Elio’s Notes: The chapter title, 且维轻舸更迟迟, comes from Li Yu’s poem Seeing Off My Younger Brother, the Prince of Deng, to Govern Xuancheng. The line asks that the light skiff remain moored a little longer because the brothers cannot bear to part, making it especially fitting for a chapter centered on Zhao Kuangyin and Zhao Guangyi’s brotherhood.
Master Jingde had suddenly entered nirvana.
Zhao Kuangyin vaguely felt that something about the matter was strange, but he could not work out exactly why. With nothing else they could do, the two of them wandered around Zhongmiao Temple.
It was only a small and simple meditation room, yet the tiled eaves were decorated with gilded designs. Zhao Guangyi glanced sideways and saw the sunlight reflected from them, dazzlingly bright, and smiled coldly.
Amitabha.
Even a golden Buddha had to stand a rank above the rest. Prayer banners snapped in the wind. Since when had he begun to fear facing death? Zhao Guangyi took a deep breath, only to fill his lungs with the smoky scent of incense.
He disliked that smell, yet there had once been someone willing to accept whatever fate brought and earnestly chant morning and evening.
The footsteps behind him were very light. Zhao Kuangyin turned and saw a monk barely thirty years old, dressed in a gold-threaded kasaya, clearly someone of high rank within the monastery. Guangyi stepped forward and saluted him. Zhao Kuangyin stood to one side and studied the newcomer, only to see the man smile faintly and extend a hand, inviting them inside.
As he turned, the young monk they called Grandmaster Jingwen clearly noticed the wooden bracelet on Zhao Guangyi’s wrist, and a smile immediately appeared.
So he is… the person Lord Wang mentioned.
The interior at least seemed more faithful to Buddhist principles. Zhao Guangyi looked around. It had not yet reached the point of being filled with gold and jade. That Zhongmiao Temple had survived the flames of war completely unharmed and had somehow continued receiving the finest protection and renovation was indeed remarkable.
“This Zhao was an old acquaintance of Master Jingde. By chance, the master once gave me guidance that led me south in search of my younger brother, who had been lost for many years. Now that I have truly found him, I came specifically to offer my thanks. I never expected…”
“It happened suddenly. Benefactor, there is no need to grieve. When virtue lacks nothing, it is called yuan, completion; when every obstruction has been exhausted, it is called ji, stillness. Senior Brother’s cultivation has run its course, and he has gone early to the Pure Land.”
For a while, they exchanged nothing more than courteous formalities.
“And this benefactor is…?”
“My younger brother. You might say he has an affinity with Buddhism. He grew up in Andong Temple in the southern kingdom and remained there until now.”
“Excellent, excellent. Benefactor, your features are clear and your brow bright. All phenomena arise through conditions, all are bound by affinity. You will surely encounter an extraordinary destiny in the future. You are not destined to remain among the Buddha’s people.”
Zhao Kuangyin burst out laughing. Naturally. How could a man surnamed Zhao go off and become a monk?
Zhao Guangyi sat to one side and watched coldly. The newly appointed abbot truly was young, yet there was not the slightest flaw in his speech or manner.
When they rose to leave, Jingwen stared steadily at the wooden bracelet on Zhao Guangyi’s wrist.
Zhao Kuangyin had already gone outside when he suddenly realized Guangyi had not followed and turned back.
Inside the meditation room, the two men stood opposite each other with palms pressed together in a Buddhist salute. Zhao Guangyi had never shaved his head, but everything about his childhood had been little different from that of a young monk. For the moment, Zhao Kuangyin felt it inappropriate to intrude upon their conversation and remained awkwardly at the doorway.
When Guangyi finally came outside, Zhao Kuangyin saw something in his hand. It was a string of prayer beads. “The abbot gave you those?”
“Mm. He said I stayed in this temple for a few days when I was young. I cannot remember it clearly, but he said we had met once before. Only afterward did I follow Master Jinghui south. By that reckoning, he is my martial uncle in the Dharma lineage. Because we shared a former affinity, today he granted me its later fruit.”
“Later fruit?”
