Chapter 3: Endless love through reincarnation

The sound of my footsteps and my master’s footsteps was quiet, but my heart was beating like the strongest drumbeat, and the violent beating made my whole chest ache.

This pain is not the pain caused by physical injury, but a voice in my heart that shouts, “My happiness is only a little bit away from perfection. My happiness… is really only a little bit away from perfection!”

Yes, I admit my greed. People are always like this. When they have nothing, they long for the day when they no longer have to worry about food and can eat to their heart’s content. When it’s cold and windy, they long for a thick shelter to keep them warm and let them sleep peacefully.

When I can really eat to my heart’s content without having to rush around, when I can really have a thick shelter,

What I want is to be able to continue to eat as much as I want the next day, and what I want is to have a comfortable bed to sleep in.

But, God, if you can hear me, then listen to me. I really only need one more person, and my life will be perfect. I would rather eat rough food and live the simplest life, as long as… I only need one more person. I will never be greedy again.

How I long for this ‘perfection’ in my life, even if it is just for a day.

“What are you thinking about?” The master had already helped me walk to the water pool. Seeing me staring blankly, he couldn’t help but ask, his expression slightly pained and his brows furrowed.

He was worried about me.

“I was thinking about perfection.” My face was a little pale, perhaps because of the pain, but because I was so pious, when I said the word “perfection,” I couldn’t help but squeeze a smile at the corner of my mouth, as if that perfection was right in front of me.

“Heaven is not incapable of accepting perfection, but how many lifetimes of goodness are required to enjoy a moment of perfection? Therefore, people should be content and appreciate imperfection. Accumulate a kind heart with each lifetime, and perhaps the perfection you desire will come unexpectedly.” Master helped me sit down on a large rock.

After thinking for a while, he pulled me up again, took off his jacket and spread it on the rock, which already had traces of green. Then he sat me down again and said quietly, “Don’t catch a cold.”

The jacket still had the warmth of my master’s body, but it made me feel dazed… In fact, back then in the bamboo forest cottage, the days we spent together were pretty rough. How meticulous could a grown man be? My master’s uninhibited personality was even less meticulous, but he was always like this with me.

That night, the medicinal food was cooked on the red clay stove, and that night, the steam from the fragrant hot spring in the large wooden tub he made by hand rose… Until now, I am wearing this jacket with his body temperature. Maybe, he always had meticulousness in his life, but he gave it all to me.

The master sat down next to me and quietly lit his pipe again. The figure of the pipe smoker was still a bit hunched. When did this happen? In the past, his back was always so straight… But how many things can be done in a day?

Just like me now, there are a few strands of gray hair in the bangs on my forehead. My master and I have missed too many years, so there are some questions that don’t need to be asked.

The deep pool in front of me, the murmuring of the water… the sound of the tinkling of the stones in my ears, this large stone, this deep pool, is almost an indelible picture in the picture scroll of my childhood, but the picture is not fading, and the large stone beneath me, which has become smooth from sitting for so long, has intensified the color. In the end, it has grown green moss, telling a story of loneliness in waiting?

“Master,” I said, when the smell of the tobacco leaves surrounded me again.

“Huh?” The master raised his eyebrows slightly and exhaled a puff of tobacco smoke. The white smoke formed into a ball in the black night, but it quickly dispersed… Gathering and dispersing may be life itself.

“Can the heavens accommodate perfection? I don’t want to think about it. I may not be able to see that far into the future, even with all the goodness I’ve done in my many lifetimes… I’m just wondering, can the heavens accommodate the happiness I want? Is that too extravagant?” My words echoed in the quiet night, accompanied by the sound of water and insects, but it was so lonely.

But the master did not answer my question directly, but instead sighed and said softly, “The wind is inconstant, people are impermanent, life is like a floating duckweed, gathering and dispersing in the distance… I say that the path of the floating duckweed is turning, love and hate are also hurried, the floating duckweed has no trace, the wind cuts the jade hibiscus… Chengyi, when you hear this, is there a hint of bitterness?”

I was silent.

“Although we are Taoist, the words I just said can ultimately be summed up in a Buddhist saying: ‘The wind has no fixed appearance, and the clouds have no fixed form.’ Your persistent pursuit of happiness shows that the secular world has not tempered you enough. Foolish boy, are you going to let your obsession become a delusion in your heart?” There was a hint of helplessness in the master’s words.

