MO RAN LISTENED, his chest hollow and numb. He had stopped yelling; now he sat, staring vacantly ahead.
"It would have all gone according to plan, if not for a severe Heavenly Rift that opened in the lower cultivation realm," Huaizui explained. "A great number of commoners became refugees, and the corpses of those who'd starved covered the land."
The illusion lit up again, revealing the lead-gray sky of early winter, scattered snowflakes drifting down. A narrow mountain path revealed itself before Mo Ran's eyes, dusted with fresh snow already marred with carriage tracks and hoofprints.
"One day, when we were coming back from collecting spiritual stones at the foot of the mountain, we unexpectedly came across a child on the verge of death from starvation."
Mo Ran watched woodenly as Chu Wanning and Huaizui appeared on the path. Chu Wanning wore a heavy cotton cloak to fend off the cold and carried a basket on his back filled with spiritual stones as he walked next to Huaizui. Without warning, the youth stopped in his tracks. "Shizun." He turned to peer at the overgrown hillside. "Is that a person?"
"Let's take a look."
The two of them walked over. Chu Wanning parted the tall weeds with slender, pale fingers. Then he started in surprise, his eyes widening. "It's a little boy…" He turned to Huaizui. "Shizun, come take a look—what's wrong with him?"
What was wrong with him? Both Huaizui and Mo Ran could tell with a glance.
The child was filthy and stinking, clad in flimsy rags so full of holes he wouldn't be able to put them on again if he took them off. Even the dogs in the monastery subsisting on leftover scraps lived more comfortably. If not for the slow rise and fall of his chest and his soft groans, this child would hardly be different from a lump of rotting flesh.
What was wrong with him? What indeed.
Time and again, humans were powerless in the face of a catastrophe. Children dying in such times was a given; it wasn't even uncommon for children to be eaten by others. Only a youth like Chu Wanning, who had grown up in a monastery, could ask such a silly question, with such trepidation.
Huaizui frowned. "Don't worry, let me take a look at him. You go back first."
Chu Wanning trusted his shizun, so he made to rise at once. But before he could step away, a grimy little hand grasped at the fabric of his cloak. Its grip was so weak, like a puppy's gentle nibble.
He looked down to see a small, dirt-smudged face. The child's voice was as feeble as a mosquito's buzz, as if a soft clump of snow from the sky might crush him completely. "Food…"
He froze, uncomprehending. "What?"
"Food…" the child whimpered, the whites of his eyes the only spots of brightness in his sooty face. He brought shaking hands to his mouth in a pantomime of eating. "Hungry…" he mumbled.
Mo Ran blinked, faint recognition lapping at the edges of his consciousness. But his brain was still numb; for the moment, he couldn't place the feeling. He only knew that this scene was vaguely familiar, as though he had seen it before. He watched unblinking as Chu Wanning stilled within the illusion. His eyes went wide with shock as he finally understood what the child wanted. First he stared in helpless disbelief. Then he hurriedly bent back down, distress stark on his face.
This youth had only ever witnessed the beauty of the world. Never before had he seen a child reduced to skin and bones like a tiny, emaciated animal. The boy huddled in the snow-covered grass, wearing flimsy rags that the cold cut right through. He tugged on Chu Wanning's cloak and said two things: food, and hungry.
"Go back," Huaizui said, his voice sharp with warning.
This time, Chu Wanning didn't listen. His heart ached to see this grimy pup of a child. Shrugging off his cloak, he swiftly wrapped it around the boy. He seemed so distraught, as though he and not the starving child was the one in agony. "Are you hungry?" he asked. "Hold on, I have some congee—I have some congee right here."
He turned to ask Huaizui for the container, but Huaizui's brow was furrowed in a scowl. "I told you to go back. This isn't your business."
"How is it not my business?" Chu Wanning was taken aback. "He… Look at him. Shizun, don't you see? He just wants something to eat. Otherwise he might starve and freeze to death." Chu Wanning was in near disbelief by this point. "What's going on?" he mumbled. "I thought the world was supposed to be peaceful. How did he…"
"Go back."
Visibly shaken at Huaizui's attitude, Chu Wanning bit his lip. But he still insisted, "I want to feed him some congee…"
Huaizui's drifting voice carried a rueful note, floating into Mo Ran's ears like the windblown snow. "I couldn't convince him otherwise, so I finally relented. I handed him the congee and allowed him to feed the child we'd stumbled across. At the time, I didn't know what emotions it would rouse in Chu Wanning, or what decision it would inspire him to make. Back then, I knew nothing."
