First-person narration, rambling and dreamlike.
No clear chronological order, only collisions between points in time.
Sickly, troublemaking, beautiful little tyrant × drunken lecher and shameless flatterer
One day, on a lonely platform in Wuchuan, I, an udumbara flower, heard the sounds of war drums. In a daze, I remembered how I once mocked the fair-skinned Crown Prince of the Buddha, who had spent six years in the mountains before attaining enlightenment and the title of Buddha. It had taken far too long.
I was once heartless. The moment I took human form, I could become a Buddha.
But I was also deeply loving. For the sake of one Changqing, I gave up a whole lifetime of Changqing.
How sad, how tragic. Giving him up was my choice.
Changqing forgot the three faces that had stirred my heart for the sake of “Changmie,” and calmly gave me up.
Now, after years of wandering, the black udumbara had turned to ash. I had spent centuries in vain on the empty mountain.
My divine presence was gone, my wisdom vanished, and even the flower’s original colors had withered.
And yet Changqing came looking for me again, wanting me to vanish into ash.
Years later, old friends were like perilous towers collapsing, and old affections like riverbeds gone dry.
Changqing was gone, and so was Changmie.
At last, I understood his many loves.
And I had lost my own capacity to love.
Leaning on a dry branch, I returned to the celestial chamber of the Three Thousand Courtyards, where I lay down and awoke.
Who knows how many years had passed? The wind chimes beside my ears shattered, carrying a faint hint that an old friend had returned.
The black udumbara, evergreen through the ages, awoke from its dream and saw the spring morning sun. I rose, picked up a brush, and began to confide the past to paper.
