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When the fire had died down and only embers remained, carrying the last silvery wisps of smoke into the sky, the white shadow wandered away from the stone paths of the monastery.
They wondered many things, for that spirit had been around for years, but never close enough for anyone to say they truly knew him.
Monks and other spirits alike conferred about the melancholy they had seen before the white spirit departed. Until, after the questions ran many mouths, someone had words to give about it.
"What's wrong with him?"
"He lost a love."
"I thought he had no heart."
“We all thought this. We thought a heart that didn't beat would never know love. But then he loved someone he had to lose. The only thing left was that person's heart, which he ripped from his beloved’s chest before the funeral pyre was lit and kept inside his own chest. It merged with his heart, and the two became one. Now he has a heart that beats, and it hurts every time it does.”
"And how did his beloved go to the afterlife with a missing heart?"
"His beloved has a soul; he stored all his love there. Perhaps, when he comes back in the next life, even though he doesn't remember anything, he'll still search for his own heart. Then they can be reunited."
"What if, with the memories washed away by the water of oblivion, his beloved only wants the ripped-out heart back?"
"Then he'll return it, leaving his chest empty, and he'll bear the consequences."
…
Sometimes Lin Jing would stare at Zhao Yunlan's empty shoulder, unavoidable reflections occurring to him. And although he himself possessed all the soulfires, he also felt something essential was missing.
The passing years had never given him a clue as to what it was. His improving cultivation had never given him a clue either. And time slipped away into that emptiness, that part of him that was like non-being, which was perhaps the reason why someone so undisciplined could easily enter deep meditative states so promptly.
Form was emptiness.
Over the past year, he had been observing the unfolding of events, the things his mind didn't know because he hadn't been told, but something in him felt it all.
First, Professor Shen. That man's face was so familiar that it stirred something within Lin Jing's mind. So familiar it almost hurt - if it weren't for the Professor’s expressions, his gaze, so strange, foreign to Lin Jing's senses.
Emptiness was the form.
form is not separate from emptiness;
whatever is form is emptiness,
whatever is emptiness is form.
The same holds for sensation and perception,
memory and consciousness.
Then, Zhao Yunlan. And all the words he no longer shared with Lin Jing, and all the truths and lies Lin Jing was slowly learning in other ways, while his friend plunged into a life where he didn't belong, but where he was still needed.
To let go.
From there, he set out alone on a mission. The missing piece of him was bigger than who he was now. It had made him lighter, more accepting, slowly less attached. The small changes on the outside didn't mean much to others - the path, after all, began and ended within. From the outside, only those with open eyes would see.
To suppress the ego.
I see some bodhisattvas becoming monks,
Dwelling apart in tranquility,
Reciting the sutras with contentment.
I also see bodhisattvas
Persistent and courageous,
Going into remote mountains
And contemplating the buddha path.
The emptiness was what he had chosen not to become. In this incarnation, a monk. In the past, the bank of the river he had chosen not to cross.
The duty fulfilled before the end had been the last dialogue between him and the outside. Without hearing, without speech, without sight, without touch, the mantra echoed within his mind, a bell reverberating within the walls of a temple. And in the temple, the sound remained, until it faded.
…
In the silence of the temple, the sound of a falling drop of water shattered the stillness. It should have been too little to interrupt the burning of the incense, extinguish the candle flames, and make the bell ring again, loud enough to echo outside the walls. But the drop of water was the truth of impermanence.
Outside the walls, the sound of the bell mingled with the water. Waterfalls cascaded all around, filling what was once nothingness.
Lin Jing slowly opened his eyes, unfazed by the strange place surrounding him. Strange only to his eyes, but like everything else, he felt it. Although he still couldn't tell what it was, there was something familiar about that place that touched him. A touch that felt like the serene brush of a lotus petal against his heart, and then it unfolded into a thousand within him.
His senses, which had been lost, were now intact. His broken meridians and damaged Golden Core were all perfectly restored.
Except for the ever-missing part of him.
The lotus that touches my heart with reluctant suavity… is white…
As if his thought had cried out for manifestation, the melancholy vision of what had once been magnificent unfolded before him.
As the surrounding waterfalls, the man's robes and long hair fell around him in immaculate white veils. With eyes of glacial colors, but sadly warm gaze, he stared at Lin Jing from a few steps away.