Zhao Guangyi said no more and became even more silent.
Elio’s Notes: Zhao Guangyi’s wording plays on Buddhist karmic language. Yuan (缘) is an affinity or condition that brings people together, while guo (果), literally “fruit,” is the consequence that ripens from prior causes and conditions. “Former affinity” and “later fruit” therefore carry a stronger karmic meaning than simply having met before.
The sword-browed man walked ahead as they left. The sky had begun to darken, and the woods were naturally filled with an indescribable secrecy. For a moment, Zhao Kuangyin experienced a faint illusion and repeatedly looked back. Each time, Guangyi was following safely behind him, silent, his eyes extraordinarily dark.
Ever since their reunion, it seemed as though something always stood between them.
No matter whether the dozen or more years between them had been wasted, surely the feeling carried through blood and bone could not simply change. Why, then? Zhao Kuangyin could not say. It was nothing more than intuition.
When they were children, he had never bothered to turn around and check on Guangyi because he always knew that Guangyi would follow him faithfully. His younger brother had been timid but obedient, and Zhao Kuangyin had always believed that he himself was Guangyi’s example.
Yet after all these years apart, Zhao Guangyi had become somehow… impossible to define. He still quietly maintained his vegetarian diet, and years of cultivation had made his temperament exceptionally restrained.
Yet something was different.
Zhao Kuangyin only felt that the person behind him was no longer someone who could be held in place merely by a wooden bracelet.
He suddenly began to worry whether Guangyi was truly following him.
Or whether there would come a day when, without making a sound, he would overtake him. The thought was frightening.
They returned the way they had come, a lone skiff gliding gracefully across the water.
The sky grew darker. Standing together at the bow, the two brothers watched the moon reflected in the lake. Zhao Kuangyin casually walked to Guangyi’s side and, stirred by the sight before him, began reminiscing. “Do you remember? When we were children, I was always making Father angry. You would be punished along with me, standing beneath that tree in the courtyard late at night. If the weather was clear, the moon would come out, and we could see fine shadows moving together with the fireflies. You always liked looking up at the shadows among the branches. I used to laugh at you and say the more books you read, the more unbearably sentimental you became.”
He laughed to himself after speaking. Their tiny boat cut across the water, and shimmering reflections danced and shattered an entire lake of foolish dreams.
Who is still trapped in a dream from which they cannot wake?
Zhao Guangyi smiled as well. The corner of his mouth lifted as he silently watched the water, seeming for a while to be remembering. Zhao Kuangyin sounded regretful. “It truly has been too long. And then you had everything that happened after going south. Perhaps many things from the past have already become vague and difficult to recover. If Father knew beneath the earth…”
Before he could finish, Zhao Guangyi interrupted. “How could I forget? I even remember the tree in our courtyard when we were children. Thinking back, it must have been an ancient tree even then. I always remember it being enormous. At night, the moonlight among its branches was especially beautiful.”
He looked at Zhao Kuangyin as though he had finally dug some minute fragments from his memory and was reconstructing them layer by layer, his face filled with delight.
Zhao Kuangyin showed no expression. He simply took a long, deliberate breath. The damp scent rising from the lake was particularly refreshing. “You truly have grown up.”
After that one sentence, he said nothing more. They went ashore in silence and returned together to the household where they were staying.
Zhao Guangyi walked neither quickly nor slowly. Inside his sleeve, he clenched the strand of prayer beads tightly and ran his fingers over them one by one without drawing attention. Each bead was perfectly smooth.
Except the last. Its surface was uneven, as though some design had been carved into it.
He closed his hand tightly around it and followed immediately behind his big brother, never falling so much as a step behind.
The master of the little courtyard had prepared food but had no desire to speak with them. He merely came and tapped gently at the door, signaling that the dishes were ready to be collected. Naturally, the family resented them, but seeing that the brothers carried weapons, they were afraid innocent people might be harmed if they spoke recklessly. So they prepared good wine and food, hoping only that dawn would come quickly and these two gods of plague would leave.
“Big Brother has had a tiring day. Guangyi will fetch it.”
