Qingxuan’s temple throbbed. Why did it have to be that scribbled talisman—it was the ugliest of all the ruined ones.
Xiao Zhi took the talisman and walked straight outside the temple gate. He leaned lazily under a cypress tree, dappled sunlight falling on the talisman.
On the talisman was a familiar pig’s head, wearing a crooked crown.
Warmth rose in Xiao Zhi’s heart. He remembered how, after finishing the talisman, she had earnestly blown it dry. Such devotion—so she had been praying for his safety all along.
As for the pig? Ancient characters were too complex. It was understandable she didn’t know how to write them.
What was the sovereign of Great Yan doing, quibbling with an illiterate from a thousand years later?
The Emperor looked up and signaled the young Daoist to come speak.
Qingxuan pressed down his racing heart: “Your Majesty.”
“When she drew this talisman, what did she say?”
He couldn’t see her anymore. Hearing a few words she had spoken could at least offer some comfort.
But Qingxuan dropped to his knees by the cypress tree, chanting, “Your Majesty, spare this humble Daoist—I dare not say.”
Temple Master Qingyuan scolded him: “The imperial procession is here—do not speak nonsense!”
“All of you withdraw.” The Emperor ordered everyone back a hundred meters. He held the talisman up to the halo of sunlight, as if admiring a master’s painting. “What did she say? I will not punish you.”
Qingxuan swallowed. A sense of impending doom and exhaustion washed over him. The girl’s smug, head-waggling look flashed before his eyes again.
His lips parted slightly. In a daze, the words slipped out: “She said, she said…”
Before him was the Son of Heaven. He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
Xiao Zhi was gentle: “No matter. Think of me as your friend. Friends chatting—what can’t be said?”
A little person in Qingxuan’s head screamed: Help! The Emperor is so sincere—he didn’t call himself “I”! The Emperor even said we’re friends!
He summoned his courage and said: “Stinky emperor pig-head—that’s what Miss Yun said.”
Xiao Zhi laughed in anger. As expected, not good words. Then again, what good words could come from her mouth?
Cursing him as a stinky pig on a peace talisman.
Was this a wish? Or an insult?
Where was he supposed to put his face?
Xiao Zhi’s expression shifted slightly. He pretended to be calm and instructed the young Daoist: “This matter—heaven knows, earth knows. It must not be spread.”
“As—as you command…”
Seeing the young Daoist’s panicked state, Xiao Zhi recalled something. The Celestial Master in the palace had been driven away by him.
“You and I have quite a fate. I give you five years. After five years, if you can achieve great cultivation, my palace just happens to lack a Celestial Master…”
“Quickly thank His Majesty.” Temple Master Qingyuan reminded his disciple.
Qingxuan knelt, dazed. How had Miss Yun’s curse at the Emperor become the great turning point of his life?
“Qingxuan kowtows in thanks for the imperial grace!”
.
“Madam, enjoy your stay.”
The bellboy placed the suitcase in the room and politely withdrew.
Yun Yi instinctively patted her pocket, pulled out a tip, and handed it over.
The bellboy squinted his gray-blue eyes, like two clear streams.
This scene seemed to have appeared in a dream too.
The wooden door clicked into its slot. The room’s air conditioning and lights instantly came on.
This was an executive suite in a star-rated hotel. Yun Yi had no time to tour the room before the telephone on the desk rang.
She stepped forward quickly. The lanyard around her neck tilted. She grabbed the GoPro with one hand and picked up the phone with the other.
“Hello?”
“—Mom! Little sister picked up!”
On the phone, Yun Xi’s excited voice faded in and out.
“Brother?”
“Your phone was off, so I had to call the hotel front desk.”
Yun Yi’s thoughts were pulled back by her brother’s complaints.
It had been exactly one hundred days since she returned to the modern era.
In these hundred days, she had plunged headfirst into work, studying until the sky and earth went dark. Her study videos’ view counts hit new highs.
Her personal brand operation was on track.
The shop under her account had produced a few small hit products. Manager Wu from the factory assigned a specialist to liaise with her.
After making a small profit, Yun Yi partitioned off a sunroom in the backyard as a packing room. She hired a part-time packer who came every morning to work at her home.
Everything was improving.
Yet the days were muddled. So what if she made money?
A thin film often covered her mind, blocking her ability to feel happiness.
The tulips in the backyard were in full bloom.
The bulbs were the extremely expensive Night Queen variety.
