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"Count, Chu-fei. Or we'll have to start again from the beginning." A kiss on one shoulder, trembling minutely, moist with sweat. Now it was just a paddle, with nettles woven into the tiny holes across its surface. He'd save Jiangui for another time, once the whip's marks on Chu-fei's back faded some more, he promised himself, running a hand across raised welts. He ran the paddle along the curve of a buttock, still supple and beautiful despite the torment brought down on it. He had been careful not to break skin, tonight, he wasn't interested in blood. Not yet anyway.
He caressed both abused globes with his hands now, sent small amounts of spiritual energy, enough to aggravate, enough to send electricity across frayed nerves. The body spread across his lap spasmed. "Will you behave for me now?" He was thinking twenty. One for every year Shi Mei had been alive, before his heartless shizun killed him. No, can't be that young. Twenty-five? Thirty? Shi Mei still lived in his heart anyway. He added the years he spent grieving.
"Count, Chu-fei."
***
He jolts awake. It's the smell of blood and vomit that wakes him. He tries cracking his eyes open. Both eyes seem impossible. So he tries one, a small crack, a small sliver. He takes in a shuddery breath and gags, he almost vomits again. He exhales and inhales, taking in a few strands of black hair as he does so. It is sour and acrid, but there's the everpresent faint scent of flowers. His brain, or what little ability he has for thinking, seeks it from among the pungent stench, allows the scent to calm him while he tries to get his bearings straight.
There's white fabric under his cheek, stained with blood and vomit, he instinctively recoils. He is being carried on someone's back, he realizes, there's solid warm flesh under the expanse of white fabric. Beyond this person's back, endless white marble stretching up into the sky. He recognizes these steps, he and Xue Meng have many races up and down it.
"Shh, we're going home."
"Are we there yet?" he asks with difficulty, almost petulantly, like an impatient child. It earns him a tired chuckle that reverberates across bones and flesh. And now he thinks he must be dreaming because his shizun's laugh doesn't embrace a heart like this.
"We've just begun our ascent. It will be a while yet. Rest, Mo Ran."
How many steps are there, anyway? He has never really counted, all this time he climbs up and down it. "A thousand?" he asks.
"A thousand what?"
"Steps? Before we reach the top?" A thousand sounds like a lot already.
"Maybe. Just close your eyes. We'll be there in no time." His shizun's voice is a little thready, annoyed at a child's endless questions, possibly.
When he was but a young mongrel, he would play on the steps of an abandoned temple with other riff-raffs from town. The temple was built on top of a hill and there were hundreds of steps one must take to get there. They would race up and down the steps, then returned to whatever hole they lived, and exaggerated their feat as if it was the most important thing in the world.
Every day it seemed, the number of steps grew, even though the temple never moved any higher or lower. He climbed a hundred steps, two hundred steps, three hundred steps, four-five-six-seven hundred. It had grown to a thousand by the time by the time they had outgrown it.
"You know what to do," he taunted the man straddling his lap facing him. "Chew, swallow and count, or This Venerable One will add an extra one for every missed number."
Little marble-like balls of dough wrapped around a dollop of sugar paste floating in sugar water. His Chu-fei had been ill, and when he was ill, his appetite went away. It came back only slowly, he didn't know why not having cultivation would hinder someone's recovery so much. But his Chu-fei was gaining strength, and today he had asked for something sweet from Liu-gong, who relayed this request to his emperor.
He fed Chu-fei himself, a small dough and a small amount of sugar water in a duck-bill spoon. He didn't trust his weak concubine not to spill any on himself. The small sweet ball disappeared between thin, dry lips. He placed the spoon back into the bowl, then with his two hands held onto Chu-fei's bare hips to steady him. He liked how Chu-fei's snow-white skin and the peony-pink blushes contrasted beautifully to his black and red robes. "This Venerable One will start feeding your other mouth." He roughly thrusted his cock that was already inside Chu-fei's hole, pushing the slighter man's entire body, wrenching a moan muffled by the sweet dough. "Chew, don't choke. And count after." It was difficult to chew and not choke, when the emperor himself was pushing into him and biting into the soft flesh around his nipples. Then once Taxian-jun spent himself inside of Chu-fei's warm body, chewed and bitten red marks onto his skin, he called to the kitchen to bring him more sugar balls. "Five, no make it seven." He glanced at the two remaining pieces in now-cold sugar water, an already empty bowl next to it. He splayed his hand across Chu-fei's thin stomach, imagined it bulging slightly from dough balls, sugar water and the emperor's seed. He traced skin and imagined he could feel the outline of his cock through the thin layer of flesh and muscle. "Make it twelve."
