ATEG Chapter 137

In the Sui royal palace, an iron-wood desk held a spread of mole-cricket shell paper, its four corners pinned flat by four corner-shaped paperweights of ox horn — glossy and waxy, mottled amber-yellow — stretching open a vast map.

Sui King Ying Bufu stood behind the desk, her golden crown binding her hair, her royal robes bearing an imposing weight. Her almond-shaped eyes were sharp and clear as she swept them inch by inch across the entire map.

Mole-cricket shell map was fine, smooth, and tough — resistant to sharp blades, impervious to water and fire — capable of preserving ink and color for a thousand years without fading. Yet this map had not yet reached a thousand years in age; it had been drawn over seven hundred years ago, after the Yin dynasty unified the realm. Since it was drawn, it had never once been revised.

The Great Yin occupied the central-western region: to its northwest lay Min, to its southwest lay Ji, to its southeast lay Liang, and to its northeast lay Sui. Beyond Sui and Liang, separated from them, lay Lu.

The three kingdoms of Sui, Liang, and Lu were divided from one another by the natural barriers of the Daqing Mountain Range and the Huai River.

After the Great Calamity began, Ji submitted to Yin, Min attached itself to the Flame Lord, Lu took shelter under the Divine Court’s protection, and Liang had fallen into chaos. Its newly crowned king, Xu Huan, had vanished without a trace, leaving the kingdom in a leaderless state. Fortunately, the domestic disorder had already been suppressed beforehand — the many evil factions had been eliminated — and though the other branches of the Xu bloodline harbored restless ambitions, on one hand the lingering authority of Xu Huan’s earlier iron-fisted measures still held sway, and on the other hand the sudden collapse of the Xuanqing Sect would pour cold water on those heated minds. Liang’s ministers continued to act according to established law and were, for the moment, holding things together.

Thinking of this, Ying Bufu could not help but sigh inwardly. Liang King Xu Huan was a man of great talent. The path he had walked was utterly different from her own. Ying Bufu had relied on royal qi, drawing on the Wuying Hall and the Yongsheng Tower to consolidate power within herself, suppressing the signs of impending chaos in Sui — a result shaped both by Sui’s circumstances at the time and by the fact that she was a woman. Ordinary people often look down on women; without absolute power in hand to overawe hearts and minds, endless disrespectful doubts would slow the passage of decrees up and down the chain, and those who paid lip service while secretly defying would be beyond counting. Only by consolidating power within herself could she take over Sui’s wreckage as swiftly as possible. But the consequence of this was that Sui could not do without her — if she were absent, she must choose a capable successor, otherwise no one would be able to use royal qi to govern the Wuying Hall and the Yongsheng Tower, and Sui would inevitably descend into chaos.

Ah Lu was the result of Ying Bufu having no other choice. Though Ah Lu was clever, she had no heart for becoming the ruler of a nation — but this was not such a great problem. When Ying Bufu herself had started out, hadn’t she also had no intention of becoming Sui King? Sui was unlike Liang; its bloodline was thin. Ah Lu had been an accident — her birth was not without a shadow of impropriety. Her father had two children at the time and was at the height of his vigor, believing he would break the pattern of the Ying clan’s single-heir lineage for generations and thus unwilling to acknowledge her. Ying Bufu — she had been called Ying Chang’an back then — had taken Ah Lu in and raised her by her side.

She had not expected the accidents that followed one after another. Now, within the five degrees of kinship of the Ying clan, only the two of them remained. The situation in Liang — where the many branches of the Xu bloodline were stirring with restless ambition — made her feel a complicated envy.

Previously, Bie Chunian had seized only her, and yet had brought enormous turmoil upon Sui — this too was a consequence of her having consolidated all power within herself. In Liang, by contrast, with the statutes Xu Huan had laid down, it would not have been so easy to cause such havoc. Had those meticulous and far-reaching statutes not been in place, Liang would not have remained free of open upheaval for so long, even after the long absence of its ruler.

But this was the path Liang had walked — not one that Sui could follow.

Ying Bufu withdrew her thoughts. Without a ruler — without someone in whom the nation’s fortune and royal qi could be vested — ordinary people would have nothing with which to contend against cultivators. If Liang continued this way indefinitely, chaos would come sooner or later. Liang’s original crown prince, Xu Kang, was for some unknown reason now sheltering in Lu, asking Lu’s ruler, Lu Hong, to help him return home and take the throne.