A near-black velvet sheen, reflecting purple tones in the sunlight. The breeze stirred waves of purple-black blossoms.
Like the night wind lifting someone’s robe. A scene surfaced in her memory: the hem of a black dragon robe fluttering endlessly…
Yun Yi snapped back to her senses.
Her best friend said this was called brain fog. There were many solutions—travel to clear your mind, pamper yourself.
Her visa hadn’t expired yet. Yun Yi grabbed her suitcase and left without a second thought.
“Why didn’t you come find us?” Yun Xi only then learned his sister hadn’t come to America, but had flown directly to neighboring Canada.
“I want to see dinosaurs.” Yun Yi pulled out a brochure. The world’s largest paleontology museum leaped into view.
Cheng Su’s voice came through the phone again: “Baby, Mommy’s coming to find you—Xiao Xi, check the flights.”
Yun Xi was frantic: “Mom, don’t book flights. We’ll just drive there.”
“I’ll come find you after I’ve had my fun.” Yun Yi politely declined her mother and brother’s offers.
.
While touring Dinosaur Valley, Yun Yi encountered a group of oddly dressed foreigners—their hair done up in meticulous topknots secured with wooden pins. And their clothing was even stranger.
Gray, dusty Daoist robes—identical to the Daoist robes she had worn in Yan.
Her heart skipped a beat. Had Daoism successfully infiltrated abroad?
A vast expanse of red earth hills ahead caught her attention. The distant canyon landscape—the moment she stepped onto it…
An ancient, majestic feeling swept over her.
Her mood expanded. The brain fog that had been clinging to her dissipated.
The man who always floated before her eyes—his outline gradually faded.
The sky was high, the sea vast. Life was long. Let go of empty fantasies and set out anew.
Inside the museum, Yun Yi’s camera framed a dinosaur fossil.
It was a half-excavated fossil. Buried in the soil were segments of spine, slender leg bones, and ribs. A colossal creature from hundreds of millions of years ago, across the long river of time, meeting her gaze from within its own grave.
Her nose inexplicably tingled. Yun Yi’s heart ached as she imagined some emperor being buried in his old age.
Three months of national mourning? After his son ascended the throne, how many days would he guard the tomb?
“Wow…” Muttering English sounded by her ear. Before Yun Yi could finish grieving, her ears had already defected, perking up uncontrollably.
“Is this a T-Rex? Is the little one next to it its child? Oh God, I can’t bear to see this.”
Yun Yi sniffled and turned toward the compassionate young man.
It was them—the group of foreign Daoists she’d met earlier at Horseshoe Canyon.
“What’s with that look? That’s obviously a hadrosaur.” His companion retorted.
“Ah, it’s actually a hadrosaur?” Several Daoist heads clustered together, chattering.
“Maybe the hadrosaur was the T-Rex’s wife.”
“The end of the world came, and the couple died together… My Jesus, how pitiful…”
While the foreign Daoists mourned the dinosaur couple, Yun Yi turned her head back to the massive pile of bones. Her expression gradually turned ugly.
An emperor’s tomb also had concubines buried with him, didn’t it?
The foreign Daoists, having finished their ordination ceremony, saw an Asian girl muttering at the dinosaur fossils.
“We saw her at the canyon earlier.”
“Like Master Xiao, she’s Chinese? There are a few characters in the Taishang Laojun’s Scripture of Constant Clarity and Stillness from Master’s lecture that I don’t know how to pronounce. Could we ask her to help?”
The foreign Daoists’ gazes gradually grew eager.
Until the girl’s muttering turned into cursing, her expression turning ferocious.
“Forget it. She doesn’t seem to like dinosaurs. People who don’t like dinosaurs are not our kind.”
“The dinosaur couple is pitiful enough. Hundreds of millions of years later, their corpses are still being cursed by a human girl.”
The foreign Daoists retreated regretfully.
Back at the hotel, Yun Yi showered, put on a face mask, and buried herself in researching the next travel destination.
In the information age, one search for “Canada travel” and information flooded in.
Yun Yi crossed out Lake Louise, the closest to her, and clicked on a polar bear viewing tour—riding a tundra buggy to observe polar bears migrating up close.
Polar bears.
She had told someone she would take him to the zoo to see pandas and polar bears…
.
Yun Yi drifted through her days and embarked on an aurora tour.
As a streak of green appeared on the horizon, the tour bus grew lively.
“Look, the aurora!”
After half an hour of driving, the bus chased the aurora. The green gradually expanded, illuminating the entire night sky.
