Inside an Earth Temple.
A small girl lay with her cheek pressed against the muddy ground. Beneath her tender face was a thin layer of dust, mixed with straw fragments accumulated over who knew how many years. Her body heat had warmed a small, damp patch there.
The girl tried to open her eyes, but found she couldn't.
Her eyelashes seemed glued together; each attempt to open them felt like tearing away a thin film.
At the same time, the wind seeping in from the temple entrance cut across her face, like knives.
The girl's body was burning hot, so hot she thought she'd been shoved into a stove.
Yet the side of her face exposed to the mountain wind outside the temple was cold, so cold her teeth chattered.
After an unknown amount of time.
A sliver of sunlight seeped through the door crack, fell onto the girl's hand, and then silently moved away.
After it moved, the light dimmed, then brightened, then dimmed again.
The girl could only rely on the warmth on her hand, silently counting in her mind. If she forgot a number, she would start over, and if she forgot again, she would recount.
After an unknown amount of time, a shadow blocked the doorway.
Before the girl could open her eyes, she heard a rustling sound of ragged cloth scraping against stone.
A rough hand cradled the back of her head, lifting her slightly from the ground. A chipped, broken bowl clinked against her lower lip, and cool water trickled between her teeth.
The fire in her throat, which had burned for an unknown duration, was finally partially extinguished.
The girl choked, coughing up a mouthful of thick saliva.
The girl opened her eyes.
A beggar squatted before her.
The beggar's hair was matted in clumps, and a scar ran across his chin. When he spoke, the scar twitched, like a slender centipede crawling.
“Drink, drink,” the beggar said. “This is all that’s left.”
The girl held the last mouthful of water in her mouth.
When she swallowed, her throat felt like it had been scraped by a knife, and she winced, shrugging her shoulders.
Seeing that the girl had finished the water and her condition had improved greatly.
The beggar placed the empty bowl on the ground beside her head, then retreated to the pile of straw in the corner of the temple.
Soon, intermittent snores came from the straw pile, like the whimpering of the mountain wind squeezing through the broken door and window cracks outside the temple.
The next morning, the girl woke to an empty straw pile.
The broken bowl remained where it was. The shallow damp ring at the bottom had dried, leaving only a hazy white stain.
The beggar was gone.
Only she remained in the temple, along with the daylight seeping in from outside the door.
The girl pushed herself up, stood, and walked out.
...
The Earth Temple was not far from the nearby town.
The girl walked along the dirt road for half a day, and houses began to appear by the roadside.
One wooden door after another passed by, and the scent of food drifted from their cracks.
Following the scent, the girl squatted under a crooked-necked locust tree at the town entrance, shrinking into a small ball, hugging her knees, and resting her chin on her arms.
The tops of shoes belonging to passersby moved past her eyes.
Some were black, some gray, some muddy, some bleached white from washing.
But not a single pair stopped.
Later, someone did stop.
An old woman bent down to look at her, then pulled out a coarse cloth handkerchief from her bosom. She opened it, revealing a thoroughly cold steamed bun.
The old woman pressed the steamed bun into her hand and left without saying a word.
The girl held the steamed bun and gnawed on it for an entire afternoon.
She took tiny bites, only swallowing when the bun's skin had softened from the warmth in her mouth.
On the edge of the town was a half-collapsed straw shed.
A large section of the roof was missing; looking up, she could see tree branches and the occasional bird flying by.
In winter, when the wind poured in through that hole, the girl would huddle in the corner closest to the mud wall, curling her body into as tight a ball as possible.
Her hands tucked under her armpits, her toes curled, making her thin, ragged clothes cling to every inch of skin they could cover.
When it rained, water dripped from the edge of the hole, falling one drop at a time onto the muddy ground not far from her.
Plop, plop, plop, like someone incessantly poking the ground with a finger.
Sometimes the rain slanted in, hitting her back. The girl would then curl up even tighter, letting the rain strike her hair instead of her exposed skin.
In winter, the girl's feet became frostbitten and festered.
When she walked, each time her left foot touched the ground, it felt like stepping on broken porcelain.
So she had to walk on tiptoes, her left foot merely tapping the ground with its forefoot before lifting, her right leg bearing all the weight, her knee severely bent.
Finally, the sun came out.
The girl sat on the stone steps at the town entrance, basking in the rare sunlight.
The sun was warm, making the festering frostbite on her feet itch slightly.
Two peddlers passed by, carrying their shoulder poles. One said, “The Immortal Sect is opening its mountain gate to recruit disciples this year. I hear if you get in, you’ll have food, three hot meals a day.”
The girl’s eyes lit up at these words. She suddenly spoke, asking the peddler where the Immortal Sect was.
