Spring of the Hidden Jade: Vol. 2

What traveler will the youth lost in the bamboo of a hidden valley meet next?

An adeptus's lifespan is long; their sense of time is naturally unlike that of mortals who live and die in a day.

A mortal's eyes stubbornly fix on a narrow limited ahead; but in her eyes time is like a vast screen-painting.

In mortal eyes, time is a forever-flowing river of blood—the scarlet flood, however it races in fixed channels, however it runs toward forking streams, will at last pour toward a dark-red-black horizon, toward distant still death.

But in her eyes, time is a beginningless endless waste, webbed with threads of silk stretching toward an unknowable far. All things stride or run; even mountains fixed in mortal eyes pass like drifting clouds in hers; even things lasting as quicksilver in mortal eyes she can, through amber-gold pupils, clearly see wear and collapse—not to mention brief cares and loves.

On the endless journey of life, mortals often long for home, and so wander in the endless long river of time, fancying that lost images might reappear at some future moment. Even when the torrent of years pushes them to make sweeping choices, they often look back dazedly at the past, as if its faded brilliance might return at some hour.

But she is different: she forever races with every motion, forever flying with white-gold mane, shattering every wave, stirring every sediment, only galloping from this moment into the future.

Mountain folk once saw her as Time's daughter—like a white horse leaping from a clear spring, no chain could bind her. Like her proud mother, no barrier or eggshell could stop her.

Plain herdsmen once chased her steps, left the wild's bonds, set out seeking water and grass; the gold-white foal became the guide of every herd on earth.

The kingdom in the abyssal sea once took her as an envoy, in imagination adding scales and tail-fins, prostrating to the light brought by one who was both mother and daughter.

In ages when mortals received high heaven's grace, tall heroes and roamers too sought clear springs for her favor, and fought one another over the tenderness she left in haste.

But after the moon-palace collapsed, the high chariot fell, and the three sisters perished, those legends too were lost with the coming of famine and the death of the people of old. High heaven lowered a harsh order; from then the starry sky no longer turned, the earth no longer moved.

And she could only be bound within the shell of the starry sky, forced to stay in this stagnant foreign land, waiting for her mother's thousand threads, waiting for hard stone to wear, waiting for the next meeting from outside…

"I have answered your question. As for the story that follows—I already told much of it last night."

Sometime she had already donned her white robe; her back to the scattered sunlight, amber-gold pupils glittered in the dark.

"It is bold to ask… I only know you are a transcendent adeptus, yet not where you come from, nor your name?"

Once more, as once in the bamboo before another strange child, she only smiled and said no more.

So the youth sighed, bowed farewell to the woman.

Years later the already-aged youth chanced to recall this moment—though by then he was skilled in sword-arts like flowing water, founded a school and became a master of a region—yet still could not grasp the last story she told. And she still ran upon the threads of fate, hiding her tracks under woods and clear springs, far from the gods' eyes, guarding ancient stories even she gradually forgot.