Half a year later, Nian Dada said his farewells to Proprietor Wen, settled his room charge, and prepared to return to Fuyao Mountain. Proprietor Wen — surname Wen, given name Jing — was the proprietor of the run-down inn that was ‘three coins a night’, and he had a big round belly. In his youth, he had worked as an armed escort, covered in a heroic aura as he ran all around jianghu, and could have eaten eight big mantous in one meal.
Their scene of farewell had not the slightest bit of sorrow to it, because there was third friend present that was really messing with it.
This friend was no more than three chi tall, his baby teeth all freshly grown in. At first glance, there was scant difference between his height and width — were he to encounter a slope, he basically wouldn’t need to spend any energy walking, as he could just roll down it. At this moment, he was holding Nian Dada’s thigh, howling hard enough to fracture his organs and weeping miserably. “Mom… mom, don’t go!”
This little friend had countless ‘moms’, with no distinction between gender and age. One amongst them was the mother that had birthed him, and the rest were all moms that he had come to acknowledge: whoever fed him was whoever he cared to call ‘mom’.
Proprietor Wen covered one of his ears. “Didn’t you say that you came to find someone?” he growled at Nian Dada. “Go find them… ai, think of a way to make this imp quit howling!”
“Go get him candy!” Nian Dada snarled, shredding his throat to do all he could to overpower the cub’s lung-tearing wails.
“Where the fuck am I going to find candy?!” Proprietor Wen asked, after which he angrily went inside, rummaged out a chunk of braised duck neck from the kitchen, then roughly stuffed it into the li’l butterball’s mouth. “Just eat it!”
The plump kid gurgled a bit, tasted the flavor, and immediately quit caring about Nian Dada, crouching nearby to peacefully eat.
Proprietor Wen looked at the butterball sourly. “It can’t be him that you were looking for, surely?”
Nian Dada looked ashamed.
“Right. I’ve heard before that you cultivators focus on reincarnation, but this Daoist pal of yours didn’t practice the divine arts of having a huge stomach in his past life, yeah?”
The reincarnated child that practiced divine huge stomach arts grinned carefreely at Proprietor Wen, and his buttcheeks clapped as he ran over in front of him, the duck neck held in his mouth. “Mom!” he crisply called out as he tilted his head back.
“Get out of here,” Proprietor Wen answered blankly.
After that scolding, though, he appeared to suddenly get a bit emotional. “Speaking of reincarnation, ever since I grew thoughtful, I went to all sorts of places, yet all of them felt lacking in something. It wasn’t until I came to the East Sea that it felt like I was coming back home… I heard that a lot of cultivators came and went from this region a hundred years ago. Tell me, would I happen to be the reincarnation of someone?”
Hearing that, Nian Dada tentatively probed, “Do you mean to seek immortality and question the Dao, Proprietor Wen? How about I recommend you—“
“Hey, I was just saying.” Proprietor Wen waved him off, casually petting the top of the butterball’s big bald head. “I feel like even if I do cultivate, I won’t amount to much, and after I study, I’ll still want to open a little inn and be its proprietor, the same as I am now. Cultivators come, cultivators go. It’s all just about as necessary as taking off your pants to fart… alright, I’ll stabilize this great ancestor for you, go on now. May destiny allow us to meet again.”
Nian Dada looked profoundly at the butterball, then ended up saying nothing, leaving by himself.
He had gotten the thought to bring Nian Mingming’s reincarnation with him, but upon seeing that the little boy had no worries for food and clothing all his life, both of his parents, and mingled in the streets like a fish in water, he suddenly felt it to be pointless.
Presumably, in Nian Mingming’s opinion, flying high in the sky might not get him the same kind of happiness he got nibbling on duck neck as he crouched on the ground.