CH 87

Chapter 87: River of Blood (I)

"Didn't you send a message that you would meet us at Mt. Jiangsong..." Once he had seen Xuanmin, that wizard that had cowered among the sea of corpses finally revealed his location again. He still had a spell protecting him so that he appeared to look exactly like the other corpses, with chunks of his bleeding flesh having fallen away while he scurried through the crowd to reveal naked, shiny white bones. The skeleton looked as though it'd been reconstituted from disparate bones, and was yellowed already, and emitted a nauseating stench.

But around him, the real corpses were all writhing on the ground, under the influence of Xuanmin's golden light. They had collapsed and broken up into fragmented, scattered bones again, with only the last dredges of yin energy attached to their bodies. Standing among them, upright and whole, the wizard was immediately noticeable. 

The only thing left to his face was his skull, which was completely covered in a web of cracks. Old, shrunken skin clung to his skinny skull, and his eyes had become two black holes. With a face like that, it was impossible to tell what he was feeling –– but from his wide-open mouth, he seemed so shocked that he had forgotten what situation he was in.

If Xue Xian acted now, the wizard would probably have no time to react at all.

But Xue Xian could not even see him anymore. Apart from that golden light, nothing in the valley had anything to do with him anymore. All he knew was that the agony in his spine had pierced into his heart, more painful than any sword. His chest felt only cold: a cold that seeped into his bones; a cold that could freeze the world.

Between him and Xuanmin were mountains and boulders, was the golden light, was the fog. But he did not raise his hand to try and sweep the fog away. He looked calmly at that white shadow that stood at the low mountain peak from across the murky mist and, in a low voice, repeated, "Great Priest?"

Details from the past suddenly rushed into his mind, some important, some trivial, some distinct, some muddied, a mess of thoughts and images flashing through him, summoned by that name, Great Priest. They became clearer and clearer––

Unusually powerful; sought after by the authorities; highly particular personality; and the carriage train that they'd run into by Dustpan Mountain...

Actually, there were constant clues all along that had pointed to Xuanmin's identity. In recent days, especially ever since they'd travelled to the Cave of a Hundred Insects, that strange, nagging discomfort of Xue Xian's had been an unconscious unease, even a nervousness.

He had always known, deep down. But he had, intentionally or unintentionally, ignored it.

Even now, after having experienced the return of Xuanmin's memories through the pendant's connection, he still clung onto that last hope that it might all have been a coincidence. He wanted to ask Xuanmin himself –– he was even willing to be stupid, as long as Xuanmin denied it, as long as Xuanmin said the word No...

"Wuchen year, the seventh month of the sixth day..." Xue Xian repeated as he gazed intently at that white shadow across the gulf.

He saw that white shadow move, just slightly.

But the fog was too thick, so he did not know if he had really seen it, or if he'd imagined it.

"When you said, Wuchen year, the seventh month of the sixth day. What day did you mean..." Xue Xian was finally able to utter a full sentence. 

In his long, almost infinite life, he had felt like this when asking a question, had never cared like this about the response. For a moment, he even regretted asking, wanted to blurt something out to stop this, to take it back.

He had never been so afraid of hearing the truth.

Yet the one on the mountain had once told him, I would never lie to you.

Xuanmin was silent for a long time, so long that the cold that had seeped across Xue Xian's chest was making him completely numb. Finally, Xue Xian heard that voice, slightly hoarse, say, "A dragon's catastrophe period..."

Xue Xian's eyelids fluttered, and he calmly shut his eyes. When he opened them again, there was no expression on his face. He took one last look back at Xuanmin, and in a terrifying cold voice, said, "Okay."

*****

In a temple around ten li from Mt. Jiangsong, a very young-looking Buddhist novice was sitting cross-legged by the window, reading a sutra book. Just as he was about to flip the page, dark clouds suddenly rushed to cover the sky outside, and thunder began to rumble.

The little novice put his sutra aside and looked out the window.

Their temple had been built following the flow of the side of a mountain, and was the tallest structure in its ten-li radius. From his angle, he could see that, in the distance, there was another mountain, in front of which was a vast and mighty river. On the mountain, there was a lonely temple.

These black clouds and lightning had come out of nowhere, and seemed not to intend to go away anytime soon. It was as though god was sad, and was throwing a tantrum.

The black clouds rumbled forth and, in the blink of an eye, had choked the entire sky from this side all the way to the other side. They pressed down heavily, seemingly almost pushing down on the temple roof itself, as though the little novice could simply reach out and touch them.

Seeing this, the little novice was mystified, and really did reach out his hand to try and touch them –– but before he could, a heavy rain began to fall.

The rain was extremely strong, and now the novice could no longer see the mountain in the distance anymore, only the slight blur of that lonely temple.

The raindrops came down so hard that the little novice's hand began to hurt, and the entire sleeve of his grey monk's robe began soaked through too, sticking to his arms. Wet clothes against one's skin is never comfortable, but the little novice did not mind. He only looked, dazed, at that savage tempest.

For some reason, he got the feeling that the rain was cathartically strong, that the black clouds were letting something off their chests. As he watched the rain, he felt a strange sense of sadness, as though he were trapped within the clouds, suffocating, unable to breathe.

The little novice was very young, and had lived most of his short life in the mountains. He very rarely felt such strange emotions come out of nowhere. He suddenly recalled the sutra that he had been reading just now, which included a line that he did not understand: Love makes life unhappy; love makes life frightening; those who avoid love feel no unhappiness and no fear.*

The little novice gazed into the mesmerising storm and zoned out for a long time, until his disciple brother came to ask him to shut the window.

