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The first lesson his master imparted was to never look at one’s own reflection, avoiding vanity and ego: lay the foundations by dipping your hands into the water to disturb the surface of the lake before consumption or ablution; by training your eyes towards the heavens to evade the limpid puddles scattered about the earth; by wielding a sword whose blade distorts light in every way.
Xiao Xingchen had been heeding the teachings of his master for as long as he could remember that they had become second nature to him. The world was a mirror of humanity; thus, seeing was inevitable, just as hearing, just as feeling. Under the tutelage of his master, he learned to not look or listen or endure until he no longer had to employ the juvenile tricks from his days as a novice.
Experience things as they come, and let them go as they go.
What Xiao Xingchen missed was a most critical caveat that reflection could exist even without a mirror—that reflection was more than skin-deep. A shapeshifting demon could materialise before him in his own image and instil no fear in him, for he would not recognise his own appearance. Yet a man who was garbed in stormy colours in contrast to his white robes, who remained stoic even when he broke into fits of laughter, who spoke about contradistinctions of their disciplines—
Is deprivation not desire itself that only engenders a consuming yearning?
—was, unbeknownst to him, a reflection of him.
At whom he had been looking.
☷
The last lesson Xiao Xingchen received from his master was her farewell gift as well, odd as a gift untethering and orphaning oneself was. Yet, severing ties to his home meant ridding himself of his greatest attachments, which would allow him to embrace non-attachment before there is attachment.
Let oneself hold nothing and be held by nothing.
Set free from his cage, Xiao Xingchen became a perpetual migratory bird with nowhere to return to. He wandered through hazy forests and endless clearings never intending to be part of a flock until he found a companion in a fellow lonesome swallow. They flew along the same trajectory, dictated by the wind, weary wings fluttering in the air. Xiao Xingchen might not have left the mountain only to settle on a tree, but with every branch and stump they perched upon to rest, in his companion he unconsciously, inevitably found a home.
☷
It always guides you, Song Zichen said as they passed along the banks of the Great River. The path led towards the mouth of twin mountains shaped like they had been one once. Looking up at the faint nightglow, he continued: You watch but do not obsess over the sky. You follow the clouds, the moon, and the river of stars, but you never let yourself lose sight of the mountains.
Worn boots screeched against the wet gravel when Xiao Xingchen halted in his tracks, the words hitting him like a wall of ice. A piercing pain welled up from the inside of his chest, and he shrank from its surprising familiarity. Through gritted teeth, he could only utter, Zichen—
Let it go was what Xiao Xingchen wanted to say, but bile was starting to burn the back of his throat. He could only listen as Song Zichen answered in his low, sonorous voice:
Xingchen. You will always be tethered to your home.
Release your attachment by not releasing it went unspoken, the words swallowed before they overflowed, left to lap against the embankments of the fortress that erected high around Xiao Xingchen.
☷
Song Zichen was the image Xiao Xingchen never looked at on the clear surface of lakes and rivers. He was the mountain Xiao Xingchen descended for the world. He was the culmination of Xiao Xingchen’s determination to put one foot but not the other into the affairs of the cultivation society. He was everything Xiao Xingchen rid and did and whisked away in the name of non-attachment.
Song Zichen was Xiao Xingchen’s transgressions.
And suffer for them Song Zichen did, humiliated and mutilated in his own home, amidst the carnage of the desecrated corpses of his master and martial brothers strewn across the once white grounds of the temple like an omen of fallen ravens. Sunken eyelids cover the empty sockets dripping with liquified eyes, crying and bathing in blood both his and not his own.
Song Zichen crumbled under the weight of Xiao Xingchen’s sins.
We shall never see each other again did not go unspoken. Song Zichen was a dam that had shattered, and the words gushed harshly from his tongue.
☷
Zichen.
Zichen.
Zichen, I’m sorry.
Leave.
I want nothing to do with you.
I’m sorry, I could not save them—
Do not defile them any further.
—but I can give back your eyes.
I do not need your eyes.
Zichen—
XIAO XINGCHEN.
When will you learn to let go of your attachments?
☷
The first lesson his master imparted was to never look at one’s own reflection, avoiding vanity and ego. Heeding the teaching once more, Xiao Xingchen knelt before the man lying bloodied and blinded for having the misfortune of being his friend. Without any hesitation, he pressed his thumbs over his eyes and pushed them firmly towards his temples, letting his vision swirl and blur into nauseating colours. The pain was stinging and burning and searing, but he refused to scream and retch, refused to faint even as he nearly keeled over from the sensation of his head being split open. The mountain sun dimmed as his forefingers sank deeper into the sockets by his septum, turning pitch black as a pop echoed inside his skull. He yanked the globes free from the clinging, loosened flesh until he was left with wet orbs on wet hands, damp cheeks, and cavernous emptiness on his face, having cleanly enucleated himself.
Xiao Xingchen made himself believe that it was a—
Is deprivation not desire itself that only engenders a consuming yearning?
—proof of nonattachment.
☷
The last lesson his master imparted was to sever his ties from his home and rid himself of his greatest attachments, which would allow him to embrace non-attachment before there is attachment. To die before death; to hold nothing and be held by nothing. Heeding the teaching once more, Xiao Xingchen left without a word, leaving behind his sight, his dreams, his friend, and his home.
Xiao Xingchen made himself believe that it was just another—
Xingchen. You will always be tethered to your home.
—proof of nonattachment.