If this came to pass, Liang’s predicament would resolve itself — but it would also risk becoming Lu’s vassal in the years ahead. However, Liang and Lu were separated by the Daqing Mountain Range, so the relationship between the two need not be especially close; with enough careful maneuvering, breaking free would not be impossible. Yet now, in the midst of the Great Calamity with aberrations erupting constantly, Liang’s situation was far from good. If the soon-to-be-crowned Crown Prince Xu Kang had any sense of priorities, he would maintain the relationship, using Lu’s ties with the Divine Court to likewise seek the Divine Court’s shelter.

And now, Sui alone remained without anyone to rely on.

Were this not a time of calamity, this would not necessarily be a bad thing. But the Great Calamity was escalating, and even though the calamity upon common mortals had passed, the calamity upon cultivators was still causing no small amount of harm to ordinary people.

Ying Bufu’s gaze was heavy as it dragged across the mole-cricket shell map that had been passed down for over seven hundred years. Mole-cricket creatures devoured people, so Sui’s forebears had flayed their shells and snapped off their horns to make this map and the four paperweights. Now cultivators had transformed into aberrations and were devouring living beings — just like the mole-cricket creatures of old. How was one to cut off their heads?

Her gaze settled on Yin territory. Earlier, the Yin emperor had used Bie Chunian to scheme against her, wielding Sui as a spear to strike at Lu. Yin held no regard for Sui’s people — it could not be relied upon.

The territory of Min was attached to the Flame Lord and also shared a border with Sui. This god who dwelled permanently in the mortal world had originally seemed a good choice. But some days ago, trouble had erupted in Min, and upon receiving the news, Ying Bufu was suddenly struck by a startling realization: could this great calamity of aberrations have drawn in even the high and lofty gods?

The Flame Lord had no need of one more Sui. And Min itself was mired in calamitous troubles of its own — it was likely unable to spare any attention for Sui.

The Divine Court was a good choice. The many deities of the Divine Court needed faith to cultivate, and the swift and decisive manner in which their thunder arts had recently annihilated aberrations genuinely made Ying Bufu covet it. Sui had many cultivators and many aberrations, and though there were also a fair number of Divine Court deities in Sui territory, they were hard-pressed to search and handle the entirety of Sui.

But if the Divine Court were to shelter both Lu and Liang, it would likely have little energy left to spare for Sui.

“Mister Xue,” Ying Bufu said suddenly, “you and I and Sui have been in accord for some time now. The Great Calamity is hard to endure — would your master’s sect be willing to form a bond with Sui?”

Xue Chengbo, who had been sitting cross-legged to one side, opened his eyes. He was not an unaffiliated cultivator; he had come from Zhilei Cave on Mount Qianren, and he had not severed his ties with his sect. It was only because of the path he had chosen in cultivation that he had come to Sui to temper himself through experience.

As one of the very finest cultivators atop the Yongsheng Tower, he understood perfectly where Sui’s present difficulties lay. This was no longer a problem that the Sui King could resolve through her own intelligence and effort alone — Sui needed an ally capable of helping it clear out aberrations. He understood what Ying Bufu meant: if a nation were to lend its aid, it would naturally be a benefit to Mount Qianren. But unfortunately…

“Many cultivators in my sect have had the Five Declines of Heaven and Man descend upon them, and I fear they have no strength to spare,” said Xue Chengbo.

Ying Bufu sighed inwardly, but was not too disappointed. This period of calamity was directed at cultivators, with ordinary people only caught in the crossfire — it was natural that the various immortal sects would have no capacity to spare. She still had one more option:

“In your esteemed opinion, could the presence behind Ding Qin be a source of support for Sui?”

They had met during the earlier incident in which Bie Chunian had schemed to use Sui against Lu. Afterward, Ying Bufu had held banquets in turn to thank each of the cultivators who had lent their aid in the matter, doing everything in her power to persuade them to remain.

The various gods of the Huai River each had their own domains; after accepting Sui’s offerings, they had departed one by one. Though the Mingdeng Sect was willing to serve as mutual support for Sui, it had always been an extremely loose sect with its own affairs to attend to, and so the help it could offer was quite limited. The ghost-spirit Yu Jian, who had roused her senses with his qin music, had stayed behind — he had been a person of Sui in his lifetime, and there remained a bond of incense-offering between them.