***
He jolts awake again. He's lying on his back now, with something soft holding up his head. A face comes into view, gentle hands holding his head up so he can sip on cool water from a leaf. "Slowly." They are still on the steps, he peers to one side, the one going down, and wonders how many steps they have come. "Do you want more?" comes the question, dry like brittle bones. No, you drink too, he wants to tell shizun. The sun is hot.
He turns his head to the other side, sees how many more steps they have to go. How many steps have shizun carried him so far. Even a hundred would have been too much. He's lost count of the steps when he's fallen asleep on shizun's back. He can't remember how many he's counted. two hundred, or three hundred.
"Are we there yet?" he asks again.
His shizun stops his rummaging around, turns his stern face toward Mo Ran. "Bear with it for a while longer," his shizun checked his wounds and his rattling lungs. It feels so painful just to draw a breath. But somehow Shizun looks paler than death, even though it is Mo Ran who has one foot in the gates of hell. "We'll get there soon." Shizun's hand is cold against his fevered skin; he turns toward that gentle touch like sunflowers to the sun. If death could be so comfortable.
One day he went to a night market he went to with his mother. They didn't have much money but they managed to buy a little amount of food. Mo Ran turned on his boyish charm and managed to get some vendors give him free stuff on top of the things his mother paid. He received an astounding lot, and he thought his usually-famished stomach would burst. He knew though, compared to the other children that passed him by, his hoard was just a very small one.
Then he was separated from his mother for a while, when the crowd surged suddenly when a group of folk performers struck up a tune. Next to him, he found a boy who seemed to have also been separated from his parents. The boy was dressed very nicely and Mo Ran guessed his robes were quite expensive.
As with many cases all throughout human history, the two boys bonded over food. They shared their loot and compared what each of them had and hadn't gotten.
"Baba bought me a lot of these, like twenty!" There were only four candied grapes left in the wrapper, and there was no way the small wrapper could fit twenty delectably big and juicy candied grapes. The boy gave Mo Ran one and kept the other three.
"Ahem. Well. My mama bought me seven of these!" Mo Ran could not be outdone. He produced two whole baozis, the one which his mother could afford and the one the stall auntie gave for free because Mo Ran smiled so sweetly and reminded her of her grandson. "They are my favorites so I ate the other five already," he lamely explained. It wasn't a lie, not really, because to him, one from his mother equaled five or thereabouts. "You can have one." He spoke magnanimously.
By the time Mo Ran's mother and the boy's father found them, they had moved on from exaggerating the numbers of existing snacks, to the numbers of imaginary things they had received from their parents. The boy mentioned his cavalry's worth of toy soldiers, and Mo Ran told him of the twenty-five marbles he received from mama. No, actually thirty! Were there five wooden tops at home for the boy? Mo Ran's mama gave him at least seven, because he always lost them. How generous was Mo Ran's mama, the boy sighed enviously. He didn't dare to speak the truth that he had exaggerated love to make himself feel better, feel special, even though he knew his mother cherished him enough, and her love could not be measured by numbers.
Then he and mama went home to their small room, and looked at their meagre belongings. He took out the one large blue feather his mother gave him one time, which must've come from a discarded jianzi toy somehow. He stroked the soft feather to soothe himself to sleep. He dreamed of ten, twenty, no thirty feathers, all soft and sweet-smelling, making a bed for him and mama so they wouldn't be cold in the winters.
