The night only made the candlelight playing along Shen Zhen’s face seem all the brighter. She appeared so serene while Lu Yan’s heartbeats reverberated throughout his body, his heart threatening to jump out of his chest. He had never imagined that, one day, the girl he kept would think herself in need of worrying about incense money.
Lowering his eyes, he counted the landscape paintings scattered through the table. Twenty in total. His eyes dimmed. They had only been back to the capital for three days. Shen Zhen could not be accused of having been idle.
Seeing him holding her paintings between his fingers, Shen Zhen hurried to speak.
“Could Your Lordship please sell these for me?”
Lu Yan’s expression was complicated. Her paintings could compare to those of the most renowned artists of their time, that much he had to admit. Her landscapes were bustling with life, faithful reproductions of the sceneries they had witnessed on their trip to and from Yangzhou. Her mountains were foggy, her forests would surprise one with the appearance of a lone spring, her skies were travelled by tender clouds. But, truth be told, there were few people in the Empire who truly understood art. And those who did could unfortunately not extend a helping hand of the pecuniary sort to a talented beauty in distress. No, their world was one of elegant ignoramuses. These people of the capital, with their expensive pens and ink, were only ever interested in the name at the bottom of a painting. What could they understand about the character of a brush stroke, about the tenderness or decisiveness of a line?!
And even if she did succeed in selling all of her paintings, only an idiot, an idiot, could believe she would be able to gather the amount of money necessary to invite Great Monk Yuan Shen to recite the scriptures for her deceased mother! Had she still been Marquis Yunyang’s third daughter, the whole temple would have been closed to visitors for her to worship in peace. However, she was not Marquis Yunyang’s third daughter anymore. As such, the funds needed to buy herself the goodwill of Daxingshan’s monks greatly exceeded anything she could gather by selling thousands of paintings. But Lu Yan was more than willing to advance these funds!
Having experienced the repercussions of his involuntary cruelty in reminding Shen Zhen about her fallen status, he was certainly not going to twist the knife in the wound by telling her all this. He was known for being diplomatic. Here was an opportunity to make use of his skills.
“Why do you not tell me when you need money?”, he asked in a heavy voice, frowning lightly enough to convey disappointment without sending her into a fearful frenzy.
He was most certainly a cold man. Potentially the coldest man in the whole empire, generally untouched as he was by all exhibits of human misery. And yet … Yet, he wanted Shen Zhen to wholly rely on him. He could give her no title, no position in society. But this did not mean he wished to treat her badly in all things he could offer her. At least, not anymore! Whatever she wanted and that was in his power to give, without revealing her whereabouts or connecting her name to his in society, he would give.
However, Shen Zhen’s ideas always ran counter to his. For one, she still hoped this would prove but a fleeting affair. In addition, she had hands and feet. She could paint and was also proficient in the art of making cosmetics. If she wished to have copper coins at hand, she would do what she had done before Lu Yan had appeared in her life, work for her subsistence. The idea of direct exchange of money between them nauseated her. Therefore, as Lu Yan so generously, and somewhat desperately, offered his purse to her, a certain resistance transpired through the Third Miss Shen’s beautiful eyes. How could he not see it? Rubbing at her hair, whether to placate her or himself, he collected all of her paintings, trying to make them disappear behind his back, as if they were particularly offensive to the eye, though they were everything but.
“I have already prepared incense money for you.”
Shen Zhen stumbled back in panic. She would not, she could not, use the money he was giving her as a payment for what she let him do in the darkest of the night to pray for her mother’s eternal peace!
“N-No!”
He observed her horror, wondering how not to ruffle her feathers but make her understand that without his pecuniary assistance, she could forget her dream of having a Great Monk chant scriptures for her mother. Pursing his lips, he was left speechless. Seeing as he was being his enigmatic self again, Shen Zhen was not sure whether she had affronted him. However, she was unwilling to run the risk of having any ill feelings fester between the two of them. She knew she would bear the brunt of them. Grabbing softly onto his hand, she used her most conciliating tone to explain.
“Your Lordship, this is not any money. This is the money I will use to pray for Mother’s peace in death. It must convey my sincerity to the Heavens. Where is the sacrifice in using Your Lordship’s money? How could I feel at ease doing so?”
Lu Yan could not but sigh.