It didn’t take Lin Jing a moment longer to understand, “My white lotus, my true heart… What long journey have you been gone on for so long?”
"It wasn't this mud flower you once cherished who set out on a long journey… It was only you yourself." With silent steps, the white entity approached, crouching down in front of Lin Jing, lifting a pale, bony hand to touch the man's brows with icy fingertips. “By not accepting losing all of you, I committed a crime to keep something with me.”
"You saved me. I don't just owe you part of myself."
"Don't talk about today, it's unimportant. You must know the truth, it's what I owe you." The same anguish that carried the white entity's voice was also present in his touch.
.
The image before Lin Jing blurred, rippled, and distorted, until it returned to clarity. Now, however, he saw the white entity standing a few meters away, waving to him from the gates of a monastery.
Old home.
"Mianmian, don't walk so fast! There's not enough Shaolin Kung Fu in the world to catch up to you!" Lin Jing felt himself lift the hem of his simple brown robes and run toward the white entity. Above the gates, magnolias were in bloom, but Lin Jing was certain the scent of the heavens was coming from that being, pale as the flower petals above.
"You need stronger legs! You won't cultivate to immortality if you don't train harder," the white entity laughed and took a few more steps toward the gates, but this time he didn't run.
In an instant, Lin Jing reached him, releasing the hem of his robes to take the other's slender waist in an embrace. "Ah, I never wanted to be an immortal, Mianmian. It seemed boring. But now I blame your rare smile, which I could see forever."
"Though rare, it is yours alone. This smile was born by you and for you. And without you, this smile will wither and die. Even memory is fleeting. Don't go away from me." The white entity leaned in, holding Lin Jing back in his embrace, resting his head on the man's shoulder.
"You yourself admit the impermanence of things, but you want me to be permanent," Lin Jing mildly scolded, raising a hand to stroke the other's long white hair.
"It is in my nature to be greedy and selfish, you have always known. Teach me the dharma, make me versed in the sutras, but do not leave me alone in the middle of the path."
"I teach you so that you may be free, but I cultivate so that you may be bound by my side..."
What if letting you go causes you suffering, such a lonely creature you are? What if none of the laws apply to you because of your special circumstances of existence? What if, in order for you to find your way, I must remain instead? Amitabha, this poor servant's mind has become murky like muddy water; may this humble one have the patience to wait for the lotus to bloom.
.
The image blurred again, and Lin Jing's arms were empty now, but his hand held the white entity's icy hand between it, his fingertips absently playing with translucent claws.
"You understand. The unfairness," the white entity said, lightly dangling his bare feet on the surface of the lake they sat beside, the sunset reflecting in his hair.
“I see and I feel. Yet, after so long of yearning for nothing but freedom, why do you want to tie yourself to me?” Lin Jing curled his toes around the white entity's heel, lifting it out of the water a little and then bringing it back down, splattering water around their joined feet.
"I don't feel like 'tying myself'. Not anymore. I want to walk by your side."
"There's nothing my heart wants more than to have you by my side. Yet that would keep me from achieving liberation. I wonder, though, if we could create a path to liberation never before traveled."
“Even if this path should be individual?”
"Uh-hm. Even so. The individual path once didn’t exist either. The non-individual path must exist somewhere."
The white entity turned to look Lin Jing in the face, sunset shimmering in multicolors in his irises. "And how do we find the path? I want to go with you."
"When you let go of your revenge, you will remove the shackles that prevent you from going where you want to go. Fight for justice; it is right and necessary, but if you don't let go of revenge, it will blind you and no justice will be achieved."
Lin Jing felt the white entity's delicate hand curl within his, claws biting into his skin, drawing droplets of blood from the adored one, in the accident of his own torment.
I will keep repeating: come, follow me. Leave everything, and let's risk a path no one knows. If enlightenment is individual, is it rebellion to make it two souls instead?
.
Lin Jing's eyes were closed, but he could still see. The scent of wood, of sandalwood all around him, but he could still smell the flowers of the heavens hovering over him.
“For me you tried, and because of me you failed,” the white entity’s voice seemed to carry all the tears Lin Jing knew he couldn’t shed. “But I don’t blame you for anything. I only ask for your forgiveness in advance, if it can ever be granted, for I can’t let you go completely like this. I take from you the part I desire most, and the part that made you fail. Will you remain trapped in me, or without this, will you be the one who will finally become free?”
