Pei Yaoguang’s eyes rippled with a flash of watery light, disappearing in an instant: “Dare to deceive this Directorate, and I’ll turn you into a human ronge!”
“Meritorious virtue, those who have taken monastic vows do not utter falsehoods.”
In the next moment, Puding’s pupils suddenly constricted as his fair arm lifted, sending splashes of water flying and dazzling the eye.
Though he had practiced martial arts since childhood, his skill level was still inferior to Pei Yaoguang’s.
Before Pei Yaoguang even drew his blade, he used only two fingers to lock onto Puding’s throat bone. The dark purple, gold-trimmed overlapping collar flickered slightly, reflecting in Puding’s pupils and filling them with numerous bright glints.
“Move again, and I’ll take your little life right now!” His voice was lowered to an extreme, yet the tone carried exceptional weight.
Before Puding could mount any resistance, Pei Yaoguang’s rough fingertips probed downward.
Soft yet prickly.
After toying with him for a while, there was still not the slightest reaction.
Puding was filled with both shame and anger, his thin lips tightly pressed together. He clenched his fists so hard that the veins on his temples bulged. He wanted to cry, yet tears refused to fall.
He had just turned eighteen, only to be toyed with and humiliated like this. A man’s self-respect vanished in an instant.
Moreover, he was a monk and the abbot’s senior disciple; this act truly ran counter to the pure monastic precepts.
Puding was undergoing intense inner torment, even giving rise to the impulse to die.
On second thought, however, he told himself: No, I cannot die!
A human life is hard to obtain, and the Buddhist Dharma is hard to hear; committing suicide is equivalent to shedding the blood of a Buddha.
That would lead straight to the Avici Hell!
He hastily muttered Buddhist chants continuously in his heart: Namo Amitabha! Namo Amitabha!
…
Pei Yaoguang let out a chuckle (“pfft“), a hint of exhilaration rising within his heart. The outer corners of his brows angled sharply upward into his temples, and his eyes were suffused with a moist, turbid mist under the moonlight.
He wore the very picture of an evil, charming, and unbridled tyrant.
With a splash, he abruptly withdrew his hand, smoothed down his rolled-up cuffs, and thought to himself: He truly wasn’t lying.
Only then did he leave the bathhouse.
When Abbot Huiru saw him walking out alone from within, he let out a long breath and silently chanted in his heart: Buddha protect us! Buddha protect us!
At that moment, a tall and slender figure appeared before the crowd.
The monks began to murmur among themselves in low voices.
“Puding was actually inside!”
“What on earth happened in there?”
“The two of them were inside for so long.”
A Jinyiwei raised his voice: “Quiet!”
In an instant, all around fell pin-drop silent.
“Amitabha.” Huiru pressed his palms together.
Pei Yaoguang raised his sword-finger: “May I ask which Master’s quarters this is?”
“Amitabha, it is this poor monk’s.”
“Might this Directorate conveniently step inside to have a look?” Pei Yaoguang said with a half-smile.
“Naturally you may.” Only, whether he said that phrase or not carried little meaning.
Hesitating slightly, Puding walked closer. With a creaking sound (“creak”), he pushed the door open and entered.
A framed thangka painting of the Three Saints of the Pure Land was mounted on the wall, its aged scroll slightly yellowed. Hanging on another wall was a calligraphy scroll bearing the four large characters: “Amitabha”.
A finely carved wooden statue of Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva stood on a black sandalwood table, alongside various scriptures and utensils commonly used by monks.
Incense curled upward from a green-glazed lotus Boshan burner, its scent tranquilizing the mind and soothing the fatigue of the day.
Puding swept his gaze around the room and steadied his nerves: “Your Honor, is something amiss?”
“It is this Directorate that worried needlessly. I have disturbed Master’s peace farewell.”
Puding looked stunned. He just gave up like that? Puding had thought he would subject him to further humiliation.
