Beneath a tree that flowered and bore countless fruits, the young man wearing a crown and the burly old Daoist sat idly, chatting beneath shade as fluid as water.
There had originally been nothing beneath the tree. With a slight stir of thought from the crown-wearing man, one of Chen Ping'an's incarnations, a stone table and two stone stools appeared. A Go board was carved into the tabletop, modeled after the game beneath the pine tree at Heart's Tip on Little Dragon Spring Ancestor Mountain.
This was truly being master of one's own house—doing as one pleased and creating all things at will.
With a raised hand, the old Abbot produced two jars of Go stones on the table. They were not black and white, but five-colored, all mixed together.
Chen Ping'an glanced at them and could not tell whether they were real or false.
The old Abbot casually asked, "Do you know where Liu Qi is unifying with the Dao?"
Chen Ping'an shook his head. Literary fortune was one broad category of human harmony. After Bai Ye, who had unified with the Dao through the poems in his heart, stepped aside, whether Su Zi or Liu Qi would naturally fill the vacancy, each had a great many supporters who held firmly to their own views. Yet regardless, people were still accustomed to regarding ci poetry as poetry's remainder. No matter how bold and unconstrained Su Zi was, no matter how tender and passionate Liu Qi was, they still stood a head shorter than Bai Ye.
At the same time, Chen Ping'an knew another inside story. Liu Qi had taken half the Marriage Register to Azure Sky World and opened a Shi Yu Blessed Land. It appeared that his path of Unification of the Dao already had Bai Ye standing