HCAW 149

Chapter 149: Six Dragons Holding the Candle

The sky was boundless and blue, the weather fine. After resting a few days, Chu Kuang’s condition had improved considerably. He left the tent and walked along the ice wall.

As he walked, he looked up at the top of the wall, estimating its height, and occasionally reached out to knock or press on the ice, as though searching for a weak spot.

Fang Jingyu followed close behind, step for step, full of unease. Chu Kuang’s wounds hadn’t fully healed yet—Fang Jingyu had no desire to see him running about. But the man’s temperament was as stubborn as an ox, and there was no stopping him. At that moment, Chu Kuang turned and, spotting Fang Jingyu trailing him, shouted in a fury:

“Get lost! I don’t want to see you!”

Fang Jingyu knew Chu Kuang was angry at him for overstepping boundaries, so he said nothing, pretending not to hear. When Chu Kuang turned his head, Fang Jingyu slipped just out of view. When Chu Kuang turned back around, he stepped forward again to stay behind him. Chu Kuang, unable to spot him, stomped his foot in frustration. “You damned mute gourd, what are you slinking around for!”

“You said you didn’t want to see me,” Fang Jingyu replied.

Chu Kuang grew even more furious and broke into a run. The winding ice wall formed a maze. After slipping around a corner and hiding for a while, Chu Kuang slowly emerged and looked around—Fang Jingyu was nowhere to be seen. Overjoyed, he trudged on alone with his satchel on his back.

But inside, Chu Kuang was a tangled mess. It wasn’t that he disliked Fang Jingyu—he just didn’t know how to face his younger brother. That boy who once clung to his leg and hid timidly behind him had grown into someone sharp and spirited, who now spouted clever reasoning and even tricked him into mouth-on-mouth nonsense. Chu Kuang pounded his forehead in dismay—had that hole in his head made him slow? Was that why he kept falling into Fang Jingyu’s traps?

He was lost in thought when he suddenly slipped. Just as he was about to fall, a shadow appeared behind him and caught him. The two of them tumbled onto the ice in a jumbled heap. Chu Kuang scrambled up and saw the one beneath him was none other than Fang Jingyu.

Chu Kuang leapt up in panic and helped him up. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

Fang Jingyu frowned. “Not hurt.” But Chu Kuang saw how he was cradling his arm and guessed it was bruised from the fall. He ached with worry but covered it with anger: “You damned brat, who told you to stick so close to me? If not for that, we wouldn’t have fallen!”

“Because you’re wearing the best coat we have in Guixu. If you’d fallen into the Ming Sea and frozen it, we wouldn’t be able to wear it anymore. What a shame that would’ve been.”

Chu Kuang nearly exploded. This brother of his—so petty! Always fussing about little things. Compared to himself, who carried the weight of the world, Fang Jingyu seemed more worried about a coat. His face darkened, and he spun around to walk away.

Intent on shaking off Fang Jingyu, he moved fast and deliberately ducked into more remote paths. After a while, they had completely lost their way amid the maze of the ice wall. At last, Chu Kuang stopped and looked back. Only wind and frost met his gaze—miles of solid ice like a mirror. No sign of the way they came.

He turned to face Fang Jingyu, and the two stared at each other. After a beat, Chu Kuang lunged at him, the two grappling in a tangled mess. “It’s your fault! Now we’re lost!”

“You’re shameless, brother. You’re the one who dragged us around and got us lost. Why blame me?”

“If you hadn’t been hounding me, I wouldn’t have panicked and gone the wrong way!”

Just as Chu Kuang was about to curse, Fang Jingyu suddenly reached out, wrapped an arm around his neck, and pulled him down for a kiss, silencing all his fury. Chu Kuang froze, completely stunned, body taut like a drawn bow. Fang Jingyu kissed him for quite a while before letting go, looking calm and composed. “Don’t slander me, brother.”

A jolt of heat ran through Chu Kuang’s body like a bolt of lightning. He trembled and jumped up, stealing a glance at Fang Jingyu before quickly turning away. He circled the area, trying to find a way back, but after several laps came up empty. Dejected, he returned and plopped down in defeat.

“What is it?” Fang Jingyu asked.

“We’re lost. Night’s coming soon. What are we going to do?” Chu Kuang frowned and grumbled, “Have you noticed how quickly night falls now? There’s barely a few hours of daylight. At night, it’ll freeze even worse. We’ll freeze to death out here!”

