Seventeen days later, Xue Wuyi died.

He breathed his last on a bright afternoon.

Dr. Shen said Xue Wuyi had no will to live. He should have survived.

He was emaciated when he died, his robes hanging loosely on his gaunt frame, his face as pale as snow. Looking at his withered body, I could no longer recall the image of the rough-clothed young man running freely in the wilderness.

As I sat by Xue Wuyi’s bedside, my heart felt empty.

During those seventeen days, I often recalled something Xue Wuyi had said three or four years ago. He said he sometimes wondered if he would have been happier and freer if he had stayed in his hometown, without those foolish, lofty ambitions that brought him to Chang’an.

I also remembered Huai Yu, sitting in her wheelchair by the windy window, looking down at the bustling marketplace below, her long hair billowing around her. Her eyes shining brightly as she said she liked the lone hawks of the desert, envied Xue Wuyi’s ability to leap across rooftops, and longed to one day stand on the top floor of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and look up at the clouds. It must be very happy and free, she had said.

Seventeen days wasn’t long, yet somehow, many memories of people and events I had held onto for over ten years suddenly became blurred. I slowly forgot many things that happened when Su Qiuchi was still alive—the small, dilapidated thatched cottage, her and Xue Wuyi’s laughter, our childish squabbles, and the bright, sharp blades forged by Su Qiuchi.

I had a dream that night.

Su Qiuchi in my dream looked the way she did when I first met her, dressed in a blue floral dress, her long, black hair in a single braid, her eyes as clear as water.

She held the broken saber, stained with Xue Wuyi’s blood, in her arms and smiled faintly at me, her eyes like the shimmering waters of West Lake.[1]

She didn’t say anything, just looked at me quietly.

I opened my mouth, but didn’t know what to say.

Then I woke up.

It was already daylight when I opened my eyes. A swallow flew past the window.

The spring winds thawed the ice, bringing good fortune to the south. It hadn’t snowed since the fourteenth day of the twelfth lunar month. Perhaps because of the disasters and turmoil of the previous year, and the long, harsh winter, spring arrived particularly early this year. The Xiongnu invaders from the north had been defeated and pushed back beyond Baicheng. Spring shoots emerged from the snow-covered fields. The refugees gradually left, and Chang’an returned to its usual hustle and bustle.

Many things happened during those seventeen days—

Huai Wuya woke up, but his health was permanently weakened.

His eldest disciple woke up, but his left leg was crippled.

Huai Wuya released Fang Hanhua and gave Shi Qiufeng a proper burial. He expelled his eldest disciple, disbanded his followers, announced his retirement from the Jianghu, and retreated to the mountains with a memorial tablet for his daughter, Huai Yu, no longer caring about worldly affairs.

The vengeful Jianghu and the treacherous court were actually not so different. The court was just another Jianghu, and the Jianghu, another court. Fortunes changed overnight in the court. In the Jianghu, in less than a month, the ambitious Huai Wuya, who was just one step away from dominating the martial arts world, was gone, replaced by a grieving father who had lost his daughter.

Shi Qiufeng had no family, so I collected his coffin.

On my way back, I was stopped by a man in coarse hemp clothing.

He was the waiter from the restaurant where I had watched the duel. A swordsman in white had given him a few taels of silver to safeguard a wooden box, asking him to give it to a woman with black hair and simple clothes at Shi Qiufeng’s funeral.

Inside the wooden box was a white porcelain cup, containing half a cup of unfinished wine.

I took the box back to my house.

As I set it down, I suddenly noticed something odd. I opened it, and saw that the swordsman in white had even cut out the small section of the table beneath the cup. I picked up the cup. Underneath it was a small, folded note.

It said: If I win the duel, I will come and marry you.

How ridiculous. He was dead, yet he still talked about marrying me.

I didn’t cry when Master died. I didn’t cry when Su Qiuchi died. I didn’t cry when I carved Xue Wuyi’s tombstone and buried the bloodstained, broken saber in his grave. I didn’t cry when I watched Shi Qiufeng’s coffin slowly lowered into the earth. Yet seeing this note, a note that should never have seen the light of day, I burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably.