He walked over to the Arhat couch and carefully lay down, his eyelids half-closed, when suddenly a sharp blade was pressed against his throat. The edge resembled a silver snake, its chilling aura biting.
Pei Yaoguang was fiercely shrewd!
What he said just moments ago had merely been lip service.
A person like him loved to catch people off guard.
Puding’s long eyebrows curved like crescent moons, the candlelight casting his profile against the wall and outlining a gentle, ascetic, and refined contour.
“Listen to me well: if he doesn’t show himself, I’ll slaughter this monk in one stroke!” A murderous aura surfaced in the depths of Pei Yaoguang’s eyes.
Puding’s breath caught, and hardening his heart, he thought: Dying is just fine!
As the sword blade pierced inward, Puding let out a muffled grunt. Gushing blood welled up, resembling blooming red spider lilies in the night, extending down to his fair, flawless slender neck.
When he had been subjected to such humiliation by him in the bathhouse earlier, he had wanted to die; it was just that, being a person under monastic vows, he knew that the body, skin, and hair are received from one’s parents, and suicide is a crime equal to killing a Buddha.
Now, however, things worked out well without needing to lift a hand himself, he would simply fulfill his own release.
In the next instant, however, Pei Yaoguang withdrew his Xiuchun saber back into its scabbard and his expression darkened: “Count yourself lucky!”
“Has Your Honor investigated thoroughly now? Our temple categorically harbors no criminals wanted by the court.”
With the cooked duck flying away, Pei Yaoguang, who had never failed a strategy and had returned empty-handed from tonight’s assignment, was determined to make the abbot send some silver taels to reward his brothers.
Abbot Huiru instructed his disciples to present the travel funds in full.
Pei Yaoguang glanced toward Puding’s quarters: “Naturally this Directorate knows that the Western Mountain Zen Temple has no connection whatsoever with the court fugitive!” He said calmly, “Abbot, set your mind at ease; we are fully aware of the truth.”
The zen temple finally regained its tranquility. Huiru returned to his quarters supported by a monk, the other monks dispersed, and everything restored its peace.
It was as if nothing had happened at all.
Watching the universally reviled Jinyiwei depart, Puding’s gripped heart failed to relax.
Back inside his quarters, Puding sat quietly upon the golden rush mat. The charcoal in the brazier nearby was nearly burnt out, coated with a layer of grayish-white ash.
The white cotton quilt on the couch suddenly bulged, growing gradually higher and longer.
A head poked out from beneath the quilt. The person’s dark hair was bound high, and having stripped off her night-walking clothes, a white brocade robe was revealed. The clear moonlight fell upon her brows and eyes like a white gauze veil obscuring her gaze, making her resemble a miraculous Guan Yin Mahasattva.
This woman actually knew the long-lost martial arts technique of bone-shrinking!
She had been hiding under the quilt the entire time, without even him noticing.
The woman in white half-concealed her face with a black scarf, revealing only the bridge of her nose upward.
She slowly approached, and only then did Puding clearly see her slender head and moth-like eyebrows, which looked as though they had been drawn in ink or carved with a knife. Her entire body radiated an exquisite, alluring, and enchanting charm.
Charming without being vulgar.
“Amitabha, female Bodhisattva, it is safe now.”
The woman in white sat down flat on her rump upon the sandalwood chair, her legs straddled apart and her body leaning backward.
“Hiss” Her brow twitched into a knot, her expression adding a hint of seductiveness that made it hard for anyone not to feel a surge of pity.
“Female Bodhisattva, have you been injured?”
“Stop opening your mouth with ‘female Bodhisattva’ and closing it with ‘female Bodhisattva’. I am a full-grown man of eight chi.” His tone carried a trace of irritation.
Puding’s phoenix eyes trembled slightly; he turned out to be a man!
Even though he wore a mask over his face, those brows and eyes were exceptionally soft and seductive.
Endowed with natural bone-deep allure.
The man slowly got to his feet and said in a deep voice: “Thank you for saving my life. Farewell!”
