Chapter 162 — The Illusory Moon
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 4 of 5
In that instant his mind went utterly blank; everything was forgotten, and only his gaze remained fixed forward, upon what lay behind that flash of white light.
As though it were a low, plaintive sound, someone was weeping softly—but then a familiar voice laughed aloud, and a small, young voice let out a wail and at last began to cry.
Somehow, he held his breath!
An inexplicable tension, yet his heart beat so fast; there seemed to be wind at his ear, yet he could not feel his own existence—as though he were nothing but a pair of eyes, searching, peering, until at last he saw...
That tiny village, and behind the village a broken-down thatched temple.
"Is it born?" a man's voice asked anxiously.
"It's born, mother and child both safe, it's a boy!" The midwife's voice carried a smile as she said loudly, "Congratulations!"
"Heh heh, heh heh..." The honest man laughed with simple, guileless joy, his plain feeling tinged with comfort and a measure of relief. The next moment, he saw the crying boy, the child nestled in his parents' arms.
"What shall we name him, father?" The mother was somewhat weak, but a smile of happiness still lingered on her face.
The father thought for a moment and said, "Neither of us knows a single character. If you ask me, the most learned man in the village is Mr. Lin, who teaches at the east end. Whenever anyone in the village has a child, doesn't he always choose the name? Why don't we go and ask him to pick one?"
The mother nodded, and the father went out. Before long he came back in from outside, a smile on his face, holding a slip of paper. "Mr. Lin said that for families like ours, the most important thing is to keep safe and know one's place, to live out a good honest life—so he chose three characters and wrote them here."
The mother said happily, "Oh, a learned man is different after all. What name did he give our son?"
The father brought the slip of paper close to the mother with his rough hand, and wrapped his arm around both mother and the child sleeping peacefully, and lowered his voice, as though holding those three characters in boundless respect and tenderness, and said softly:
"Zhang, Xiao, Fan..."
"Boom!"
A thunderclap rang out in the firmament, and rain began to fall from the sky. His whole body shook suddenly, and he gasped sharply!
Rain outside the house, the sky ink-dark, and distant Canglan Mountain stark and savage; in that vast, bitter wind and driving rain, father and mother held each other, calm smiles on both their faces, gazing at the child in their arms...
He wanted to cry out but could make no sound; a thousand words swirled and spun in his mind, yet in the end they came to only two:
"Father—Mother!"
The rain filled the air, and all of it seemed to fall upon his face, ice-cold to the bone.
********
The illusory moon in the sky glimmered with a faint, ghostly light.
"Bang!"
A stone came flying from the sky, seeming to pass straight through his body and land behind him. The sky had cleared at some unknown moment, and a pack of children were running through the village, laughing and playing at the top of their voices.
The ordinary-looking boy was running desperately in front, and a boy somewhat older than he, with a gang of children behind him, gave chase, shouting loudly, "Zhang Qingyue, if you've got any guts, stand still!"
The boy in front spat. "You think I'm an idiot?" he called back as he ran—and ran all the faster.
On and on they chased, until the children gradually drew near that shabby thatched temple at the east end of the village. From the outside, the little temple was worn and broken, who knew how many years of wind and rain it had weathered.
Zhang Qingyue was the first to dash inside, and the pack of children behind him ran in after, and from that ruined little temple the sound of children's voices seemed still to come drifting out.