“All right.”
Zhao Kuangyin sat in a chair wiping his sword and answered casually.
Zhao Guangyi pushed open the door and went outside. Hidden within the broad sleeves of his plain clothing, his clenched hands had gone white. He had been hesitating over that final prayer bead all along.
There were three dishes, two meat and one vegetarian. He would never eat meat himself, and Zhao Kuangyin understood that perfectly. So all he needed to do was…
Standing in the narrow kitchen, Zhao Guangyi’s fingers moved slightly. He crushed the prayer bead carved with the half-faced lotus.
Inside the hollow wood was a tiny amount of scattered white powder. It trembled lightly against his fingertips. Zhao Guangyi immediately shifted away from it, his eyes becoming razor-sharp as he stared at the dishes the household had prepared upon the table in hopes of avoiding trouble.
If he put it into the meat dishes, it would be flawless. Zhao Kuangyin would die silently, without anyone knowing why. It was only a single instant of choice. Zhao Guangyi clenched the broken bead fiercely, yet the image appearing before his eyes filled him with disgust. Back in the incense-filled Andong Temple of his childhood, he still always remembered that person, someone frail, yet filled entirely with expectation.
What right did he have to speak endlessly to Zhao Guangyi about the human heart?
Was it merely because he had a good big brother?
Outside the kitchen, cold light suddenly flashed. The point of a sword aimed directly at the center of the wooden door.
Inside, someone hesitated. Outside, the sword point trembled as well.
The five fingers clutching the prayer bead suddenly closed. Zhao Guangyi released a long breath. He abruptly remembered Zhao Kuangyin’s expression when he had stared at that painting.
He was someone who valued emotion deeply.
And only someone whose heart contained feeling could hold the realm beneath heaven within it.
Had it been another person, perhaps Zhao Guangyi would have been willing to gamble. But today, he would tentatively believe in the owner of that wooden bracelet. The child who had once been filled completely with expectation. Zhao Guangyi wanted to try believing in the sincere feeling that child had valued more than life itself, all the way to death.
Zhao Guangyi swept the broken prayer bead and its powder into a rag and threw the bundle through the rear kitchen window. It landed alone in a patch of withered grass.
So Zhao Kuangyin, do not disappoint me either.
Outside, the sword immediately withdrew.
Zhao Guangyi dusted his hands, picked up the dishes, and pushed open the kitchen door with perfect composure. He glanced around. There was no one in sight. Reassured, he carried the food back.
Inside, Zhao Kuangyin was examining his sword blade carefully by candlelight. When Guangyi entered, he smiled and gestured for him to put the dishes on the table. Zhao Guangyi stood calmly at one side. “Big Brother, please eat first.”
Zhao Kuangyin stared straight at him without speaking. Still seated, he reached for the chopsticks and smiled. “Guangyi still eats vegetarian food?” He lifted the wine pot and poured it into a bowl. The liquid streamed down until more than half the bowl was full. The wine swayed above the dark-brown bottom, reflecting the faces of the two men in restless distortion.
Zhao Guangyi nodded. He could tell that the man opposite him was looking at him differently than usual, yet his own smile did not change. “Big Brother should not force Guangyi.” He lifted one sleeve with the other hand and lowered his head to sit.
Suddenly, a sword blade arrived. In almost the same instant, Zhao Kuangyin swept up the long sword from the table behind him and aimed it directly at Guangyi. The tip stopped only a hair’s breadth from his throat.
Zhao Kuangyin was smiling. The man wearing the wooden bracelet smiled as well.
“Big Brother saw what Guangyi did in the kitchen after all?”
Zhao Kuangyin kept the sword steady in his right hand. With his left, he slowly raised a cup of wine, tipped back his head, and drained it. The man before him was still smiling, entirely unflustered, dressed as usual in plain robes. The wooden bracelet at his wrist was painfully conspicuous.
Zhao Kuangyin looked at it. “Were you going to betray it?”
Zhao Guangyi shook his head. “Big Brother was the one who first gave its mate to someone with no part in our future.”
