Conversation under the Moon
The cold moon hangs high in the sky.
It was clearly the height of summer, but the night wind seemed to roll in from the depths of a cemetery, carrying a biting chill as it cut Su Baiwei beneath the locust tree. Sophora flowers fell like snow, staining her pale green dress before being swept up by the wind, tumbling unsteadily.
"What are you thinking about?" The jumping voice drowned out the noisy cicadas and came from behind him, like a stone thrown into a deep pool.
Su Baiwei didn't turn around, her gaze still fixed on a certain point in the void. Her voice drifted on the wind, "Tomorrow is the beginning of the decisive battle. I'm actually... a little scared." She paused, as if every syllable was tinged with the heaviness of the night dew. "What will happen if I lose?"
"Heh," he chuckled, short and cold. "Doctor Su is afraid too? The worst that can happen is that he'll continue to be your blood cauldron. The medicine man you care about won't die anyway, but you—" He trailed off, his gaze like an invisible blade, grazing across her thin back. "I'm afraid you'll become an object, oblivious to pain, unconscious and insensible. Tsk, the Demon Cult has saved the shackles."
"If I'm truly unconscious," Su Baiwei said with a bitter smile, "perhaps... it's also a relief?"
"What's so difficult about that?" Tiao Tiao said casually, but her gaze was sharp as a needle, fixed firmly on her face. "That package of 'good stuff' mixed with other ingredients is for you, isn't it? The Heart-Eroding Powder corrodes the soul, and the Dragon Blood Drain replenishes Qi and blood. Making full use of it won't be a waste of its century-long cultivation. It's just right for you, the Blood Cauldron."
Su Baiwei was silent for a long moment, then sighed deeply, her voice filled with exhaustion. "People are truly strange. Even when life is so hard, they still grit their teeth and live for that tiny glimmer of hope in their hearts."
Tiao Tiao was silent.
The cold moonlight splashed across the sky, stretching the two figures and casting them onto the ground. He pressed his knuckles against the hilt of the Qingguang Sword with such force that it seemed as if he could press the shadow of the past ten years into the cold iron.
"Do you like green?" Tiao Tiao's eyes swept across her light green sleeves. The color seemed particularly heavy under the bleak moonlight.
Su Baiwei's fingertips twisted the cuffs of her sleeves, and the silver hibiscus flower twisted and deformed in the folds of the fabric. "Green... I don't like it." Her voice was low and hoarse. "Every time I see it, it's like a reminder of my inescapable fate. It's just that mother loved it the most." She paused, her fingertips unconsciously tracing the outline of the petals. "After mother left, father mostly gave me green. But no one has ever asked... if I like it."
"Why not change?"
"Change?" She laughed at herself, her smile short and sad. "It's easy to change the color of clothes, but it's hard to change your destiny." She lowered her eyes, staring at the petals under her fingertips, her voice softer, with a hint of almost illusory warmth: "This hibiscus...I like it. It blooms in the morning and withers in the evening. It seems easy to break, but it blooms every day, rain or shine. It's like..." The voice suddenly stopped, and the lingering sound dissipated in the wind.
Tiaotiao's gaze fell on the stubborn silver thread. Under the pale moonlight, the flower stubbornly glowed with a faint silver light, as if resisting the solemnity of its surroundings.
He turned his eyes away and looked into the dark night in the distance, his Adam's apple rolling: "Day after day..." His voice was so low that it was almost crushed by the night wind, with a hint of imperceptible bitterness.
Then, the ripple quickly faded. He tilted his head, the moonlight outlining the sharp lines of his jaw. "So, what color do you like?"
"White." She raised her head, her gaze fixed on the cool moonlight filtering through the branches. A distant and pure longing filled her eyes, as if she were gazing at an unreachable shore. "I love its purity, untainted by dust. But I..." Her voice choked, her fingertips sinking deeply into the silver hibiscus thread on her cuffs, her knuckles bloodless from the strain. "My roots... are in rotten mud saturated with blood and poison. This color..." She lowered her eyelashes, her voice trailing off. "Even thinking about it... I'm afraid of tainting it." Her fingertips were still stroking the petals, her voice lowering. "Just like this hibiscus, no matter how hard I try, I can't produce white flowers..."