Blankly, Mo Ran watched as Chu Wanning opened the flask of congee and raised it to the child's mouth. The boy eagerly tipped his head, but he couldn't swallow it. He was close to death; he had no strength left.
Mo Ran's throat bobbed. It was as though a tiny sprout in his mind nudged aside a layer of dirt. Suddenly, this scene seemed so familiar…
It hit him all at once, like a great dragon rising from the waves, clouds of mist tumbling after it. He jumped to his feet, hands clenched into fists—he remembered!
"It was you?" He rushed over to Chu Wanning in the illusion, pupils contracting. "All along, it was you? You were the one who… You…"
He couldn't continue. Throat stinging, he covered his eyes with his arm. He never could've imagined it had been Chu Wanning all along.
That starving, freezing child in the grass was none other than Mo Ran himself. After he had buried his mother and left the mass burial ground, he had nowhere to go and was forced to beg for food and shelter. The illusion overlapped with his memories. Mo Ran had never forgotten the youth who had wrapped his cloak around him on that snowy night.
"What's wrong?" Chu Wanning asked anxiously. "You can't drink it?"
Little Mo Ran could muster no more than a tiny whimper as he looked at Chu Wanning with listless, heavy-lidded black eyes.
"I'll pour some out for you, if you don't mind."
Chu Wanning removed the lid of the flask and poured some porridge into his hand. Carefully, he reached up, hesitant—perhaps he thought it was unsanitary, or that the child would disdain drinking from his hand.
His worries were baseless. This, unsanitary? Between Linyi and Wubei Temple, Mo Ran had drunk river water, rainwater, muddy dregs from a ditch. He had eaten wild berries and discarded food. At his most desperate, he had swallowed worms and ants and gulped down dirt.
Crouched on the ground, Mo Ran leaned closer to drink the porridge. Those sips tasted like heavenly ambrosia, and the person whose palm he drank from was no less than a god.
"Slow down, slow down—there's more if you want it." Surprised and saddened, Chu Wanning looked at the child's filthy head lowered over his palms, lapping up the congee so pathetically and greedily, his tongue curling like a baby animal drinking water.
"Where did you come from…" Chu Wanning couldn't help asking.
But Mo Ran only whimpered in response. He had finished all the congee save for the bits between Chu Wanning's fingers. The boy kept licking at his hand, straining for every last drop, the sensation ticklish and painful both. The tickle was in his palm; the pain was in his heart.
"Don't worry, there's more—let me pour some more." Chu Wanning filled his palm with congee again as Mo Ran stared fixedly at him. As soon as Chu Wanning extended his hand, Mo Ran shuffled over and noisily lapped up the porridge.
Handful by handful, kneeling on the ground, Chu Wanning fed him the entire bottle of congee. Mo Ran had never forgotten. Through all the tumultuous ups and downs that followed, he had wondered countless times what would have become of him if he hadn't crossed paths with this person. He entertained many possibilities, imagined many scenarios. But in the end, the answer was always: he'd be dead. He'd have starved, or frozen, or been dragged away by wolves, torn open, and devoured. If he hadn't come across this youth, he would be spending his days below the Yellow Springs with his mother.
Much later, after Mo Ran became Taxian-jun, he had once made a trip to Wubei Temple to look for his savior. But after so many years, Mo Ran couldn't remember that young man's face. Faced with a courtyard full of gleaming bald heads, he felt only an itching annoyance. In the end, he'd turned and left with a wave of his hand.
The abbot at the time had been deeply shaken. Baffled as to how Wubei Temple might have offended Taxian-jun, he anxiously waited for Mo Ran to retaliate. But the next day, the emperor ordered thousands of boxes delivered to the temple. Upon opening them, the monks were greeted with a dazzling sight—the boxes were stuffed to the brim with gold.
"His Majesty does not know the identity of his old benefactor, but in the interest of fairness, he sends ten thousand gold to each monk at Wubei Temple as thanks for saving his life."
So the savior he had searched for everywhere to no avail was the very man he had imprisoned in Sisheng Peak and humiliated day and night?
All those years ago, that youth had wrapped his warm cloak around Mo Ran's frail body. And so many years later, as fate would have it, he carelessly ripped open the now-grown youth's clothes. Time and time again, he pinned him down between the sheets and dragged him into depravity. By day, he searched far and wide for his savior. By night, he unwittingly forced his savior to kneel between his legs, to bend his neck and lower his head, enduring all manner of degradation.
