Volume One: New Rain Chapter Eighteen: Butterfly Dream

After everyone finished gossiping about Tao Yao, a round moon was already high in the branches above.

The night deepened, and the breeze grew chilly. Yet none of the few gathered by the fire were willing to go home just yet, all urging Dabai to tell them a story.

“All right, all right. It’s late tonight, so Dabai will tell only a very short story—just one! And when it’s done, you all must go home,” Dabai said, helplessly blowing at his beard.

“It’s not going to be that one, is it? ‘Once upon a time there was a mountain, in the mountain a little monk, and the little monk said once upon a time there was a mountain...’” Ye Mingke asked suspiciously.

“Of course... not. That’s the longest story—my story is very short. It’s called ‘Zhuang, Zhou, Dream, Butterfly.’”

“Though the books don’t say so, I think this story must also have happened on a quiet, boundless summer night like this one.”

“And the man called Zhuang Zhou wasn’t sleeping in a cramped little house, but right out under this brilliant, endless starlit sky.”

Everyone followed Dabai’s gaze upward, looking at the dazzling stars overhead. The sky was a deep blue, as if hiding endless possibilities and countless beautiful dreams.

Dabai began to tell the story—a beautiful story, and indeed a very short one, set down in books in just forty-eight characters.

“Long ago, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, fluttering and carefree, unaware he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly, he awoke, and he was Zhuang Zhou again. Was it Zhuang Zhou dreaming he was a butterfly, or the butterfly dreaming it was Zhuang Zhou?” [“Zhuangzi: The Equalization of Things”]

“So was it Zhuang Zhou who dreamed he had become a butterfly, or the butterfly who dreamed it had become Zhuang Zhou? It’s a story that can never be explained.”

“But this is only an inexplicable story—not an inexplicable question,” Dabai added, saying something none of them could understand.

“I don’t get it,” Tao Yao said, shaking his head in confusion.

“That wasn’t fun,” Mingke protested.

Only Qiao Qiao, resting her chin in her hands, gazed at the twinkling stars in the night sky, remembering again that dreamlike night several months before.

The many-headed monstrous birds, the walking corpses, the blood-red sky, the descent of the deity, and the final scene, which could only have been a nightmare.

No one believed what she saw that night—not even herself.

But was it really just a dream?

Unable to wring another story from Dabai, Mingke and Tao Yao said their goodbyes along with Qiao Qiao and headed home together.

After they left, Dabai climbed up into his treehouse, gazing out into the distant night sky. Though he hadn’t drunk any wine, he already felt tipsy.

“Was it the butterfly dreaming of Zhuang Zhou, or Zhuang Zhou dreaming of the butterfly?”

“A question that can never be explained is not a question at all.”

“But you silly boy, you were right—this really isn’t a fun story. Ha ha!”

He sang out from his perch in the tree, as if asking the heavens and the earth, or perhaps just himself, before finally dissolving into laughter.

“Drunk, asleep, and dreaming.”

He tumbled into sleep in his tree hollow, mumbling to himself.

In his dreams, the sound of rain grew like the tide, shrouding the world.

“Is it raining?”

After seeing Qiao Qiao home, Mingke was caught halfway by a sudden downpour.

The town’s summer rains always came and went without warning—just moments before, the stars had been shining bright, and then suddenly the clouds gathered, the wind rose, and the rain fell.

The roar of the rainfall drowned out the world, the storm pouring down in torrents.

Caught by the night rain, Ye Mingke grew anxious and quickened his pace toward home.

Night in the little town was always dark.

Now, as the hour grew late, with few lights and the rain falling in sheets, the world seemed a chaos of darkness, distant thunder rumbling in the sky.

Ye Mingke ran through the black, rainy night.

His eyes were closed.

He kept running.

He avoided puddles with uncanny accuracy, skirted trees that blocked his way, leapt over low stones. It was as if he could see everything before him perfectly.

The scent of things, the sound of raindrops splashing in puddles of varying depths, the instinctive tightening of his body just before he nearly collided with a stone.

It was as if he saw another world.

A world usually suppressed by sight, a wondrous world joined to his heart, breathing with him.

“Whew.” He reached the little house, opened his eyes, panting slightly, rain sliding down his face and body.

The moment he opened his eyes, the strange feeling vanished.

He stood in the rain at his door, looking back into the dark, rain-filled night, feeling as though he’d almost caught hold of something.

“To play chess, you must use your heart. If you don’t use your heart, how can you see the path of the pieces clearly?” Aunt Long’s words, spoken so lightly as she cracked her melon seeds, now seemed to make a certain sense.

Perhaps there really was a way to “see” with the heart.

He savored the strange sensation for a moment, then went inside, bathed, changed into dry clothes, and climbed into bed.

“Good night.”

He spoke to the storm still raging outside his window, then fell into a deep sleep.

Qiao Qiao did not sleep well that night.

Again and again she woke from frightful nightmares, each time just as thunder exploded across the sky and lightning flashed.

She didn’t scream, but sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. She listened, dazed, to the pounding rain, the scenes from her nightmares having driven away any trace of sleep.

