On Earth Pass Island, fierce winds howled over Songhe Peak, carrying waves of sighing pines that sounded like weeping lamentations.
The peak stood some seven or eight hundred zhang high, now shrouded in white as though dressed in mourning.
Along both sides of the thousands of stone steps winding from the foot of the mountain to its summit, three-foot white banners snapped in the wind, and a white glass lamp burned at the edge of every step.
Their wicks trembled, their light and shadows wavering, stretching the slender shadows of those climbing the mountain all along the way;
Winding up to the summit, they resembled a long, pale carpet leading to the netherworld.
The vermilion doors of the hall at the summit had long since been removed and replaced with plain wooden panels, bearing a pair of elegiac verses written with a "white wolf ink brush":
"Pine-boned, he stood atop the peak, guarding the island through the years, at last becoming a crane; his Dao heart returned to the Purple Mansion, his name enduring through the ages, his lamp forever passed on."
The white flowers hanging beneath the eaves were no ordinary paper flowers, but pale, exquisite blossoms painstakingly fashioned from spirit silkworm silk by the disciples of the Dian Cang Sect.
They rustled as the wind passed, like the soft song of falling snow.
The pair of stone cranes guarding the entrance were wrapped all over in white silk;
Each held a string of supreme-grade second tier black jade prayer beads in its beak, glistening like tears-a personal gift from Xuan Zhen True Person.
Spirit Crane True Person wore plain white Daoist robes;
His hair, usually tied high, now hung loose over his shoulders, and several frost-white strands had appeared at his temples.
He still had nearly two hundred