And among all these people, the one Ying Bufu regarded with the greatest attention was Ding Qin and Bai Hong, who had appeared last in the Huai River.

Though they had not participated greatly in the whole affair, they had appeared at precisely the critical moment. Ying Bufu was no fool; she could naturally see that this was no coincidence, but an arrangement made by someone who had anticipated events in advance.

Afterward, as aberrations erupted frequently across Sui, she asked the two of them for assistance — and received a surprise that was no small matter.

The transformation of cultivators into aberrations was a process. As long as there remained struggle within their hearts, they would not completely become aberrations. But the decline of the Dao-heart and the influence of aberrant power upon the mind would cause them to slide ever deeper into that abyss. Yet the divine power that Ding Qin possessed could expel the influence of aberrant power upon the mind. For the many cultivators who had, inevitably due to the Five Declines of Heaven and Man, experienced a decline of the Dao-heart, this was undoubtedly good news. They had no wish to choose the path of transforming into aberrations — but in the process of the Dao-heart’s decline, a single moment of misstep could cause one to fall into aberration, from which it would be nearly impossible to struggle free afterward.

Many cultivators came seeking help, yet there was only one Ding Qin — such a situation was most prone to breed trouble. From her eyes, Ying Bufu could see that this young girl was genuinely young, not merely possessing arts to preserve a youthful appearance. Cultivators did not necessarily mean reasonable and accommodating people, and cultivators with deteriorating Dao-hearts were even harder to deal with than ordinary people. In a matter of life and death, faced with such a young girl, it would have been strange indeed if they had not tried to use underhanded means against her.

Yet the result was that these cultivators were brought into order by her. This was not achieved by the great demon at her side forcibly suppressing them with martial power — rather, she had genuinely transformed these cultivators into people who could be put to use.

The foundation of her ability to accomplish this lay in the fact that she had passed on the path of the deity she served. This must have been permitted by the deity behind her — but even with such a method in hand, managing to bring this entire group of cultivators from all corners of the land, each with their own temperament, into order was no easy feat.

Ying Bufu had naturally examined the path Ding Qin had transmitted first, asking Ah Lu to explain it to her. Her understanding of the deity behind Ding Qin also began from this point.

To her astonishment, this was a god of the highest order.

A High God takes the Dao as their body. The Dao neither increases nor decreases, neither comes into being nor passes out of being. Whether people believe in it or not, whether they cultivate it or not — for the Dao, this makes no difference whatsoever. Those who act in accordance with the Dao may arrive at where the Dao points.

That this High God would send a divine messenger to intervene in the affairs of Sui suggested they had, like the Flame Lord, become involved in the Great Calamity.

Could Sui perhaps rely on this High God?

“It may be worth attempting,” Xue Chengbo answered carefully.

As a cultivator, he understood such matters somewhat better than Ying Bufu. Previously, when the spine of the earth had been repositioned and the High God had manifested in the world, cultivators had wished to seek an audience and ask for guidance — yet the High God dwelt at the summit of the mountain peak, and the newly established pillar connecting heaven and earth bore a deep and weighty power that made it difficult to ascend. In the end, all those cultivators had been forced to give up. Many had also long wished to investigate the origin of this High God, though what was known was very little.

Xue Chengbo had formed a few guesses of his own only through piecing together many scattered clues and the old legends passed down within his sect — this High God’s name was unknown to the world, and they had likely not appeared for a very long time. Searching through the historical records for junctures at which a High God might most plausibly have gone into concealment, the most likely candidate was a great calamity that had occurred one hundred and twenty thousand years ago.

Unfortunately, Mount Qianren’s transmission was not old enough, and many ancient secrets were poorly known to it. Xue Chengbo’s conjecture remained just a conjecture.

He had also studied the method Ding Qin had transmitted, and it was through this that he confirmed the name of this High God: Changyang.

For Sui to seek to attach itself to Changyang — this choice was not problematic in itself. Though High Gods were lofty and not easily approached, one could observe the Dao through the power of divine beings, and divine intent could be discerned through the divine messenger. This deity’s divine power was warm and luminous, and not without a vast and solemn majesty. The divine messenger enacted the deity’s will, and judging by Ding Qin, this High God undoubtedly harbored a heart of compassion for the world.

