Jiang She lifted two perch from the stream. Even out of the water, they thrashed about with tremendous vigor. He wondered where Old Deer Mountain God had found such lively fish.
They must taste excellent.
Not far behind him, Meng Haoran and Yuan Danqiu had already built a simple outdoor stove from stones and branches and lit a fire.
Yuan Danqiu glanced into the distance at the immortal, who was trying to thread a fish onto a willow twig. He looked relaxed and at ease, with profound mastery of the Dao.
Then he looked at the Mountain God nearby, sitting cross-legged in meditation with the bearing of an old immortal.
He lowered his head and nudged the person beside him with his elbow.
Together with Meng Haoran, he hemmed in Li Bai, who was trying to get the fire beneath the stone stove burning more fiercely.
Yuan Danqiu lowered his voice and asked him,
"That one..."
"Is he truly an immortal?"
Li Bai laughed heartily, then lowered his voice too. "Master Meng, Danqiu Sheng, this time I have truly met an immortal."
Yuan Danqiu's eyes flickered.
He pressed on. "Taibai, staying by the side of a true immortal, what did you see?"
What had he seen...
Li Bai stopped smiling and thought it over.
He had appeared at the Lu residence with Young Master Jiang. First he had met the immortal, then witnessed an illusion that blinded the eyes. Some hidden aperture in his eyes had been opened, and after Jiang She brushed a hand over them, he could see ghosts and spirits.
And then there had been seven days in a dream.
He had watched those nineteen people live out forty years.
Following Young Master Jiang and Old Deer Mountain God, he had seen how those nineteen people came into wealth. He had witnessed their wedding rites and their rise to office. He had also seen troops attack; once the border conflict began, lives were reaped like grass beneath a sickle, people rushing in an endless torrent to their deaths. Yuan Danqiu was among them.
He had seen the ruler's suspicion, how the honors and favor of the past turned to smoke in a single day.
He had seen Scholar Lu's corpse, gradually carried out of the Ancient Locust Kingdom.
And the place where everyone had lived out their lives, some enjoying wealth and glory, others keeping to the Dao for forty years, had turned out to be an anthill. The so-called "neighboring kingdom" might have been an anthill beneath another locust tree.
He had seen glory.
He had seen life and death.
After thinking for a long while,
he found himself unable to answer.
Recalling what he had witnessed in the dream, Li Bai shook off his reverie. In the end, he answered Yuan Danqiu with the same words he had once asked Jiang She in the dream, unable to hold back:
"I was fortunate."
"To witness the fates of life and death,"
"the turns of honor and disgrace,"
"all determined by a single thought."
As Li Bai spoke, he looked toward the surrounding mountains. This was the foot of Lumen Mountain, not far from the gates of Xiangyang County. He had come here many times before, and had climbed Lumen Mountain with Master Meng over and over.
Only this time, when he looked up,
he could make out a faint, fleeting shadow within.
Was it a Mountain Ghost?
Or a Spirit Demon that had cultivated the Dao in the mountains?
Or perhaps a wild beast?
Li Bai narrowed his eyes, trying to discern the strange shadow among the hills, but he could not make it out. Then he spoke again, slowly.
"I was also fortunate"
"to see the truth of ghosts and spirits with my own eyes,"
"to see a spirit beast that seemed to understand human speech, yet was divine and strange, to see a pact made eight hundred years ago, and to see flowers covering the mountains in the space of a few breaths, wildflowers woven like embroidery."
When Li Bai finished,
Yuan Danqiu's breath caught.
"You..."
Only then did he look up toward Lumen Mountain—
The azaleas blanketing the mountain had bloomed at some point, spreading everywhere. Red and purple flowers flourished in profusion, like clouds glowing across the horizon, brilliant beyond measure.
A gust of wind passed, and the flowers surged like a sea, splendid as rosy clouds.
Azaleas were common flowers in the mountains and fields, blooming in spring and summer. Meng Haoran remembered that at this time last year, only a few scattered blossoms had opened. Now and then, he might spot a few splashes of red while climbing the mountain, and even that had been enough to delight him.
He had lived in Xiangyang all his life and studied the Dao on Lumen Mountain.
