to deal with such silliness. "What's this about a wife? You're a man, how can you say these things without blushing…"
Mo Ran smiled more brightly. "Then, if you didn't make me your wife, did I make you mine?"
This infuriated Chu Wanning. And he wasn't just furious; he was ashamed. He couldn't tell this Mo Ran that the shape the lust gourd had taken was that Mo Ran, the pale-skinned phantom who appeared in Chu Wanning's dreams. Nor could he tell him about the intense, obscene entanglements they'd shared in those visions.
As the saying went, humans needed face like trees needed bark. The Yuheng Elder's dignity was of the greatest importance. Chu Wanning swept his sleeves aside and said, "If you're going to keep babbling, you can show yourself out. You're banned."
As expected, Mo Ran came to heel. Pursing his lips, he gazed woefully at Chu Wanning with dark and shining eyes, then nuzzled his cheek, voice a soft pout. "Okay, okay, I won't ask any more questions. Dear Shizun, don't chase me off."
"Stick with Shizun, don't call me dear." Mo Ran's tender address melted Chu Wanning's heart; he couldn't bear it. Still, he pushed Mo Ran away, expressionless. "Stop with the random names."
"But just saying Shizun isn't affectionate at all." "Is that so?"
Mo Ran tried to persuade him. "Look, it's boring if I call you Shizun in front of others but also call you Shizun when we're alone. Wouldn't you agree?"
Chu Wanning wasn't falling for it. "Nope."
Mo Ran tried a different tack, pulling at Chu Wanning's sleeves as he said, "Shizun, Shizun, Shizun." His tone was honey-sweet, raising the hairs along Chu Wanning's spine.
At the end of his patience, Chu Wanning smacked a book against Mo Ran's face. "Shut up."
It was a thick tome, but it struck him so lightly it didn't hurt a bit.
Mo Ran lowered the book with a smile, revealing that peerlessly handsome face. "I worry if I get too used to addressing you this way, I'll do it in front of others by accident. So it's better to use a different term."
Chu Wanning frowned. "Don't you think you'll get accustomed to using a different term and use it in front of other people as well?"
Mo Ran sighed. "Why do you never take the bait?"
Chu Wanning's hackles rose at that. Displeased, he wholly turned his attention to his own book, refusing to acknowledge the disciple sprawled on the desk, idly blowing at his own bangs. After a few moments of mutual peace, Mo Ran spoke, the picture of dejection. "I just wanted some special treatment from Shizun."
"Hm?"
"Both Shi Mei and Xue Meng call you Shizun. If I also call you Shizun, there's no difference at all. I… I'm not really asking for much… I just want a different name, something only I can call you."
Chu Wanning set down his brush and turned to him, straightening his spine.
"It's not like I'll use it very often." Mo Ran's thick lashes were lowered, leaving a smudge of shadow on the bridge of his nose. "Only sometimes… Is that still not okay?"
Chu Wanning eyed him silently.
"It's fine." Mo Ran looked crestfallen. "I won't. It doesn't matter."
In the end, Chu Wanning relented. Not even a decade of seniority gave him the strength to endure this young man's incessant cajoling and pouting pleas.
As he studied this handsome man who grinned so brightly at his nod of assent, Chu Wanning suddenly felt he'd been tricked. It seemed he was always the fierce and intimidating one brandishing his claws, yet he always wound up conceding, indulging Mo Ran in every particular. He was like a fish swimming in circles, only to end up taking this bait named Mo Ran in the end.
"What should I call you?" asked the bait.
"Whatever you want," Chu Wanning wearily replied. "No way! This is very important."
Mo Ran racked his brain, but his brain was lacking and rather crude besides. After thinking for some time, he ventured, "Baby?"
Chu Wanning recalled that dream and couldn't bear it. "No." "Chu-lang?"
He couldn't abide this either. Face stormy, he asked, "Then should I call you Ran-mei?"4
"Ha ha, you're right." Mo Ran scratched his head with a smile, then furrowed his brow in thought once more. Unfortunately, he had overtaxed what scant inspiration he had and produced something even worse. "Chu- lang baby?"
Even Mo Ran couldn't take that one seriously. He clapped his hand to his forehead in despair.
Chu Wanning smiled against his will. "You can stop trying. What's the point of thinking so hard about it? These things have to come naturally."
Mo Ran privately agreed, yet he didn't want to give up. In the end, he grinned. "Then I'll think properly about it in the future and come up with a name that suits you best."
He grabbed Chu Wanning from where he'd been tidying the books and pulled him into his lap, his hand on the back of Chu Wanning's neck. He stared at him for a long time.
Uneasy, Chu Wanning asked, "What are you doing…"
Mo Ran sighed. "I can't stop myself," he mumbled, "no matter how many times I look."
"Ridiculous… Mngh…"
Chu Wanning's lips were captured before he could say more. Mo Ran's mouth moved against his, lips deliciously sweet over the wet heat below. He wrapped the man in his lap in his arms as they kissed with consuming adoration.
Rain fell in sheets outside, drowning the shameful noises of their lips and tongues. When they parted, Chu Wanning blinked open teary eyes. He both wanted to look at Mo Ran and didn't dare.
