The ceremony was complete.
Lang Zhengfan’s spirit tablet was to be returned to the Ksitigarbha Hall to be enshrined, the eternal flame still burning as before. Lang Jiuchuan personally carried it back. As for the Lang family, the ceremony was finished, but they would still take a vegetarian meal at the temple, and since they were in a period of mourning with few opportunities to go out, they would wander the temple grounds for a while.
As it happened, the third month had arrived. Though the air still held a lingering chill from winter, some people had already put on their spring clothes. With the imperial examinations underway, quite a few visitors had also come to offer incense and pray for their family members sitting the exams, hoping for good results. Huguo Temple was therefore lively and full of people.
Lang Jiuchuan first returned Lang Zhengfan’s spirit tablet to the Ksitigarbha Hall. Seeing the eternal flame still burning steadily, she adjusted the wick, then took out agarwood incense and burned a fresh stick before the tablet.
Cui Shi stood beside her. Breathing in the fragrance of the incense, her voice still hoarse, she said: “This incense smells better than the ordinary kind. I heard that you make it yourself.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve given this real thought.” Cui Shi gazed at Lang Zhengfan’s spirit tablet and was quiet for a long moment. Then she said: “Do you know why your name is unlike those of your brothers and sisters, and doesn’t follow the Cai generation name?”
“I heard it was Father’s intention.” Lang Jiuchuan glanced over at her. Seeing her eyes swollen and red, she lowered her gaze slightly.
Cui Shi pressed her handkerchief between her fingers and said: “That’s right. When you were still in my womb, your father had a landscape painting in ink that he loved dearly.”
She looked toward Molan, who held out a box. Nanny Cheng opened it, removed a scroll, and hung it from a nearby hook.
Cui Shi looked at the ink painting, pointing to its lower portion: a secluded mountain valley, a crane rendered with lifelike precision, its beak open, calling out from the depths of a still and shadowed marshland. Her expression softened. “The crane is an auspicious creature. ‘The crane calls from the deep marshes, its voice heard even in the heavens’ — this is a metaphor for a person of wisdom: even if hidden in a remote valley or mountain forest, their name and virtue will still reach the ears of the heavens.”
Her finger moved upward. The crane, which had stood in the marsh, now spread its wings and soared, rising to stand upon mountains and rivers — its feet upon countless peaks and rushing torrents, gazing down with ease and sovereignty, proud before all creation.
“He hoped for the child to live a long life, and for the child to be brilliant and unbreakable. The child had not yet been born, and he had already set down hopes and blessings.” Cui Shi’s tears fell. Her fingertip trembled as she touched the bold, vigorous brushstrokes of the characters in the lower right of the painting. “Crane calls from the marshes; mountains stand, rivers flow on. Jiuchuan — the name has breadth and spirit. Let this be my child’s name. May she face whatever hardship and injustice comes her way unbreakable and unstoppable, as steadfast as the mountains, as free as the crane in flight.’ Those were his words. He wrote the characters himself. And as it happened — you were born the ninth, so heaven too had a hand in it.”
Lang Jiuchuan felt her heart give a sudden, sharp ache.
Looking at the ink painting — at those bold, powerful characters — she seemed to see a young man who was about to become a father standing before it, and there, taking inspiration from the painting, writing down those words with pride and authority, setting down his child’s name with a father’s responsibility and love.
Jiuchuan. That was how it had come to be.
Cui Shi wiped away her tears with her handkerchief and said: “The children of your generation were to follow the Cai generation name. By your grandfather’s intention, you were to be named Zhen. But he had already decided otherwise, and since he was gone, I had to preserve something of him — so I insisted on using Jiuchuan. Though in truth, at the beginning, I was unwilling as well.”
Lang Jiuchuan looked at her, waiting for what came next.
Cui Shi pressed her lips together. Her eyes met Lang Jiuchuan’s steadily as she said: “I was unwilling — because I felt you were not our child.”
