Shen Hui had just lifted his head from the water vat when the young disciple came over and led him into the temple.
"This way, this way."
The disciple pushed open a side gate. Beyond it lay a long, narrow courtyard.
Soft moss sprouted between the flagstones. Several chipped clay pots sat against the wall, their plants unknown, their leaves limp and curled at the edges.
There was a well in the corner, and the hemp rope on its winch had grown fuzzy with wear.
"This is the east courtyard. Our quarters are over there."
As they walked, the disciple said, "My Daoist name is Qing Shi. My family name is Wang, and my given name is Shi. Master chose it for me. He said I'm... well, honest and straightforward."
He chuckled twice, a little embarrassed.
After crossing the east courtyard, Qing Shi led Shen Hui through a moon gate.
The space beyond opened up into a somewhat larger courtyard. An old peach tree stood in the middle, its gnarled branches looking as though they had been forged from iron.
A stone table and stools sat beneath the tree, a thin layer of dust covering the tabletop.
Facing them stood a hall with three bays. Its doors were ajar, and the inside was pitch-black. The outline of a statue was just visible, most of its lacquer peeled away.
"That's the Three Pure Ones Hall. We hold morning and evening lessons in the front courtyard, though sometimes we do them in the hall. Master gives his lectures there, too."
Without stopping, Qing Shi led Shen Hui beneath the covered walkway beside the hall.
The walkway's red-painted pillars were mottled and peeling, and the carved patterns on the railing had blurred beyond recognition. A heap of odds and ends lay beneath the eaves: a broom with a broken handle, a cracked wooden bucket, and a few bundles of old reed mats.
The air smelled musty, with a faint trace of incense mixed in.
They passed through another narrow gate and entered an even smaller courtyard. It had only two rows of low rooms, one to the north and one to the south, and looked older still.
Qing Shi went to the door of a room on the north side. He felt beneath a broken roof tile on the windowsill and pulled out a copper key. It took him a few tries to unlock the door.
"Creak—"
The door swung open, and a rush of stale, damp air swept out.
The room was tiny. A wooden bed covered with a straw mat stood against one wall.
There was a wobbly wooden table, a square stool, and a chipped earthenware basin in the corner. That was all the furniture.
The window paper had yellowed, and there were even a few holes in it, hastily patched with scraps of paper.
"You'll stay here. I'll bring you some bedding later."
Qing Shi set the key on the table. "Don't mind it. It may be a bit crude, but it's still better than a ruined temple."
Shen Hui walked around the room, looking it over. "What are you saying, Daoist? This place is already far better than a ruined temple."
Qing Shi waved a hand and led him back outside, pointing to a separate little shed at the western end of the courtyard. "That's the latrine."
Then he took him to the southeast corner of the courtyard, where a stone trough stood. A gourd dipper hung beside it, and a bamboo pipe beneath the trough connected to a spring on the mountain behind them.
"Use the water here for washing up and laundry. If you want hot water, you'll have to heat it yourself in the kitchen."
After finishing his instructions, Qing Shi carried his large rattan trunk toward the row of rooms on the south side.
"I'll go get settled in. Make yourself at home."
Shen Hui returned to the little room and sat beside the bed for a while.
The room was so quiet he could hear his own breathing, along with the distant rustle of pines.
He stood, picked up the earthenware basin, and went outside to the water trough.
The icy mountain water splashed over his face, jolting him alert.
He washed carefully, then used the water to tame his disheveled hair.
The trough reflected a blurry image of him, clearer than the one in the vat, but still thin. The bewilderment in his eyes seemed to have faded a little, though.
He carried half a basin of water back to his room and was about to wipe the mud off himself when someone knocked at the door as soon as he set the basin down.
Qing Shi had returned, carrying a wooden tray.
On it sat a large bowl of steaming vegetable congee, two coarse-grain steamed buns, and a dish of dark pickled vegetables.
Draped over his other arm were two folded gray Daoist robes, two sets of white coarse-cloth undergarments, and a pair each of shoes and socks.
"Here, make do with these for now. The Daoist robes are old, but they've been washed. Change into them first. The shoes and socks are new. I picked them out based on the approximate size of my own feet, so see if they fit."
Qing Shi set everything on the table one item at a time, then reminded him, "Remember, morning lessons start at the third quarter of the yin hour tomorrow. Get up on time. Master hates tardiness."
Shen Hui looked at the steaming bowl of congee. His stomach clenched, and he thanked Qing Shi again.
Qing Shi reached the door, then turned back with a hesitant look. "Um... you do know what the third quarter of the yin hour is, right?"
Shen Hui paused, then shook his head.
Qing Shi's eyes widened as he looked Shen Hui up and down. "You dress strangely enough, but how can you not even know the time..."
He shook his head, apparently finding it hard to believe. "Never mind. I'll come get you at the mao hour tomorrow... Uh, when it's just starting to get light. Don't sleep too deeply."
He had already stepped over the threshold when something occurred to him. He drew back and lowered his voice to add, "One more thing. Don't wear too many layers to morning lessons. The hall... well, it's not exactly warm, but if you dress too warmly, you'll get sleepy. Master has sharp eyes."
With that, he finally left. His footsteps gradually faded over the flagstones.
Shen Hui closed the door and slid the bolt into place.
There was no lamp or candle in the room, only the faint daylight filtering through the window paper.
He sat down in the dark, picked up the bowl of still-hot vegetable congee, and slowly ate it with the pickled vegetables, one mouthful at a time.
The congee was made from coarse rice mixed with some kind of wild greens, and the buns were dense enough to make him choke a little.
But he ate every last bit, even carefully scraping the rim of the bowl clean.
Once he was full, he finally felt a little warmth in his body.
