In the faint light, a hint of pain seemed to cross the monk's serene face. Bathed in the dim glow, his features appeared all the more profound.
The pain vanished in an instant, so quickly that one might have thought it an illusion.
But Wang Xian caught it—
It was a suffering buried deep beneath compassion, one that even a thousand years could not wholly erase.
It was not a superficial hurt. It was like the moss on an ancient pagoda's foundation, seeping into the cracks in the stone year after year until it had long since become one with the stone.
"Who am I?"
Wang Xian murmured to himself. In his eyes, the vanished Ku Chan, the Unchanging One, was no longer there. Only the round-faced monk before him remained.
Ku Chan was a union of obsession and madness, a mixture of Buddha and demon, a storm and a blaze, a force that could sweep everything up and tear it apart.
But the man before him embodied harmony and peace, something closer to the very essence of things—
Like the eye of a storm: seemingly calm, yet holding all the storm's secrets.
Or like glass within a fire, tempered by raging flames until it became clear and transparent.
It was as if Ku Chan and the round-faced monk before him came from two different worlds—
One was the surface of chaos and struggle; the other, the depths of purity and wisdom.
One was like a treetop swaying in a gale; the other, like roots silent beneath the soil.
One asked why I suffered; the other asked why suffering existed.
All around them, silence reigned.
Even the hunger rising from the base of the tower temporarily receded, as though it, too, had been awed by the silence.
The hunger had