I didn’t know why I was crying. I had foreseen their endings—when I saw the bright, lonely look in Shi Qiufeng’s eyes, I knew he would likely die for his ideals. When Xue Wuyi stubbornly continued to kill, I knew he would eventually find the death he sought. I had carved so many tombstones, witnessed so many deaths and partings. My eyes had long run dry, no longer capable of shedding tears—why, why was I crying now?

Tears streamed down my face, splashing onto the wooden box.

I sobbed uncontrollably in the empty house.

I started having frequent dreams. I dreamt of a windswept wilderness, completely deserted, with only me standing on a barren hill, surrounded by desolation.

In some dreams, familiar things flashed before my eyes. The people I had met and the things that had happened in the past twenty-seven years intertwined, complex and chaotic, bizarre and surreal. I would forget everything upon waking.

After waking from these dreams, I couldn’t fall back asleep. I would stare at the ceiling, listening to the dripping of melting snow from the eaves, my heart empty.

I left Chang’an, carrying Shi Qiufeng’s sanxian on my back, and Stone in my arms.

For eleven years, I had thought I would never leave this place.

After leaving Chang’an, I slept soundly, without dreams, until dawn. I suddenly understood why Master had abandoned his bright future and wandered the world, willingly becoming a drunkard lost in his illusions. He seemed to have a choice, but he never did.

Neither did I.

I went to Jiangdu, to the grave I had dug with my own hands over ten years ago. The weeds on Master’s grave were already waist-high.

He had carved his own tombstone long ago. There was no name, no epitaph, only a line from the Diamond Sutra:[2] All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows, dewdrops, or lightning. The characters for “dreams, illusions” were deeply carved. Master must have been very drunk when he carved them.

I stayed in Jiangdu for six months.

I learned to play the sanxian, able to play a complete rendition of “Wind and Rain, Iron Horses.”

My sanxian teacher was the wife of a teahouse owner, named Manniang. She had been a famous courtesan, renowned throughout the Qinhuai River area,[3] her singing, dancing, and sanxian playing captivating the entire city of Jiangdu. Countless men had fallen for her, all more handsome and wealthy than the teahouse owner.

Manniang taught me the sanxian for two months. On the last day, she said to me, “Yan Jiu, you’re intelligent, but you’re a lost soul.”

“You will achieve nothing.”

I started drinking, the wine I brewed myself. The first time I tasted plum wine, it was sweet and sour, like swallowing a crystal grape.

Shi Qiufeng was right. Some things are best left untried, but how would you know if you don’t try? Xue Wuyi was right. One shouldn’t be too stubborn, too inflexible. Master was right. Plum wine is delicious, intoxicating.

But Shi Qiufeng was wrong about one thing. Even without Stone, I wouldn’t be lonely. I was used to being alone. When Master was alive, he only cared about drinking. His loved one was in his wine. When Su Qiuchi was alive, I watched from afar as she and Xue Wuyi were deeply in love. When Xue Wuyi and Shi Qiufeng were alive, they lived in their own cages, pursuing their own ideals.

I had always been alone.

Having Stone just added a bit of fun to my life.

Stone was well-behaved when we were in Chang’an, but after it grew older and started traveling the Jianghu with me, it became restless. Whenever we arrived at a new place, it would run off, impossible to catch, sometimes disappearing for ten days or half a month before returning, covered in dirt. Strangely, whenever I was about to leave a place, Stone, as if it knew, would be waiting for me.

Perhaps it was a wanderer at heart, instinctively understanding the value of returning home.

During these six months, I often pondered the meaning of life and death. I used to think that life and death were just ordinary occurrences. Whether emperors and generals or commoners, everyone ended up as a handful of dust and bones.

Later, I gradually understood. That day, I wasn’t crying for Xue Wuyi and Shi Qiufeng’s deaths. They chose their own paths. I wasn’t moved by the note either. I always knew Shi Qiufeng merely saw me as a kind of anchor, a beacon of light on his bleak path.

I was crying for myself.

I’ve met many people, remembered few, and even fewer could be called friends. And now—

I had nothing left.

That was why I cried, why I sobbed uncontrollably, why I wept over that note, a note that declared I had lost everything.

Buddha was right. All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions.

When I returned to Chang’an, it was another spring, bright and beautiful.