He just wanted to tell me that the ultimate state of life is just a natural state, where you go when you meet the road and cross the water when you meet it… If you have a fixed mind, the shore will appear.

This determination is only the determination to go forward firmly, not the obsession that I must go somewhere. When obsession becomes obsession, people become crazy… and once people become crazy, where can they see any clear direction?

“Master…” I was speechless. I naturally understood these principles, but I was not able to let go that year. This year, I may not be the one who can let go.

“Well, you have a boyish life, and your love life is bumpy and not smooth… or maybe the obsession with the myriad things in this world is also a tempering process for you. Just like Lin Furui, whether it is his good fortune or his misfortune, it is all just a thought, but this tempering process is essential. What’s more, you are my disciple, and I can only accompany you through the mountains of swords and the sea of fire, and the abyss of the world, with my eyes closed.” As the master spoke, his brows were furrowed, and he took another big sip of tobacco.

I couldn’t help but grab my master’s hand, feeling the rough calluses on it, and for a moment I couldn’t speak again.

“These days, when you were in a coma… I fell asleep next to you for a few nights, for no reason. But it was like I was half asleep, and I seemed to see that girl Ruoxue sitting in front of your bed, weeping… but I’m not sure.” The master finally said it, accompanied by a sigh.

My hand trembled, and I couldn’t help but squeeze my master’s hand. I remembered that night in India, that dream, that figure that hurried past in the monitor, Ruoxue…

Thinking of this, my lips trembled uncontrollably, but I couldn’t say anything… At this moment, all kinds of emotions were intertwined in my heart. What could I say? If I wanted to completely break off, why did I have to quietly worry about it alone? Or, had Ruoxue already stubbornly decided that this love was only her own business?

Because, that year in the vast white forest, the promise between her and me was actually a separation. Huh, others are staying together, but we are promising to part…

“Chengyi, where is Ruoxue? Ling Qing had been asking this question for a long time, but no one wanted to answer, including Ruoyue, who just kept crying.” My master had never mentioned what happened to us after we parted, but seeing my abnormal expression, he finally couldn’t help but ask.

Perhaps, the state of Ru Xue is too strange, even Master cannot explain it… He must ask me for an answer.

I looked into the deep pool in front of me, and my throat trembled uncontrollably. It took me a long time to say two words: “Dragon Tomb.”

“Dragon Tomb…! Yes, I should have thought of it earlier. How could what Master said be wrong? So you got the whisk? Master’s eyebrows rose, and his eyes revealed deep shock and confusion.

“Hmm.” My mind was in a whirl, and I didn’t know how to tell my master about this experience in detail.

“What does that have to do with Ruoxue?” This is the question that Master is wondering. Yes, the Dragon Tomb is a mark left by my master’s early travels. How could it be related to Ruoxue?

“Because… there is a kind of bug, it is very scary. It is almost immortal, and it can only be completely eliminated by taking it to the dragon tomb. Ru Xue… she is the tomb keeper.” That part of the past repeatedly played in my mind, and the last time it was again and again fixed in the dark door, the figure that walked over unswervingly, and my painful scream, was forcibly dragged away by Chengxin Ge.

After so many years, the pain is still so clear that I feel like I’m reliving the pain of that time.

“Where is the tomb?” The master was a little slow to respond. He couldn’t imagine how Ru Xue could become the tomb keeper.

“The burial place of the skeleton of the real dragon.” I had nothing to hide from my master, and I answered with pain, burying my head between my knees, as if only in this way could I relieve the intense pain in my chest.

“What did you say?” The master suddenly stood up from the rock, his brows full of worry. Then he said in a lost voice, “Once, the true dragon was there, ready to truly break through the void and return to Kunlun! After the failure, the space there was extremely unstable… How could people stay there?”

But, Master, that is where Ruoxue is! A place I can never go to again.

But before I could say anything, my heart suddenly began to ache… a sharp pain, a pain I can’t describe, like two souls in pain at the same time.

The membrane in my soul began to violently deform, as if something was about to burst out… but I couldn’t break free from the membrane for a while.

I couldn’t help but moan in pain. In the short seconds of this drastic change, the only thing that echoed in my mind was this sentence: “Is this really the way it is? Is this the way it is even in reincarnation? How many reincarnations will it take to destroy it and cut it off? Huh, how many reincarnations will it take to destroy it?”