Puding hastily reached out to stop him, his fingertips brushing past the man’s snow-white sleeve cuff like milk foam flowing through gaps in fingers silky and ice-cold.
“Benefactor, do you still have a place to seek shelter?”
“The Commandery Guard is highly likely to have people stationed nearby guarding the exits.”
The man pondered for a moment. If that were true, if he left like this, wouldn’t he implicate the entire zen temple and saddle them with the charge of harboring a criminal?
Sooner or later, they would land in a prison cell.
The man turned his head back, sizing him up with a steady gaze: “For a monk, you know quite a lot about court affairs.”
He paused: “Just now, why didn’t you think of turning me in?” At that time, when he heard Puding emit a sound of pain from his throat, he had originally intended to watch developments quietly and act according to circumstances, but fortunately that eunuch withdrew his hand in time.
“Meritorious virtue, this poor monk bet that he wouldn’t truly take this little life of mine.” Puding cupped one hand in salute.
The man pondered the situation. Emperor Yuming held Buddhism in such high reverence how could that eunuch dare to take a monk’s life so lightly!
Puding had won his gamble.
“Benefactor should still tend to your wound promptly, lest it injure your lungs and internal organs.”
With a soft thump (“wudong“), the man set down his sword. The cyan jade on the sword tassel was engraved with the character “Heart” (Xin), with a long dark-green tassel trailing from the bottom.
He tore open his lapel with a yank, exposing his entire shoulder. Blood had soaked a large area of his undergarment.
Puding’s pupils shrank; he hadn’t expected the wound on the man’s back to be this deep.
At the scapula was a horrific, gruesome gash where white bone was faintly visible.
Judging by his frame, he also looked very lean, yet taut and powerful—typical of someone well-practiced in martial arts.
Puding retrieved a small white porcelain jar from the medicine cabinet: “This is gold-Chuang ointment. It will sting a bit when applied; you must endure it.”
“Pfft”
The bottle stopper was removed, and Puding slowly sprinkled the white medicinal powder into the wound.
Veins bulged tautly across the man’s arm, his lip line pulled straight, and his eyes half-closed as his face distorted as though countless worms and ants were gnawing at his bones.
Sweat trickled down continuously, sliding past his cold, fair, and exquisitely prominent adam’s apple, which curved upward like jade.
Seeing him suffer, Puding waved his hand through the air to fan him, which finally brought him a measure of relief.
As the man finished straightening his garments, a sudden strange noise echoed from outside the door, and he instinctively gripped his sword hilt.
“Meow ,meow” It turned out to be only a cat.
The two men let out a long breath of relief.
Puding said in a low voice: “Then Benefactor, sleep on this Arhat couch.”
As the words fell, Puding sat down on the sandalwood chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and narrowed his eyes.
The man slowly turned and lay down on his side, one hand drooping beside his ear.
Rich, heavy sandalwood fragrance filled his nasal cavity; the entire Arhat couch was saturated with the scent of sandalwood, even stronger than the fragrance on Puding’s own person.
“The chair is freezing cold. Why doesn’t Master sleep here as well?”
Puding opened his eyes halfway: “It’s no matter. Benefactor, rest well and recover.”
A look of displeasure crossed the man’s face: “How truly long-winded you are. What are you blushing about like a maiden, when you’re a grown man!”
“Besides, you and I are both men.”
Puding thought to himself: Then… complying is better than showing courtesy.
Thus, with rustling sounds, he climbed up onto the Arhat couch.
The two slept head-to-toe in opposite directions, but the couch was narrow, bringing their bodies very close together.
The sandalwood fragrance that permeated the man’s surroundings shifted from chilliness to a warm, cozy scent.
Only, the man still half-concealed his features.
“Monk, what is your dharma name?”
“Puding.”
With those words spoken, silence settled over the room once more.
Puding did not ask his name; he was tactful enough to know his background was special.
“Tomorrow once circumstances permit, this poor monk will escort you safely out of this monastery.”