Mo Ran smiled. He knew Chu Wanning was thin-skinned; he couldn't help pulling him close to caress him, their heartbeats pounding an interweaving duet. "It doesn't matter what I call you."
"Hm?"
"Nothing," Mo Ran said, smiling. "Shizun is the best."
Chu Wanning pillowed his head on Mo Ran's shoulder. There was a sweetness in the sensation, but also a certain precarity. Sitting as he was on Mo Ran's lap, he could vividly feel something hot and hard beneath. He thought smoke must be coming from his ears.
After a long pause, he whispered, "Are you really…" Mo Ran cleared his throat. "It's nothing."
"I'll help you…" Chu Wanning's cheeks burned as he said it.
"You don't need to," Mo Ran hastily cut in. "Shizun has to go to the elder's meeting soon."
Chu Wanning glanced at the water clock. "Not for fifteen minutes, it should be…"
"It's not enough," Mo Ran said, awkward. "Huh?"
"I can't come that quickly."
Chu Wanning stared at him. When he understood, he flushed to the roots of his hair. He quickly got up from Mo Ran's lap and took a step back. Then he felt angry with himself, thinking such behavior too cowardly. He stepped forward again.
Mo Ran found him adorable. He sat on the chair, hiding nothing; even with clothes in the way, the bulge in his pants was still shockingly ferocious, capable of taking a man's life.
"I'll stop teasing." Mo Ran caught Chu Wanning's wrist. He wanted to pull him close and kiss his mouth again, but Chu Wanning's taste was so tempting he was afraid a single indulgence would destroy his restraint. So he only held Chu Wanning's hand. He brought it to his lips, eyes fixed on Chu Wanning until the moment he lowered his lashes and kissed it sincerely.
Mo Ran licked the back of Chu Wanning's hand. "Shizun, you're so sweet."
The rain fell on Sichuan for another two weeks before the clouds broke apart for a clear, sunny day.
Mo Ran picked through the puddles in the bamboo forest, some shallow and some deep. Morning practice was back on today, but Chu Wanning hadn't appeared. A quick inquiry located him in the backwoods, where'd he apparently gone to teach a few of Xuanji's thicker disciples how to toss throwing stars.
Mo Ran heard Chu Wanning's stern voice before he saw the practice grounds. "You need to relax your hands. Hold the star between your index and ring fingers. Concentrate your spiritual energy in your fingertips. When the light glows gold, release it at your target."
Shrrrk.
The sound alone told Mo Ran the disciples had failed. They sighed piteously.
"Man, this is so hard."
"Elder, could you show us again?"
"When the light turns gold, the throwing star will grow hot to the touch," Chu Wanning said. "Feel for it, don't try to look."
"Can you hit your target without looking?"
A cheerful voice answered from behind him. "Of course you can." Chu Wanning turned. "What are you doing here?"
"Mo-shixiong," the new disciples chorused.
Among them was an exceptionally pretty female disciple. She flushed when she caught sight of Mo Ran, hastily making her bows along with the rest.
Mo Ran scarcely acknowledged Xuanji's disciples as he walked straight up to Chu Wanning. "Shizun, why don't you put on a blindfold and show them how it's done?"
Chu Wanning hesitated. "Okay."
Permission granted, Mo Ran took down his own pale purple hair ribbon, three fingers wide, and laid it across Chu Wanning's eyes. He tied it tightly, but not painfully so, the silk of the ribbon like flowing water. Its ends danced in the breeze.
"Throwing star," Chu Wanning said.
One of the Xuanji Elder's disciples came up and handed their throwing star to Chu Wanning.
"Three," Chu Wanning continued.
"Huh?" Confused, the disciple retrieved an additional two stars from their weapons pouch and handed them to Chu Wanning.
Chu Wanning stroked pale, slender fingers over the cold metal surface, pursing his lips. Without word or pause, the stars shot from between his fingers with a flick of his wrist and a momentary flash.
Cling! Clang! Their collisions rang out.
"Aiya, right on target! Right on the bullseye! But…only one of them."
Chu Wanning said nothing, but Mo Ran blandly replied: "The other two are on the targets behind you."
The new disciples turned to look in disbelief. The remaining two stars, one on either side, were stuck deep in the exact center of targets in completely opposite directions. Morning sunlight spilled down through the rustling bamboo forest. Xuanji's disciples were stunned speechless.
Chu Wanning raised his hand to remove the blindfold, revealing half-lidded phoenix eyes and fluttering lashes. He handed the ribbon back to Mo Ran. "The first sound you heard was the three throwing stars colliding in midair. Control your spiritual energy properly, and you can make two of them ricochet and fly in opposite directions. In battle, you can use this to catch your opponent off guard and take first-strike advantage."
The disciples exchanged glances. One youth, face shining with anticipation, cried, "Elder, h-how do we learn this? Is there a trick to it?"
"Mo Ran," Chu Wanning said. "Show them your hands."
Mo Ran held them out with a smile. The disciples crowded around him, shoving at each other in an attempt to figure out what trick would be revealed to them.