"A white cloth dropped into a muddy pond can be stained black, burned to ashes, and twisted, but the core remains white." Tiao Tiao cast his gaze towards the lonely, cold moon, his voice tinged with stubbornness, "The heart is dirty, dirty, and can never be washed clean. And if it's clean, no amount of dirty water can hide that spark of light." He paused, his lips curled up in a cold arc. "Are you used to seeing things wrapped in brocade on the outside, but rotting corpses on the inside?"
Su Baiwei stared at his profile, its profile rendered exceptionally cold and hard by the moonlight. She said nothing, but her fingers, clenched tightly around her sleeves, loosened a little, as if the words "the core is still white" had pierced her deepest heart. Yet, his final harsh words sank her into a deeper silence. She tilted her head slightly, looking away, her eyelashes trembling slightly in the moonlight.
Tiaotiao suddenly raised his hand, his movements swift as a whisk. His fingertips, almost suspended in mid-air, flicked away a locust flower that had fallen onto her shoulder. The movement was so swift that only a shadow remained, as if the petal were scorching hot, or as if his fingertips were condensed with unmeltable frost.
The wind suddenly stopped and the locust flowers fell straight down.
A white petal floated in front of Su Baiwei's eyes. She subconsciously stretched out her hand, and her pale palm held the cold petal, as if catching a small piece of solidified moonlight.
She looked at the fleeting white in her palm and asked softly, "What about you? Do you like blue?"
"I like it." Tiao Tiao answered simply, digging his fingertips deeper into the patterns of the scabbard.
"Why?"
Tiaotiao's gaze drifted into the depths of the night sky, to the inky black dome that seemed to devour everything. "Like the wind blowing through the trees, unfettered and unrestrained; like the flash of a sword appearing in a deep ravine, splitting the chaos; like the darkest and freest sky before dawn, concealing the fuse of daybreak." His voice grew quieter. "It's not eye-catching, yet it's unstoppable. It's the color that travels through the darkness of the night."
Su Baiwei's gaze finally shifted from the faint white on her palm to his hand, gripping the scabbard tightly, and onto the silent, yet infinitely sharp blade. Her gaze lingered on the cyan for a moment, and the corners of her lips curved ever so slightly, "So... it's also cyan." She stopped looking at the flowers, and stopped looking at him, her gaze turning towards the deeper night.
Moonlight streamed over her locust-flower-stained hair and shoulders, caressing fragile porcelain like a gentle touch. She loosened her grip, and the faint whiteness silently sank into the green of her robe sleeve, instantly swallowed up. The hibiscus pattern on her cuff was blurred in the dim light, as if it would break at any moment, yet stubbornly clung to a cold, almost severing gleam.
The sound of footsteps broke the silence of the night, coming from far away and getting closer.
"Sister Su!"
Su Baiwei and Tiao Tiao looked in the direction of the sound.
"Sister Su," the child's chest heaved violently, "My father... fell into a hunter's trap, and a bamboo stick pierced his heart. Mother asked me to find you!"
Su Baiwei's face suddenly turned serious and she turned and walked towards the inner room of Huichun Hall.
Tiao Tiao's eyes swept across her hurried back, then fell back on the frightened child. He sighed softly, "Your life is hanging on the edge of a knife, and you still have the mind to care about others."
The child looked up, with pure trust in his eyes: "Sister Su is the best."
After a moment, Su Baiwei hurried out carrying a heavy medicine box, and Mu Jin followed closely behind with a serious expression.
Tiao Tiao shook his head and followed silently.
"What are you doing here?"
"If you faint on the way, who will take you back?"
Inside the simple house, the pungent smell of blood filled the air. A man lay on the earthen kang, his chest a dark red stain soaking through his clothes, mixed with mud and grass debris. His face was pale, and he was barely breathing. Seeing Su Baiwei, his distracted eyes finally focused a little.
Mu Jin gestured for the mother and son to leave and gently closed the door. Inside the room, only the suppressed breathing and the crackling of the candlelight remained.
Su Baiwei deftly cut through the bloodstained clothing, revealing a hideous wound. A thick bamboo thorn lodged diagonally beneath her left breast, flesh twitching and dark blood slowly seeping out. She probed with her fingertips and breathed a sigh of relief, "Fortunately, it's only three inches from the tip of my heart, missing the vitals."
