Chapter Ninety-Seven: A Single Thought

Days passed, and the Elder Little Lord never appeared again. The nightmare of falling from a great height came less and less often. Most nights, Hua Sheng buried himself in his textbooks until well past midnight, falling asleep only when exhaustion left him too spent even to dream, so that dawn often seemed to break before he had time for sleep.

To guard against delusions returning, Hua Sheng did his utmost to fill every hour. When he was not reading in his ward, he would help the hospital by sweeping and mopping the floors. After all, the money spent on his stay here came from the state, and he did not want to become a crippled sort of man who could do nothing at all.

That afternoon, as usual, he was pushing his mop over the tiled floor. When he reached the stairwell, he noticed a flattened piece of gum stuck to the ground.

"What kind of filthy person does this? Didn’t even wrap it in paper—just spat it on the floor." Hua Sheng set the mop against the wall, pulled out a tissue, and scraped hard at the dried gum. As he stood up, he accidentally knocked over the mop leaning beside the wall, and it clattered down the stairs.

"Oh no! If it breaks, that’ll be trouble." Hua Sheng had been using it to mop the floors these days, and though it was only a cleaning tool, he had developed some feeling for it.

Sure enough, after tumbling to the bottom of the stairs, the cord binding the mophead snapped, and the head separated from the wooden shaft. Hua Sheng sighed and shook his head. He picked up the shaft, trying to fit it back into the mophead and repair the broken cord.

The instant he lifted the shaft, a flash of golden light cut across Hua Sheng’s vision, like sunlight reflected from someone across the way closing a window.

But there were no glass windows below the stairwell. Hua Sheng looked around, then fixed his gaze on the wooden shaft in his hand.

It was an old, ordinary mop, used for who knew how many years. The handle had been worn smooth by countless hands. Fine wood grain glimmered faintly along its length.

Where it had just fallen, a small fragment had broken away from the once smooth surface, revealing fresh grain beneath.

The grain looked strange. Hua Sheng leaned closer to study it. There seemed to be tiny characters embedded in it, but he could not make them out, nor did he recognize them. What was uncanny was that those characters seemed to be glowing.

He set down the mophead in his other hand and held the shaft with both hands to look more closely.

Yes, there was indeed light.

Hua Sheng used his fingernail to pry along the grain and peel away the fractured piece. Something was plainly hidden inside the wooden shaft of the mop.

He kept scraping away more and more of the fragments, until even his fingernail split open. At last he exposed an area about the width of two fingers.

Inside it blazed that dazzling golden light.

For a moment, his mind roared like a storm sea.

Hua Sheng clenched both hands, then slammed the entire shaft hard against the floor. With a thunderous crack, like a firecracker exploding in the corridor, the sound rang out.

When he picked the shaft up again, the wood covering it was flaking away in pieces.

No matter how impossible it seemed, it was that familiar color.

It was the radiance of the Staff of Supreme Harmony and Golden Hoops!

Doctors and nurses startled by the noise came rushing down the corridor. Nurse Cat and Doctor Yu Ran were among them.

Doctor Yu Ran stared in astonishment. "Hua Sheng, what do you think you’re doing?"

"Doctor! Look! Look at this! It’s the Staff of Supreme Harmony and Golden Hoops! The Elder Little Lord didn’t lie to me!"

Doctor Yu Ran shook his head. "Hua Sheng, look carefully. It’s just a mop handle. You’ve held it before too, and still insist it’s some sort of golden staff. The dents and holes in your ward wall were all made by you beating them with this stick. What are you doing with it now?"

"What mop? Can’t you see this light? How could it be a mop?" Hua Sheng asked.

"It’s a mop, Hua Sheng!" a nurse beside him said.

Doctor Yu Ran glanced at the nurse, a trace of reproach in his voice. "This is exactly why I told you not to let him mop the floors. He’s hallucinating again!"

Hua Sheng stared at the staff in his hands, unable to believe it.

Doctor Yu Ran said, "Hua Sheng, look at the mirror beside you."

Beside him stood a full-length glass mirror. In it, his own face was sallow and yellow, his eyes drifting. In his hands was clearly an old wooden mop handle, scarred from the fall.

He looked away from the mirror, then back at what he was holding. It was unmistakably the Staff of Supreme Harmony and Golden Hoops.

Nurse Cat pulled out her phone, took a picture of Hua Sheng, and showed it to him. "See for yourself!"

Hua Sheng looked at the screen. There he was, just as in the mirror, holding that shabby wooden stick.

Around the corridor, besides doctors and nurses, there were also security guards, attendants, and patients who had come out for a walk. Everyone looked at Hua Sheng with frightened eyes.

Hua Sheng looked at the staff in his hands, then at the expressions on their faces. Suddenly, he threw his head back and laughed bitterly.

