◎ Lighting a Lamp ◎

Mist rose thick between the trees, gloom spread everywhere, the sky was dark and the earth dim. The two of them had completely lost the path by which they’d come, and had no choice but to follow the slope upward. Fortunately their luck held, and before long they found a dilapidated mountain god’s shrine to shelter from the rain.

Zhou Tan gently laid Yan Wuping’s body on the worn-out prayer cushion, then searched the shrine for some straw and dry firewood. The fire-striker he carried had gotten damp in the rain, and it took him a long while to barely coax a weak flame to life.

Qu You sat before the fire, slowly drying her soaked clothes. From the corner of her eye, she saw Zhou Tan staring blankly at the shrine altar.

No one knew how many years this mountain god’s temple had lain abandoned—it must have been built back when people still lived on Jinghua Mountain. The mountain god’s statue was carved from rough stone, its head knocked off by something unknown, leaving an ugly gap.

The young woman’s corpse lay on the cushion beneath the altar, her face still marked with tiny bits of green plant matter she’d brushed against in the curtain of rain.

Zhou Tan gazed at her silently.

It felt as if it were only yesterday—he had saved Yan Wuping at the canal docks in Lin’an. She had been tracking Peng Yue’s trail then, traveling all the way from Ruo Prefecture down to Jiangnan, disguised as a man, not daring to reveal her martial skill. Her face, tanned wheat-brown from long wandering under wind and sun, had carried a light of both hatred and hope.

Now all of that had vanished. She lay alone in this run-down mountain shrine, her once fine features worn down and ravaged by hardship, prematurely marked by decline. The blood on her face hadn’t been wiped clean—it had clotted near her left eye into a patch of black.

Life was so fragile. If it hadn’t rained today, if they hadn’t been trapped on the mountain, Boss Ai and the physician would have found them quickly. If Yan Wuping hadn’t been so impatient, if she’d only suffered wounds that could be treated. If he’d arrived just a little earlier, or stopped her the moment he’d vaguely guessed her intentions.

Going further back—if he hadn’t shown pity for a child by the roadside, hadn’t been ambushed, hadn’t helped a nearly-hopeless Yan Wuping and Gu Xianghui back then; if Peng Yue hadn’t walked into the wrong room all those years ago, or if Yan Zhi had patiently waited for orders from above before opening the city gates to the enemy.

So many “ifs.” Even one of them coming true would have meant a different outcome than this.

Zhou Tan felt his consciousness grow hazy. He saw Qu You walking toward him, her mouth opening and closing as if she were saying something, but his ears were filled with a blank fog—he couldn’t make out a single word.

The clean, gentle scent of the woman lingered at the tip of his nose. He realized Qu You was testing his temperature with her forehead, and in that instant, Zhou Tan suddenly recalled lying on his sickbed.

For a long stretch of time after the assassination attempt, his mind had actually remained somewhat clouded.

Aside from his dreams, he could recall with startling clarity even the smallest, most trivial details—like the physician cruelly bandaging his wounds, the pain he couldn’t cry out against, the medicine’s scent both gentle and merciless, his soul drifting free from his blood-soaked flesh, floating up to watch, with perfect clarity, his own life ebbing away drop by drop.

The sensation was bone-chilling, and yet in that helpless process of waiting to die, he had found some strange thread of pleasure. He’d forced himself again and again to remember his colleague’s mangled corpse in the imperial prison—the body piled with a hastily discarded official robe beneath the forbidding walls, one all-too-familiar hand reaching out from the heap.

The memory was frighteningly vivid.

Later came the sound of a suona horn, warm fingers brushing across his neck, leaving a numbing shiver in their wake as they traced the wound. Long-lost vitality flooded back into his body, and then, through the screen, he saw a pair of clear, bright eyes.

Strange—it had been their first meeting, and yet he’d felt, hazily, as though he had already known her, long, long before.

When Qu You had walked over, she’d already sensed something was wrong.

Zhou Tan sat with his head bowed low, seemingly sunk into some self-contained emotion cut off from the outside world. She called his name several times, but he gave no answer, only a faint flush rising on his pale face.

She bent down and pressed close to his forehead, and found that he was running a fever.

Qu You cupped his face in her hands, her own face very close to his. Zhou Tan slowly lifted his eyelids to look at her—her reflection did not appear in his amber eyes, yet within them she caught a flash of self-loathing.