Only… harboring a heart of compassion for the world, and being willing to shelter Sui — these were two entirely different things.

Whether this matter succeeded or not depended not on Sui, but on the High God.

Xue Chengbo explained to Ying Bufu what he knew regarding this High God — but what he knew was, in truth, precious little.

After hearing him out, Ying Bufu sighed. “Let us first contact Ding Qin and see.”

……

At this time, Ding Qin was not in the capital of Sui, nor was she together with Bai Hong.

As time passed, the affairs they had to handle grew more and more numerous, and both grew ever busier — inevitably, they could no longer travel together as constantly as they once had.

The cultivators who had gathered around Ding Qin on account of the aberration situation were a mixed lot; those she could truly trust were few, and those with whom she was of one mind were even fewer. This time, Bai Hong had gone to handle matters on another front, and the one accompanying Ding Qin was a different demon cultivator.

After the matter of cultivators falling into aberration had arisen, the first to come seeking her out were in fact these demon cultivators. Most of them had found their way to her through their connection with Bai Hong.

Bai Hong cultivated the Way of Wind; she had been fond of traveling far and wide in the past, and so had made wide acquaintances. It was only later that she had been detained by the many villages along the Jiuqu River for over a thousand years, and thus had met less often with her other friends — but she had not severed contact with them. After the matters of the Five Declines of Heaven and Man and the aberrations arose, Bai Hong was likewise worried about these old friends of hers, and so had reached out to them.

Most of these demon cultivators who had come were free-spirited, with no dependents and nothing tethering them. Having old friendships with Bai Hong already in place, they had stayed on after arriving, and had lent much help in the various affairs that followed.

Ding Qin’s outing this time was for the sake of an aberration lurking nearby.

This aberration was unlike the Wu Shan they had encountered before. Back then, Wu Shan had harbored doubts in his heart — on one side battered by the influence of aberrant power, on the other tormented by grief over the matter of his younger brother Wu Shui. The two forces had fought and tormented each other within him, causing Wu Shan to become mentally unhinged and erratic in his actions, and so he had been discovered swiftly.

Most cultivators in the world who had begun to fall into aberration yet had not fully become aberrations were like this — the various struggles within their hearts manifested outwardly as mental instability and incoherence. Those aberrations with clear minds, by contrast, were mostly those who had already made a definitive choice to walk this path of abandoning the Great Dao and going alone through the world. With no more struggle in their hearts, their minds naturally remained unclouded and their actions orderly.

Such aberrations retained the same appearance, memories, and intellect as they had before their transformation, and so they could cunningly disguise themselves as ordinary cultivators, concealing themselves among living beings. However, they would generally not venture to places under the protection of local earth gods.

This was due to a change brought about by the Divine Court’s seal some time earlier. Just as the many divine beings of the Divine Court could draw on the seal to employ methods of ordering destiny qi that they had not originally mastered, so now, following the Divine Court’s issuance of the order to annihilate aberrations, the seal had undergone a further change — every divine being within the Divine Court could now discern aberrations, and upon recognition, could employ the thunder arts within the seal to annihilate them.

These thunder arts were different from the thunder arts that cultivators widely practiced. The power within the Divine Court’s thunder arts bore a nature of supreme excellence, yet these arts could only be unleashed after recognizing an aberration — preventing abuse by divine beings — and moreover, how much of this power one could draw upon still depended on how much the divine being themselves could bear. However, even a divine being of the Divine Court who had only just consolidated their divine position and possessed modest cultivation could use these thunder arts to injure an aberration; and even if unable to annihilate it, in most circumstances self-preservation would present no difficulty.

Beyond this, depending on the level of cultivation of both parties, the heart-flame of the Mingdeng Sect also had the potential to illuminate an aberration’s true nature. Even if one’s own cultivation was insufficient, one could recite in one’s heart the name of Dan Yao Rong Guang Che Ming True Lord and draw on the Flame Lord’s power to discern an aberration’s identity.

For others wishing to identify aberrations, the task was fraught with difficulties. But aberrations could not deceive Ding Qin’s pair of spirit eyes.