She reached out her hand into the darkness beyond the window.

A crack of thunder.

A bright flash of lightning revealed her pale, childish face and equally pale hand in the gloom.

“Am I Qiao Qiao? Or a butterfly?”

She asked the darkness.

“Or...”

Another thunderclap drowned out her last question.

Or...

Or...

“Or Luo Qingxi.”

Suddenly, she remembered—the god in the temple had stroked her hair, murmuring quietly,

“Luo Qingxi, this is only a dream.”

Thunder rolled on and on outside, almost unbroken, making the earth tremble.

Qiao Qiao instinctively hugged her blanket close.

The night was cold.

The rain poured endlessly down.

Day broke.

But the sudden midnight storm continued off and on all day, turning the town’s lanes into a watery expanse.

Ye Mingke, as always, was up before dawn, chopping wood in the rain-filled courtyard, his pupils reflecting the candlelight from inside the house, bright and focused.

Uncle Jian pushed open the window and sat by it, quietly watching the young man who spent the entire rainy day splitting wood.

On rainy days, darkness always fell quickly, making it seem as though evening came soon after lunch.

Night fell.

Because it was the fifteenth of the month, the townsfolk ate dinner early, then shut their doors and fell asleep to the sound of unceasing rain.

Sleep claimed them.

As the hour of You arrived, even the rowdiest children—who had still been tossing and turning—quickly lost consciousness and drifted off.

A darkness thicker than the night itself, like fog or a rising tide, swallowed the town. And in the darkness, a filthy, bloody red began to seep through.

The rain still fell, hissing, tinged with crimson, swaying in the wind.

From the darkness emerged troops of corpses, clad in decaying armor, marching in step and prowling the night. They seemed to sense the rain as well, raising their empty eye sockets toward the black sky above.

Raindrops from the highest heavens fell into their hollow eyes.

High in the sky drifted flocks of monstrous, fire-tailed birds—Moonbanes—whose fiery reflection danced in the rain.

A lone Moonbane, separated from its flock, stood on the roof of a house. Its five sinuous necks stretched upward, gazing at the rain-filled night, letting out a thin, mournful wail like a girl’s sobs.

Was it lamenting its solitude, or weeping for the stormy, benighted world and the ignorant, lost multitudes below?

“My good man, you do love to overthink. Who’s to say the cries of this monster bird aren’t just its laughter? Maybe it’s perfectly happy inside.”

Suddenly, the sound of footsteps splashing through the water approached. The steps sounded perfectly ordinary, and in this eerie night, that made them seem all the more out of place.

The footsteps drew near: two people, neither carrying any rain gear, came out of the downpour.

They walked through the puddles as they pleased, yet neither mud nor rain touched them. As they passed, the monsters made way for them. The solitary Moonbane, hearing their voices, shrieked and took flight into the night sky.

The pair stopped before the smithy. The first, still wearing a tall scholar’s cap, bowed in the direction of Uncle Jian’s bamboo house—it was the Scholar.

“I am Zhuang Sheng. Tonight I come, uninvited, to seek an answer from the Sword Sovereign Jian Nantian!”

Though the Scholar was second only to the village chief in status, whenever he addressed Uncle Jian, he was always respectful in manner. Even after being beaten back last time, he never dropped the honorifics.

“Is all that ceremony really necessary?” muttered the man behind him, clearly dissatisfied.

The man, dressed as a hunter, was Old Chang, the town’s huntsman.

“You must be here to ask about Mingke entering the Divine Mountain so many times?” The door creaked open. Jian Nantian did not come out; he merely stopped his wheelchair at the entrance, exchanging glances with the Scholar through the darkness.

“With only the two of you here, I can guess your intentions.”

“There are less than six years left, and you’ve made no progress in breaking through the Six Paths. You must want to speed things up.”

“Though Mingke trains in the Divine Mountain, I have not taught him any cultivation methods—he remains an ordinary mortal. I have not broken our original agreement.”

Jian Nantian’s calm words carried clearly through the rain.

“Easy for you to say. Didn’t you break the rules by opening the Divine Mountain?” Old Chang muttered.

“Old Chang!” the Scholar barked. “Don’t forget, tonight you are only my attendant. I am in charge here.”

“I have not lifted the mountain’s restrictions, nor tampered with its formation,” Uncle Jian added evenly.

“Let’s make a new agreement, then,” the Scholar said, turning with grave formality. “The ban on Divine Mountain will be relaxed, allowing disciples to train, but the restrictions and the formation remain unchanged, until the Six Desolations Array is broken in six years’ time.”

“Agreed,” said Jian Nantian.

“We take our leave.” The Scholar bowed once more, turning away with Old Chang.

After they had walked some distance, Old Chang couldn’t help but ask,

“Scholar, you are the Celestial Master of the Azure Palace—when you meet the Supreme One you need not bow, so why do you show such courtesy to a man of no rank?”

“Rituals are not for others, but for oneself.”

“Such a man, such deeds; even if the body cannot reach, the heart yearns for it.”