The moon on autumn nights always appears more yellow than at any other time, though the brighter its hue, the lonelier it looks.
It was nearing dawn, and aside from my subdued conversation with her, only the faint scent of rose incense lingered in Musheng.
She still handed me a glass of orange juice instead of making tea.
A stack of worn tarot cards lay face down on the spread black cloth. Dim light fell on the backs of the cards, resembling a flowing water stain.
"I know you're not human, but a demon," Mu's fingertips lightly drew circles on the cards. Beneath her lowered eyelashes, her emerald eyes twinkled with fragmented yet bright light.
"You knew I would come back to find you." I wasn't surprised at all, my gaze falling on her cards.
Mu smiled and said without raising her head, "Those who come here to find me are all people hoping for help."
"Am I also someone who needs your help?" Suddenly, I saw something familiar from Mu, and it reminded me of those people who keep coming to Unceasing looking for me, those folks who are eager for my help.
"Perhaps you are," Mu suddenly looked up, her emerald eyes like a nightmare that could trap anyone deeply, "My cards will tell us everything we want to know."
"I'm not one of those kids who run here for cotton candy." I politely reminded her.
She fell silent, took the deck of cards, symbolically shuffled them, and flipped the first card, murmuring to herself, "Eight of Cups... at some point, in the past, maybe even now, you feel you've been abandoned."
"I'm not going to pay you for a divination." I shrugged.
She ignored me and flipped the second card. "I see you waking up from countless nightmares, panicked, sad and helpless. Nine of Swords."
I smiled and shook my head. "Go on."
She continued to play with the cards, unhurriedly saying, "You're trying to cross the river of sorrow in your heart, seeking the true brightness on the other side. You've been searching... for the person you lost. He has a lion's brave heart and a king's pride. However, your search journey is filled with thorns and full of perils."
"Oh..." I nodded, "So, give me the concluding remarks."
A weird smile appeared on her lips as she flipped the last card — a card depicting "Death" — and pushed it toward me.
On the card, a skeleton sat proudly on a horse, showing off its might trampling over a land of creatures.
"If I were you, I would cherish every remaining minute and second." Every word she spoke was like an eternal ice shard.
Every remaining minute and second... I laughed coldly in my heart.
Suddenly, the overhead light in the room went out, and an unexpected gust of wind rushed towards us. In the darkness, I only heard the swishing sound of tarot cards falling to the floor.
After two or three seconds, the light came back on. Except for the tarot cards scattered on the floor, there was no sign of anything abnormal. Only an open window was still swaying slightly.
"It's windy at night, you should remember to close the windows," I blinked at her, politely bending down to pick up the fallen cards for her.
One, two… When my fingers touched the tarot card that had fallen near my feet, my heart briefly tightened.
Straightening up, I handed the gathered cards to Mu, stood up, and said, "I'm sorry to have bothered you for so long. It's late; I'll say goodbye."
Mu got up and saw me off to the door. Her steps were silent, and there was an inexplicable expression of triumph on her face.
"Come again when you have time," she said, waving at me.
I was just about to depart when I suddenly turned back, giving her a particularly bright smile. "By the way, you seem to have overlooked a detail in your concluding remarks with the Death card."
"What?" She cocked an eyebrow.
"The Death card is upright from your perspective, symbolizing death and endings. But from my perspective, it's reversed." I cleared my throat and added, "If the upright Death card implies death, the reversed Death card implies... fighting death for new life[1]."
I saw Mu's smile freeze for a moment, out of some malice or unwillingness. Such an expression really shouldn't appear on someone as ethereally beautiful as her.
"Speaking of Tarot..." I winked at her. "My Tarot skills might not be inferior to yours."
I turned and left Musheng, the pure-gold amulet on my wrist swaying with the movement of my hands, making a crisp tinkling sound in the silent night…
[1] 置诸死地而后生: place somebody on a field of death and he will fight to live, an idiom based on Sun Tzu's The Art of War. To fight desperately when confronting mortal danger; fig. to find a way out of an impasse.
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