The number of Divine Court and Mingdeng Sect cultivators within Sui had always been insufficient. Those frenzied cultivators who had clearly begun their transformation into aberrations were handed over to the cultivators Ding Qin had brought along — not all of them willing. Many cultivators, once the problem of potentially falling into aberration had been resolved, were more intent on finding ways to slow their own Five Declines of Heaven and Man. They took active part in handling aberrations only under the compulsion of vows sworn when first learning the method, and in exchange for the benefits Sui had offered.

The information Ding Qin had received from the Wuying Hall this time was quite vague — only several locations of apparent atrocities that seemed aberration-related, and these locations were widely scattered, making it appear unlike the work of a single person. The only thing that could link them together was the interval between atrocities — each separated by only one to two days. Aberrations had broken free from the Dao; the ordinary arts of divination and tracking were nearly impossible to make work on them.

“What are you planning to do?” Feng Liuniang asked.

Feng Liuniang was a woman of full figure, her bright yellow dress matched with a jet-black sash that accentuated her slender waist. She was a wild bee who had cultivated into a demon, capable of releasing many bees to help search for places showing signs of abnormality.

But this aberration was being exceptionally cautious. The places where it had harmed living beings and seized their life force were scattered and without pattern. Though she kept many bees, they still could not cover such a vast area.

“Let us first search these few locations,” Ding Qin said, sketching out a map and marking several points.

Feng Liuniang, one arm folded across her chest, the other holding a jade smoking pipe, lowered her head and looked over the several spots, then raised an eyebrow and asked, “Why did the little one choose these particular places?”

She and Bai Hong were acquainted, it was true — but she would not let a little girl command her simply because Ding Qin held the status of divine messenger.

“The interval between this aberration’s attacks is roughly one to two days. Looking at the condition of the highest-cultivation cultivator among the victims, one can roughly estimate the aberration’s cultivation level. Knowing the aberration’s approximate cultivation level, one can then estimate the distance it could travel within one to two days.” Ding Qin used each incident location as a center point, calculated different radii based on chronological order and time intervals, taking the maximum result in each case, and drew several circles of varying size on the map.

She felt no displeasure at Feng Liuniang’s questioning. She understood what Feng Liuniang was thinking, and she knew clearly that as long as she gave a reasonable explanation, Feng Liuniang would certainly help her wholeheartedly.

Feng Liuniang looked at the circles of different sizes on the map and could not help but narrow her eyes. The circles produced different intersections — some overlapping in pairs, while others had several circles overlapping together into a small shared area. And the locations of these intersections quietly sketched out the possible positions of each “lair.” This aberration did not wander aimlessly like other aberrations, nor did it follow a particular route — it had a fixed lair, perhaps shifting it occasionally, but with very low frequency. The seemingly scattered and disordered pattern on the map was simply a result of this aberration being able to travel very long distances, choosing different directions each time.

But they had too few clues, and so the circles Ding Qin had drawn were also quite imprecise; the possible “lair” locations produced by the intersection of several circles numbered more than one. They would need to search through them one by one.

The several locations Ding Qin had just named were arranged in order from most to least probable.

This was already far better than the completely clueless situation they had started with.

Feng Liuniang reached out and pinched Ding Qin’s cheek, complimenting her. “The little one has a sharp mind — this makes things much easier.”

Ding Qin’s face reddened a little from the pinch, but her heart was filled more with worry. “There is still a possibility of something going wrong.”

“Whether something goes wrong or not, let’s search these places first and then see,” said Feng Liuniang, the jade pipe between her lips. She parted her vermilion lips and exhaled a stream of fragrant mist — each tiny droplet of mist a drop of sweet honey dew, drifting and lingering in the air, not dispersing. The smoking pipe she carried was not packed with tobacco, but with fragrant, sweet, qi-infused honey.

The honey-mist shimmered a beautiful pale gold in the sunlight. Hanging from Feng Liuniang’s waist was a small bell-shaped hive, as if carved from amber — exquisite and charming. From the little hive flew out many small round bees, each one plump and fluffy, with a pair of small black antennae on their heads and crystalline translucent wings that made no sound in flight. They flew into the honey-mist, drank their fill of the sweet honey dew, did a few joyful spinning dances around Feng Liuniang, and then flew off toward the places she directed them.

……

The search was a long, tedious, and wearing affair.