She turned back to glance at the corpse on the ground, then moved her hand from his face to his shoulder, and said softly, “You’re running a high fever.”

The illness had come on so suddenly—Zhou Tan’s body had never fully recovered; within a single year he’d endured torture, medicine, and an assassination attempt, and now, soaked by the rain, the fever had flared.

His body heat seeped into her palm. Zhou Tan lowered his eyes, not daring to look at her again. Qu You noticed him trying to pull away, but this time she didn’t let go—instead she asked directly, “What are you avoiding?”

“Don’t come near me.” Zhou Tan turned his gaze from hers and closed his eyes, his thin eyelids trembling with unease, betraying the hesitation and struggle within him.

“The day you first came to my household, someone should have told you—don’t come near me, don’t show me kindness.” Zhou Tan spoke as though bitterly cold, gritting out each word. “Do you see this corpse? She once believed in me, and now she lies here. Aren’t you afraid that one day you might end up just like her?”

The corpse lay beneath the ruined idol—even the god no longer protected him.

“Why are you blaming yourself like this?”

Qu You watched him; his emotions had clearly slipped out of control, that he would even say such things.

“Her death isn’t your fault. You didn’t want to be ambushed, you didn’t want Peng Yue to be let off with mere exile, you didn’t want to fail to help her…” Qu You thought back on how she’d once doubted him, and felt a sudden, aching bitterness. “This isn’t your fault.”

“This is exactly my fault,” Zhou Tan stubbornly denied her. “When I wasn’t able to follow through, I shouldn’t have made false promises. I shouldn’t have let her hold onto hope only to lose it, only to make a choice that can’t be undone. Once a person dies, it’s like a lamp going out—there’s no turning back.”

He turned his head in the dim light, and Qu You saw the firelight reflected in his lashes, a shimmer of tears welling in his ice-and-snow brow. “Leave me. You’ll have a better life.”

A person always in the habit of blaming himself.

A person who swallowed others’ malice as armor, using it to force people away from him.

How could someone like this… ever become a villain? Or rather, how could someone with such impossibly high moral standards ever allow himself to do wrong?

“Zhou Tan,” Qu You raised her hand near his lashes, not quite touching them. “After everything Wuping told me, the one thing I’m certain of now is… that your mouth is full of lies. I won’t believe another word you say.”

Going by Zhou Tan’s usual behavior, he would surely have snapped back at her with something cutting, denied it while meaning the opposite, angered her into storming off, then licked his own wounds alone. His disguise was seamless—if not for Yan Wuping’s words, Qu You would have nearly believed that everything he said reflected his true thoughts.

The things she had doubted again and again finally had proof behind them. From the very start, she had drawn a clear line in her heart between the good and the ill she kept turning over—past the dazzling accounts written in the histories, all she saw was a good man cowering, unattended, in a corner on his wedding night.

Zhou Tan had, in her heart, manufactured disappointment, contempt, and disgust toward himself, skillfully driving her away. But unfortunately he’d miscalculated a great deal—Yan Wuping had made everything clear, and Qu You immediately understood what he’d been thinking.

To be a lone, friendless minister—to have no soft spot, no weakness.

She waited for Zhou Tan to mock her as he always did, but he only sank into heavy silence, giving no answer. Qu You leaned down and saw that his eyes had drooped shut, his awareness already beginning to scatter.

Qu You dragged him into a corner, meaning to wrap him in straw, but the straw left over from starting the fire had all gotten damp in the rain, soaked through and useless. With no other option, she resorted to the most clichéd of methods—holding him in her arms, sharing warmth with him.

Night grew deep, the sound of rain gradually softening. Zhou Tan fell into a heavy sleep in her arms, then woke briefly, and she heard him call out hoarsely in a nightmare, “Teacher.”

Qu You suddenly recalled Peng Yue’s words before his death. Gu Zhiyan had lived an upright life—if Zhou Tan hadn’t betrayed his teacher’s school, then what exactly had he learned in the imperial prison, to make him willing to destroy his own reputation and set out on a path so utterly different from the first half of his life?

Before she could think it through further, Zhou Tan began to stir restlessly in her arms again, cold sweat beading on his brow. She reached out to wipe it away, and heard him murmur, “So dark.”

Qu You’s drowsiness vanished at once. She rubbed her eyes and looked—the fire was nearly out. She had no fire-striker on her; if the flame died, they’d have no light until dawn.