“Do you realize how much these paintings will sell for?”
“How could I not know, Your Lordship? Whatever I can get for them, I will take.”
When misfortune had befallen the Marquisate, Shen Zhen had been left to desperately try and sell whatever was in their possession. She was very much aware of the value of virtually any merchandise in the world, let alone her little paintings. Had she not known their true value, she would have not rushed to paint twenty of them in three days.
Lu Yan’s eyes strayed to her little hand, blackened by ink. Squeezing her face, he could not conceal a disgusted pout. There were many grievances he had found he could bear in Shen Zhen’s company, however filth was not among them.
“Very well. Come back to the house with me and wash your hands.”
“Your Lordship should go rest”, Shen Zhen retorted with a conciliating smile on her lips.
“I will stay to paint another picture or so.”
At those words, she turned walked back to the table, grabbing onto a brush and dipping it into ink. Lu Yan was left to simply stare at her for a long while, scowling and having her completely disregard his presence. He bore it for a long while until he lost patience and walked towards her, grabbing onto the back of her neck with one hand. Leaning in, he whispered in a dangerously soft voice:
“Have you not heard what I said?!”
The hand on her nape might have been warm, it still sent an ominous shiver down Shen Zhen’s back. She let the brush in her hand slip, knowing better than to continue disobeying someone as unpredictable as Lu Yan.
Back in Lanyue Pavilion, after a quick wash, Shen Zhen came to lie down beside an exhausted Lu Yan. He would have most blissfully fallen asleep, lulled as he was by the fresh perfume of her skin, if she had not decided, after a short while to twist about in bed. Stretching out his hand, he found the girl besides him shriveled up like a dry leaf.
“Are you menstruating?”
Shen Zhen let a dazed groan of ascent out.
“When did it start?”
“Today”, Shen Zhen answered, not sensing danger and therefore easily speaking the truth.
Lu Yan propped himself up on an elbow, a frightening sneer at the corner of his lips.
“Wonderful! Shen Zhen, do you have no consideration for your own body?! Is this a new way of worshipping I didn’t know of?! Mortifying the flesh?!”
She knew she suffered from severe pain during her period! And yet, she spent the whole day in the Eastern Room, with that horrid draft that drove Lu Yan, a man, insane, let alone her! If she did not care for her own health and wellbeing, who would?!
Shen Zhen’s back stifled under his reprimands, making her unable to speak back. However, after a short while, she felt a warm palm slithering past her waist and coming to rest over her lower abdomen.
“Your Lordship …”
Shen Zhen turned two very aggrieved eyes back to stare at him. Lu Yan pulled her into his embrace, his breath caressing the top of her head.
“You have painted twenty pictures and that is all you will paint for the time being. If I hear you’ve as much as come close to a brush tomorrow, I promise to burn all the stationeries in Chengyuan! Understood?!”
“Yes.”
What else could she do but obey his whims?!
The matter surrounding Shen Zhen’s selling her paintings for incense money had already shaken Lu Yan to his foundations. He had not expected to be struck by lightning, or something very like it, first thing in the morning!
Shen Zhen had actually pulled out a box filled with all the jewelry he had bought her back in Yangzhou and started estimating the value of every piece! He must have paid six hundred copper pieces in total. However, since they were in the capital and everything sold for much more, she believed she could sell the whole for seven hundred and twenty copper pieces.
Staring at the necklaces, bracelets, head ornaments and the account book in Shen Zhen’s hands, Lu Yan felt rage griping him. He had chosen every piece personally, aware she was a connoisseur in the field. All of gold and the best jade, all inlaid with the purest gems! And here she was, estimating their worth so she could sell them! He laughed angrily.
Had he called her stupid?! The only stupid one was him, obviously. She settled accounts better than anyone else he knew!
Heartless! Only a woman with no feelings, no attachment, not the smallest consideration for the man who shared her bed could give one such an attack. She wanted to drive him to apoplexy! Lu Yan choked, his brows furrowing, his temples pounding and a disagreeable ringing settling in his ears.
He resisted the urge to flip the table with all of the jewelry over and scream his rage to the world, and to Shen Zhen more particularly. Rather, he turned on his heels, walking out of Chengyuan expressionlessly. Not even the charming ‘Your Lordship’ that followed him out did not make him slow his stride. Stepping onto his carriage, he slammed the door violently, the only thing escaping his fury being a pile of paintings that he handed to Yang Zong as he alighted in front of the Supreme Court.
