A foolish youth lay upon the immortal mountain's back, cold dew soaking his body, moonlight draped over him.
-"Verse on the stone wall of Qiyun Rock"
The days drifted leisurely by. Each day, Xing Yan followed the same route, traveling between Horseshoe Mountain, the Ji Family School, Shangqing Palace's Good Karma Office, Li's General Store, and the Rice Fragrance Tavern, where he worked odd jobs.
When he grew a little older, and Old Zhang grew older still and could no longer manage heavy labor, Xing Yan would inherit this ancestral property on barren Horseshoe Mountain. He would scratch a living out of the wilderness, plunging through gullies and crossing ridges to hunt game. Once he had saved a little money, he would marry a farm girl from a nearby mountain village whose family matched his own in standing. From then on, he would leave the school far behind, along with the beauty at the grocery shop, and become a household head fit only to tend his sons and daughters at the edges of the fields.
Perhaps, had that unexpected incident never occurred, young Xing Yan's life would have followed this same uneventful course, just like generation after generation of the Zhang family, leaving not a trace in the legends that followed.
The incident that changed young Xing Yan's entire life happened in the summer of his sixteenth year.
That day, the summer heat blazed. For some reason, insects had infested the loquat trees his family had painstakingly planted on Horseshoe Mountain. Ordinarily, loquat trees possessed a fresh, pure aura of their own and seldom attracted pests. Yet when Old Zhang went up the mountain that day to inspect the grove upon which the whole family depended for food, he discovered unfamiliar moths fluttering among the trees.
Old Zhang was frantic. He hurriedly summoned his son and wife to help swat them. Who could have known these flying insects would be so nimble? Killing every last one proved exceedingly difficult. The three of them had no choice but to flap their clothes at the creatures, doing their best to drive these strange pests out of the loquat grove.
After struggling all day, they finally cleared the strange insects from the trees. Xing Yan had been the main force in driving them away, scrambling up and down the entire day. Even a young fellow like him was utterly exhausted by the end.
That evening, he felt too weary to move, so he told his parents to go home first. He would rest on the mountain and watch to see whether the insects returned. On a summer night like this, sleeping in their thatched hut would be unbearably muggy anyway. He might as well stay on the mountain, where the night air was cooler. If he grew hungry, he could pick wild fruit to fill his belly and save them the cost of a supper.
And so his parents went home first. Zhang Xingyan lay down on the white stone slab on the hillside where he often rested.
The white slab was naturally formed and shaped rather like a bed. Although Horseshoe Mountain covered a considerable area, it was not very high, and its sparse woodland made it little more than a barren hill. Old Zhang had once hoped to sell it and use the money to buy a paddy field near Raozhou City, but no one had shown any interest.
The only noteworthy thing on Horseshoe Mountain was this bed-shaped white stone, half buried in the earth. It was about the length of a person, just long enough for Xing Yan to lie upon. Its surface was smooth and clean. Though there were a few slight bumps in the middle, he stopped noticing them once he had lain there for a while.
There was another peculiarity about the white stone bed, one only Xing Yan knew: whenever the farming season came and he grew tired from working on the mountain, he would lie on it to sleep and rest, and always wake feeling refreshed, his mind seemingly much quicker. Sometimes he even felt an urge to throw back his head and let out a few long cries.
Still, perhaps there was nothing particularly remarkable about that. Surely anyone who slept on a cool stone ought to feel that way upon waking. The thoughtful boy feared others would laugh if he mentioned it, so he had never told anyone.
When Xing Yan lay down again on this natural white stone bed, a bright moon had already leaped above the eastern hills. In the fresh breeze peculiar to the mountain wilds, he stretched out his limbs and savored the stone's coolness.
After a long while, feeling somewhat bored, he quietly gazed up at the river of stars filling the sky.
Looking at the pale Milky Way stretching across the heavens overhead, the boy could not help recalling a farmers' saying:
"When the Silver River spans east to west, every household has rice to eat."
Unfortunately, his family had no fertile fields that yielded rice.
The boy lying on the white stone could never seem to get enough of the starry heavens above him. They seemed different every day. Whenever he watched the stars for long enough, he felt as though his gaze, and then his whole body, were about to be drawn into that mysterious, boundless sky.
