Chapter 175 — The Meditation Chamber
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 5
Ming Li frowned and turned to look about. The place resembled nothing so much as a meditation room in a temple; the chamber was quite spacious, its four corners set with great red-lacquered pillars, the floor paved with grey brick, the door made of paulownia wood, with a window to either side, likewise red-lacquered, all of it most solemn. On one wall hung a painting of Guanyin holding her vase of pure water and sweet dew; below it stood an incense table with four dishes of offerings—pears, apples, tangerines, and sweet oranges; before the offerings stood a bronze censer holding three slender sticks of sandalwood, from which wisps of pale smoke rose and drifted into the air.
Against the wall on the other side lay Ming Li himself. Here stood a wooden bed, plain and sturdy, without the least ornament—monks, he supposed, cared nothing for such things; the room was plain likewise, for apart from what has been described there was only a round table set in the middle, with four round stools about it. Table and stools alike were black, and on the table stood a teapot and cups of unadorned porcelain.
Just then the footsteps reached the door, and with a creak the door of the meditation room was pushed open from outside and someone stepped in. Ming Li looked at him and started slightly: it was a young monk he had never seen, a stranger, carrying a wooden tray on which sat a fresh water jug. The monk did not glance toward Ming Li but went straight to the table in the room and exchanged the teapot there for the one on his tray.
"You... who are you?" Ming Li asked, but he had barely got out a single word when his throat seized with pain—not the blazing fire of his unconscious hours, but miserable enough—and his voice died away to a rasp.
Even so, it gave the young monk a fright; he spun around at once, and in his haste nearly upset the tray in his hands.
"Ah, you're awake?" The young monk seemed quite surprised, yet delight showed in his eyes. He smiled: "Wait here, I'll go call my senior brothers to come see you at once."
With that he made to run out the door, and Ming Li, at his back, asked hoarsely: "Little master, if I may ask—where is this place?"
The young monk turned his head and smiled, his face innocent and fair, and said: "Here? Why, this is Fan Yin Temple, of course!"
Fan Yin Temple!
Ming Li was struck dumb, as though a thunderbolt had hit him. The young monk trotted off, no doubt to fetch the others, leaving Ming Li alone to lie back woodenly on the bed, his heart in utter turmoil.
Fan Yin Temple...
Astonishment and doubt churned in his heart, and yet, somehow, another bitterness rose from deep within him as well.
Fan Yin Temple... Fan Yin Temple... Pu Zhao...
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Voices came faintly from afar, and several footsteps approached the meditation room; someone seemed to be questioning the young monk in a low voice, and the young monk, plainly young and merry, answered with laugh upon laugh.
Somehow, listening to that question and answer, Ming Li fell into a reverie; he did not think of his present plight, nor of old grudges—at this moment he suddenly, for no reason, found himself envying this ordinary young monk. Innocent and merry as he was, perhaps he did not yet know that the world holds sorrow and hatred too?
Youth and ignorance—and was that, after all, the happiest time of all our years?
The footsteps halted abruptly just outside the door, and someone said to the young monk: "You need not go in. Why not run to the rear courtyard and inform the abbot—tell him that benefactor Zhang Qingyue has awakened."
The young monk laughed: "Very well. But senior brother Fa Cheng, you promised to teach me the Great Brahma Prajna—you can't go back on that."
The one outside laughed: "Little rascal, so greedy—off with you. I gave you my word, and I won't go back on it."