Bought Nothing but Loneliness

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Nan Feng crouched at the back of the woodshed, his knees pressed against a stack of moldy old account books, his fingers stiff with cold.

In Blue Stone Village in November, the wind poured through the mountain pass and swept along the bases of the earthen walls. It was dark in the woodshed, and he could only make things out by the patch of gray daylight filtering in through the door.

Outside the courtyard, Old Liu was chatting with an old man surnamed Wang, their voices muffled by the two walls between them.

Nan Feng paid them no mind. All his attention was on the pile of odds and ends before him.

An old iron plow, a broken porcelain jar, and half a blackened wooden door panel lay on top. A copper lock weighing over ten jin and several hinges rusted into lumps.

All junk.

He sifted through them one by one. Each thing the backs of his hands touched was colder and rougher than the last. His frown deepened.

Old Liu had said the Wang family was clearing out their old house, and there was plenty of stuff. If Nan Feng arrived late, the people from the neighboring county would snatch it all up. He had driven his van for two and a half hours to get here. If the whole trip yielded nothing but scrap iron and copper, he wouldn't even make back the gas money.

Keep looking.

He pulled out the bottom layer of junk, moving quickly but carefully. After nearly ten years in the trade, he knew which things couldn't take rough handling.

He pushed broken roof tiles aside, revealing a broken shovel handle underneath. He dug farther down, and something hard jabbed the back of his hand.

Very hard.

But it didn't feel like iron. Iron was cold and rough to the touch. This thing was cold too, but in a different way-a deep, sinking cold. Its surface was smooth, offering no resistance when he rubbed his fingers over it.

Nan Feng pushed aside the broken tiles and rotting scraps of cloth covering it.

A tower emerged.

It was palm-sized, nine stories high, and made of bronze. Blue-green patina climbed from its base to its peak, as though time had poured a coat of moss over it.

The corners of the nine tiers of eaves curved upward. Their outlines remained, but corrosion had blurred the patterns beyond recognition. A dull-colored bead sat atop the tower, its material impossible to discern.

The square base was covered in inscriptions, their strokes as fine as strands of hair.

Nan Feng leaned in for a closer look.

His eye was famously sharp in the antiques trade. After ten years, he could recognize most seal script, clerical script, oracle bone script, and bronze inscriptions.

He couldn't recognize a single character in the inscriptions on the tower's base.

The script was strange, unlike the bronze inscriptions of the Shang and Zhou dynasties or the bamboo-and-silk scripts of the Warring States period. The way its strokes joined was utterly unfamiliar.

He turned the tower over to examine its underside. Where the corrosion was worst, a hairline crack extended from the base to near the third story.

The crack was packed with black deposits. He picked at them with a fingernail; they were hard as stone.

Crouching in the woodshed, Nan Feng held the tower in his palm and examined it for nearly ten minutes.

The patina had formed naturally, with distinct layers and no signs of artificial aging.

The inscriptions had been carved with exquisite precision, each cut and stroke varying in depth. No machine could have imitated them.

Its weight was off, too. It was nearly twice as heavy as a bronze object of the same size.

But he couldn't identify its era.

It was the first time since he'd entered the trade.

Experience was more accurate than instruments. This wasn't a modern imitation; that sense of age and weight couldn't be faked.

"Sir, where did this tower come from?"

Holding the tower, he stood and went into the courtyard to ask the old man surnamed Wang.

The old man squatted under the eaves, smoking a pipe. He didn't even raise his eyelids.

"It was passed down from my ancestors. I don't remember how many generations. My grandpa said it was already sitting in the woodshed in his grandpa's day, always used to prop things up. If you want it, eight hundred."

Old Liu clicked his tongue.

"Eight hundred? Isn't that just a lump of bronze? Xiao Nan, don't let him fleece you."

Nan Feng didn't bargain. He took out his phone, scanned the code, and transferred eight hundred yuan.

Old Liu was still grumbling when Nan Feng wrapped the tower in two layers of old newspaper and tucked it into a canvas bag.

He couldn't say why. When his hand touched the tower, his fingertips had warmed for an instant.

The bronze was cold, and so was the patina. That warmth had seemed to seep from inside the tower, then vanished in an instant.

The moment he put the tower away, he clenched his right hand. There was nothing in his palm. Yet that warmth lingered in his fingertips, like the iron objects he'd touched in a blacksmith's shop as a child, the heat seeping outward from deep in the bone.

It was already pitch-dark on the road back to the city. The van's heater was broken, so Nan Feng drove wrapped in his coat, the canvas bag resting on the passenger seat.

Streetlights swept past the window one after another, their orange-yellow glow falling on the bag, brightening and dimming.

He listened to no music and made no calls on the way. The tower's inscriptions and that crack kept turning over in his mind.

There was something off about the crack. It didn't look as if an impact had caused it; it looked more as though something had forced it open from inside.