The man said: “There is no need to trouble Master; this person has his own plans in mind.”
“Then Benefactor may handle it as you see fit.”
After a long while, the sound of heavy breathing arose.
The man slept lighter than Puding, yet he too slept soundly until dawn.
At the first watch of mao, the morning bell rang to summon the assembly, and the monks rose to wash up. When Puding woke, the man had already vanished without a trace.
It was currently the hour for morning lessons; the chanting of Buddhist mantras inside the Great Buddha Hall was endless, filled with a faint aroma of sandalwood.
The monks successively chanted the Surangama Mantra, the Great Compassion Mantra, the Ten Small Mantras, and the Heart Sutra in unison.
Day after day, it was always thus.
When the morning lessons concluded, Puding knelt alone upon the lotus rush mat, pressing his palms together in sincere repentance.
Disciple Puding broke a monastic commandment last night and committed a violation of the precept against lust. Although it was not caused by personal intent, disciple cannot escape the blame, I implore the Buddha not to blame me!
He offered devout repentance before the golden statue of Sakyamuni Buddha, bowing in prostration and chanting sacred names.
He put on quite the picture of a cornered man who had committed a monumental blunder.
Following the entire routine, he offered silent prayers to the Buddha once more, praying for the white-clad man to be safe and smooth-sailing, free from disaster and misfortune, and petitioning protection for the monastery so its incense would never fail and its prosperity would endure long.
Puding did not know that Pei Yaoguang had already developed sufficient interest in his hidden ailment; he wanted to know whether Puding’s condition was congenital or acquired.
The distinction between the two was immense.
Pei Yaoguang dispatched his confidant, Li Qing, to investigate his background and experiences.
Upon hearing that he was actually the Heir Apparent of the Duke of An’guo, he promptly ordered men to continue digging deeper.
Soon, wind of it reached them.
He spent eighty wen in coin to inquire about it from a menial laborer of the Duke of An’guo’s estate:
“Puding’s original name is An Huaisheng, and his genitals were smashed and injured by a boulder.”
“The physician asserted that he would never be able to raise his head as a man again in this lifetime.”
“Taking monastic vows was his best destination, and at the same time, because he felt deep compassion for the excessive slaughter in the world, he devoted his heart wholly to the Buddha.”
The four words “devoted his heart wholly to the Buddha” grated on the ears with unusual harshness. Pei Yaoguang let out a cold snort: “Do you think that bald donkey truly has the Buddha in his heart?” He glanced at Li Qing.
Li Qing had followed him for a long time and understood his temperament; how dared he pick up this thread of conversation? He could only play dumb and pretend not to understand.
Even though that monk couldn’t function, he had clearly felt that touch was extraordinarily scorching!
It was like thrusting a hand into a smoking iron wok filled with sand.
Interesting. The corners of Pei Yaoguang’s lips curled upward slightly: “Keep an eye on that monk’s movements and travel activities.”
Late at night, a sudden gust of wind whipped up, shaking an ancient camphor tree three times.
A woman dressed in a lotus-pink satin gown, her face half-hidden by a pink gauze veil, crouched upon a tree trunk clutching a pink jade flute.
She gazed intently at the man crouched in another cluster of bushes, and softly murmured: “The young master has been very worried about you recently, Fenxin.”
“Fenxin” was his code name.
Fenxin spoke in a low voice: “Don’t put deep trust in the young master’s words; I have already ceased trusting anyone around me.”
“Including me?”
“Mn, anyone!”
A flash of melancholy crossed Chiyu’s expression, which instantly reverted to its normal composure.
“Then… when are you going back?”
Fenxin shook his head and smiled with icy detachment: “I don’t know.”
“But running around outside like this ultimately won’t work out.” Her chin rested against the back of her tender pink hand as she stared at him without blinking.
Assassins like them could quietly forfeit their lives at any moment.
“Never mind me; people like us must not harbor a shred of emotion toward others.”
One had to be as cold as a snake fast, accurate, and ruthless.