Lin Jing couldn't feel the pain anymore, but he knew when his chest was ripped open with claws and his heart was devoured whole to rest in another chest. Without a voice left to speak, he prayed in his mind:
Avalokteshvara, O Buddha of Compassion, may this heart beat as proof that he is alive. Amitabha, O Limitless Buddha, may this heart lead him to the path that will give him the only true treasure he will ever need.
.
When Lin Jing’s vision opened to the light again and the white entity’s face of decaying beauty and poignant sorrow was before him, he shook his head regretfully, “I am not your savior, I am your ruin.”
"A stolen heart that even the passing of reincarnations could not repair. Incomplete, I remained trapped in this cycle of suffering. You took my freedom from me, forcing me to reincarnate again and again, never knowing where to find the missing piece of me. Why did you steal it? If you had asked me, I would have given it to you willingly. The shell that housed my soul would have mattered little compared to your happiness in having a beating heart. But because you stole it instead, my soul was tormented." My soul gave this to you willingly, so why am I now agitated by it and cruel to you?
“Even though it’s kept in my chest, it’s always been yours.” He tore open his chest with his claws, reaching inside and ripping out the still-beating heart. Turning it into a small red gemstone, resembling a diamond, he pushed it into the man's chest.
Without a heart, I'll only be able to hold on for a few hours. But existing doesn't matter anymore if I've lost you again. I only want to return what’s yours, as my only way to show the gratitude I have for experiencing what is to have a warm, beating heart inside my chest.
Now Lin Jing knew: who this person was, what he meant to him… what he meant to the world - the Great Seal, the Profane Lands, the Pillars. He had known this person, who was nameless but remembered being called 'Gui Mian' by others, when he had cracked the Great Seal to free his physical form. Raw, filled with anger and hatred, made whole by injustices against him and pain, but, in that moment, still powerless, almost fragile.
Pale as white flour noodles, Lin Jing - or the person Lin Jing used to be in the past - had first called him 'Mianmian.' But over time, feelings, and what that person represented, he had come to call him 'Bai Lianhua,' a white treasure born from the mud. Born in the right place from which the most perfect purity could spring - even though those of ordinary mind only saw the filth and the three corpses poisoning everything a little more each day. And because the path was more arduous for that solitary white lotus, Lin Jing had decided to stay. It would be more arduous for him too, having to find light in the non-going, having to figure out how to transform attachment into compassion, holding the hand of the one who wanted to walk beside him without either of them being prisoners of desire.
And now, as Lin Jing also understood who Shen Wei really was, and how much each thing there wasn't a concrete truth, but a point of view, he also felt the weight of watching what the wear and tear of a few more centuries of solitude had done to Gui Mian. He had not been able to let go of revenge.
Did I not teach you well, did I not love you enough? Or did I just... abandon you too soon? Your choices are yours, but if they were in part guided by my presence in your life, then I am also responsible for them. If I touch the river that runs clear and the water becomes dirty, I am responsible for those who will either have to wait to quench their thirst or will have to drink dirty water. You shouldn't have given me this heart back; you needed it more than I did.
His revenge hadn't always been elaborated this way: tearing the world apart, killing his brother…
He wanted his brother to pay for the pain, for the help he had denied his own people, for never returning for Gui Mian, before or after his imprisonment. He was too obsessed with his brother to let him die. Lin Jing wondered if the shift to crueler plans was because denied affection had caused Gui Mian to never learn to convert obsession into love - to expect nothing in return.
Grief-stricken, Lin Jing also wondered if Gui Mian had left him there precisely so he could free Shen Wei. What if what he sought wasn't victory, but closure? What if he didn't know how to fight for what was right without letting go of what felt like revenge?
Perhaps Shen Wei was no longer the entire problem. It had been a long time, but he still represented the ultimate desolation of abandonment, of what it meant to turn one's back and never look back.
This was also how many people felt about someone who died, even when death was just a part of the cycle, just a new beginning.
No, Lin Jing thought as he looked at Gui Mian through the binoculars. Death, for the Gui, had always meant complete extinction. Even if Lin Jing still existed as a soul to be reincarnated, his death meant the extinction of his memory and temporary ego, the extinction of the meaning the white lotus held for him, the extinction of the promises of which nothing would remain.