What could split a bronze object open from the inside?

It was nearly ten by the time he returned to his rented apartment. Nan Feng took out the tower and set it on his desk.

The apartment was small, with one bedroom and a living room, and unorganized secondhand goods piled everywhere. Only the desk was tidy: a lamp, a magnifying glass, and several identification guides with frayed pages.

He switched on the desk lamp. In its warm light, the blue-green patina on the tower took on a deep, profound hue.

Nan Feng took three photos and sent them to several trade group chats.

After ten minutes, few people had replied. One friend who dealt in ancient bronzes sent a message.

"It looks pre-Tang, but I've never seen those inscriptions. Ask an expert to take a look."

No one else spoke after that.

He put down his phone and stared at the tower in a daze.

The desk lamp shone on the tower, and the bead at its peak suddenly flashed.

Nan Feng thought his eyes were playing tricks on him and leaned in for a closer look. The bead was still the same dull color.

But he had definitely seen a glimmer just now, very faint, as though something inside the bead had lit up for an instant.

He reached out and picked up the tower.

The moment his fingertips touched it, the heat returned. Stronger than it had been in the woodshed, it seeped from the crack at the base like a mass of embers sealed inside, still breathing.

Nan Feng frowned and held the tower under the desk lamp to examine the crack.

The patina was thinner along the crack's edges than elsewhere. A faint blue-green light showed deep within the gap.

The light was pulsing.

Like the rhythm of a heartbeat.

Nan Feng's breath caught for a beat.

He was holding something that shouldn't exist in this world. The feeling made no sense, but it was real, as if someone were whispering in his ear: This thing is real. It has been waiting for you all along.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something.

A burst of searing pain struck the back of his head.

The world lurched sideways. His forehead hit the corner of the desk, his teeth clamped down on his tongue, and his mouth filled with the taste of rust.

His vision darkened, and the sounds around him seemed to have their volume turned down. He heard someone rummaging through drawers behind him and someone cursing.

Someone else was asking where the money was.

Three people. Home invaders. Security was poor in this old part of the city; two months ago, he'd heard a neighbor mention that a resident had been robbed.

A hand seized his hair and yanked his head back. His back struck a desk leg. The lamp fell, its bulb shattering on the floor.

Nan Feng lay facedown on the icy floor, still clutching the tower in his right hand.

Blood flowed from the wound on the back of his head, down his neck and into his collar. His consciousness was fading, his field of vision narrowing.

He heard a robber shout, "There isn't a single damn thing worth anything in this dump!" Someone was kicking him in the back.

He couldn't move.

With the last of his strength, he tightened his grip on the tower. His fingertips pressed against the crack.

Blue-green light burst from the crack.

Light gushed between his fingers, dazzling and scorching, as though something had broken free from the tower's base. Nan Feng's hand hurt as if it were on fire, but he couldn't let go; his fingers seemed glued to the tower.

Blood ran from the wound on the back of his head, down his arm and into his palm, then flowed into the crack.

The instant the blood touched the crack, the tower shuddered.

All the light in the apartment collapsed into a single point, then burst outward.

Nan Feng heard the robbers scream, their voices warped and distorted. But he could no longer spare them any attention.

A force was pulling his consciousness from his body, each inch bringing a tearing pain. He saw his own body lying facedown on the floor, blood still flowing. The three robbers were frozen in place.

The tower spun before him. The nine-story bronze tower grew in the blue-green light, its inscriptions rising to the surface and moving like snakes. The characters he couldn't recognize became legible to him in the light.

A line of golden characters emerged before the tower.

"The Primordial World shatters, the divine soul returns."

A second line appeared immediately afterward.

"Earth's origin, the root of all worlds."

Nan Feng wanted to understand the two sentences. But his consciousness had already scattered completely.

All he could perceive was the warm force pouring from the tower's base, wrapping around his soul. Slowly, heavily.

The robbers' screams grew more and more distant. The scene inside the apartment folded, twisted, and shattered in the blue-green light.

Light, sound, and pain vanished together.

Darkness.

Deep, deep darkness.

The blue-green light floated in the darkness for a while, then went out as well. Only the illusory image of a nine-story bronze tower remained, spinning in the void.

The crack in the tower's base spat out one last ray of light, which became a line of golden characters as fine as dust.

"After three thousand years, you've finally returned."

Then even the illusory tower vanished.

Nan Feng knew nothing anymore. He didn't know whether he was dead or alive.

Wrapped in that warm force, he simply sank through the darkness and silence, in an unknown direction.

Like a pebble falling into a bottomless well.

The walls of that well were covered in light. He would later learn that the shapes of those lights were called the "Primordial World."

Before the illusory bronze tower faded completely, nine layers of patterns appeared on its body.

The first layer lit up for an instant, then went dark again.

As if waiting for someone to push open its door.