"Count, Chu-fei," he ordered the figure bound in the middle of the room. It was spring and all the doors and windows of the Pavillion had been thrown open. The flowers were vigorously blooming and the scent was heady. He hadn't had a drop of drink but he was already drunk with the sight of it all. Red ropes bound Chu-fei's lithe body, all those years of cultivation and swordwork, that even loss and sickness couldn't completely take away. He was suspended a little in the air, on an invisible hammock made of ropes and sinew and pain. The posture brought out all of Chu-fei's best angles, but it couldn't have been easy on those joints and muscles not that Taxian-jun cared. All that mattered was the emperor's pleasure and everyone must take pains to meet his lofty demands.
He pushed another lily stem between Chu-fei's legs, to join the rest of the flowers already planted into his abused anus. He threatened to pierce holes into Chu-fei's nipples so he could pin flowers through his rosy peaks. He'd weave his concubine a flower crown and make him into Taxian-jun's living vase to mount in the throne room for everyone to see. He whispered his plan and watched Chu-fei's body shudder from desire and humiliation both He ran a finger across Chu-fei's half-hard cock, dainty and cute. He decided itt deserved a flower of its own. "How many, Chu-fei? Should this Venerable One add another?" Chu-fei's pisshole looked so lonely, he thought, running a thumb across the slit. He chose a particularly fat-stemmed lily, beautiful and dewy like the first spring of youth. "How many can you take?" he asked the trembling body, his own private garden blooming so beautifully on a person he so hated. Maybe four five more eight or nine.
***
He is awake again. It is hard to imagine that they had just escaped carnage. The sun is shining, though it has dipped further down, casting long eerie shadows of the late afternoon. How long ago? How long more? He isn't making sense he is becoming delirious. Shizun, is shizun still carrying him? How far? How far still?
He asks but shizun no longer answers him. The back carrying him is still strong and solid. He can hear the rattling of a damaged lung. His? A stuttering heartbeat. His? Shizun's?
Clouds float lazily in the sky, as if there hasn't been a fight to death nearby. A procession of ants passes them. The flowers lining left and right of the steps sway in the gentle breeze. Flowers. He remembers his dreams. He feels nauseous. Shizun, Shizun, he calls though no words come. His throat is sore, his head is spinning. Will you ever forgive me. He finds no joy now in all the things he did.
How many more steps? How far? One, two, three, he'll count again. He's so tired. Maybe he'll rest and count. Mo Ran not so smart, he's actually stupid, but he can count as high as a million. When he gets to a hundred he will ask shizun to change places with him.
Five... ten...
"Are we there yet?" he asks, wheezing. He's tired now. "Shizun..." He beseeches but the man has gone quiet.
Fifteen... twenty? No maybe they're still at fifteen. How many hours, how many hundreds have they... no shizun... surely not a thousand yet? There can't have been so many steps, can it? The scent of spring lulls him back to sleep. Twenty... twenty-one...
When he was left alone in the world, he promised his mother he would build her a grand tomb and decorate it with dozens, hundreds, thousands of flowers of many kinds.
"Let's play a game, Chu-fei," he whispered into a well-shaped ear, one with its lobe pierced through. "This Venerable One's favorite counting game." It had been raining constantly and they were trapped indoors.
"This Venerable One is sparing you the knife this time." He said, as though he was at the most benevolent. Sometimes, he would make tally marks with knives and blood, because it made Chu-fei's cries all the sweeter.
His hand roamed down Chu-fei's flat chest, toward his belly. "What? No thanks?" It was slightly distended, from forcing liquid into Chu-fei's body, then pushing beads after beads of fat pearls through the furls of his anus. A week ago, they had ransacked the house of a particularly wealthy cultivator, a con-man he should say, who had no cultivation at all. The man was partial to pearls. Strings after strings after strings of high-quality pearls. Fat ones, large ones, shiny and lustrous. He took them all with him, and laid them all at Chu-fei's feet. He forgot to put aside some for his Empress, but Song Qiutong seemed happy with the pair of jade earrings he gave her.