But not the extinction of all hope. The heart you guarded and your request for forgiveness bear witness to this.
Shattered into thousands. That small red diamond on Lin Jing's chest seemed to brand him with fire. That wasn't his old heart - that dead body no longer needed it, and the body he now had possessed a living heart.
That diamond was the living heart Gui Mian had made for himself, holding all the beautiful things and precious lessons he refused to forget.
Ah!
The pillars were erected, the Profane Lands disappeared, the god was awakened, and a soul blossomed. Lin Jing stood there before it all for as long as it took.
Now he understood his friend living without a soulfire, living without truths as well. They hadn't been dragged away from each other, it was just a change of seasons. Whoever they were becoming would meet again under the blossom of a new spring.
It was done, he had stayed as long as he was supposed to, seen what he was supposed to see, but the time had come to go, to seek and discover.
He returned through a place no one at that moment would have wanted to tread. Everything shattered, through the gates of the Netherworld, along the Huangquan roads, the Naihe Bridge, all the way to the Yanluo Court. There was no safe path, nothing but the rubble of what had once been the Netherworld. One could not simply return.
A path never before traveled…
The heart that is in fact yours, kept here in my chest, will show me where to go.
There was so much dust and dark water from the Wangchuan spreading everywhere, forming black mud when they pooled. There were still echoing screams and crashes here and there, from what was yet to break and fall.
Returning there, with a mere human body, was a very high risk. It required more foolishness than courage.
Even without meaning to, Lin Jing had already abandoned Gui Mian once. Not anymore.
Removing the Buddhist Beads from his wrist, he held them between his joined palms and quietly intoned, "Om Shri Mahakala Hum Phat. The heart of compassion that has guided me here will keep us safe."
Without fear for his temporary body, a mere vehicle to carry his soul at that moment, amidst the destruction Lin Jing walked, descending further and further, until he reached the bottom of the Yanluo Court where the dust of all the destruction had accumulated the most and the now-quieting torrents of the Wangchuan had formed a vast, dark quagmire, a swamp echoing with the moans and wails of those now buried there.
The reform of a flawed system.
In different ways, wasn't this what both the Gui Twin Kings wanted? The reform of what was corrupt, of what didn't work equally for all?
To achieve this, those old, deeply entrenched concepts needed to break down, to fall, so that one day a new power could be built in their place.
Lin Jing raised his joined palms until the beads dangling from his hands brushed between his eyebrows, then lowered them back to his chest.
The root of that white entity was mud, just like his own, but Lin Jing had not come to blossom from a flower. He, lost there, would have turned back into mud. The other, rooted there, would bloom again.
In silence and prayer, he waited there, at the edge of the mud, where his feet had already sunk.
I wondered why I was angry before, if I wanted that heart to be yours too. If taking that from me had made me able to see beyond my human desires… And I realized: I wasn't angry about what you took, the missing part of me wasn't that… it was always you.
For enlightenment, one must be complete. Perhaps, on a path of nonconformity, meant to be walked non-individually, two who walked it would have to be complete and walk in fullness.
Unfazed, Lin Jing continued to wait. Whether minutes or hours had passed, he couldn't tell. Certainly not days, or someone would have noticed his absence again. Certainly not days, but what did it matter if they were? If it had to be years, he would wait.
If it had to be lifetimes, the diamond in him would guide him, even if the memory was washed from him.
When something outside resonated with the jewel in his heart, Lin Jing opened his eyes to gaze at the mud now covered in bulbs at the top of their stems, and green leaves unfurling over the black immensity, of all sizes, beginning to cover everything.
Lin Jing took another step into the mud, and another, sinking knee-deep, chasing the sensation of life breaking through the surface. Slowly, each bulb shed the first green leaves that protected it, revealing white petals beneath.
The moans and whimpers that had been heard there until just a moment ago gradually ceased, replaced by stillness.
In that stillness, the bulbs began to blossom against the darkness, blooming white, in the docile glory of a flower's existence.
Ahead, Lin Jing spotted a large green leaf floating on the surface, so large it could have been a round boat carrying supplies and good news back and forth. So large it could have been the shelter where a meditating Buddha would be carried by the subtle movement of the leaf over the muddy water, unconcerned about the edges of his robes that might dangle and get dirty.