The grass was green, the orioles sang, and the geese flew north.

Dr. Shen had passed away, peacefully, without pain or illness, a smile still on his face, like a Maitreya Buddha.[4] Less than two months later, his wife followed him. When I arrived in Chang’an, all I saw were two adjacent mounds of earth.

I sat cross-legged in front of their graves for a long time.

A strong wind blew past. The spring sunshine was bright, and my heart suddenly felt clear. Master wasn’t some carefree wanderer, but a man trapped by love, unwilling to let go. Dr. Shen wasn’t some immortal, but an ordinary man protected by love. To follow one’s heart’s desires without overstepping boundaries wasn’t about following the heart, but about following love.[5]

As for whether Buddha saved all sentient beings for their sake, or for his own sake, who knew what Buddha was thinking?

I visited Xue Wuyi’s grave. I had buried him and Su Qiuchi together. They couldn’t share a bed in life, but at least they shared a grave in death.

I visited Su Qiuchi’s grave. I pulled out the spring weeds that had grown wild and placed a branch of white pear blossoms, her favorite, in front of her tombstone.

I visited Shi Qiufeng’s grave. I took out the wooden box I had carried for a year, raised the white porcelain cup high, and smashed it, along with the remaining half-cup of wine, in front of his grave. The porcelain shattered, the cloudy liquor slowly seeping into the earth.

As I was leaving, I ran into the young woman Shi Qiufeng had saved.

She hadn’t left Chang’an with the other refugees. She had remarried, to a teahouse waiter. She held her one-year-old son in her arms, her face rosy, her smile peaceful. Her new husband didn’t mind that she had a child from her previous marriage, treating him as his own.

She said Hero Shi was her benefactor, and she would never forget him.

I visited Huai Yu’s grave. A nun in black was kneeling in front of it, her back straight.

Hearing my approach, she turned around. It was Fang Hanhua.

Her eyes were calm, no longer filled with the anger of a year ago.

She stood up and pressed her palms together. “Miss Yan.”

I burned a painting of a lone hawk soaring over the desert for Huai Yu. I had found the painting in a small alley in Jiangdu. The black hawk spread its wings and soared under the cold moonlight, the vast desert stretching out below, white as sand. She would have liked it.

I lit the paper. The flames flickered, sending wisps of black smoke into the air.

I asked, “What’s your name now?”

“My Buddhist name is Zhehua.”[6]

“…What does it mean?”

“My master said I was troubled by worldly affairs, harbored malicious thoughts, and had committed grave sins. My secular name was Hanhua. My master gave me the name Zhehua, hoping I would devote myself to Buddha, let go of the past, and save myself and others.”

The flames died down, leaving a pile of ashes.

We parted ways at the crossroads.

“I’m going outside the city to visit my father and sister’s graves.” She wore gray robes, her young face as pale as paper. “Farewell, Miss Yan.”

The blind fortune teller was still downstairs, but no one visited his stall.

Hearing my voice, he looked delighted. “You’re finally back.”

“I’m closing up shop in a couple of days and returning to my village.” The blind fortune teller said, sighing and shaking his head. “I’m old, I can’t do this anymore—”

He packed up his stall, leaned on his crooked wooden staff, and left.

The setting sun cast a lingering glow, painting the sky with vibrant colors.

I returned to my house. As I opened the door, the smell of decay and dust filled the air, making me cough.

A copy of The Complete Works of Su Shi still lay on the table, a paperweight holding open a page with Su Shi’s poem “Ding Feng Bo”:[7]

Don’t listen to the sounds of rustling leaves in the forest. Why not sing aloud and walk at your own pace?

A bamboo staff and straw sandals are lighter than a horse. What am I afraid of?

A straw cloak and rain hat will see me through life.

The chilly spring breeze wakes me from my drunken slumber, a slight chill.

But the setting sun on the mountain peak welcomes me.

Looking back on the bleak path I’ve travelled, I return home,

Neither seeking wind nor rain, nor clear skies.

Stone darted forward and jumped into my arms.

I carried it to the wine cellar, dug out a jar of last year’s plum wine, took a stool, and sat under the old locust tree in front of the house, pouring myself a cup.