"Guess how many this Venerable One managed to fit inside your body," he began pulling at the first strand of pearls, pulling them out roughly. It was quite amusing to Taxian-jun how tight his Chu-fei still was, despite the daily use and abuse of his body had endured. Maybe Taxian-jun hadn't fucked him enough? Maybe he'd start making Chu-fei wear jade phalluses on other times the emperor's pillar was not buried inside his body. "You managed to take in quite a lot. So greedy. You took in every pearl the man had. Such a greedy whore." He yanked a strand and it elicited a pained gasp. "This venerable one is feeling quite generous. A hint then, my dear little slut of a shizun. It's how many wontons my Shi Mei made me when he was still alive." He tugged again, a particularly fat pearl lodged itself stubbornly.
"If you guess wrong, we'll have to do it all over again. This time, maybe this Venerable One will fuck you with them inside."
He counted all the wontons that Shi Mei made him, and bragged about it later to anyone who would listen. First it was huge five wontons in a small bowl, and by the end of the day, they became six, seven, eight, nine. A dozen of fat, juicy wontons that made the biggest bowl in all of Sisheng looked small.
He counted the times Shi Mei smiled at him, told him he was a kind person. Once or twice, several times a day, then it felt like entire days were filled with Shi Mei's kind smiles. Hundreds and hundreds of smiles and tiny chuckles that made his heart sing.
He counted all the little flowers he picked for Shi Mei, the one he would've laid on his shixiong's path, to make him happy and to cherish him. But Shi Mei had gone to town with Tanlang-elder and wouldn't be back for another week, by the time which the flowers would have wilted and browned. Their shizun offered to teach him a little trick with a talisman and a spell, to keep the flower looking fresh for another week. Flustered, Mo Ran thought the man was poking fun at him for his crush, and told him not to bother. After all, he could get more of the flowers, properly fresh. Ten, twelve, fifteen or fifty of them!
And then he felt bad for turning down Shizun's help. So he went to find a flower, the most beautiful of them all, as an apology.
So there was that one single flower that left him with scars on his back.
And so he wakes. And it is dark. His body is just a constellation of pain. Even blinking sends needles into his brain. The scent of blood and vomit is back, the sourness of sweat and faded flowers itch on his nose. He doesn't dare to inhale too deeply because it hurts to breathe. It is so dark he entertains the thought of himself going blind. But the sun isn't beating on his back, and the chill is that of the wind at night.
The harsh breathing and the moans aren't his. The sweat that soaks his front and face isn't his. The back upon which he rests is rigid, like rigor mortis on a living person, it is disconcerting. Strong back that acts like a bier, and Mo Ran is delirious with some unknown fear. There's coughing and it is not Mo Ran. The sound of blood splattering, the metallic scent that follows. Someone vomits and that is not Mo Ran. Dry vomit, like the stomach has not even bile to offer. He looks down, past a shoulder clad in dirty white fabric. The steps look awfully close now, like he's a hairbreadths' away from touching it. He is separated from cool stones of Sisheng's step only by a body. Thin and strong.
Shizun... how many? How many left? It's dark now, can't you rest a while? I'm sorry shizun, let's take turns? Let me carry you?
How many are there, these steps that seem merciless and never-ending? He remembers asking if there are a thousand of them. But there seems to be more. Two thousand? Can there be more?
Let's take turns shizun, but I'm so very tired. Aren't you tired too? Won't you rest?
Are we there yet, he wants to ask, but his lips are glued together, and his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. How many more, shizun, ten more? Twenty more? Even one more is too much. Please stop shizun, won't you rest a while?
One... two... three... He is stupid, he knows he is always dumb. But he can count to a hundred and he promises he won't sleep now. Counting is easy when someone is carrying you. I'll keep you company, I promise you're not alone. Four... five... A shuddery breath. Not his never his. Six... someone falls, and Mo Ran falls with him, but his body never meets the floor. Because someone is always there to catch him Seven... eight... please can't we arrive already. He is not particularly devoted but now he prays to all the gods and buddhas that they would arrive soon. His heart seizes with abject terror that shizun might not be for much longer.
