A Cheng returned home.
Father wasn't there.
He usually would have been home by now, but he wasn't; not in the kitchen, not in the bedroom, not at home.
A Cheng looked at the cold stove, feeling a little dazed.
He lifted the pot lid; inside was a bit of leftover porridge from the morning, completely cold and congealed into a block. Father hadn't even eaten breakfast.
A Cheng scooped out the cold porridge, mixed it with a cold dish, and made do with it for dinner.
He felt somewhat aimless.
A Cheng moved a long bench and sat in the courtyard, watching the sunset.
Scenery is always there, visible any day, but one isn't always in the mood to appreciate it.
A Cheng's mood was terrible.
He knew his Father looked down on his son, very clearly, just as A Cheng secretly despised his Father as an old scoundrel lost in his memories.
On many matters, the Father and son had an unspoken understanding.
Why did Father prefer to speak in the Pure Land? Because he didn't have to see A Cheng.
Why did A Cheng like to speak at the academy? Also because he didn't have to see his Father.
They disliked each other. Father believed heaven was fair, a life for a life; when A Cheng came into the family, his wife had to leave.
A Cheng believed heaven was unfair; Father should have died back then, but Mother died instead.
Having similar experiences, yet they had vastly different perceptions of fate. Father still harbored hope, so he could tirelessly love the world. A Cheng's heart had actually long turned to ashes; he yearned for a life surrounded by people, but on the other hand, his heart was more suited to a reclusive pastoral life.
A Cheng encountered a budding romance, then gave it up. Now he longed for genuine family affection.
Sometimes, during evening meditation, he felt himself advancing towards an empty and wondrous realm. He wanted to be revered as an ancestor, achieve fame and success; he wanted everything. He cautiously limited his greed, believing he was comprehending a path of gain and loss: attachment, insight, letting go.
In this era, who doesn't want to be noble?
A Cheng sneered at the increasingly cold afterglow of the sunset, "Everyone wants to! Everyone puts on airs of nobility, everyone thinks they are a Lay Buddhists of the Virtuous Path!" A Cheng saw through the so-called 'Righteous Dharma' of Virtuous Path Star, and he also deeply agreed with this Righteous Dharma. "Ah, it's good for everyone to love each other, what's wrong with that? But how many are true gentlemen, and how many are hypocrites? Is it a heart of pure ice, or merely a few private affections?"
That Father of his, he deluded himself into being a hermit, A Cheng stood up, spat, and turned to go back inside, kicking over the bench he had been sitting on. He didn't bother to pick it up, just let it lie on the ground.
He entered his room, opened the window, took off his shoes and socks, stripped off his clothes, and with his bare torso, leaving only a dusty linen long-pant. He lay in a reclining chair, propping his feet on the desk, with his arms pillow behind his head, and just gazed at the sky, swaying gently.
He waited for half an hour.
Father didn't come.
A Cheng's face turned cold. He put on his upper garment and rushed into the inner room to meditate.
He sat for another hour or so, his mind restless, waking from his meditation several times.
He began to practice boxing, strong winds swirling, causing the objects in the room to clatter and shake.
The more furious he became, the faster his palms struck, the swifter his internal energy flowed. A Cheng roared, unleashing a palm strike into the air towards the wall. With this blow, not a drop of internal energy remained in his body, and the palm force solidified as if tangible, whistling through the air.
"Oh no!"
A Cheng glimpsed the direction his palm force was aimed at, and his heart immediately jumped in alarm. However, he only had time for that fright. The next moment, that Splitting Palm shattered the shrine on the wall.
A statue fell to the ground, smashing into pieces.
It was precisely the statue of Lu Yuan Bodhisattva that A Cheng had unexpectedly obtained a few days ago while chasing a monkey troop.
A Cheng was terrified, his blood ran cold, his hands and feet turned icy. After a long moment, he finally recovered.
It seems… no one saw… so it doesn't count… otherwise… it would mean beheading.
"Yah, ugh! Ha!" A strange cry came from outside the house.
A Cheng frantically turned his head to look at the window. A dirty face covered in black mud, twitching uncontrollably, stared fixedly at him with wide-open eyes, the whites showing more than the pupils. To A Cheng, it was a terrifying face.
Outside the window was A Shu, the village madman.
Now, a madman had seen A Cheng smash the Bodhisattva statue.
Heh, although no one would believe a madman's words, sometimes, a single word has more power than the person who speaks it.
No one can reason with a madman, so rules, benefits, and threats cannot control a madman's actions.
At that time, if someone heard A Shu's words and came to search his place, and Father wasn't there, leaving only a half-grown boy, who could decide what should be said and what shouldn't?
A Cheng was scared. He also stared fixedly at A Shu's face, at his scruffy beard, vaguely smelling his sweat and urine. Besides fear, he felt an added emotion of disgust.
"Uh, uh, ho..." In A Shu's throat, muddled and low syllables rumbled. His expression was very strange, seemingly pain, seemingly ecstasy, "Cheng... Cheng, ho, Bodhisattva..."
A Cheng took two steps towards the window, feeling extremely fatigued due to his depleted internal energy, his legs weak.
A Shu seemed startled, retreated two steps, fell, without a sound. He stood up and walked outside.
Behind the house was a small grove of trees. Passing through the grove, one could see the rest of the village houses. There was a path that encircled the grove, where many people strolled in the evening.
A Cheng stood by the window, watching A Shu gradually disappear into the shade of the trees.
...
Night.
A Cheng returned home.
Father wasn't there.
He still hadn't returned; not in the side room, kitchen, or woodshed. He wasn't anywhere.
A Cheng exhaled, tossing the shovel into the woodshed. He then went into the side room to fetch a washbasin and scooped water from the small river by the door. He squatted by the river to wash his face. The moonlight couldn't penetrate the water's surface, and the swaying white light was tinged with a faint red.
A Cheng carefully cleaned the crevices of his fingernails.
Since Father wasn't there, he had to resolve many things himself, and the methods were often not so pleasant.
Returning to the inner room, A Cheng took out the dustpan. The fragments of the Bodhisattva statue had only been swept into the dustpan, not yet buried. He jiggled the dustpan, and the broken pieces clattered against the wooden sides.
It was just an ordinary idol, A Cheng thought. But under the moonlight, he took a closer look. Among the dusty fragments was a small, dusty, square plaque. Its shape was crude, but apart from being regular, it was no different from the other stones.
He picked out the plaque, blew off the dust, revealing its complete form: a square stone plaque, about half the size of his palm, with chamfered edges, very smooth. One side had an epiphyllum pattern, the other was blank.
A very ordinary stone plaque. He tucked it into his in my arms, planning to drill a hole in it in a few days and hang it on a string.
A Cheng retrieved another shrine from the storage room and hung it on the wall of the inner room, covering the palm print.
Suddenly, a loud "bang" came from outside.
The door had been smashed open, startling A Cheng.
He climbed out the inner room's window, ran along the wall, circled back to the front door, and secretly peered inside.
In the darkness, a broad back embraced a woman in white.
It was Father.
It was Bi Li.
Drops of blood fell to the ground, startling the moonlight.
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