"The staff I treasure more than life itself, in all your eyes, is nothing but a filthy, worthless mop!"

At that moment, he suddenly understood that he was the monster.

A deep brand had already been burned into him; all the strange thoughts in his mind had become his labels, part of his body. In this world, he would always be a monster. Again and again, the imprint in his life would torment him. He would forever bring fear and unease to others, making everyone suffer and worry for him, including himself.

Because he could never belong to this world. Even in the real world, it was the same. He saw and felt things no one else could understand.

However well one might disguise it, however much sympathy one might offer, people could never live peacefully beside a monster. So why should everyone be made to suffer? Especially those who wanted to help him—each and every one of them was a good person. Hua Sheng could not bear to see the disappointment on their faces.

Hua Sheng laughed madly. Whether it was reality or only imagination, he could hear his laughter echoing through the corridor.

The only thing he knew for certain was that this was not his world.

"Move aside! Get out of my way! Anyone who comes near me, I’ll beat to death!" Hua Sheng shouted. Then he suddenly lowered his head and murmured, "The Way gives birth to the one, the one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things..."

Doctor Yu Ran slowly approached him. "Hua Sheng, please hand the staff to me. Slowly!"

"The Way gives birth to the one, the one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things!" Hua Sheng repeated over and over. "The Way gives birth to the one, the one gives birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to all things!"

"Doctor Yu Ran! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’ve let everyone down and disappointed you all." One hot tear ran down Hua Sheng’s cheek and fell upon the staff in his hands. "My illness cannot be cured. I’ve found the answer. It’s because I never belonged here at all!"

Yes. He now knew the answer.

Why does the world have time and space? This world is fundamentally impossible to comprehend—only a vast mass of shapes, colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and sufferings. None of it has any meaning to our bodies. Yet we are able to know this world because we possess an intuition, and this intuition grants us space and time.

Whether space and time come from our imagination is unimportant. What matters is that they exist within the intuition of life. This intuition is not something the outside world gives us, nor is it necessarily created by the outside world. When our senses are stimulated by external information—by seeing, hearing, touching—intuition adds something beyond that and gives it to us.

So when we cover our ears, close our eyes, pinch our noses, seal our mouths, even suspend ourselves in midair, we cannot feel this world. And yet in our hearts we know that the world still exists. Thus our minds tell our senses: what you are telling me is not accurate.

Though I cannot feel this world, the world has not disappeared.

Reality, in truth, is the fusion of mind and information.

This is why the one can transcend yin and yang, transcend opposition, transcend all things!

In an instant, Hua Sheng understood what that one born of the Way truly was.

"Because the one is the heart! It is what the heart sees, knows, and realizes."

The one born of the Way is my heart, your heart, and the hearts of countless people.

The one is consciousness, the soul, awakening itself. It allows all things to be sensed.

The one is the standard by which all things are measured; it determines good and evil, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, intelligence and folly, light and darkness.

Because the one is so important, even yin and yang, opposition, and all things themselves can become optional.

If every heart were to believe that light is darkness and darkness is light, then what, after all, would light and darkness themselves matter?

The Way can indeed create the world, but it also need not create the world at all. For the Way has already created the heart, and the heart can create its own world.

Of course, people will be utterly unaware within the world they have created, just as in a dream—through the long night one is lost in dreams, unable to know oneself, let alone when only a single moment is involved.

And more than that, this one is not merely a number, but a sequence. Only such a sequence can give birth to a complete and meaningful heaven and earth.

So it is not that the Way gives birth to the ten thousand things, and the ten thousand things give birth to the one.

It is the Way that gives birth to the one, the one to two, two to three, and three to all things.

Thus, the heart gives birth to the universe, and the universe returns to the heart.

Thus, everything that can truly trap a person in this world is only a single thought.

Like one gone mad, Hua Sheng hurled the staff in his hand toward Doctor Yu Ran, and with a sharp crack, the doctor’s hand was knocked aside.

"Then tell me! Among all the people in this world, who is not living inside the world of their own mind?"

Doctor Yu Ran’s hand was suddenly streaming with blood.

Taking advantage of the brief moment of shock, Hua Sheng broke through the crowd and ran for his life up the stairs.

Doctor Yu Ran clutched his wound and chased after him with the nurses. The others shouted, "Hua Sheng, stop! Don’t run!"

Hua Sheng paid them no mind and kept running. He did not know how long he ran before he rammed his shoulder against a steel door and reached the rooftop.

This was the rooftop in that photograph, where he had once released sky lanterns with Wei Yu.

The sight of lanterns filling the sky had once been the softest place in his heart.

Hua Sheng saw the Elder Little Lord standing at the edge of the rooftop wall, smiling at him.

He rushed toward him like a madman, leapt over the roof railing, climbed up to the edge, and stood shoulder to shoulder with the Elder Little Lord.

