The significance of the herbs and vegetables soon became apparent to Yun Jieshi as the days passed. As expected, the reason was tied to why Qui Tian always made different herbal teas – some of them discount soups – and tested him.
The wisdom to this first graced Yun Jieshi when Qui Tian began repeating two words that attracted his interest:
"Good… harmony."
Harmony and disharmony were integral parts of this world, Yun Jieshi had judged.
His daruan was tied to harmony because of the Harmonising Psalm of Zhan Hao.
Disharmony ran through ghosts like Feng Jie Hong and abominable creatures like the Jade Imps. The stink on them was a representative of this fact, even if only Yun Jieshi could detect it.
The hag added to the little monkey's unease when concerning disharmony with a single word.
"Dangerous…"
She also explained with a few broken sentences that pits like the one in Yun Jieshi were always in danger of being Disharmonised when they were still fresh. That was why she had fed him the right herbal tea daily.
She conducted the tests with the other different teas to help him tell which one would reinforce the harmony in his pit… and also to check if or when he started to devolve into disharmony.
Yun Jieshi had remembered that dangerous look the hag had donned when he was making a choice between the three stone cups she gave him. He pieced this together on his own: if he had shied away from the right cup for too long, the hag would have killed him – suspecting him of harboring disharmony.
It had been a serious affair indeed.
Qui Tian was very wary of disharmony. That was why she too never shied away from drinking the tea.
"Good… harmony," she always said.
"Human food… better," she always murmured.
'I didn't think there could be such great meaning to vegetables,' Yun Jieshi thought. 'It's not just the fables and the histories about how ideologies were formed that count.'
Qui Tian didn't seem to know why it was that the ginseng, the lemongrass, the scallion, and the radish root compelled harmony. If she did know, she hid it well. Yun Jieshi didn't make it a point to dwell on anything she was reluctant to share these days, and for good reason.
Presently, Zi Kun had just lifted off from the world, and Yun Jieshi was by the grate, watching the rice. He was cooking it in a large bowl with another acting as the lid. It didn't take long to cook. Not long at all.
He beamed.
"34…35…36…37…38… Now!" Yun Jieshi removed the bowls from the grate. He pushed away the discount lid and blew the steam coming from the perfect clump of pastel blue rice.
Licking his lips, he took a pinch of the rice and threw it into his mouth. Belatedly, the old sagely voice in his head informed:
"Spiced Wine Rice, a selective delight for the enlightened; good for warm drunken pleasures."
"Perfect," said Yun Jieshi after he swallowed, but it wasn't the texture of the rice he was remarking. He had already perfected that over the last few days. It was the amount of salt that he commended himself for.
After the little monkey had mastered the instruction for supplying water, the hag had seen it fit for him to learn the spell she used to produce salt. It was a little harder, but not so hard that Yun Jieshi couldn't learn it after half a day of practice.
He had immediately put the instruction to good use. He started by judging how much of this salt would be enough for the pastel-colored rice. It was a bit greedy, he'd found when he first cooked it.
Right then, the hag entered the cabin.
Yun Jieshi beamed at her and immediately split the rice into two big bowls. He paired each serving with the broth he made from a creature the old, sagely voice had identified as a Mournless Cow. It was especially delicious.
Qui Tian sat down after offloading her groceries and eagerly reached for a bowl. Before she dug her fingers into the food, however…
"Hold on!" Yun Jieshi damn near screamed. The old woman froze.
The little monkey hurried to a corner where his belongings were heaped. He grabbed his ruan and screwed out one of the turning pegs stabbing into its head. It was ebony, with a beautiful, double-edged red blade on its end.
Yun Jieshi grabbed a pair of sticks next to the ruan. (He'd extracted them from nearby trees while Qui Tian was out.) Well, they certainly looked like random wood chunks at first glance, but they were actually chopsticks. Yun Jieshi quickly shaved chips off them to perfect their ugly shape and then rushed back to the hag to present them as utensils.
"Please, don't break these ones. You're doing great learning how to use chopsticks, but I can't keep making new pairs every day," he said as Qui Tian reluctantly accepted the chopsticks. She sighed and turned to the divine right corner. There were two ugly, crooked wooden spoons perfect for use, but since yesterday, Yun Jieshi had demanded that she learn to use chopsticks instead.
As frustrated as the old woman was, she still entertained Yun Jieshi's fussy plight. She used the technique he taught her. The way she wiggled her fingers clumsily before finally getting the first step right always made the little monkey smile, his nostrils flaring.
'I really shouldn't laugh at my elders,' he thought.
The hag picked up chunks of cooked boar meat swimming in the broth and mixed them with the rice before taking a bite. She looked a little refined. Yun Jieshi was proud.
As bothered as the hag looked, he had caught her practicing to use the chopsticks even when they weren't eating. That had served as his motivation to continue urging her to use them.
'I wish I could make richer broths,' the little monkey thought as they fed. He only had them use the spoons when they weren't eating meat, which was rare.
Rice was a staple though. Since Yun Jieshi had asked for them to harvest it eight days ago, Qui Tian had started demanding that they collect it every day. Even when she left Yun Jieshi in the cabin, mostly to practice the instructions of his talismans, she would bring back the Spiced Wine Rice.