Yang Zong doubtfully eyed the pack of scrolls.
“Young Master, these would be …”
Lu Yan’s lips curled up into a self-deprecating smile.
“Take them to my study back at the Estate and put them away so no one can see them.”
As he stepped up the stone steps leading to the entrance to the Supreme Court, he passed by the drum that the citizens of Chang’an came to beat when they had grievances to redress. In a fit of supreme anger, he kicked it. And he?! Where could he go to have his grievances redressed?!
Time flashed by and in a blink of an eye, it was already March seventh.
Lu Yan had promised he would accompany Shen Zhen to Daxingshan Temple. However, all of Chang’an and its suburbs had chosen that very day to kick up a dust. Someone had come to beat the drums early in the morning.
They had a jolly case of mass murder on their hands! At the Blue Gate Inn, in Anshan Lane, southern part of the city, a family of six had been slaughtered, for lack of a better world, overnight. And what a death! The heads of the corpses had been cut off and hung from the beams in the room. Neither the elderly nor the children had been spared. The money had not been stolen; the young women had not been raped.
Lu Yan truly wished to know what that family had done to earn itself such hatred. They had not been butchered for money or for the pleasure of rape, not that mere thieves or rapists would have had the courage to attack a family of six! A very determinate enemy had gotten ridden of them.
And such tragedy had befallen them when Judge Zheng had decided he would spend the day in bed, prostrate because of a migraine. Of course, Official Sun, being a junior, had been sent out to be jostled by the carriage and to breathe in the wonderful perfume of rotting corpses. So, someone, in this case Lu Yan, had to be left behind to receive whoever else wished to report a few more mass murders throughout the day! The people of Chang’an should not have reason to say the officials at the Supreme Court did nothing all day long while the capital was burned to the ground by unrest.
Therefore, the only thing Lu Yan had been in the power to do for Shen Zhen had been to send her over under the aegis of a trustful coachman.
The carriage conveying Shen Zhen to the temple turned a corner, revealing Daxingshan Temple’s yellow walls and gray tiles, tall and dignified as it was. And right by Daxingshan, there was an ancient tower – the Longye Pagoda. The Longye Pagoda was nine stories high, octagonal in shape with luxurious gates at every floor. Standing under its eaves, one could hear the wind chimes ringing. A sound not only pleasant to the ears but also adding a touch of sacredness to the whole estate.
Since the seventh day of March was no holiday, there were not many pilgrims in the temple, making it look a little deserted. However, had it been the eighth of April, the birthday of Gautama Buddha, one would have been sure to encounter a crowd black with people. After all, not only the people of Chang’an made the trip to Daxingshan Temple to burn incense. Besides Yangzhou, Jingzhou and Luoyang, some people came from as far as the Western Regions, Goryeo and distant Japan.
Shen Zhen, accompanied by Tangyue, was led into the main hall of Daxingzhan Temple by the guest-welcoming monk. The temple worshipped three holy bodies, the “Three Sages of the Flower Garland Sutra”. In the middle rose the Vairocana Buddha, also known as the Buddha of Retribution. On its left, a statue of the Manjushri Bodhisattva. On its right, one of the Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. In addition, there was a large temple bell in the hall, only awaiting to be shaken.
(Translator’s Note: The Flower Garland Sutra, also known as the Avatamsaka Sutra, describes a cosmos of infinite realms upon realms, mutually containing one another. It is the foundation for the creation of the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, known as Hwaeom in Korea and Kegon in Japan. The Vairocana Buddha is interpreted in the Flower Garland Sutra as one of Gautama Buddha’s three bodies. He would be the embodiment of vacuity, emptiness and void. The Manjushri Bodhisattva is identified as the oldest and most significant bodhisattva in Mahāyāna/Tibetan Buddhism. He embodies transcendent wisdom. The Samantabhadra Bodhisattva associated with practice and meditation.)
It is in front of the Manjushri Bodhisattva that Shen Zhen fell on her knees. Manjushri had been enshrined as the incarnation of supreme wisdom and great compassion. He was said to save all living beings from suffering and to purify them of their sins. With closed eye, her hands joined in supplication, Shen Zhen chanted his praise for a long time.