Mo Ran stared at the scene before him, blood vessels spiderwebbing over his eyes. "How… How could it have been you…"
In this lifetime—in these two lifetimes—his greatest fortune had been to meet Chu Wanning, and his greatest misfortune had been to wrong Chu Wanning. Such was their fate.
Everything went dark again; all that remained was the cold wind whistling in his ears, and Huaizui's distant, disembodied voice. "I asked the child if he wanted to stay at Wubei Temple for a time. But he said he needed to go back to Xiangtan to repay a debt of kindness on his mother's behalf. I couldn't convince him to stay, so I sent him on his way with some food and money. He unsteadily made his way down the snowy slope. Wanning stood there watching the whole time, until the child's figure disappeared in the blowing snow. Only then did he turn around to go back to the temple. When I took his hand, it was cold as ice."
Huaizui fell silent. When he continued, the sorrow in his voice was audible. "After that day, Wanning asked me if he could go down the mountain to render aid to the commoners, but I refused each time. I berated him for allowing his conscience to be so easily swayed. As punishment, I sent him to Dragonblood Mountain to reflect on his behavior, where he stayed for one hundred and sixty-four days.
"At first, he asked me to let him go. Later, he stopped speaking to me—perhaps he'd lost hope. Every day, for one hundred and sixty-four days, I asked him what new understanding he had come to. I always hoped I might change his mind. But his answer was always the same." Huaizui sighed, as wispy as falling snow. "'I want to go into the world.'"
This youth had been taught that the practice of cultivation existed apart from the earthly world. But after witnessing one child's plight, Chu Wanning willingly dove into the straits of hardship.
"Eventually, he rebelled by burning all our scriptures. I feared something even worse would come to pass if we went on like this, so I released him from confinement. I thought I would find some other way to talk sense into him. In just one more year, when his spiritual core stabilized, I'd take him to the ghost realm, and all of this would be over."
Huaizui paused. "But unexpectedly, on that very night, Chu Wanning left without a word. All I found in the monastery was a letter. He wrote that despite the passage of so much time, he still felt deeply tormented whenever he thought of that starving child. He wished to travel on his own for ten days. He thought I might detain him again, so he had left in the middle of the night. I was overcome with fury and anxiety as I held that letter in my hands, but there was nothing I could do." Huaizui let out a long breath. "I had no idea where he had gone."
The illusion lit up once more, showing one of the courtyards in Wubei Temple. Chu Wanning had returned. He was covered head to toe in filth and blood, but his eyes were blazingly bright beneath the moonlight. His keenness was undeniable—like a celestial blade, painstakingly forged, unsheathed at last from its scabbard.
Huaizui stood facing him, and neither of them spoke.
In Mo Ran's ears, Huaizui's ponderous narration continued. "Ten days later, he returned, just as he'd promised. I was secretly relieved he'd come to no harm, and figured I would just scold him before sending him to his room to rest. I wasn't ready for him to express himself so vehemently."
Chu Wanning knelt and bent to the ground in a long prostration.
Huaizui knitted his brows. "What are you doing?"
"Perhaps Shizun has remained in seclusion for too long, for the world outside is nothing like what you've described. This disciple sincerely asks that you descend the mountain and see for yourself. The mortal realm is a boundless sea of suffering—it's no longer the blissful paradise Shizun spoke of."
"Ridiculous!" Huaizui roared. "Do you know what you're saying?"
Chu Wanning thought once he described what he'd personally seen, surely his shizun would no longer turn a blind eye. Huaizui's furious reaction was so unexpected he couldn't muster an immediate response. "Shizun always told this disciple to partake of the sufferings and worries of others." He hesitated. "Over these ten days, I visited twenty-three villages in the upper and lower cultivation realms, and saw a great many terrible things. If Shizun went down the mountain to take a look, you would also…"
Huaizui cut him off. "Who gave you permission to leave the mountain?!" he shouted. "Our temple here is isolated and pristine, and you have yet to master your cultivation and ascend. What makes you think you can come and go as you please and meddle in the affairs of mortals? Human suffering is age-old; it has no end! How could one little cultivator make a difference? How can you be so delusional!"
The more Huaizui yelled, the angrier he became, and the wider and rounder Chu Wanning's eyes grew.