Lang Jiuchuan’s lashes gave the faintest tremor. She said nothing.
“When the news came that he had fallen in battle, I went into early labor. I was shocked and frightened, and heartbroken beyond words. On top of everything, your position was wrong in the womb at that moment. And yet even so, when you were finally born, I was still full of hope — I could clearly see, clearly see a crescent-shaped birthmark on the back of your neck. They all told me I had been mistaken. I came to doubt myself too. But how could I have been wrong?”
Her gaze drifted, caught in a flicker of confusion and distress. “Even if I had been mistaken about that — how could I not recognize my own child? But do you know — when I looked at you, I felt not a single thread of connection by blood. They all say a mother and child are linked at the heart. And yet when I looked at that tiny version of you, I felt no stirring whatsoever. Only a stomach full of fury.”
“Everyone concluded I was overwhelmed by grief, unable to accept Fanhe’s death, and had therefore lost my mind. And then, having suffered such a difficult birth, I had turned all my pain into hatred and bitterness toward you. But that was not it. This was our first child. I had yearned for this child so deeply. No matter how much grief I was carrying — how could I have hated her? And yet the truth was that every time I looked at that tiny you, the revulsion and antipathy only grew stronger. I kept thinking: if you truly were not my flesh and blood, then where was my child? What kind of life was she living in your place? Every time that thought came to me, I could not control the hatred that rose up in my heart.”
Cui Shi’s tears fell like beads from a broken string. She looked at Lang Zhengfan’s spirit tablet. “I failed him. I couldn’t even protect his child. I didn’t want that other child to go on taking everything that rightfully belonged to mine — including the name. That was why I refused.”
“Then why did you still use it?”
“Because he had chosen it. And what if it was I who was wrong?” Cui Shi looked at Lang Jiuchuan. “What if the mistake was mine — not theirs?”
Lang Jiuchuan was silent. This question she could not answer now, and did not dare.
Because no matter what the truth was — whether the child was genuine or not — both of those children were already gone. The person she was now was nothing more than a soul returned to a borrowed body.
If she said it aloud, Cui Shi would likely break entirely — because she had failed to protect either of them, the real one or the one in doubt.
Cui Shi said: “I know I have been cruel and heartless. Regardless of whether you were mine or not, to treat a child who knew nothing with such coldness — that was my ruthlessness. I am not fit to be called a mother. I accept that. But what I feared even more was allowing myself to grow attached — to feel something for this child — and then discover in the end that she was a stranger, while the child I had with Fanhe was left without anyone to grieve for her.”
“For over ten years, I never went to see you. I didn’t dare. Not until your grandfather died and you returned to the household — and since then, I have been somewhat lost.” Cui Shi’s eyes held a helpless confusion. “I no longer know who you are. You are both unfamiliar and familiar to me. You stir something painful in me. Tell me — are you truly our child?”
Lang Jiuchuan’s lips parted slightly. She said: “If Madam feels that she isn’t, and it eases your conscience to believe it — then consider me not to be.”
Cui Shi’s complexion went white, and her body swayed as if it might give way.
Lang Jiuchuan let out a quiet breath. “Madam,” she said, “regardless of blood — the person I am now is Lang Jiuchuan of the Lang family. I will live according to what Father hoped for, and I will walk my path in this world. In the future, should you need me, I will see you through your old age as well. The Lang family — I will look after them too. Because I am Lang Jiuchuan, and I believe that this is what he would have wished.”
Cui Shi followed her gesture toward Lang Zhengfan’s spirit tablet.
Her throat moved. The words were like an answer — and yet somehow like no answer at all.
Cui Shi closed her eyes. “Go,” she said softly. “Let me speak to your father for a while.”
Lang Jiuchuan bowed to her and turned to leave the Ksitigarbha Hall. She stood at the hall entrance, listening to the muffled sound of weeping from within — low and heavy, as if something were being pressed down from the inside.