Ding Qin and Feng Liuniang stood outside a mountain hollow, faces grave as they looked within. This was already the last of the locations they had marked earlier. With the searches at the previous locations all turning up nothing, the probability of success at each successive place grew lower by convention — which only made Ding Qin increasingly anxious. What if her earlier deductions had been wrong? What if she had overlooked some clues? If they failed to find this aberration, how many more living beings would it kill? How terrifyingly powerful might it grow?

The little round bees had long since flown out and were beginning to return one by one. They were sensitive to all manner of blood-evil and dark energies, capable of noticing any abnormality. Aberrations devoured living beings to supplement themselves and inevitably carried traces of blood-evil; in all the previous tasks, not a single aberration had escaped detection by them.

When the last little round bee had returned, Feng Liuniang shook her head. Nothing out of the ordinary had been found.

The bees settled on Feng Liuniang to rest; those without space perched on nearby stones and branches. Feng Liuniang took out honey dew to feed these exhausted little creatures.

Ding Qin pressed her lips tightly together, frowning as she thought over where things had gone wrong.

“Don’t be too anxious,” Feng Liuniang reassured her. “You’ve already done very well. The information we received was genuinely quite vague to begin with.”

Ding Qin watched blankly as the bees, trusting and affectionate, lingered around Feng Liuniang for a good while before flying back into the tiny hive no bigger than a thumb pad. This was a magical instrument Feng Liuniang had specially refined — the spiritual essence inside was abundant, and it was the most comfortable environment for the bees to rest in. They recovered better inside it than in the outside world — yet every time they returned, no matter how tired they were, they would always linger a while around Feng Liuniang before willingly entering the little hive.

“I’ve thought of something!” Ding Qin said suddenly.

For an aberration that was at enmity with all living beings, the safest and most sensible choice would be to keep moving and not stay too long in any one place.

Lingering in a single region for a long time would make discovery very easy — unless there was something there that made it willing to risk the danger rather than leave, just as the bees were attached to Feng Liuniang. The bees themselves also possessed no weak offensive power, yet they would never show killing intent in Feng Liuniang’s presence.

This aberration deliberately went to places of varying distance in scattered directions to “feed,” precisely because it too had recognized the danger in this — and yet it had persisted in staying there. Whatever that place held must be extraordinarily meaningful to it.

If that was the case, it would certainly take great pains to avoid leaving any ill-omened aura at its own “lair.” Aberrations had been cultivators with all manner of daoist arts before their transformation; among them there might very well be one who had a method of washing away or concealing the aura of blood on their person. In searching for this particular aberration by the method they had always used before — tracing it through its blood-evil and dark energies — they had simply been on the wrong track from the start.

“We shouldn’t be searching for blood-evil energy. We should be searching for places where there are subtle abnormalities in spiritual essence fluctuations,” said Ding Qin, her eyes bright with conviction, as she explained her thinking to Feng Liuniang.

The aberration’s hiding place was also very likely concealed by a formation to mask it, and the spiritual essence fluctuations would not be obvious — which was why the bees had not noticed it. But they did not need to go back and check each location one by one. The bees had excellent memory for all kinds of fluctuations; they simply needed to ask them to recall.

Feng Liuniang asked the bees about it, and sure enough, a few anomalous spots came to light.

“Let us go have a look,” said Ding Qin.

Feng Liuniang shook her head. “Our earlier sweeps may have already alarmed it. Running through the locations one by one would likely take too long. Let’s split up — we each take one of the two most probable locations, and have the bees check the others.”

Feng Liuniang selected a few of the sturdiest bees and sent them out, putting them through another run.

The little round bees nuzzled affectionately against Feng Liuniang for a moment, then spread their small wings and flew away.

Feng Liuniang left one little round bee on Ding Qin’s shoulder, and the two parted for their separate destinations.

Before long, Feng Liuniang received a transmission from Ding Qin. The aberration’s hiding place was not at Ding Qin’s location.

“It’s not at mine either,” said Feng Liuniang, her brow creasing with a troubled frown.

If not at either of the two locations they had gone to, then it might be at one of the places the other bees were checking.

“Let us go to the next one,” Ding Qin said decisively. “I’ll go to the third location — you go to the fourth.”

“There’s no need,” said Feng Liuniang, her expression very grim. “Meet me at the fourth location.”

“One of my bees is dead.”

……

Beside a marshy pond, a man in white robes with a tall, slender figure stood amid withered yellow reeds, his fingertips pinching a small round bee that had gone still and lifeless.