"Brother, I saw someone inside that temple just now," the little novice said, pointing at that wispy mountain silhouette across the rain.

"What kind of trick are you using to be able to see so far?" the brother laughed. "No way. That's Daze Temple, a famous haunted temple. It's been abandoned for who knows how long. How could there be anyone there?"

"I really saw it. I saw it before the rain began. A person wearing white, standing at the top of the pagoda, but when I tried to look again, they had disappeared." Then, the little novice said, "Amitofo," seemingly having begun to think about ghosts and spirits.

Actually, he did not need his disciple brother to tell him that the lonely temple in the distance was Daze Temple.

He had asked the fellow novices about it when he'd been younger. They said that, many years ago, perhaps one hundred or two hundred years ago, a young man from Nanjiang arrived at Daze Temple and had shaved his head to become a monk. But before he could be initiated into monkhood, a bolt of lightning set the temple on fire, killing all of the monks inside. After that, whenever folk mentioned Daze Temple, they would either sigh with regret, or gossip about whether that youth from Nanjiang had been a star of calamity, who had brought disaster upon everyone and himself.

Ten years after the fire, people said that a man dressed in white had been seen on Mt. Songjiang. He had met an abandoned orphan by the dilapidated doors of Daze Temple and taken that orphan home.

The woodcutter who had seen the monk in white had said, in all sincerity, that he had seen the monk roll up his sleeves, and that on his wrist was a totem from Nanjiang.

Many decades later, a man dressed in white was seen on Mt. Songjiang again. Of course, this time, the monk did not roll up his sleeve, and so they had not seen whether he had had a totem on his wrist. But similarly, that monk found an orphan at the temple and took the child away.

Of course, these were just unsubstantiated rumors, so they had not spread very far. Today, probably only those who lived at this temple, who could see the shadow of Daze Temple in the distance, discussed these incidents. The little novice recalled that, when his disciple brothers had first mentioned the story, they had also chuckled while adding, Shifu even told us that the craziest rumor he'd heard was that the Nanjiang youth was the monk in white –– and that the monk in white later became the Great Priest.

"What about the orphans? What became of them?" the little novice had asked at the time.

The disciple brothers had snapped, "Do you really believe these stories? How would I know?"

Since then, that lonely, haunted temple had been a source of much mystery to the little novice. He had the feeling that anything could happen there.

"Don't just stand there. It's raining unbelievably hard, and this morning I heard that the river running through the county has started to flood. With this rain, the river's probably going to reach our ankles. Why did you leave the window open so long? This whole room would've flooded too," the brother said.

The little novice nodded along, then reached out to shut the window once and for all. Just as he gripped the windowpane and was about to pull it shut, he absent-mindedly looked out at the sky and froze.

"Brother..."

"What is it now? Why is it so hard for you to shut a window?" Laughing, the brother walked over to help the little novice with the window. 

But the novice, shocked, pointed out into the black clouds and muttered, "I think I saw a dragon..."

Hearing this, the brother got ready to smack the novice in the head, but he suddenly saw a long black shadow glide across the clouds, wrapped in the white flashes of lightning. It was difficult to see what the creature looked like, but based on that shadow, it had to be a dragon!

"Oh heavens––" the brother said, dumbfounded.

The little novice pointed at Mt. Songjiang and said, "I think... I think it's headed for Daze Temple!"

At the same time, inside Daze Temple on Mt. Songjiang, the exorcists from the Ministry of Ceremonies were gathered with their horses within the great hall. The great fire that had raged in the temple all those years ago had not been too destructive, but the temple was rural, with few visitors and few monks, and that lightning had struck in the middle of the night, which was why no one had been able to escape.    

In reality, the fire had only burned the back part of the temple. The front sections had barely been damaged.

Obeying the Great Priest's orders, the Taizhu and Taipu brought the hundreds of Chengzi officials with them to the temple's great hall, where they sat in one great circle. The Taipu was at the head of the circle and the Taizhu was at the end, and on the floor between them, there was a small stone sculpture. The sculpture was carved with complex talismanic text and covered in yellow talismanic paper, and was circled by a trace of blood. 

The Taipu instructed each Chengzi to slit their thumbs and let out a drop of blood. A hundred crimson droplets appeared from a hundred wounds, and just as the blood was about to drop, a sigh came from the great hall. The sigh was very faint, and intermixed with the breeze of the mountain, so that, although the Taipu faltered, no one else seemed to have heard it.

Frowning, the Taipu looked around cautiously, but recalled that they had thoroughly searched the premises earlier and found no one.

Had she misheard?

The Taipu debated with herself, then shook her head as she decided not to think about it anymore. She barked instructions to the officials around her, then reached out and pressed her bleeding thumb onto the floor in front of her. The hundred officials followed suit, and gave their blood too.

Then, everyone closed their eyes and began to recite a prayer.    

A buzzing sound rose within the great hall and seeped into the tempest outside...

The Ministry groups at Mt. Wanshi and Dongting Lake did the same: they all sat in a circle around the stone sculpture that the Great Priest had prepared for them, and gave their blood to the spell.

---

* This quote comes from "妙色王求法偈" (King Miaose requests a Buddhist hymn) which is some kind of Tang dynasty Buddhist manuscript?? But I can't find any information on who "King Miaose" is, nor what the manuscript really is, or anything like that sorry.