“So you wanted to kill me?” With a crash, Zhao Kuangyin hurled the wine bowl to the floor. His sword-brows lifted, killing intent rising sharply around him. “Zhao Guangyi. To think I was still willing to call you Guangyi. You truly have grown up. That child who used to cry after I scolded him twice has now learned how to replace me.”
Zhao Guangyi shook his head. “Every person is irreplaceable. Some things cannot be done merely because you have taken someone else’s place.” He spoke with perfect clarity, yet somewhere within his heart there was still a faint expectation no different from that child’s.
Zhao Kuangyin’s fingers moved. He gestured toward the food on the table. “Why couldn’t you do it?”
Zhao Guangyi shifted his gaze away from him and looked instead toward the simple luggage beside the bed. The edge of a small rolled painting protruded from among it. “For the same reason as Big Brother. There was once someone Big Brother could not bring himself to strike either.”
Zhao Kuangyin followed his gaze. His hand shifted, and the sword tip moved, drawing a thin line of blood along Zhao Guangyi’s neck. The injured man neither spoke nor resisted. Yet Zhao Kuangyin was shaken by that single sentence. “No. That was different.”
The listener smiled lightly. “Ah… different? Then Big Brother, why could you not bring yourself to do it to him?” His voice was quiet and steady, yet to Zhao Kuangyin, it sounded almost bewitched. In an instant, he felt as though he could once again smell that soul-entangling sandalwood fragrance. The persistence of that bond was infuriating.
He turned back toward Zhao Guangyi and saw the blood on his neck. “Guangyi…”
“I am the same as Big Brother. I still have feeling in my heart. You are my elder brother. In the end, I could not do it. If Big Brother is angry, then kill Guangyi.”
“Why? Does this have something to do with Zhongmiao Temple at Chaohu?”
Cause and consequence rose like a rope of weeds being torn from the bottom of a lake, drifting up and down in the water yet still refusing to break the surface. If Guangyi possessed such poison, someone must have secretly assisted him during the visit to Chaohu. Following the thread backward brought Zhongmiao Temple, its abbot, Andong Temple… Many lines were beginning to take shape, yet Zhao Kuangyin still could not see where they led.
“Guangyi will speak truthfully. Lord Wang Rao wished to eliminate Big Brother and promised that afterward I could take Big Brother’s place and achieve something of my own. Guangyi was indeed blinded by temptation and once entertained such thoughts. But in the end, I abandoned them.”
Zhao Kuangyin lowered his sword.
Zhao Guangyi took out the broken prayer bead. “Someone at Andong Temple told me that after leaving with Big Brother, barring anything unexpected, Big Brother would certainly visit the abbot of Zhongmiao Temple at Chaohu. The newly appointed abbot would assist me. So long as Zhao Kuangyin died quietly, Guangyi could then follow Military Governor Wang Rao and rise swiftly to success.”
More than a dozen years had passed after all. Zhao Guangyi had merely been a child trapped inside a Buddhist temple, unable to see the world beyond. How could Zhao Kuangyin truly blame him for the methods he had learned? Besides, he had only been incited by others.
What he had never imagined was that Wang Rao had harbored hostility from the very beginning.
Zhao Kuangyin had regarded him all along as a confidant, a friend despite their age difference. After being appointed Military Governor of Zhangde, the almost white-haired general had once patted him on the shoulder and remarked that the younger generation was formidable. Now it seemed there had been a knife hidden behind the smile.
Zhao Kuangyin raised his eyes toward the wound at Guangyi’s neck and sighed deeply. “Big Brother has wronged you.”
He threw down the sword and came over to examine the injury. Zhao Guangyi merely touched it. “It’s nothing. Just a small scratch.”
Pain showed in Zhao Kuangyin’s eyes. “When you were little, Big Brother bullied you and you ran off alone, fell, and scraped your knee. You came back crying with your eyes swollen like a rabbit’s. That year I told you, if you were that afraid of pain, what could you possibly accomplish in the future?” And today, in my disappointment, I nearly injured you with my own hand.