Chu Wanning watched his shizun pace beneath the moon, sleeves flying, shouting at the top of his lungs, jabbing a sharp finger at Chu Wanning's nose. Under the dark shadows of the haitang tree, Huaizui's countenance was incoherent, fractured. Mo Ran watched Chu Wanning's expression flicker from confusion to vulnerability, then to astonishment, to despair, before settling at last into grief.
He closed his eyes as Huaizui asked, "Do you understand your mistakes?"
Silence.
"Speak!"
"This disciple…" Chu Wanning paused. His voice was hard as steel. "Does not."
Huaizui slapped him across the face. "Impudent!"
Chu Wanning's cheek bloomed red, but he squared his shoulders and faced Huaizui once more. His eyes flashed with indignant disbelief. "Shizun, you've always taught me to do the right thing and show compassion to others. Why is it that you're telling me to stand back and do nothing when a real crisis is before us?"
"These aren't the same at all," Huaizui replied through gritted teeth. "If you left right now…what could you possibly do? You're talented, yes, but the evil in this world is like nothing you've imagined. What would be the point in leaving? To throw away the fourteen years I've spent raising you? To martyr yourself on a momentary impulse?" His words rang harsh, like metal crashing to the ground. "Chu Wanning, you can't even save yourself. How can you save others?"
Chu Wanning looked at his shizun, gaze filled with sorrow and fury. He raised his chin, phoenix eyes misting over. Huaizui had likely never seen Chu Wanning so close to tears. That watery glimmer seemed to quench Huaizui's rage. He blinked, then said with some hesitation, "You… Ah, forget it. Did I hurt you?"
But Mo Ran knew Huaizui was mistaken. Chu Wanning wasn't hurt by the slap—he was hurt by the fact that the shizun he had revered all his life could say something so at odds with the lofty image of him he held in his heart.
Chu Wanning slowly closed his eyes. After a moment, Mo Ran heard a sentence he knew all too well. "If you don't know how to save others, how can you save yourself?"
Huaizui froze. He looked like a wooden statue shoved in the corner of a shrine, perfectly stiff and immobile.
"The plight of the common people is right before us," Chu Wanning said hoarsely. "Forgive this disciple's foolishness, but I don't understand how Shizun can sit up here with your eyes closed, waiting to ascend."
Slowly, Chu Wanning got to his feet. His robes were no longer the pristine white they had been when he set out; they were stained with mud and blood. But his bearing was as upright and dignified as ever. "If I don't cultivate to immortality, so be it."
Huaizui's temper flared. Eyes darkening, he snapped, "You little ingrate! Do you have any idea what you're saying?"
"I simply want to do as you've always taught me." Despite the combative set of his jaw, Chu Wanning was trembling, staring back at Huaizui with a wounded look in his eyes. "You taught me everything—do your principles only exist on paper? There are a million refugees with nowhere to go, and orphans dying everywhere. Am I supposed to cultivate in Buddha's shadow instead of going out and doing what I can?"
"After you ascend, you can be as compassionate as you like!" Huaizui snarled, eyes bulging from his skull.
Chu Wanning stared at Huaizui as if seeing him for the first time. His chest heaved, his hands were balled into fists, and tumult swirled in his eyes. Mo Ran thought he might spring forward, like a great dragon breaking through the waves, to grab Huaizui by the throat and make him know the folly of his sins.
But Chu Wanning only stood there, shoulders trembling. At last, the ends of his eyes stained red, he said in a ragged voice, "Shizun, I don't cultivate so I can break free from the mortal realm. Is achieving immortality the sole purpose of cultivation? If that's the case, I'd rather fail. I'd rather give up; I'd rather go down in flames. I'd rather stay among the living, to give them everything I have, and die when I have no more strength in me."
For a moment, neither spoke.
"Shizun, go ahead and ascend. After I save as many people as possible, I'll follow you."
"Chu Wanning!"
Even in the illusion, Huaizui's towering rage was palpable. Mo Ran had a vague feeling, a bone-deep dread, that this would not end well. This wooden sculpture dared to oppose its life-giving creator? It didn't know its place. Huaizui's eyes were scarlet, suffused with a bloody gleam. There was no one to whom he could speak about his deep dismay, his fury and shame, the secret regret buried for so long. Those emotions festered in his heart.
Chu Wanning had reached the gate of the courtyard when Huaizui's chilling command rang out. "Stop right there, you traitor."