Time was running out, so she quickly cleaned up the mess. When her fingertips touched the warm blood, her movements paused imperceptibly, as if a memory had been pried open and then forcibly suppressed. She pointed to a faint pattern on the ceiling of the tent and said in an unusually steady voice, "Count how many petals there are?"
The patient was puzzled, but continued to look. Tiaotiao caught a glimpse of the needle and thread in Mujin's hand, and understood.
Just as the patient was concentrating on counting silently, Su Baiwei's eyes focused, and she suddenly exerted force with her right hand, and the bamboo thorn was pulled out in an instant.
With a soft "puff," a dark red stream gushed out. Mu Jin's pupils shrank slightly as she handed over a special needle threaded with catgut. Without a pause, Su Baiwei took the curved needle. Her fingers flew like butterflies, delicate stitches weaving through the flesh and tying knots. Each thrust of the needle sent a small stream of blood foaming, and the man's breathing became shallower.
Sweat dripped from her forehead, her breathing quickened. The tip of the needle blurred for a moment before she forced it down. Her hand remained steady as a rock, her expression focused and calm, as if she were sewing ordinary cloth. This composure was an instinct honed by countless life-or-death experiences. Mu Jin stared at her hand and the injured man, her eyes filled with anxiety.
The candlelight flickered, its shadow dancing on her pale, focused profile. Sweat dripped onto the blood-stained towel. Candle wax silently accumulated.
When the last candlelight struggled to go out and a thin wisp of blue smoke rose straight up, the crucial hemostasis and suturing were finally completed, and the wound was properly wrapped.
Mu Jin opened the door and called in the mother and son.
Seeing the man's breath was weak but steady, the woman immediately covered her face and cried bitterly, pulling the child to her knees and saying, "Miss Su! Thank you so much..."
Su Baiwei's hands were still stained with blood, and she hurriedly said, "That's not necessary."
Tiao Tiao's palms moved slightly, and a gentle internal force steadily lifted the two of them up. "Doctor Su doesn't like empty formalities."
The woman thanked him repeatedly, then her face became troubled and her voice became even lower: "My family... really can't afford the medical fee..."
Su Baiwei gathered her utensils and said calmly, "As usual, we'll go to Huichun Hall tomorrow to clean the courtyard. Three days..." Her voice stopped abruptly, and her movements paused. She felt as if she had been pricked by an invisible needle. Her voice lowered, with a hint of vagueness and emptiness, "...No need. Huichun Hall...will be closed for the next few days. I'll pay the consultation fee first."
The room was dead silent, with only the wisp of smoke drifting away quietly. She slowly stood up, leaning on the edge of the table, her thin figure swaying in the dim light.
The woman thanked him profusely.
Tiao Tiao watched her pack up the medicine box. Just as she took a step, Su Baiwei's eyes suddenly went dark, and her body seemed to have lost all its strength, and she fell to the side softly.
"Miss!" Mu Jin exclaimed, her body moving faster than her voice as she took a half step forward and reached out to help.
A shadowy figure, swift as a ghost, passed by in an instant. Its arm firmly dislodged Mu Jin's hand, while simultaneously catching Su Baiwei's slumping body. His touch was icy cold, a chill that seemed to seep into the very bones. He instinctively closed his arms to steady her, like a herbalist catching a rare flower about to fall from the edge of a cliff.
Su Baiwei closed her eyes and calmed herself down. Her face turned transparently pale. She managed to stand steady, her voice slightly hoarse: "...Thank you."
The woman was frightened: "Miss Su, you..."
"No problem." Su Baiwei had already broken free from the support and walked towards the door without looking back. Her hands pressed hard against the rough door frame, her knuckles whitening. She paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and then stepped through the threshold. Her thin figure stumbled in the dim light, but she was determined. "Stay."
Her figure blended into the deeper night outside the door.
Tiaotiao withdrew his hand, his fingertips still cold and heavy. His eyes swept over the worried Mujin beside him, and finally he walked away silently.
The green shadow, darker than the night, sank silently into the darkness behind her, maintaining a distance of three steps, like a silent anchor, its outline slowly swallowed by the vast darkness.
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