Yet he had never seen such wondrous flowers covering the entire mountain.
Then he thought of what Taibai had said: "the fates of life and death, the turns of honor and disgrace, all determined by a single thought." And of "the truth of ghosts and spirits, spirit beasts that seemed to understand human speech, a pact made eight hundred years ago..."
Eight hundred years ago.
That was the Han Dynasty, the time of the Zhaoxuan Restoration.
The two of them were both a little dazed.
Jiang She finally finished preparing the fish and brought them over. He had just sat down when he noticed the two men looking stunned. He studied them, met their eyes, and understood what had happened.
He looked at Li Bai.
Li Bai had his head lowered, poking at the firewood.
Jiang She smiled and asked the Mountain God,
"How about roasting one fish and steaming the other?"
He had been here for a long time, and had to take care of many things himself. Over time, he had learned many things that people in his previous life had never needed to know, such as how to cook out in the mountains.
The Mountain God had heard them talking earlier.
After all, no matter how low they kept their voices,
how could they hide them from the master of these mountains?
Old Deer Mountain God stroked his beard, looking at the youngsters sitting there like wooden chickens, stunned and lost in thought. He smiled and said,
"Splendid!"
No one knew how Old Deer Mountain God had raised his fish, but they tasted incredibly fresh. They needed only the simplest seasoning for their fragrance to waft through the air.
The fish had only just come off the fire and was still a little hot.
He took a bite.
"Delicious!"
"Ah, what wonderfully fresh fish!"
"Sir, you have quite the skill!"
Though the expert had said that what happened that day was not to be told to outsiders, the county was small, and rumors still spread in fragments.
Besides the nineteen people who had entered the dream, there had been other servants from the Lu family in the courtyard that day, as well as the county magistrate, seven or eight constables he had brought along, and several family members of the missing who had rushed over after hearing the news.
How could so many people be made to keep quiet?
Immortals were rare in this world.
When something happened right beside you, it was even harder to forget.
Even County Magistrate Cheng Zhi, upon returning to his office, remained distracted. He stared at the documents he had been reviewing, unable to settle his mind, and kept thinking about what had happened that morning.
His cousin-in-law, Wang Er, had said he had lived through forty years in a dream and even become an official, yet when he awoke, only seven days had passed.
How could a person survive seven days without food or water?
Cheng Zhi could not help pondering it.
Thoughts kept bubbling up, one after another. The more he tried not to dwell on them, the more they occupied his mind.
After half an hour, he had barely read a few pages of the records. He simply tossed the files aside and sent a servant to fetch two volumes of Daoist scriptures from home, along with a copy of Biographies of Immortals.
With those in hand,
he could at least force himself to read.
He had been reading for a while when one thought after another surfaced, like gourds bobbing up after being pushed down. Cheng Zhi pressed a hand to his forehead and called in his advisor.
He told the advisor what he had seen and heard that day.
At the end, he said, "Today I learned that Lumen Mountain here in Xiangyang has an old Mountain God. That god seemed to hold the gentleman in great respect, so he must be an immortal of the Dao."
He added,
"Forty years in a dream, but only seven days passing in the world after waking. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I doubt even Biographies of Immortals contains anything like it."
Biographies of Immortals had been written by Ge Hong in the Jin dynasty. It described the lives of eighty-four immortals. Cheng Zhi owned a copy at home, though he had never read much of it before.
After recounting what he had heard that morning, the magistrate was still full of wonder.
"To think there are immortals like that in this world."
"What do you think..."
The advisor listened, his face full of astonishment.
Only after a long while did he recover. Suppressing the surging excitement in his heart, he thought it over, then gently and carefully reminded him,
"From what you've said, my lord, this expert was only passing through. There's no telling how long he'll stay."
"Experts like that rarely open their doors to disciples."
"The bond between master and student is hard to come by."
It was as if the county magistrate had been doused with cold water.
"You're right."
"Then I..."
Seeing his reaction, the advisor continued, "You could also commission someone to compose an essay about what happened today, making clear that this immortal encounter took place under your jurisdiction. What do you think?"
Cheng Zhi's eyes gradually brightened.
He murmured,
"In that case,"
"perhaps I, too, could leave my name in the annals of history."
Before you continue