He washed himself in the dark and changed into the coarse-cloth undergarments. Then he rolled up his ragged old clothes and stuffed them beneath the bed.
He lay down. The straw mat was hard and lumpy, but beneath him was solid ground, and above him, a tiled roof.
Outside the window, the mountain wind swept over the roof with a low whoosh, like a car speeding down a road in the dead of night.
The third quarter of the yin hour... He closed his eyes and worked it out in his head.
Around 3:45 a.m., maybe? In a place without clocks, he couldn't tell the time precisely and would have to rely on someone else to wake him.
In the dark, he listened to the wind, felt the hard wooden bed beneath him and the warmth of food in his stomach, and drifted into a deep sleep.
In a haze, Shen Hui dreamed.
In the dream, he was a renowned master, capable of moving mountains and boiling seas, and turning a sword into a dragon. His cultivation had reached its peak.
At last, one day, his heavenly tribulation arrived. If he survived it, he would become a true immortal.
He stood beneath the ninth heaven and looked up. A dazzling bolt of lightning suddenly burst across the sky.
Shen Hui let out a long cry and shot upward.
But when the lightning reached him, he realized the blinding white light was actually a truck with its high beams on, hurtling straight toward him.
Shen Hui jolted awake and sprang upright in bed.
In the darkness, he gasped for breath. It took a long while before he could make out the shabby shapes around him.
There was no sky with thunderclouds pressing down, and no glaring beam of headlights. Only a window patched with scraps of paper, through which a little bleak moonlight seeped, casting a faint frost-colored sheen across the floor.
"Damn those high-beam bastards..."
He rasped the curse under his breath, his throat dry and tight.
He wiped his face with one hand. A fine sheen of cold sweat covered his forehead.
He lay back down on the hard wooden bed, but his sleep had vanished completely.
The chill of late autumn crept in through the thin straw mat and the holes in the window paper, seeping into him thread by thread and burrowing into his bones.
He curled up and dragged the other gray Daoist robe over himself, covering up with it haphazardly.
Daoist Qing Shi had said he would bring bedding. He must have gotten busy and forgotten.
Shen Hui stared at the blurry rafters overhead.
In the silence, the wind in the distant mountains grew clearer, moaning and wailing like the breath of some enormous creature.
Every so often, he heard one or two faint calls, some rustling sound that could have come from an insect or a bird.
His thoughts drifted away of their own accord, back to a world separated from him by who knew how many layers of time and space.
His parents' faces had already grown a little blurry. He only remembered that he had been very young when they died, and that he had cried his heart out.
It had been his grandparents' calloused hands that pulled him up from the mud, raising him on mouthfuls of rice soup and gruel.
Later, he got into college and made it out of that little backwater. But before he could bring them out and give them a comfortable life, the two old folks passed away one after the other, as if they had planned it.
He hadn't cried at the funeral. He'd only felt as though a huge piece of his heart had been scooped out, leaving it hollow and cold as the wind blew through.
After that came graduation, job hunting, renting a tiny room, cramming onto the subway every day, working overtime, and eating takeout.
Life ticked along like a wound-up clock, following its routine, yet still hollow.
Then, on a late night after working overtime, he'd been riding his secondhand electric scooter and turning into a quiet, unlit intersection—blinding headlights swallowed everything, and in the next second, he'd become a human speed bump...
He sighed softly and forced those memories out of his mind.
The past was on the other shore. There was no point dwelling on it.
He began to sort through the situation in front of him.
When he had first arrived in this world, he'd seen farmers' clothes and the layout of their houses from a distance outside the village. They were more or less like those of ancient times. Productivity was low, and hardship was a fact of life.
But... it seemed that "cultivation" really existed here?
The water ghost in the stream, the yellow talisman on its back, and the solemn way the old Taoist had spoken of "Golden Core True Persons who refine gang qi and practice sha"—none of it seemed like an act.
Cultivating the Dao... living forever... He couldn't say he was fervently yearning for it, but as someone steeped in modern science, he was naturally curious about a system of power so far beyond the ordinary.
What was more, this might be the only opportunity he had to change his circumstances.
As his thoughts wandered aimlessly, something stirred in his heart without warning.
It was as though some fine string had been gently plucked, or as if a dormant corner inside him had sensed a subtle change in the world outside.
He couldn't explain it, but he simply knew that the third quarter of the yin hour had arrived.
He wasn't surprised. He calmly accepted the fact and sat up.
He put on the gray Daoist robe and tied its matching belt.
The undergarments and Daoist robe rubbed against his skin, coarse but thick, just enough to keep out the bone-deep chill of dawn.
He tried moving his hands and feet. The new cloth shoes were a little tight, but he adjusted after a few steps.
He picked up the chipped earthenware basin from the corner and went outside.
It was still blue-black beyond the door. A faint sliver of pale dawn showed in the eastern sky, setting off the mountain ridges like ink-wash silhouettes, dark and light in just the right measure.
The courtyard was colder than the room. The air was crisp, and one breath felt as though it washed his lungs with ice water.
Water dripping from the bamboo pipe beside the stone trough had frozen into a thin, transparent crust at the bottom.
He broke through the ice with the gourd dipper, scooped up the bone-chilling spring water, and splashed it onto his face.
The cold instantly banished the last of his drowsiness and the haze left by his dream.
He used the water to hurriedly rub his teeth with his fingers.
After washing, he carried the basin back inside and poured the water onto the dirt outside the door. Then he stood in the middle of the small courtyard and waited quietly.
All was silent between heaven and earth. Shen Hui looked up as the pale strip of dawn slowly spread across the dark-blue sky, tinged with the faintest orange-gold.
The stars were disappearing one by one.
Morning lessons were about to begin.