Xing Yan lay there without moving. Only at moments like these was he truly happy. Every worry and sorrow belonged to tomorrow; for now, he need not trouble himself with them.
Time slowly slipped by. The moon moved, and shadows shifted. Before he knew it, the full moon had reached the sky directly above him. Snow-white moonlight poured silently down like gentle water, flowing over his still, reclining body.
The moon is so round tonight... is it the fifteenth again? I'll have to ask Mother when I get home...
Xing Yan thought idly. Just then, he suddenly sensed that the white stone beneath him had come alive. A vast force surged abruptly up from below and slammed into his body.
In an instant, the boy lying so comfortably there felt as though his entire body were about to be flung upward, sent flying into the depths of the endless, unfathomable universe of stars...
"Ah! A ghost!"
Xing Yan's first thought was that he had encountered one of those evil ghosts ignorant men and women always talked about! He had always treated ghosts and gods with grinning irreverence, and now retribution had finally come!
At that thought, Xing Yan had no intention of lying there waiting to die. He was about to struggle when the moonlight, originally as soft and insubstantial as water, suddenly seemed to take solid form. Snow-white, translucent light shone straight down upon the white stone where he lay—as though all the lunar essence that had filled heaven and earth had gathered in an instant upon this tiny patch beneath him. Together with the immense force surging from the stone, it battered Xing Yan's body in an unending torrent.
Caught between these two inexplicable, immense forces, the boy felt as though two giant claws had seized him, squeezing one moment and tearing the next. His whole body seemed no longer his own, like a tiny leaf tossed helplessly in a storm. Unfortunately, unlike a leaf, he could feel pain. For a time, it felt as though ten thousand ants were devouring his flesh, filling him with terrible pain and unbearable itching. It was also as though he were falling from a cliff, knowing death was near yet finding nothing to grasp! Xing Yan was stunned with terror, unable even to cry out. He wanted to get up and flee, but could not move so much as a toe!
Yet the boy's unexpectedly resilient nerves allowed him to retain one last thread of thought through this inhuman agony:
So those miserable, labor-filled days I used to live were actually so happy, so blessed!
Just as Xing Yan thought he would "die an unnatural death" on the spot, as old Master Ji put it, he gradually realized, even while still contorted with pain and terror, that the dreadful aching and itching had already receded like the tide. The two immense forces had now merged into one, like a stream slowly washing through his body yet surging without cease—he himself had no idea how he could experience those two absurdly contradictory sensations at once. By then, however, he had begun to recover from his panic. A little later, he finally understood that the ordeal was over.
For as that stream washed through body and mind, the pain throughout him gradually faded, and a sense of ease took its place.
As the clear stream washed through his body again and again, Xing Yan seemed to acquire a third eye. It looked down upon "Zhang Xingyan" on the white stone, watching "him" gradually become clear, ethereal...
He had no idea how much time passed. Xing Yan's "third eye" quietly watched the flowing stream become ever more formless as it circulated, until at last, like a mountain spring returning to its ravine, it dissolved into his limbs and bones. Eventually, the boy could no longer perceive it—first the formless stream vanished, and then that strange "third eye."
Yet the lingering trace within his body, at once rich and mellow, light and airy, remained something he could not let go of for a long time.
Passing from his initial agony to this reluctance to part with the sensation, Xing Yan gradually forgot his earlier terror and became enthralled by this feeling unlike anything he had ever experienced. He remained in the same position upon the unyielding stone, which had returned to normal, hoping the strange phenomenon would come again, unaware that the east had already begun to brighten.
"That Xing Yan boy has gone mad!"
Early the next morning, the neighbors in Raozhou City who knew Xing Yan passed these words from mouth to mouth with laughter.
And no wonder. From the moment young Zhang Xingyan returned home at dawn, and throughout his subsequent rounds in Raozhou City, he kept grabbing acquaintances and asking them the same questions:
"Did you see that white light outside the eastern city wall last night? Look at me-do I seem different today?!"
His survey met with unanimous denials, including from his parents, and everyone gave him strange looks. Whenever he encountered an especially caring respondent, the boy would also have his forehead felt to determine whether he was running a fever!