"I knew you would come in the end." The Elder Little Lord looked at him. "This place cannot hold you. If you had not come, I would have stayed here with you forever."

"I just finally understood." Hua Sheng smiled. "I thought the world was out there, and I had only come to take a look. But in truth, my heart decides what kind of world I see."

"Then let us leave together."

"How do we leave?"

"By jumping."

"Wouldn’t that just mean falling to our deaths?"

"Exactly. That is why it is called leaving this world."

"You’re only an ordinary mortal here. This is my world. Aren’t you afraid that if you jump with me, there will be no coming back?"

The Elder Little Lord pointed to the canvas shoes on his feet. "That’s why I’m wearing these shoes of returning to heaven’s power!"

Hua Sheng laughed again. Many things suddenly rose before his eyes.

Doctor Yu Ran had also reached the rooftop. "Hua Sheng, don’t act on impulse!"

Nurse Cat was hopping in anxiety, nearly shrieking herself hoarse. "Don’t jump! Stop right there!"

Hua Sheng turned back and said to them, "My brother is here, and so is my Staff of Supreme Harmony and Golden Hoops. Can you all see them?"

"We can, we can!" Doctor Yu Ran said to appease him. "Come down first, and introduce your friend to us!"

"You all are lying!" Hua Sheng smiled, though his expression was filled with desolation. "You can’t see them at all. Because you and I are not the same kind. To say you can see them is only sympathy. Still, I’m grateful. It’s just that staying here will only add to your burden. We would all keep suffering forever."

Doctor Yu Ran extended the hand Hua Sheng had battered bloody and said, "Child, listen to Doctor Yu Ran. Come down now."

Hua Sheng said to the Elder Little Lord, "If everything perceptible can be fabricated, then will the real me end up having nothing at all?"

"That depends on what you believe in," the Elder Little Lord told him. "What kind of story are you willing to write with your life? One that sinks into cliche and becomes a tragedy, with an ending every reader can foresee? Or will you prove what it means to have the protagonist’s halo, turning the plot once more at a bend in the road and charging into that blood-quickening world?"

Hua Sheng suddenly understood something and turned back toward Doctor Yu Ran.

There was sorrow in Doctor Yu Ran’s eyes.

"Doctor, what are you grieving for?"

"Come down, foolish child. You clearly know that this is not a real world, so why are you still unwilling to step away?"

"Doctor, you are wrong. I am only clearer than you about when I will leave this world. It is you who cannot be certain, and so you feel no sorrow at all. Isn’t that right?" Hua Sheng drew a deep breath. "Doctor Yu Ran, have you ever heard of those stories about the multiverse?"

Everyone gazed at Hua Sheng in astonishment.

"The universe is like countless plastic bubbles, each with its own tiny differences. I stand here, and in one universe there is a me who jumped, while in another universe, there is a me who reached out and returned to you. Perhaps we became friends for life and lived out our separate lives well. So you must believe that another me stayed behind. You do not need to be sad. Because I have, at once, remained with you and yet pursued without reservation what belongs to me alone."

Warmth entered Hua Sheng’s gaze as he spoke slowly:

"Thank you. Thank you for never giving up on me, for always forgiving my mistakes and my foolishness. I simply do not need anyone else to define me, because I am myself. Now I must go. Since I have already reached the end of the story, please indulge me once more, and let me willfully write the good ending that still holds a trace of hope."

Let us count down together. Let this world I created return to my heart.

"Three! No more opposition."

"Two! No yin and yang."

"One! Change the heart."

In that instant, the Elder Little Lord clasped his hand tightly. And then, with their hands locked together, the two youths leapt into the air and flew.

It was not merely the sensation of weightlessness, but a freedom beyond measure, like an eagle breaking free of its chains and once more throwing itself into the embrace of the sky.

As he fell, Hua Sheng passed by his own ward. He saw the windows and doors flung wide open, and the stack of manuscripts lying at the corner of the desk. A gust of wind swept through, carrying every last page out through the window and into his arms. Then countless sheets of white paper enveloped him and the Elder Little Lord like snow.

Like the snowflakes drifting over the lake then, or like handkerchiefs waved to cheer a hero’s return.

"Where is that Rolex of yours?"

"Some place without time—what use is a Rolex there?"

"I only want to see the time. I’ve kept wondering whether everything we see now is only because we’re still trapped in the Spiral Cave, and never once left..."

It was a blaze of brilliance at the end of the tunnel; it was the splendid battle flag flying over the Academy of Arcane Arts; it was the sky lanterns lighting the boundless night; it was the stirring war song that set the whole world aflame.

Time carries away all sorrow and leaves behind only brilliant, weathered traces. The past is like a rippling lake, sending tremors through memory. When you can no longer possess those things, the only thing you can do is make sure you do not forget.

Hua Sheng told himself: how could it all end here?

The story has only just begun.