The peddler scrutinized her from head to toe, his gaze sliding from her face to her tattered, shapeless shoes, then back to her face. He raised his chin towards the north: “In the mountains. Follow the main road, and you’ll reach it in five or six days.”
Before the girl could thank him, the other peddler said, “That’s an Immortal Sect, not a charity. They’re very strict about who they pick; not just anyone can get in there.”
Nevertheless, the peddler who had answered the girl was kind-hearted. As he left, he tossed her two hard biscuits.
And so, the girl set off with the biscuits in her pocket.
The biscuits were too hard to break, so the girl held them whole in her mouth, waiting for her saliva to soften them little by little before chewing.
Holding one biscuit meant walking a long way, her mouth constantly puffed out, her cheeks aching and stiff.
The girl had lost track of how many days she had walked.
The trees by the roadside grew from short to tall and back to short again; the dirt road turned into a gravel road and then back into a dirt road.
The soles of the girl’s tattered shoes finally wore through, her toes protruding from the holes at the front and sides, frozen purple and black, like a small cluster of wild fruit struck by frost.
The girl sat by the roadside, looking down at her feet.
Her toes moved slightly, clearly devoid of sensation.
The girl sat for a long time.
The road stretched out before her, disappearing around a bend.
In the distance, the shadow of a mountain squatted, hazy and indistinct.
The girl thought, she might as well stop walking.
She would just sit here and wait for the sun to set, for night to fall, for dawn to break—anything.
She didn't want to move anymore.
She buried her face in her knees, hugging her calves with both hands, forcefully curling herself into a ball, tighter and tighter, until her ribs pressed painfully against her knees.
But when she didn't move, it was even colder.
Wind poured in from all directions... seeping through the torn hole in her collar, through the drafty seams of her sleeves, rising from the holes in her shoe soles, as if someone were pouring lake water into her body from head to toe.
It was too cold; eventually, the girl stopped shivering, only feeling her body grow heavy, her eyelids drooping, as if something was pulling her down from below.
Ultimately, the girl still stood up.
The girl didn't know why she stood up.
Perhaps it was the cold, or perhaps that lingering thought was still urging her on.
She stood up and continued forward.
Her left foot tiptoeing, her right foot supporting, step by step. She would rest for a while after every li of walking, then continue.
Passing a small village, a family at the village entrance was drying clothes in their courtyard.
A young woman, her back to the girl, was on tiptoes hanging a grey-blue garment on a clothesline.
Hearing a sound, the woman turned and saw the girl.
Her gaze fell from the girl's face, pausing for a moment on her frostbitten, purple toes.
The woman finished hanging her clothes and waved to the girl: “Come in.”
The girl stood motionless at the courtyard entrance.
The woman's face appeared very soft in the afternoon light, with a faint smile line at the corner of her eye. The woman repeated, “Come in, it’s cold outside.”
She went inside.
The courtyard wasn't large; its floor was packed yellow earth, hard underfoot. The kitchen was to the side of the main room, with low mud walls and a thatched roof from which faint wisps of green smoke rose.
The woman served her a bowl of hot porridge, with a few red dates floating on top. A thin layer of rice oil shimmered slightly on the surface of the porridge, trembling at the rim of the bowl.
The girl's hands trembled violently as she took the bowl, making the porridge ripple in fine circles.
The girl held the bowl with both hands, her fingers pressed against its warm surface. It was hot enough to make her gasp, yet she wouldn't let go.
The woman then gave her a pair of old shoes, made of black cloth with tightly stitched soles. She did not refuse them.
The woman said, “Stay here tonight; you can leave tomorrow.”
And so, the girl stayed.
The kitchen floor was covered with dry straw, a hundred times warmer than the base of the wall in the straw shed at the town entrance. She huddled in the straw pile, with the stove behind her.
There were embers in the stove chamber, radiating a gentle warmth through the mud wall, pressing against her back like a giant hand supporting her.
That night, the girl slept for a long time.
So long that when she awoke, the fire in the stove chamber had been rekindled. The woman squatted before the stove, adding firewood, her profile glowing red in the firelight.
The next morning, she helped the woman chop a pile of firewood.
However, the axe seemed a bit too heavy for the girl; her whole body swayed when she swung it, and she had to gasp for breath after chopping a single log.
But she did finish chopping it all.
The woman stood at the kitchen entrance, watching her: “Eat before you go.”
The girl ate another bowl of porridge.
This time, there was much more white rice.
Thus, the girl stayed there for three days.
She chopped firewood, carried water, swept the courtyard, gathered the fallen dry leaves under the jujube tree into a pile, and carried them in a bamboo basket to dump into the ditch at the village entrance.
