Chapter 101: A drop of your blood

The wine was naturally left for the old man, and we all boarded the boat.

From leaving the village yesterday afternoon to getting on the old man’s boat this morning, it had been less than a day, but it felt like it had been many years. However, the road ahead was still as difficult as ever, so how long would it be?

Under the purple-red sky, a slight pressure arose in my heart, and my gaze fell on the magical old man.

He rowed the boat calmly, and Huigen sat cross-legged next to him. He didn’t look at Huigen or us, but occasionally an unknown force pushed away the breeze brought by the wreckage of the boat, blowing away the decayed clothes on the wreckage. His gaze would produce a hint of pity, but it was fleeting.

The sound of the boat breaking through the water, and occasionally the sound of the old man taking a sip of wine and sighing with satisfaction, everything was so quiet under the purple-red sky, and the gray boundary stone was getting farther and farther away in the eyes…

“Chengyi, do you think the old man rowing the boat is a monk?” Chengyuan sat next to me, gently covering his nose and mouth. Perhaps the decaying smell from the boat wrecks in the lake was too much for a young life to bear. It would be better after this stretch of water.

“I don’t know, but I think so.” People in the secular world don’t care much about the three thousand worries on their heads, and only one kind of person insists on shaving it off, and that is a monk, not for anything else, but only for the respect for the faith in his heart.

“Why do monks drink alcohol?” Cheng Yuan asked me in a low voice.

Monks drink? The monks I know are never that serious. Master Hui occasionally drinks wine with eggs, Hui Gen eats cakes, and Jueyuan loves beauty… But how should I answer this question?

“There are so many things to give up in order to show that the six roots are pure. I am a Buddhist. But to forcefully give up is probably always different from letting go on your own! If you can’t let go, it’s because you have suffering in your heart. Drinking a sip is not necessarily self-degradation, but at least you have shown sincerity before the Buddha. Maybe one day, under certain suffering, a person who is a good drinker will finally let go of alcohol. That would probably be a real abstinence, a real letting go.” My conversation with Chengyuan was very quiet, but at that moment, the old man said something to himself that fell into our ears.

Chengyuan’s face turned slightly red. After all, it is not good to talk about others like this.

But I was a little confused. What the old man said was essentially the same as what the master said: you can only let go after you have picked it up. But the vicissitudes of life in between were heavier than the master’s.

“What are you worried about?” Hui Gen suddenly spoke up.

The old man didn’t answer Hui Gen’er’s question, and he didn’t even look at Hui Gen’er. He took another sip of wine, squinted comfortably, and suddenly said to us, “Are the flowers on the hillside beautiful?”

No one answered. The flowers were red and white, and you could say they were beautiful, but they were also filled with a tragic, deathly air. Who could appreciate them if they didn’t have a special interest in life?

We didn’t answer, but the old man continued, “The legendary hell is full of red spider lilies along the way. Some people say that the red spider lily is the world’s lycoris, but that’s nonsense. The real red spider lily should be the last drop of blood that a person sheds after death, which is poured into the underworld.”

What kind of crazy nonsense is this? Why do I think it’s nonsense when I hear this?

“Here, there is an existence that wants to turn it into a real hell, and also wants to fill it with red flowers along the way, so it uses the blood of the living to irrigate it, but the result is this kind of flower that looks like nothing. It’s pale, with a drop of red. The pale is the loss of vitality, and the red is the blood that finally spreads out. Do you smell the temperature of that flower? It’s like the scent of human life. It’s so sweet, the sweetness of desire fills the whole life, but it also has a pungent smell of blood. That’s the smell of blood when it decays, and it’s also the smell that fills your throat when you feel pain.” The old man said this quietly, but I suddenly felt a chill down my spine.

What is the connection between this fragrance and life? Or, this is the question we all have, but the old man quickly answered us: “Life is always accompanied by various desires. The simplest things, such as food, clothing, housing and transportation, bring you enjoyment, satisfaction and sweet tranquility. But life is also accompanied by various pains, such as birth, aging, sickness and death. Humans have always done this, so they have created such flowers.”

“But isn’t that a bit simplistic and empty? Isn’t it the case that desire and suffering are not accompanied by spiritual fulfillment and serenity? That’s because many people have forgotten their souls. That’s why the flowers are so pale and powerless that they can’t bloom more beautifully. What I see here is not the myriad of things in the world, but the myriad of things in the underworld. I want to save souls and make the flowers of life bloom more beautifully, but I find that my dreams are too big and my strength too small. Little monk, if one day all the people in the world have gone, do you think the world will be filled with these red and white flowers, or will there be other colors?

The old man’s words were crazy enough, and there was also a sense of despair in them, but Hui Gen didn’t want to stand up and simply said, “Things that flow, you see them to death, but it’s meaningless.”

“Hmm?” The old man narrowed his eyes and waited for Hui Gen’er’s explanation.

“Just like people, whether they are moving forward or backward, they are always moving. Perhaps today, the only colors that are eroding life are desire and pain, but tomorrow it may not necessarily be the same. Perhaps in the very distant future, people will pay more attention to the mind and soul. These pale flowers are also only temporary things. Why do you have to be so obsessed with suffering? A person of the Buddhist faith, how can there be such obsession? No matter how great the strength, just do it. To save people, it is never a one-time effort.” Hui Gen’er calmly replied.

Hearing these words from Hui Gen, the old man’s eyes lit up and he suddenly asked, “What is your Dharma name?”

“Hui Gen.” Hui Gen’er replied simply.

“Hahaha… Sure enough, what a presumptuous dharma name. But it’s not a false name! Good, good… Actually, I’m not suffering from this, but I just want to see if you, human, can stay in one place.” After the old man finished speaking, he suddenly happily took a few sips of wine.

Then he waved his hand and said, “Return safely. I will leave you a drop of blood.”

Hui Gen looked at the old man without saying a word, his eyes full of questions, but in the end, under the indifference of the old man, he wanted to say something but stopped, and in the end he sat quietly beside the old man, silent.

Under the purple sky, the figure of Huigen sitting cross-legged and the background of the old man rowing the boat were like a deep silhouette. Perhaps this was Huigen’s opportunity?

While I was thinking, the old man suddenly said, “We’re almost there.”

I looked up and saw that the fog that we had been unable to see through on the hillside was suddenly right in front of me. In the distance, the boundary marker had shrunk to a tiny line about the size of my index finger. I looked back at the marker one last time, and the boat quickly entered the fog.

Once I entered the fog, I was overwhelmed by a sense of unreality. Everything in front of me seemed to be a bit real and a bit illusory. In fact, the scenery in the fog did not change much. It was still a purple-red sky, and the same purple-red, motionless lake. There was just a flat rock about the size of a house in the lake. At the edge of the rock, there was a protruding rock that extended all the way, like a road.

There is nothing here. Is this the new city? In this state of confusion, I couldn’t help but think so, but I also felt that this confusion was not right. I looked at everyone on the boat, and except for the old man, everyone had a hint of confusion in their eyes, half-open, as if they were about to take a long nap.

The slight rocking made us a little more awake, but even more confused.

The old man said calmly, “We’ve arrived. Why aren’t you getting off the boat?”

Have we arrived? Where are we? I suddenly realized that the ship had stopped right next to the reef. In the fog, I could no longer see the hillside, the fields of death flowers, or the boundary stone that warmed my heart.