Aside from its delightful taste, it had quite some sublime effects.
As Qui Tian hummed in contentedness after chewing a mixture of the pastel blue rice dipped in broth, her hazel eyes showed from her thick eyelids. They might have been aglow, mirroring her pleasure. She hurried to devour her food, as did Yun Jieshi. If she finished quicker than him, he'd have no choice but to share. Qui Tian was shameless when it came to meats, and worse when it came to the rice these days.
As the two fed like hungry wolves, steam began to hiss from them both. A warmth that felt as good as taking a hot shower after being clapped by rain, brimmed through them. Mirages began to form, making the warm cabin even warmer.
Yun Jieshi finished his food quickest. He placed his bowls on the side and let out an obscene moan while closing his eyes.
He was… intoxicated.
Qui Tian was too. She took a deep breath after drinking the remains of her broth and closed her eyes.
The two froze even while radiating furious warmth.
While Yun Jieshi could only have described the state he and the hag were in as drunkenness, that wasn't entirely accurate.
He opened his eyes. His brain seemed to grow wings and leave his body. It must have flown circles around the cabin's interior while wearing his eyes. He saw his little figure from all angles, rushing by over and over again. He giggled. His judgment wasn't impaired. He knew exactly what was going on (well, at least the fact that he was under the effects of the Spiced Wined Rice).
His brain seemed to fly back into his head in the next instant, the sharpness of his senses returned.
It was the same for the hag. She sat up straight and licked her lips.
The strange state of drunkenness never lasted longer than a minute, but it was blissful while it lasted. The comfortable feeling of warmth, however, lasted for more than an hour.
"Phew… I wish I could take this rice to Earth," Yun Jieshi said to himself.
He pulled himself up and took the bowls away while Qui Tian recovered her senses. He hadn't been especially surprised, but unlike Hua Dongmei and the Imps, she seemed perfectly capable of eating selective delights for the enlightened, like he could.
When he asked if she was enlightened, Qui Tian never managed to muster an answer. It seemed to be a sour subject, and thus Yun Jieshi didn't press. He did wonder why she had said she couldn't eat the rice at first though.
While in the divine right corner, Yun Jieshi tore the stem of an eggplant Qui Tian had brought and wrote on one of the slips of hemp she kept for him.
"Eternal frost, hailing from beyond. Thaw and abide."
A generous amount of water poured from the slip of hemp and filled one of the large bowls. It was at least three times as much as Yun Jieshi had been to produce the first time he tried making the talisman.
Using fresh material – fresh plant blood – produced a better result, even if the amount of Xun he used was the same. Better yet, it reduced the cost of creating an instruction, much to the little monkey's delight. Where he'd used up all his Xun for this single instruction before – after having written on the hemp with an older scallion – days ago, now he only used a third of it.
He could feel the consumption of Xun more concisely around his pit. Presently, with the right blood, Yun Jieshi could use the water instruction three times before exhausting his Xun.
He cleaned the bowls with bubbling excitement. At some point, the water he was using turned warm because of the heat he was radiating – a result of the Spiced Wine Rice.
The feeling of contentedness because of the meal was one thing though. The little monkey had something to look forward to today.
Because he and Qui Tian had breezed through their reserves of meat so quickly over the last eight days, Qui Tian had to go hunt again. This time, though, as part of Yun Jieshi's requests, he was to tag along.
He'd only ever accompanied the hag to the garden, helping her with carrying the vegetables and rice. But now, he would learn how and where to hunt for food.
"Come on. Let's get going," he said to Qui Tian after he was done with the dishes.
The hag got up while Yun Jieshi picked up his ruan, beaming. He felt good. He hadn't been on a long trip outside in three days. He only went out of the cabin to do his exercises with the large bone bow.
He got out of the cabin before Qin Tian and drew in the frigid air. It hissed when it fell on him, mixed with the snow. As he was now, Yun Jieshi didn't need to fear the blizzard. For an hour after eating the Spiced Wine Rice, he wouldn't need the protection of Qui Tian's talisman.
It was nice to be the blizzard's equal for once.
A golden light shone in Yun Jieshi's sight, neither stinging nor irritating, but attention-grabbing. It was the urn – the Complete Dear Treasure, Qui Tian's Reminder.
Qui Tian's voice, melding into the same words over and over again filtered into Yun Jieshi's ears. His enthusiasm dropped by a peg.
He hadn't pestered Qui Tian about the urn and she hadn't bothered to explain what it was. The little monkey was patient with everything else he wanted to know about the hag, but this… this kept stabbing at him whenever he left the cabin, reminding him that it was a mystery that could probably be answered with a sentence or less.
The hag wobbled out of the cabin after him and closed the door, ready to leave. She saw the little monkey staring at the urn with a frown. At once, she knew…
"Qui Tian… Could you tell me about this urn?" Yun Jieshi asked her. "Why does it keep saying the same thing over and over again? Why does it have your voice? What even is it?"
He didn't look at her. In his mind, he already expected silence as the answer. But it was worth a try, right?
Qui Tian was silent indeed… for several moments. But she had an answer beyond that today.
"If tell… You… leave me."