The woman treated her quite well. She gave her food, let her sleep on the dry straw pile in the kitchen, and occasionally spoke a few words to her, asking where she came from and where she was going.
The girl responded vaguely, not answering fully. The woman didn't press her.
The girl thought then that if the woman was willing to keep her, she wouldn't go to the Immortal Sect.
She would stay in this village and help the woman with chores.
When she grew up, she could do even more work.
She could dig the roots of the jujube tree in the courtyard deeper, and help the woman re-tie the fence behind the house.
Though the girl dared not ask.
But that's what she thought in her heart.
On the morning of the fourth day, the woman squatted before the stove, serving her the last bowl of porridge.
The porridge was hot, and the bowl was still the coarse celadon one.
But when the woman stood up, she didn't hand the bowl to her; instead, she placed it on the stove.
The woman, her back to her, said, “You should go. My man will be back in a few days, and we can’t have an extra person in the house.”
The girl squatted by the stove, not looking up, her eyes fixed on the trampled dry straw on the ground. Stalks crisscrossed, pressed into the mud, with a few upturned ends poking at her shoetips.
She had worn the woman's black cloth shoes for three days; they were warm and dry, and now it was time to return them.
After a moment, she said, “Mm.”
The girl took off the black cloth shoes and placed them side by side by the stove, their toes pointing towards the door.
The woman said from behind her, “Keep the shoes.”
The girl refused.
The girl picked up her old, broken shoes from the corner, slipped her hand inside, and felt the hard, cold mud shell within before putting them back on. The holes in the soles were still there, her toes protruding from them once more.
She walked out of that family’s courtyard.
When she reached the village entrance, she looked back. The woman had already gone inside, and the courtyard was empty. A few more dry leaves had fallen from the jujube tree, drifting on the yellow earth, gently swirling as the wind pushed them.
When the girl spent the night huddled in a dilapidated temple by the mountain path, her feet were once again clad only in those toe-exposing broken shoes.
She squatted in the corner, hugging her knees, chin resting on her arms, her eyes fixed on the pitch-black night outside the temple door.
She didn't blame the woman. The woman had been good enough to her, so good that she almost thought it was something she could always have.
She stood up and continued walking.
Blood blisters on her feet burst and reformed layer after layer, breaking again and regrowing, until finally, the skin and flesh congealed into a hard scab, as if her sole had mended itself with a new shell. Her legs were terribly weak, her knees shaking whether bent or straightened.
She would walk a stretch, sit by the roadside for a while, then stand up and walk again.
The girl didn't remember how many times she stopped, only that the last part of the journey was incredibly slow, so slow that when she lifted her foot, it took a long time to put it back down.
Eventually, she arrived.
At the mountain gate, a disciple stopped her. The disciple wore a grayish-blue Daoist robe, and his gaze, when he looked down at her, first showed astonishment, then a complex expression that was hard to define.
It was as if he couldn't believe that the girl before him, as thin as a stick, with a filthy face and exposed toes, was a human being.
He asked the girl questions, but she didn't answer.
Her throat was too dry, her lips stuck together; opening her mouth only produced a rustling gasp.
Just then, a woman walked out from inside the mountain gate. Dressed in plain white, her cuffs adorned with silver-gray patterns, a jade token hung at her waist.
The woman glanced at the girl, then squatted before her, meeting her gaze directly. Her voice was neither too soft nor too loud: “What’s your name?”
The girl shook her head, squeezing out two words from her throat, hoarse and dry: “None.”
The woman looked into her eyes for a long moment.
Her gaze shifted from the girl's face to her toe-exposing broken shoes, then back to her face, before she stood up.
A middle-aged man, who appeared to be a deacon, walked over and glanced at the sky.
At that moment, the wind at the mountain gate was whipping up freshly fallen snow particles and scattering them against the gateposts. He casually remarked, “The snow will stop soon.”
The woman tilted her head, glanced at the sparse snow outside the door, then looked down at the girl.
Snowflakes landed on her hair, on the ragged clothes covering her shoulders, melting one by one, then falling again, then melting again.
The woman reached out and brushed the snow from the girl’s shoulders.
“Then let’s call you Lu Xueqing.”
The girl stood at the mountain gate, the snow on her hair no longer melting, accumulating in a thin white layer, like a soft cap covering her messy hair.
Lu Xueqing lifted her face, gazing at the plain white figure before her, unable to utter a single word.
The wind blew snow particles into her eyes; she blinked, then blinked again.
By now, the snow on Lu Xueqing’s eyelashes had melted into water, streaming down her cheeks, mixing with the already dry dust on her face, carving two thin, clean streaks.
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