Chapter 120 — Seven-Mile Vale
劍問蒼天 · Page 1 of 5
The mountain path was narrow and wound twisting, and from the hard stone walls on either side jagged rocks thrust out without warning—one careless step and a man would crack his skull against them.
Around the rock faces water dripped ceaselessly in many places, pooling wherever it fell most thickly into small, still basins. In the dim, sunken spots above and below, green moss had taken hold, filling the air with a faint, damp, cool-smelling breath.
Ming Li and Xiaobai twisted and turned through seven bends and eight crooks, and only after no small effort did they finally emerge from that mountain passage whose age no man could reckon, and see the light of day once more.
That day the sun had only just risen, and after the gray gloom of the past several days the weather seemed remarkably clear.
Stepping out from the dark passage, they were struck full in the face by the sunlight, and both Ming Li and Xiaobai could not help narrowing their eyes, feeling as though the light pouring down from the sky bore a fair halo of rings that settled upon them.
After a moment, when their eyes had grown used to it, the bustling noise from somewhere ahead began to reach them.
The two looked forward, and all at once the world opened wide: ringed round by ranges of mountains lay a broad, flat, fertile stretch of land spread out before them.
Houses rose one after another, one upon the next, rich in the flavor of the Miao people, some built against the slopes and some clustered close together. A clear brook, rising in the deep mountains ahead, wound its way through this land that seemed a paradise cut off from the world. Many of the Miao dwellings stood upon its banks.
And upon the water, seen from afar, the Miao had built three bridges, no two of them alike. The first was of wood, the crudest of all: two great logs lashed together and laid across from bank to bank—that was a bridge.
The other two were both stone, and each had a character of its own. One was built of great blocks of stone, rough and solid, laid flat across the narrow stream with heavy slabs set over them—just the simple, practical way of bridge-building here in the southern borderlands.
But the last stone bridge was made of small stones, and had no piers at all. It was an arch, every stone fitted tight to the next, spanning the air and leaping the stream, and in its look it was entirely the manner of the Central Plains. That such a thing should appear in this place was passing strange.
Ming Li took it all in, and something stirred in his heart, though he let nothing show on his face. He and Xiaobai walked on, and the crowds grew denser, the bustle livelier. All around them was mostly the native speech of the Miao, and to Ming Li's ear it was a jabber of sounds from which he could not make out a single word in half a day.
Xiaobai walked at his side, glancing about. Many of the Miao they passed looked their way, and seeing unfamiliar faces, looked a few times more—though there was no particular hostility in it. After a few steps she said to Ming Li in a low voice, "It seems these southern borderlands have grown much more peaceful over the years."
Ming Li was taken aback, not following her. "What do you mean?"
Xiaobai said, "When I came to this place in those days, the ordinary Miao looked on outsiders as though facing a great enemy, their eyes full of vigilance and suspicion. In those years the strife among the Five Tribes was fierce and cruel, and quarrels among the clans broke out without cease. If an outsider dared come to Seven-Mile Vale without some means of defending himself, he was more likely than not to meet a bad end. But from the look of things today, these past years must have seen far less fighting."
Ming Li nodded slightly and looked around. By now they were walking among the Miao. The broad road ran along one side of the stream—on one hand the closely packed dwellings of the Miao, on the other the clear water, with rows of green trees along the bank.