Fang Jingyu said nothing, stood, and took off his satchel.

Chu Kuang glared at him. “We’re the most pathetic pair of Emperor’s Bai and Tianfu Guard ever. We haven’t even started chipping away at the ice wall and we’re already about to become ice sculptures!”

“If you’ve got the energy to yell at me, then help out,” Fang Jingyu replied, not stopping his hands. He pulled out bronze frame pieces from his satchel, set up poles, draped cloth over them, laid down beast pelts inside, and built snow walls for wind protection. Before long, a small tent stood fully formed.

Chu Kuang was dumbfounded—so this brat had planned ahead. Fang Jingyu even had hooks and netting. He drilled a hole in the ice, caught some bighead fish, cut them into raw slices, rinsed the blood, and handed them to Chu Kuang. Chu Kuang rolled his eyes. Fang Jingyu said, “There’s no vegetables here in this frozen land. You’ll get scurvy if you don’t eat raw meat.”

Only then did Chu Kuang grudgingly eat a few pieces.

After eating, the two sat in the tent, knees drawn up, listening to the northern wind howl outside. After a long silence, Fang Jingyu finally spoke:

“We’ll set out again tomorrow. If we still can’t find our way back, it’s fine. Emperor Bai knows this place better than us. If we don’t show up, he’ll probably come looking.”

Chuchang glared at him. Outside, it gradually grew dim, the night spreading across the sky and earth. The darkness was so thick that they couldn’t see their own hands in front of them, and they couldn’t see each other’s faces. Chu Kuang said, “I have to sleep here with you for a night?”

“What’s the big deal? Didn’t you share a bed with me in Emperor Bai’s City?”

Chu Kuang felt a chill run down his spine and thought to himself that at that time, he was severely injured and his mind was foggy, so he let Fang Jingyu manipulate him. Now that he was awake, he felt that he shouldn’t have let Fang Jingyu act so recklessly. At this moment, Fang Jingyu said calmly:

“Brother , don’t be mad.”

Chu Kuang seemed as if he had been pricked by a needle, retorting like a ruffled cat, “Don’t call me ‘brother’ in such a sticky manner! We’re not even related!”

“Even better if we aren’t related,” Fang Jingyu said. “The case is already done, so why are you still embarrassed?” Chu Kuang’s anger flared up, and he wanted to smash that incessantly chattering mouth.

At that moment, a bright light suddenly shone through the tent, and the two stopped arguing, curiously crawling out of the tent. Outside, it was like a beautiful painted curtain, with the sky filled with dazzling colours and blue-green mist slowly rising. The two were mesmerised; they had never seen such a scene before.

Finally, it was Chu Kuang who came to his senses first and said, “I once read in a book rumoured to come from the Nine Provinces that this is called ‘Six Dragons Holding the Candle,’ and some also refer to it as Five-Color Light. The ‘Songs of Chu’ says: ‘In the northwest of the sky, there is a country of darkness without sun, illuminated by the dragon-holding candle.’ Presumably, this country of darkness refers to our place.”

Fang Jingyu felt uneasy hearing him drop the bag of letters. But then he thought, his brother had always been a knowledgeable person; it was just that Chu Kuang was often rough and wild, which he had gotten somewhat unaccustomed to.

Strangely, after he and Chu Kuang recognised each other, they sometimes truly seemed to have a tacit understanding like that of siblings. Fang Jingyu quickly grasped the meaning behind Chu Kuang’s words and said:

“That means… the Nine Provinces are to our southeast.”

“This direction should be more or less correct. That brother of mine has quite the sharp mind!” Chu Kuang was very pleased and exchanged a fist salute with him. Yet the moment their fists met, Chu Kuang’s movement froze, and he quickly drew his hand back.

The two of them entered the tent to shelter from the wind, leaving a slit open to watch the five-colored light. The sky above blazed brilliantly, and they sat close together in silence. Suddenly, the world seemed to fall into stillness—no wind, no snow—only the faint glow flowing from the heavens.

In that quiet, it felt as though every knot in the heart unraveled on its own. Chu Kuang turned his head to look at Fang Jingyu, as if making up his mind, and bit his lip.

“Jingyu.”