As large as a bed that could shelter a body resting after a mind so broken by torments that someone in long mourning had not known how to overcome. A mourning for a brother who would not return, a mourning for the freedom that was denied him, a mourning for a people who had come into existence without having the right to exist… And certainly all that mourning permeating that being had caused the mourning of the death of something as fleeting as a human being to impact him in such a way that he had suffered pain disproportionate to it.
It's time for you to come home and learn now... that suffering is not your destiny, nor anyone else's.
One more step inside, and Lin Jing's knees were covered. The giant leaf floated closer, until its edge touched the man's legs.
"There you are, my white lotus..."
On the leaf lay the intact figure of the one everyone had seen shatter before, robes and hair protected against the green, not even a strand touching the mud. His face asleep in what seemed like the sleep of death did not alarm Lin Jing - this was how the white entity had always looked when he rested, before, in other times, when they lay side by side.
Winding the Buddhist Beads back onto his wrist, Lin Jing reached out to brush the hair away from the other's face, discovering that many of the flaws on his face when he had approached at the waterfall had disappeared. He still looked tired, but it was as if during their quiet years cultivating near the monastery, the accumulated resentment and yin energy had subsided.
It had been that. What Gui Mian had shattered into ten thousand pieces. All the resentment that had plagued him for so long. The prison he had imposed on himself.
Between the white entity's eyebrows and on his shoulders lay small, timid silver flames, flickering as if any gentle breeze would extinguish them at any moment. And at that, Lin Jing smiled; if the white entity had not held anything good for himself, the achievements of another would not have influenced him. What he had now was his because it was meant to be - how he would earn it was between him and the heavens from then on.
Or not only, but somehow.
With two fingers raised, Lin Jing touched his chest, the glow emanating from it seeming to ignite the silver soulfires even brighter. He moved his fingers away, and the light followed his hand, taking the form of the red diamond hovering above his palm.
"Om Vajrasattva Hum," he chanted the purification, and the diamond's red color faded more and more, until the translucent jewel remained, untainted by color, stain, or darkness.
It was time to return, to be whole in the place where this had come to belong.
"If you are the one who must leave this time, you will leave complete and at peace with what I let you know: it was not in vain. The treasure I wanted most for you, the soul to overcome all suffering, you now have." Guiding the jewel until it hovered over Gui Mian's chest, Lin Jing watched it sink into the place that the white entity had left empty in himself, like a raindrop absorbed by the heat-beaten ground, making it indistinguishable from itself.
And Lin Jing would light incense for the rest of his life, fill the altar with flowers, and offer his prayers, if he was the one who remained this time. Even if he didn't know about all the incense and prayers for his soul that Gui Mian had offered for centuries, despite how much the white entity always claimed to have no faith in anything.
"I found you so I could let you go, didn't I? You let me go when you showed me where the missing part of me was. You said you were selfish, but you still wanted me to move on.”
He reached out, with careful and gentle arms, lifting Gui Mian to his own chest, resting the white entity's head on his shoulder. So close again, it felt as if Lin Jing had never let him go from his arms and needed to leave. Death really was just an illusion. “To me you came of your own free will, and from me you freely leave, if you must.” Without regret or anger, even in the face of the imminent loss of what he had barely been able to touch for an instant, Lin Jing inclined his head, placing a kiss on where the soulfire glowed on the white entity’s forehead.
Around them, more lotus bulbs sprouted from the mud, as if attracted by the silver flames, blooming one after another, casting light across the previously dark Wangchuan mudflat.
Lin Jing watched the other's face, peaceful as if he was ready to let his own newborn soul go and find a path to another life. But the soulfires did not leave, sinking and merging into the white entity, like an existence that was body and soul in one, perpetually.
Gui Mian's eyes fluttered open, revealing an ethereal tenderness that would have been entirely new, if Lin Jing hadn't already seen that exact same look one day, when Gui Mian expressed a desire to find what would give him hope.
“You could have picked any other flower,” Gui Mian murmured softly, raising a weak hand to touch the face of the man holding him.
With a quiet smile, Lin Jing shook his head, "No, I couldn't. I walked the path you made for me. Now, come, follow me. We have to create that path never travelled before.”
Liberation.
*