Even so, the boy refused to give up. He even grabbed Li Xiaomei's sleeve and pressed her with the same questions. The girl, who barely knew him, blushed scarlet and did her best to shake off his witless pestering before fleeing straight into the back room. All she left behind was half a lonely sleeve, caught in Xing Yan's wicked claw.
Caught red-handed with the evidence in his grasp, he naturally earned a stern warning from Shopkeeper Li not to use feigned madness as an excuse to molest his daughter. Fortunately, the shopkeeper had already heard about Xing Yan's strange behavior that morning and had witnessed the entire incident with his daughter, so he more or less understood what had happened. Thus, although his rebuke sounded severe, there seemed to be a note of barely suppressed laughter in it.
Coming to his senses, Xing Yan immediately blushed scarlet himself. He could only leave behind the half sleeve, still bearing a lingering fragrance, turn around, and beat a hasty retreat.
Old Master Ji, who was strolling along the nearby flagstone street to digest his breakfast, happened to witness his pupil's disgraceful performance. Showing none of the dignity expected of his age, he exclaimed in an exaggerated voice:
"Who would have thought the lad already had a passion for the cut sleeve!"
With that, he shrugged and chuckled like a cormorant.
Unfortunately, lofty music found few listeners. Apart from the old master himself, no one on the entire street understood the joke.
In truth, everyone assumed that Xing Yan, always a mischievous little imp, was playing some new trick on them that day. And so they cooperated with a unanimity they had never achieved before, denying his questions as though they had arranged it beforehand-all except Qinghe, the decrepit old Daoist at the Good Karma Office.
When the boy finally turned his pleading gaze toward old Qinghe and asked those same questions, his voice had grown much quieter. After the repeated blows he had suffered that morning, his confidence was nearly exhausted. Worse still, even he had almost begun to believe that last night had merely been a strange dream. If he kept asking like this, he feared he too would start wondering whether something was wrong with him.
The longer he looked at the bright sky and broad daylight, the stronger that thought became.
By now, the thoroughly dispirited Xing Yan had decided that if old Qinghe, who could at least claim some distant, roundabout connection to the immortals, also denied it, then he could safely conclude that last night had indeed been nothing more than a wildly absurd dream.
From the look of things, old Qinghe had been waiting in his charitable shop for quite some time, like a man guarding a tree stump in hopes a rabbit would dash into it. Hearing the boy's questions, the old Daoist scrutinized him from head to toe with an air of profound mystery. Only after a long while did he say softly:
"There is indeed a change!"
Wow! After spending half the day running around and losing half a night's sleep, after enduring a thousand hardships and all the humiliations the mortal world could offer, the boy had finally tasted sweetness after bitterness and found a kindred spirit!
To Xing Yan's ears, tortured by the same answer over and over, old Qinghe's quiet words sounded as magnificent and delightful as the peal of a mighty bell.
Seeing Xing Yan's excitement and anticipation, old Qinghe continued slowly, stressing every word:
"To-day, you, real-ly, are, dif-fer-ent-"
"Because today you're especially stupid! Wahahahaha!"
The disreputable old Daoist burst into laughter as soon as he finished. Judging by those wild guffaws, which seemed capable of lingering among the rafters for three days, the old fellow must have been holding them in for a very long time!
"I'll strangle you, you rotten Daoist!"
Furious, the boy made as though to pounce. Yet even as he waved his claws about, he had completely given up inside, thinking only listlessly:
Oh, so last night really was just a dream... but what a strange dream it was. It felt as though I'd actually lived through it!
After a little while, Xing Yan seemed to remember something else and addressed old Qinghe, who was still dodging him:
"Master! Please take me as your disciple! Just consider it a little compensation for making fun of me!"
And so, with this daily plea for discipleship, much like all those that had come before, young Zhang Xingyan's life seemed to return to its usual course. The commotion that morning was treated as nothing more than a joke, an inconspicuous morsel among the many topics the townsmen savored over drinks while enjoying the evening cool. Perhaps in another day or two, everyone would forget it.
But would the white stone that had stirred that night, and that uncanny moonlight, truly allow young Zhang Xingyan's life to continue along its former path?