Fang Jingyu tilted his head. The soft glow flowed across Chu Kuang’s cheek. A few stars adorned the sky, drifting in the river of light, reflecting in Chu Kuang’s eyes. His delicate, ethereal appearance was just like the Fang Minsheng Fang Jingyu had seen ten years ago. Fang Jingyu’s heart skipped a beat, and he responded instinctively, “What is it, Brother Minsheng?”

Chu Kuang turned his face away again, resting his head on his knees and muttering, “I don’t know how I should treat you.”

“And how does Brother want to treat me?”

“I’m Chu Kuang now. I’m no longer the Fang Minsheng from before. I’m afraid… you’ll be disappointed in me.” As he spoke, his arms unconsciously tightened around himself, fingers digging into his skin and leaving faint bruises. “I… can’t go back to who I was.”

Fang Jingyu gave a soft laugh. “If Brother really wanted to return to the past like Emperor Bai does, that would be what worries me.”

He gently placed his hand over Chu Kuang’s. “It’s all right. No matter what you’re like now, I’ll never lose hope in you. Just knowing you’re alive is already the greatest fortune of my life.”

Chu Kuang said nothing, but his hands were trembling. The five-colored light poured down from above. According to legend, it was a remnant of the celestial hound’s birth or the candle held by the Six Dragons illuminating the sky. Some say it foretold chaos in the world, but on this night, it felt nothing but peaceful. Beneath its light, all past pain seemed like it might one day fade.

Suddenly, Chu Kuang found himself pulled into a warm embrace—gentle as spring despite the winter’s chill.

“I once said I wanted to leave Penglai Heavenly Pass with you, to ride side by side through the world. And you said you’d go with me through blood and fire,” a voice whispered beside his ear. Chu Kuang looked up and saw Fang Jingyu’s soft smile. For ten years, his younger brother had lived with heavy burdens, and now at last, that weight was lifted. “Now we’ve both fulfilled our promises. I ask for nothing more, brother.”

This time, Chu Kuang no longer pushed him away. They stayed like that in each other’s arms for a long while. Back in Yingzhou, they had spoken from the heart, but still wore masks. Now, they finally met one another with complete sincerity.

He closed his eyes, a faint sigh escaping his lips. “But I’ve done so many things wrong.”

“What things?”

Chu Kuang opened his eyes and glanced at Fang Jingyu—who was looking at him with a teasing expression. His face flushed, and he clenched his teeth, thinking angrily: This idiot is just playing dumb. What else could they have done wrong? They’d already gone too far—more than once!

Just then, he felt his cheeks gently cupped. A light kiss brushed his lips like a feather. Fang Jingyu held his face and asked softly:

“Is this the mistake you meant?”

Chu Kuang’s face burned. “You kissed me again! You’re doing it on purpose!”

A long wind swept over the sky, rustling softly. The peace within the tent dissolved as the two clashed once more.

Fang Jingyu said calmly, “The Penglai Code doesn’t forbid me from kissing my ‘brother.’ Besides, you’re not really my brother—so it hardly counts as a crime.”

Chu Kuang had no response. Then Fang Jingyu gently pushed him down—not forcefully, but with firm resolve. Chu Kuang’s whole body tensed, sensing what was coming next. Just like in the ship’s cabin in Yingzhou, like in the old temple at Yuanqiao, like in the residence at Daiyu—each misstep vivid in his mind, and now they were on the verge of making yet another one.

“You dead gourd! Do you even know the way back? You left us here on purpose, didn’t you—so you could pull this stunt!”

Fang Jingyu replied, “Brother Minsheng is truly brilliant. You’ve guessed right.”

“I’m not even fully recovered! And now you’re trying to get handsy?”

“Every wound salve you used, I brewed it. Every dressing, I changed it. You’ve sat on that Taoyuan Stone Chair for half a month. If you weren’t healed, would I have let you run around? If you can still brawl with me, you’re more than fine.”

Chu Kuang struggled under him with all his might. The tent curtain fell, blocking out the wind and snow outside. Shadows flickered faintly across the canvas as though firelight danced beyond it. His clothes were gradually stripped away, revealing his porcelain-white body in the moonlight, like a fish with its scales peeled off on a chopping board. Chu Kuang shouted angrily:

“Fang Jingyu, I swear I’m going to kill you!”

Fang Jingyu lowered his voice as he drew close, “Then let me die inside you, brother.”