ling

《醒时梦长》

Here you go, bud! One piping hot bowl of shredded meat noodles!

Hot-hot-hot!

Miss, there's only half a jar left of the Guixing reserve you wanted, and it's gotten pretty strong. We've got some new Husong in though, just out of the cellar this morning, if you want to give it a shot.

Hm...

Ever has patron chosen drink; when does drink choose patron? The ways of Shangshu do take rather differently.

That's, uh...

Might this new wine quench thirst?

Absolutely. Husong's light, sweet, and goes down easy, lingering on your palate for—

Might it make drunk?

Any wine can—depends how much you drink.

I know not if, once you see myself intoxicated, you may retract that.

(Hey. She's not a local, is she?)

(With how she acts, has to be some aristocrat touring the sights. She's here in Shangshu to kill time.)

(You know, I've been having the same dream every night lately...)

(Yeah? Well, last night I dreamt I got married to Xiao Hui!)

(Eat your noodles already, or you'll be late to work.)

Allow me to hear.

Eh?

The dream.

Uh, no, we were just chattering, Miss. Sorry to bother you while you're drinking.

Drinking lone does stifle. I bid you wine with me. Tell of your dream.

Are you one of those... dream interpreters? I've heard people can make a living with that, in some parts of Yan.

Well, if you're bored, then sure, why not?

These last few days I keep dreaming that Catastrophes are striking nearby, everyone's panicking. All these different orders come flying out of the Tianshi Bureaus, and they make me chief constructor, in charge of rebuilding Shangshu's nomadic city.

I'm carving stone when a Messenger finds me and—

Rebuilding?

Yeah. I'm sure you noticed when you arrived that our city isn't built like anywhere else.

To posit ranges upon migratory platforms would be unimaginable elsewhere. The nomadic city of Shangshu may rival even Heaven in its craft.

Which means our load-capacity's many times higher than usual. Making it that much harder to get enough drive.

I mean, thank Heaven for smiling on us, and the city for all its amazing people, and the Catastrophes for coming so rarely, but we haven't exactly put the 'nomadic' part to the test just yet. And who knows if it'll survive when we do?

Yea, your point is well taken.

But in the dream though! I find a solution!

The problem keeps gnawing at me after I'm chief constructor... until it suddenly hits me as I'm brewing tea.

All of Yan's rivers connect. Hundreds and hundreds of them, all linked to the sea too. The waterways are completely open. They're *natural lines* for nomadic cities to travel on.

And you know what say: 'water keeps a boat afloat.' If you combine the rivers with a nomadic city's own movement systems, it solves the lack of mobility from bearing all that load.

Just imagine. A Catastrophe bursts out, and this age-old mountain city turns light as a feather and shoots down the rivers like an arrow.

The people sit safe at home boiling tea, the only sign being the wind tossing up the occasional wave to splash over the Three Mounts and Eighteen Peaks. A burst of rain from a clear sky, and suddenly they realize they've gone a thousand li without even noticing.

Just like that, Shangshu is free from the fear of Catastrophe, and her people safe.

A fine and spectacular dream! Would that my sister were here to immortalize its contours in ink.

Hahahah, the only realistic part's when you're carving the stone!

Who says the rest can't happen?

Rebuilding a whole nomadic city... Like you'd ever be a Tumu Tianshi.

Nay, I see no harm.

It is from such dreams, one imagines, that the Tumu Tianshi begin their very work.

Who wants to carve stone their whole life anyway? What, you wanna serve noodles 'til the end of time?

(Shh! Careful, don't let the boss hear that.)

It's not so bad! Customers come from all over the country, so it's never boring. While it can be rough being on your feet all day, the boss treats us right whenever a festival comes around.

If I keep saving, maybe in a year or so I can get hitched to Xiao Hui after all.

You'll want to hurry, then. Sure, her house is only average, but with those looks? I hear she's already gotten proposals.

Dumbass—think before you speak.

Hahahaha!

You've got a good shot at becoming a Tumu Tianshi, though, really...

If that dream of yours comes true, then say goodbye to the trials of Shu's paths; they'll be wide open. We'll be able to sell our mountain city's carvings and tea all over Yan. No, more than just Yan.

Come to think of it, I completely forgot to get your take on my dream. It can't be normal, having it night after night...

Never did I say I could explain dreams.

I am merely a frequent dreamer of my own.

Still, if you want for it, I may yet try...

Then—

Come on, you should've started work ages ago. Pay your bill and get moving.

Oh!

Shoot! I left in a hurry today and didn't bring my—

Add it to my wine bill. Hardly could I hear your dream for free.

You're too kind, how can I—

I'll ask one thing further. Of the Three Mounts and Eighteen Peaks, which is most remote, most befitting of 'the trials of Shu's paths'?

What's your plan?

Once I've drunk my fill, I'll want for a quiet place to sleep. I may even dream a dream as fascinating as yours.

Scholars dream in hairpins wrought to flowers gold, beauties in red peonies by bridge's other end, and those who 'dream' as common folk, in matters devised, in feelings aroused. So in this nature does that stonesmith's dream lie.

The dream is fine, yet you believe it to pertain to fortune's scale. 'Twas dreamed however wanton, yet you do not dare interpret it however wanton.

Dreams, at the close, are merely dreams. The past, and future, always arise by themselves.

Why should you be here?

Gkh...

Did Dusk send you to meet me, or could I be away in her painting by now...

Gkh, gkh...

Or, perhaps... I am simply drunk?

Where was I just now?

You said you envied me.

So you little things know how to speak.

Very well. If the Husong's proven itself of such good effect, come next time I should try the Guixing reserve.

Ink, I think you're the only one like me in this whole world. But in the end, you're so much freer.

Where's this coming from?

Housewares are dead things, no heart or soul. We just happened to be touched up by Ling, and made into geists.

A teapot with a broken handle and no lid becomes a geist with broken legs and no arms. Anything of thin celadon can't even take a few hits...

A geist's form and will are confined by its true nature. We can only be however our body is.

All the same, we exist only in Dusk's scrolls, and aren't even necessarily 'living things'.

Dusk's scrolls are a whole different world... You might be of brush and scrawls, but you're from Dusk's imagination, along with the paintings' limitless sights.

'Imagination' is the freest of all. With it, a leaf is a boat, rivers fold in waves, dead trees flower, gray hair is again lustrous, Heaven and Earth invert, and all things become hazy.

Where did you learn such words...

Even when without form, when ink makes no splash, and brush halts and leaves empty, that itself has meaning.

Dusk's imagination is ceaseless. As the scroll is unfurled, so too are you eternally free.

Truly your envy runs deep, from the sound of it.

Gkh-gkh, Ware, I would think you're the one worth envying.

Oh?

To be free at ease isn't all good.

I ask you. There are several Ink Spirits here. Can you distinguish which were painted when Dusk joyed, and which when she grieved?

You all look roughly the same...

Correct. Not even we know what mood she had in painting us. Perhaps it was only done... emotionlessly.

But you, while your body is brown, your belly is deep black, stained by a dozen years of boiling tea. I could smell its scent, your scent, before you even approached.

Geists of the fine arts are snobbish. Geists of weapons of war indulge in violence. When a geist is impervious, we know its body has been tempered by heat and flame.

You're born with a basis, something to abide by. You're restricted, but that doesn't have to be your end. That is your meaning.