The descent from the Peak of the Setting Sun was slow and silent. The two walked hand in hand through the darkness without seeming to notice the wind cutting between the pines. The blood on Zhì Yuǎn's right wrist had already dried into a dark crust that stuck his skin to Yù Qíng's fingers, but she did not loosen her grip, and he did not try to free his hand. They held firm the entire way what they had locked high above.
Zhì Yuǎn felt a difference in his step on the trail. The cold speck that had entered his chest on the summit remained lodged just below the sternum, making his bones feel denser with every step on the earth. The usual fatigue of the end of the day gave way to a constant clarity.
Half a step behind, eyes fixed on her husband's broad back, Yù Qíng dragged her feet on purpose during the descent. She let her weight drag backward to force him to pull her and test whether he still bore her weight. Zhì Yuǎn did not stumble once. He guided her down the slope with such ease that the extra effort seemed to cost him nothing.
When they reached the cabin, the interior smelled of old straw. Zhì Yuǎn lit the lamp with his left hand and the light flickered across the bamboo walls, revealing Yù Qíng standing right in front of him. Her eyes dropped to their still-joined hands, where the deep marks of her nails showed beneath the dried blood. She raised her free fingers to touch the wound with care.
"Your skin is warm," she murmured, tense. "And your chest… it's different. It feels harder."
Instead of answering at once, Zhì Yuǎn suddenly pulled his right hand and brought her body against his own. He lowered his left hand to Yù Qíng's waist and held her firmly.
"If I became light enough for the wind to carry me," he said, his voice low and calm, "how would you manage to drag me back to bed?"
Yù Qíng's breath hitched for an instant before she broke into a small, possessive smile. She rested her forehead against his chest to hide her face.
"I'm sorry…" she whispered, her voice muffled against the tunic. "I squeezed too hard."
Zhì Yuǎn only ran his hand along her back in a slow gesture in the warm, still air of the room, until Yù Qíng slid her fingers along his arms and guided him to the edge of the bed.
"Sit," she urged, her voice hoarse. "I'll get hot water to clean your hand."
She returned shortly after with a wooden basin from which steam rose slowly. She sat facing him and pulled her husband's right arm over her own lap.
With a damp cloth, she began to clean the nail marks one by one in slow, concentrated movements that gradually tinted the water a pinkish tone, while Zhì Yuǎn watched her lowered face.
"When we were children," he said after a while, "you used to dirty the hem of your dress in the workshop sawdust just to hold the broken pieces your father brought from the mine. You didn't even let the helpers come near the bench."
Yù Qíng continued passing the hot cloth over his skin without lifting her head.
"I liked watching your hands work," she murmured. "You always knew what was wrong. You looked once at the cracked wood and already understood where the force was lost."
"It was just paying attention to the pieces and feeling where the friction was wrong," he answered, pausing briefly when the cloth pressed the deeper cut. "Nothing special."
"And today on the peak?" Yù Qíng asked, finally raising her moist eyes to him. "What happened?"
Zhì Yuǎn turned his palm and closed his fingers around her hand, bringing it to his own chest, exactly over the point where that new weight rested.
"It's as if a veil that had always covered my vision had torn," he said. "I was no longer only looking at things from the outside. I felt the weight of the air and saw how the light recedes when the cold advances, as if the entire world were formed by threads I had never noticed before."
Yù Qíng remained silent for a few breaths before leaning forward and touching his face with her free hand.
"You can see whatever you want in the world," she whispered, her hot breath fanning against his lips. "As long as you never forget me."
Zhì Yuǎn did not hesitate. He held the back of his wife's neck and pulled her into a rough, wet kiss. Yù Qíng answered at once, seizing the front of his tunic hard and kicking over the forgotten basin of water on the floor. Without hesitation, he laid her on the mattress and pinned her under the weight of his own body. She met him with the same hunger, opening her legs to pull him closer, filling the room with the sound of their breathing and flesh striking flesh.
------
When silence returned to the cabin, the lamp had already gone out.
Completely exhausted, Yù Qíng threw herself to the side, draping one long leg over Zhì Yuǎn's thighs and spreading her hand over his chest. The tips of her fingers stayed lightly dug into the skin even as sleep overtook her moments later.
Zhì Yuǎn remained awake in the dark, feeling the sweat that still stuck their skins together and the constant weight of her leg and hand over his body while he looked at the bamboo ceiling.
After some time, almost by instinct, he turned his attention inward.
With the same clarity he had once used only to judge the fit of wood or the flaw in a mechanism, he managed to see his own internal structure—the density of the bones, the tension of the muscles and tendons, and, deeper still, a network of narrow and almost dry channels that had never truly been used. In the center of the chest, where the cold speck from the summit had lodged, there was now an open space, but any attempt to use that force met the closed passages around it.
He decided to test it.
Breathing deeply, he pushed that dense speck against the entrance of the narrow channels and felt the sharp pain respond at once, as if forcing thick water through a dried passage. Even so, he did not retreat. He continued drawing air and maintaining pressure against the points of greatest resistance, feeling the internal walls tremble with each cycle until, after countless attempts in the darkness, a thin thread finally began to run.
It was little, but enough to prove the path could be opened.
When he finally stopped, his skin was hot and damp with sweat. He opened his eyes and slowly turned his face so as not to wake Yù Qíng, who continued sleeping deeply with her face buried in the curve of his neck and her fingers still firm against his chest.
Zhì Yuǎn observed her for a moment and let that same perception descend over her body.
Inside, he found the same narrow and dry channels, along with a musculature that remained taut even during sleep, as if her entire body never relaxed the readiness to seize and pull him back if he tried to leave.
Looking at his wife in the dimness, Zhì Yuǎn understood that there was no point in opening those paths alone. If he continued changing his own flesh that way, the distance between them would soon become too great, and Yù Qíng would never accept being left behind—even if she broke herself entirely trying to keep up by force.
He raised his left hand and placed the warm palm on her bare back, pulling her a little closer to his chest. If he was going to walk that new path, she would go with him, because he himself would give her no other choice.