The Guest Hall consisted of meditation rooms provided for Luoyang's eminent families to practice in. Brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones for copying sutras were all ready to hand, so she could simply sit down and write. She was copying the Ullambana Sutra, praying for blessings for her loved ones and deliverance for the dead.
Wei Xun liked her bold, spirited bearing when she took up a bow against an enemy, and admired her quiet concentration when she wrote. After watching for a while, he saw her finish a page and lay it beside her to let the ink dry. He picked it up to admire it, then noticed that the sheet underneath contained not scripture but calculations: one dou, ten catties; one shi, ten dou. One shi and six dou, a hundred and sixty catties of rice, enough to keep a hundred and sixty people alive.
Guessing that she was calculating how much rice Chan'guang Temple had used to buy corpses that day, Wei Xun said, "You know they're probably not doing this out of compassion, but just to get corpses for their Nine Contemplations Painting, don't you? They won't distribute that grain."
Expressionless, Baozhu pulled the sheet from his hand, crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it behind her. "I know. Never mind that all the grain stored in Chan'guang Temple wouldn't be enough to relieve the starving-even if I held office as Eastern Capital Defender or Prefect of Henan Prefecture, I couldn't solve the underlying problem of the interrupted grain shipments. Some people are destined to die. That's why I'm copying sutras in the middle of the night, hoping they'll ascend to heaven soon and find a better birth next time."
Knowing something weighed on her heart, Wei Xun drew the brush from her hand and showed