Even though I know that back then, I was the one who failed you.
The two looked at one another in silence, then sat down together. The meal still had to be eaten.
How could I have lost him?
That child who had always followed behind him, with gentle brows and eyes, shaking his head as he read aloud, quietly watching Zhao Kuangyin practice his fists, earnestly standing beneath the tree and sharing his punishment.
The final memory was firelight.
Nothing could be seen clearly within it. Their father had been framed. A loyal man all his life, yet even he had suffered persecution. Thick black smoke filled everything around the house. Zhao Kuangyin could see nothing.
He had always believed absolutely that wherever he went, Guangyi would follow behind him.
But after he fled with their parents, the streets had been filled with soldiers and chaos. Before he could pay attention to anything, he had been dragged onto a carriage heading north by men secretly sent by Guo Wei to protect them.
It would have taken only the time needed to turn his head and look back once more, yet Zhao Kuangyin had forgotten to do so for the entire journey.
At the small square table were several dishes and wine. Zhao Guangyi still ate vegetarian food out of habit. The plain dishes somehow made the man opposite him find it even harder to speak. “Guangyi, Big Brother…” The words reached Zhao Kuangyin’s lips, yet suddenly seemed unnecessary. He hesitated.
Zhao Guangyi was much more composed, nothing like the timid child he had once been. “I know what Big Brother wishes to say. What happened then cannot be blamed on Big Brother. Every cause in destiny has its origins. The Buddha is compassionate. That you and I have met again is itself the later fruit. From now on, Guangyi will wholeheartedly follow Big Brother. As for what happened today, Guangyi…”
“Big Brother knows these years have truly been difficult for you. You were never meant to belong to Buddhism, yet your nature was ground down there all the same. There is no need to say anything more. From now on, you and I will stand with one heart.”
He extended his hand. The wooden bracelet on Zhao Guangyi’s wrist swayed, still carrying the sheen of all those years ago. Their hands clasped tightly.
Zhao Guangyi looked at the bracelet and sighed silently within his heart. I will live properly in your place. Now I too want to try learning how to… expect something. How ridiculous. The one conviction that gentle child had possessed had once been mocked and torn apart by him, and now Zhao Guangyi himself had become interested.
I’ll try it for you. I’ll wager on your big brother and see whether he can win the realm beneath heaven.
That rolled painting was especially glaring.
Two children stood amid fallen leaves in the vast rear garden of a Buddhist temple. Autumn refused to leave. An older monk was driving the newly arrived boys to their chores. Some had already shaved their heads; some had not even decided whether they would enter monastic life. Every day, they had to sweep away the thick leaves fallen from the tall trees. When stepped upon, the layer was deep enough to crackle beneath their feet.
Neither boy was even ten years old. One, with gentle brows and a wooden bracelet, looked younger. Neither had shaved his head. Even the brooms were taller than they were.
“Go ask Master Jinghui to let you formally enter the Buddhist order.” The slightly older boy was clearly much steadier than the child beside him.
The younger boy struggled with the broom. “No.”
“Why? Master Jinghui likes you very much. He said he doesn’t want me as a disciple, but he seems willing to accept you.”
“If I become a monk, Big Brother will definitely laugh at me.”
“Your big brother again. If your big brother is truly that wonderful, why hasn’t he come to get you? What is there to stay for in this miserable temple? You can go all day without seeing anyone.”
“My big brother will become a hero someday. Once he becomes a hero, he’ll definitely come and take me away.”
“Hahahaha…”
The older child’s laughter mixed with the crackling leaves beneath their feet. Another autumn. Chrysanthemums beneath Phoenix Terrace were blooming beautifully. At Andong Temple, someone began chanting the morning prayers. And so another day began.
A monk slowly climbed the bell tower, preparing to strike the bell. Countless beginnings were like this, repeating, cycling, never finding an exit.
“You don’t seem like someone from the south.”
“Ah… I’m not from Jinling.”
“What temple were you at before?”
“I stayed for a while with Master Jinghui at Zhongmiao Temple on Chaohu. Do you know Chaohu? It’s across the river…”