A giant green curtain hung down from the heavens.
The bus stopped before a pine forest.
The tourists got off, raising their cameras and lenses to photograph the sky.
Thick snow covered past her calves. Crunch crunch. Yun Yi heard the dry, salt-like snow grinding against her boots. A few familiar voices fell into her ears.
At first English, then the voices became Chinese, without proper tones.
“The Old Lord said: The Great Dao has no form…”
Yun Yi turned around and met the eyes of the chanters.
It was actually those foreign Daoists from the dinosaur museum a few days ago.
But the cold was unbearable. They weren’t wearing Daoist robes—they had wrapped themselves in thick down jackets, so she hadn’t recognized them on the bus.
She shifted her gaze and lightly swept past the thin old man behind the foreign Daoists.
An Asian face, not tall, wrapped in a long black down jacket—an extremely ordinary tourist look. Yet Yun Yi inexplicably felt he had an air of immortal grace.
She opened her phone, exhaled white breath, and amid the tour group’s exclamations of “So beautiful!” and “How gorgeous!”, snapped photos.
Her eyes numbly swept over the scenery. The lens replaced her eyes to appreciate the ultimate view.
“Fellow overseas students, the photos from the ordination ceremony haven’t been developed yet. Let’s take a group photo together?”
Yun Yi heard the immortal-like old man speak to the foreign Daoists in Chinese.
A large-sized foreign Daoist responded in comical Chinese: “Master, as you command~”
Yun Yi’s heart skipped.
That master smiled and corrected his disciple: “Your master is not an emperor. You should say, ‘This disciple respectfully obeys Master’s command.’”
Only then did she realize—all the tourists on this bus were Daoists. She was the only wild tourist.
No wonder they’d given her a discount when forming the group. She’d been stuffed into someone else’s tour group.
“Miss, shall we take a photo together?” The old Daoist smiled kindly at her.
Yun Yi froze. She was about to take the DSLR from his hands when the camera passed over her and was handed to the tour guide.
The old Daoist: “Miss, you are a person of fate. Today is the fifteenth. Though there is no moon in the sky, there is aurora everywhere. Why not take a photo with my disciples as a keepsake?”
Yun Yi was invited among the Daoists. Her face was lit by the green light from the sky, her vision filled with the shifting, swaying green skirts of the aurora.
“One, two, three, cheese—” The tour guide pressed the shutter.
Yun Yi mechanically made a peace sign.
A group photo blending East and West. Following the principle of ladies first, the petite girl was placed in the center.
Behind her head grew two ears—the peace sign from the foreign Daoist she’d met at the dinosaur museum.
It was too cold. Yun Yi couldn’t stand it and ran back to the bus. Through the window, she watched the Daoists.
The aurora shifted ethereally above their heads. In the distance were rows of white pines. They raised their arms high, as if conducting some mysterious ritual.
Faintly, a subtle bell sound drifted over.
It was the sound of Three Pure Ones bells.
The next afternoon, Yun Yi received the photo.
The foreign Daoist who had “given” her rabbit ears stood politely at the door and handed her the printed group photo: “Master instructed me to give this to you.”
His Chinese had improved a lot, as if he had practiced countless times.
“Thank you. Where is your master?”
“Ah, Master last night… took a flight back to China.”
“A red-eye flight.” Yun Yi sweated for the temple master.
“Master needs to chase the time difference. He said…”
Chinese wasn’t enough. English came to the rescue.
From his words and body language, Yun Yi learned that after returning to China, the temple master would arrive just in time for the fifteenth day of the lunar month, the full moon. Entrusted by someone, he had to set up a ritual altar and perform rites.
“Your master is too dedicated…” Crossing more than a dozen time zones, spanning two countries, to chase that full moon.
The foreign Daoist wanted to say something, but his Chinese foundation was too poor to express his admiration for his master.
From his words, Yun Yi picked out another name: Fuyun Temple.
She stared at the old Daoist in the photo. Suddenly she recalled what the Xiao Family Village chief had said—that Emperor Ridge had a Daoist temple, and its master had gone abroad to preside over overseas ordination ceremonies.
Could this temple master be that Daoist?
“You mean, your master returned to Fuyun Temple?”
“Oh God, how do you know Fuyun Temple? My Jesus, my God, is Fuyun Temple that famous in China?”
“…” Yun Yi looked at the topknot on his head and really wanted to ask: Dude, didn’t you join Daoism? Why is it “God” and “Jesus” every other word?
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