She sighed, gently let go of Zhou Tan, rolled up her sleeves, and crawled behind the ruined altar. If she remembered correctly, she’d spotted a number of old lanterns discarded there earlier.

After fumbling around in the dark for a good while, Qu You found half a candle stub.

She quickly scraped away the old wax coating on the surface with her fingers, and with the last spark of the dying fire, lit the wick. She found a lantern shade that was relatively intact—though with the autumn wind whistling and slipping through the cracks, the flame threatened to go out at any moment.

At last a bit of warm light filled the ruined shrine. She carried the trembling little lamp toward the corner and found that Zhou Tan had already woken.

Though awake, he didn’t have the strength to move even slightly. Qu You hung the lamp on the edge of a nearby table, then wrapped her arms around him again, warning, “I’m very tired. I have no energy to argue with you. It’s too cold here—don’t move around.”

Zhou Tan’s gaze stuck to the lamp. His lips moved, but he didn’t push her away—instead he raised his wide sleeve and carefully draped it over the front of her body.

The two of them stared for a long while at the flickering candle flame within the battered lamp shade. Qu You, holding Zhou Tan’s arm, suddenly said, “I miss home.”

Zhou Tan’s voice was hoarse. “Tomorrow I’ll send you back to the Qu residence.”

“Ah, not there,” Qu You shook her head, and said earnestly, “My hometown—it’s actually in Hang… in Lin’an, the place where you used to live. I grew up in Lin’an when I was young, then came to the capital. It’s been so long since I’ve gone back.”

Zhou Tan listened quietly as she spoke. Her voice was lovely, and even when the occasional word she used was one he didn’t understand, he couldn’t bear to interrupt her, so he didn’t ask.

“I want to go home. There’s an old town in Lin’an—every spring, my friends and I used to go boating there. The flowers in that town bloomed so beautifully. The first time I stole one, I got caught by the local watch and fined five hundred coins.”

Qu You rambled on. It had been so long since she’d spoken of these things—now, such days were separated from her by countless mountains and rivers; she had wandered far from home, and could never go back.

Seeing that Zhou Tan said nothing, Qu You suddenly stopped too, then, after a moment’s pause, continued: “I know—you want the whole world to resent you, so that no matter what you do, you never have to worry about anyone grieving for you.”

Zhou Tan closed his eyes and feigned sleep, giving no reply.

“Never mind, telling you this now, you won’t listen anyway. Fine then—someday, when you’re truly honest with me, I’ll tell you a big secret.”

The wind suddenly rattled the window lattice with a sharp sound. Zhou Tan opened his eyes and looked anxiously at the swaying, wavering lamp, afraid it would go out—only relaxing once he saw it was fine.

Qu You kept talking. “Do you know why I’m so interested in you? Actually, before, what I wanted to know was something else entirely, but the moment I saw you, I had this instinct… Nietzsche once said that what makes a person great is that he is a bridge and not a destination. You won’t tell me what exactly you’re scheming, but I think—you’re very much like a bridge.”

This time he understood none of it at all. After a moment of silence, he forced his dry, hoarse throat to ask, “What does Brother Ni mean by that?”

“You don’t understand, do you,” Qu You said drowsily, half-asleep. “I know where the far shore of the bridge lies, but you don’t. All you know is destruction and sacrifice, willing to give everything of yourself to break what is unjust… The path you walk now goes beyond this era. I admire you for it.”

Zhou Tan wanted to ask more, but Qu You had already fallen asleep with her head resting on his shoulder, still murmuring words he only half understood.

“I love the one who feels shame when the dice fall in his favor, and then asks himself: am I a cheat? — for he wants to perish.”

“I love the one who casts golden words before his deeds, and always keeps more than he promises — for he wants to go under.”

“I love the one who justifies the people of the future and redeems the people of the past — for he wants to perish by those of the present.”

……

“I love all those who are like heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over mankind: they herald the coming of the lightning, and perish as heralds.”

Look—I am a herald of lightning, a heavy drop fallen from the cloud.

Author’s Note:

—From Thus Spoke Zarathustra

You You is probably a diehard fan of Nietzsche. At heart, what interests her is the anonymous author of the era-transcending “Flower-Cutting Decree”—her admiration is for the kind of person who dares to be first under heaven. And our Zhou here happens to be exactly the model type: someone who holds himself to impossibly high standards, forever pursuing something beyond himself. Ah, there have been countless such scholar-officials throughout Chinese history—so many, in fact, that history itself is simply crowded with brilliant stars.