After shaking the sacred bamboo slip at the entrance of the hall and kowtowing respectfully, the guest-welcoming monk walked over with the donations book. Shen Zhen could obviously not sign her name, so she simply wrote the sum of her donation down.
Sixty copper coins. That was the money Lu Yan had given her just the night before. Shen Zhen was very well aware her paintings could not have fetched such a price. Had she painted forty instead of twenty landscapes, she would still not have earned herself that much money. But that wretched man’s face had been so menacing when he had shoved the purse between her fingers that she had not dared refuse. Shen Zhen sighed silently. Yet another sum to add to the debt to be paid once she recovered her freedom.
The guest-welcoming monk smiled obsequiously.
“The venerable Master Yuan Shen is still reciting the “Humane King Sutra”. He shall be with the Miss presently. The Miss may wait in the guest room, if she is so kind.”
(Translator’s Note: The Humane King Sutra’s target audience is the rulership (i.e. monarchs, presidents, prime ministers, etc.). The interlocutors in most scriptures are apprentices on the path of becoming Bodhisattva or Bodhisattvas. However, in this sutra the discussants in this text are the kings of the sixteen ancient regions of India. Rather than meditation and wisdom, it promotes “humaneness” and “forbearance”, these being the most applicable religious values for the governance of a Buddhist state.)
Shen Zhen did indeed follow the guest-welcoming monk into the guest room, taking a seat as he turned on his heels and closed the door behind her. At that moment, a female pilgrim appeared from behind a corner, trying to pass her through the doorframe before the door were closed. The guest-welcoming monk stopped her at once.
“Dear Benefactress, no one is allowed to enter without the abbot’s permission.”
The female pilgrim snatched the book of donations out of the monk’s hands, opening it wide and rapidly reading through the names.
“So, just with sixty copper coins, one can ask your Great Monk Yuan Shen to personally recite scriptures and dispel the darkness of doubt?”
The guest-monk smiled obsequiously, snickering deep inside of himself.
“Dear Benefactress, Buddhism is centered on cause and effect. All is predetermined by the cycle of karma. How could such extrinsic things as these have any effect on reincarnation?”
Offended, the female pilgrim shoved the book back into the monk’s hands, before departing in a stride any general would have been proud of. After the female pilgrim had become nothing but a shrinking point on the horizon, a novice monk who had been sweeping close by approached obsequiously, asking his superior in awe:
“Really, just sixty copper coins of incense money?!”
The guest-welcomed monk slapped the boy’s bald head sonorously.
“Where is this about money?! It is about merit!”
The guest-welcoming monk lowered his head, observing the donations book between his fingers. Where could sixty copper coins be enough?! Not even six hundred would have made Master Shen Yuan as much as shake his mala beads.
It is in the side hall that Shen Zhen finally met Grand Monk Shen Yuan. The side hall had been dedicated to the Thousand-armed Goddess of Mercy, surrounded by five hundred arhats of gold. One could not but be overcome with awe at their sight.
(Translator’s Note: Guanyin, also known as the Goddess of Mercy, is a Bodhisattva associated with compassion. She is considered the most widely beloved Buddhist divinity. Some Buddhist and Christian observers have commented on the similarity between Guanyin and Mary, mother of Jesus. This can be attributed to the representation of Guanyin holding a child in Chinese art and sculpture; it is believed that Guanyin is the patron saint of mothers and grants parents filial children. An arhat is a person far advanced along the path of Enlightenment, but who may not have reached full Buddhahood.)
Before leaving, Shen Zhen took one last look at the lush green hills behind her, lulled by the sound of gurgling spring water and calmed by the soft movement of the hanging plaque announcing Daxingshan Temple in the wind. Remembering the voice of Great Mong Shen Yuan just now, she felt like she could depart from this idyllic scene in peace, a little bit readier to affront the storm that awaited back in Chengyuan. As she entered the carriage, she let the curtain drop, concealing the scenery on her way back to her and concealing her to prying eyes. The carriage drove slowly, as the music of wind bells from the eaves of the pagoda gradually disappeared. At four minutes past eleven, Tangyue helped Shen Zhen alight from the carriage.
“Miss, be careful. Your foot is still fragile.”
Neither noticed the silhouette of another person standing at the corner of the alley leading to Chengyuan, observing them …
