On the bluestone, the prayer beads moving through Xuanzang's fingers stopped.
He slowly opened his eyes. In those eyes, deep as an abyss, there was neither compassion nor anger, only the clarity that saw through every illusion.
"You asked this monk why the Buddha delivered only you, and not her."
"You asked this monk why good deeds brought no good reward."
Xuanzang's voice was quiet, yet it reverberated through the silent valley:
"Have you attained enlightenment?"
"What delivered you?"
The skeleton abruptly raised his head, his neck bones grinding with a teeth-setting rasp. A flickering, spectral green flame seemed to ignite in his hollow eye sockets.
Xuanzang did not stop.
His gaze was like a sharp sword, peeling away the last disguises of this skeleton, layer by layer.
Behind his head, the Red-Blood Buddha Wheel faintly appeared and slowly turned, spilling a heart-stopping crimson radiance into the pitch-black night.
"'When practicing contemplation of white bones, you should repeatedly take up an image of light: lamplight, the light of a great fire, the sun's disk, or the moon's disk. Having taken up such an image of light, proceed to the burial grounds and take up the image of a corpse turned livid, and so forth, through to the image of a linked skeleton.'"
Xuanzang stared straight at the skeleton, his voice booming like a great bell:
"Without a learned guide to teach you the proper sequence, how could you have mastered it?!"
The skeleton shrank back, his frame trembling with faint rattles.
"Who was that wandering monk? If an eminent monk truly taught you, why would he leave only an incomplete scripture, never mentioning the sequence or the dangers of practicing this method?"
Xuanzang stepped closer, every word piercing the heart:
"A demonic obstruction arose in your own heart!"
"Your neighbors