Aren't we home yet? Nine.... please shizun, stop, that's enough. It's enough. Mo Ran doesn't need dozens, hundreds or thousands. Not even one more. He won't ask for any more. He knows now the shape of greed, and it repulses him. Stop, please. Please can't they arrive already? Ten...
But his shizun is well-known for his stubbornness which is as immovable as his kindness is vast. There can't be more than a hundred, right, shizun. We've climbed for so long already. I'm not worth a thousand.
Eleven... I'll count shizun, and when we get to a hundred, we'll be home. Funny now he comes to his penance when shizun has nothing else to give.
Twelve... thirteen... He will count properly, neither foolishly nor irresponsibly. He will count faithfully, this path of blood that carries him home. Fourteen... fifteen... How many hundreds of a hundred have they passed? The trail before and after seems insurmountable. How many hundreds of a hundred makes a vow? Sixteen... seventeen... Truly. Devotedly. Eighteen... nineteen... add that to the thousands they have passed. A prayer in each number.
They'll be home soon, in no time. And he'll be his shizun's hands and feet for all eternity. Twenty...
"We're here. We'll be okay now." Only that shizun's meaning of okay is vastly different to Mo Ran's own.
Shizun died. Mo Ran died inside. He found out the number. Three thousand seven hundred ninety-nine. The sum of his grief. He refuses to exaggerate the numbers. Neither smaller nor larger—exactly three thousand seven hundred ninety-nine. The long and the short of it. He knows now that everything he believed are lies. To lie is to sin, and it was Chu Wanning who paid for it. Mo Ran his lover and executioner.
In the underworld, in the thrall of the Fourth Ghost King he counts. Only up to three. No more than that. Again and again. One-two-three. Only three, but they are heavy and inconceivably large.
"What are you doing? Why aren't you in bed?"
Mo Ran is already on his feet and running back to the house before even the end of the question. "Wanning! Aren't you cold?" In a few strides, he is in front of Chu Wanning, fixing the man's robes and house cloak over his shoulders, crossing it firmly in front of his chest, so that the night wind won't get to him. "Let's get back to bed," he kisses a warm temple.
"Answer me first," the stubborn man he has married in this life and in all other lives insists, who would've stomped his feet if Mo Ran hasn't swept and carried him off back inside.
"It's stupid," he murmurs. "I was counting the stars. I got up to a hundred, before you broke my concentration."
"So it's my fault now?" They are back inside, on the bed, under the covers. He pulls a blanket up to Chu Wanning's chin, then cuddles the man against his chest. It is a sign that his spouse isn't a hundred-percent recovered. Clingy to the point of working up separation anxiety. Something that will never happen when he is truly healthy and hale.
He smiles at his beautiful Wanning, his now, properly. Truly. Devotedly. Their road has been harsh and long. They have arrived here one agonizing step after another. Bleeding, dying, died. Now they learn happiness, one small way at a time. Now they live, one uneventful day at a time. Humbly, gratefully.
He counts his blessings everyday and prays he doesn't squander them, not even one or even half of one. "Yes, I do think so. I was aiming for at least two hundred." He kisses the crown of Chu Wanning's noble head.
A rustling, a warm body climbs on top of him. "What are you going to do about it?" Phoenix eyes gleam in the dark like twin harvest moons. There is a promise of danger there, but the illusion shatters when cherry blossom pinks start to crawl over the tops of his ears, dusting his high cheekbones. They are trapped with each other in this position until finally Chu Wanning loses whatever courage he's built up, and starts to sag back into the covers.
This Chu Wanning is so different. One second he's baiting for sex, bashfully, inexpertly; another second slinking back into his shell, mortified.
He peels back the covers to reveal a shrimp has taken over the bed. "Who is this shrimp I found? So pretty and so far away from sea?" Mo Ran kisses Chu Wanning's pouty lips. "Little shrimp has too many layers."