After staring for a long while, they hadn't figured out a thing. But that female cultivator's heart was pounding, her eyes bright. She and her friends were all new to the sect. They hadn't yet reached a focused state of mind and often went down the mountain to buy books for pleasure reading. They too had perused that God-Knows-What Rankings Chu Wanning had once read. When the girls had seen the size ranking, they'd been scandalized, giggling as they nudged and goaded one another. But their bashfulness didn't stop them from discussing the contents in whispers back in the disciples' quarters.
"I heard the longer a man's fingers are, the larger that thing is," said one feisty shijie with an ample chest and the courage to match. "When I get the chance, I'll sneak behind Mo-shixiong at Mengpo Hall. I want to see how big his hands are."
Later, that shijie really did carry out her plan. In order to line up behind Mo Ran, she'd run so fast she accidentally knocked over a bowl of hot soup and spilled half of it on her quarry. Her lips parted in shock and embarrassment.
As she stood, shaken, a large, fine-boned hand picked up her spilled bowl and placed it back on the counter before handing her a new one.
"Careful. It's a shame to waste good food."
His low and husky voice left her unable to so much as lift her head. Her cheeks flamed red, both her face and the bowl steaming. Throughout the entire episode, she'd only dared peeks at Mo Ran: at his waist, well- muscled and trim, at his lapels, which framed his broad chest, and of course she snuck the most glances at his hands…
"Exquisite." She returned unable to describe those hands even with a dictionary's worth of praise. This was the only worthy descriptor. All the shimei in the room had fallen silent, pursing their lips. Their hearts were ablaze, kindled with wild and suggestive imaginings.
In the present, a chilling voice broke through the female disciple's reverie. "What have you noticed?"
"Elder, please forgive me," another disciple said. "This disciple is stupid and has not noticed anything."
"Mo-shixiong's hand looks particularly powerful?"
Everyone made their guess, but when it was her turn, her mind went blank. She blurted, cheeks crimson, "His fingers are very long."
Mo Ran was stunned. What on earth were these youths looking at? He pulled his hands back and scratched his head, turning to Chu Wanning.
Chu Wanning might not know what was meant by the comment about Mo Ran's fingers, but he wasn't stupid—one glance at the female disciple's blushing face told him it was nothing good. His face darkened and he swept his sleeves back. "What the hell are you looking at."
His visible displeasure frightened the disciples into bowing their heads. Mo Ran didn't want Chu Wanning to be called harsh; sensing the building tension, he smiled and volunteered the answer. "It's calluses."
He shot a look at Chu Wanning and continued. "Scraping your fingertips bloody, letting the calluses form, then scraping them bloody again—after about a hundred times, you'll be able to accurately control your spiritual energy. There's no shortcut."
Chu Wanning taught them until noon, by which time most of the disciples had more or less grasped the basics. Then it was time for him to take his leave. These were someone else's disciples, after all. Some pointers were fine, but teaching them in too much detail might offend the Xuanji Elder. Chu Wanning was no longer a fifteen-year-old teenager who'd just come down from the mountains; he'd finally grasped the intricacies of such social rules.
He and Mo Ran left the bamboo forest and arrived at Naihe Bridge.
They crossed it together, shoulder to shoulder. Beneath their trailing sleeves, the backs of their hands brushed lightly with every step. It was a fleeting touch, but it made their hearts soften and melt, revealing the tender sprouts of spring.
There was no one around. Mo Ran finally reached out and interlaced his fingers with Chu Wanning's. Though they'd have to let go very soon, both of their ears flushed pink, their throats dry and hot. Ever since that rainy night in Wuchang Town, they'd had hardly any time alone together at all. Even during their infrequent trysts at the Red Lotus Pavilion, they worried constantly about Xue Zhengyong suddenly popping in unannounced. At this point, a momentary touch of the hands was enough to stir the flames in Mo Ran's chest. "Shizun," he murmured, "Tonight, can we go…"
He was still speaking when he saw someone running toward them. Mo Ran swiftly straightened to his full height, pressed his lips together, and fell silent, stepping to one side.
The newcomer hadn't noticed anything amiss. When they reached them, they bowed their way forward and said, "Yuheng Elder, there's an urgent matter. The sect leader requests your presence in Loyalty Hall at once."
"What is it?" Chu Wanning asked.
"Guests have come, bringing important information relating to Xu Shuanglin. Xue-zhangmen can't make the final decision on his own, so he called all the elders over in the morning for a discussion. You're the last one."
The name Xu Shuanglin drove all thoughts of affection from Chu Wanning's mind. He rushed straight for Loyalty Hall.
Mo Ran followed a step behind. "Wait for me. I've fought Xu Shuanglin before. Maybe I can help."
The two leapt swiftly with qinggong and soon arrived at Loyalty Hall. When they pushed open the door, they were met with silence. Aside from Xue Zhengyong and the elders, two others stood within the hall, covered in blood. Mo Ran's gaze fell upon a familiar scabbard on one of their backs. After a moment, his eyes widened in shock and his face instantly paled. "Ye Wangxi?!"