"Who are you calling a shrimp?" the love of Mo Ran's lives grumbles but allows himself to be unfurled, and placed onto his back. "And who are you calling little?" He loves it when Chu Wanning is huffy, like a cat. He loves it when Chu Wanning is alive, burning with desire, for him. Mo Ran makes show of framing Chu Wanning's body with his thighs, leaning down so he can begin to unfasten the little ties keeping his sleeping clothes closed. He bares Chu Wanning's body slowly, like opening a precious present. More precious than all the world, he thinks to himself.
Chu Wanning reaches out and Mo Ran lets him repay him in kind, divesting Mo Ran's clothes, throwing them to the ground with an impatience he sometimes sees.
Mo Ran bends down and turns Chu Wanning's head to get to the small mole of his ear. "Yuheng," he starts. He finds another mole on the side of Wanning's neck, on the juncture of his shoulder, "Kaiyang". Another mole, on further down, "Yaoguang".
"Have you named my moles?" Chu Wanning grumbles indignantly, but Mo Ran simply turns him around so he can get to Wanning's white back. He kisses down the back, his thighs, the back of his knees. Tianshu, Tianxuan, Tianji, Tianquan. He's run out of names now. Beidou qixing is modest with only seven stars to its mighty constellation. But Chu Wanning has many more moles on his body, each like a kiss of a fallen star. Each so precious he dares not count them so banally with numbers. He will memorize more star names. He will cover his Wanning with stars.
He turns Chu Wanning around, then raises him slowly so they are spooned together front to back on their knees. He licks and bites Chu Wanning's earlobes until the other man cries out, pushing his slim hips back to rub against Mo Ran's cock. "Put your thighs together," Mo Ran maneuvers them easily. Chu Wanning protests in the form of guttural moans, and insistent rubbing of buttocks. "Not tonight." When before he would only take, this time he's learn temperance. "Not until you recover."
Mo Ran hates that the world continues to take and take from his Wanning, but he's learned to live in that world. Even if it means bringing many umbrellas in his qiankun pouch, so Chu Wanning will always have one over his head no matter how many hundreds he give away.
Mo Ran hates the world that insists upon breaking down Chu Wanning's body and leaving Mo Ran to care for the pieces. But Chu Wanning won't be Chu Wanning if he doesn't offer himself to the world and Mo Ran can only put him back together again.
He realizes he's not so different from the world. He is often overcome by the need to covet, hoard, and hide Chu Wanning, to keep him as his, and only his. He too is no different, and he sometimes marvels in the fact that Chu Wanning lets him.
He still wants to lock his Wanning up in their house, he knows Taxian-jun wants too. He's learned the hard way the care and safekeeping of Chu Wanning. How to treat him well, how to ignite him and how to cool him down. How to ease his pain, the ones that plague his joints in winter, and the ones that plague his heart at someone else's suffering. How to take his mind off worrying for things they cannot change. All Mo Ran has to do is count his sins and transgressions, to ask for forgiveness, readily given.
"I'd pluck a star and give it to you if you ask," he slides his cock between too warm thighs, slots himself next to Wanning's beautiful one.
"No answer? One is too few. Then ten? Would you like ten or twenty? I counted up to two hundred before you came to fetch me back in."
"You... said a hundred," his breath hitches when Mo Ran takes both their cocks into his calloused hands. Wanning reaches down as well, leaning his head against the crook of Mo Ran's neck, tonguing the vein there, licking and biting like a little hungry kitten.
"You must've heard wrong. I said three hundred." Mo Ran nudges Chu Wanning's jaw with his nose, aligns their mouths and pushes his tongue in. He still tastes the tea they both drank before bed. A bit sweeter on Chu Wanning's tongue, a bit bitter on his own.
"It is impossible to count stars."
"Sure," he says, humoring his Wanning with a kiss. "Because a star is born every time I make love to you."
He loves the pinks and scarlet crawling up his beloved's white skin. So he leers, the way he knows will make his Wanning shudder with want. "They are our children, Wanning."
Their lovemaking is slow and generous. They reach the heights of their desire quietly, languidly. Again and again together. "Get well soon, so we can make more," he whispers as his love falls bonelessly over him to curl around him lazily.
"Shameless," Chu Wanning whispers against his heart.