When Liu Boqin wakes up, he is holding a hunting spear.
Two-World Mountain, autumn rain. A monk from Chang'an stands at the mountain pass, asking him to escort him across. He knows the monk is called Tang Sanzang. He knows a monkey is trapped beneath that mountain. He knows the journey for scriptures has eighty-one trials. He has read the original story.
But what he doesn't know is this: in the original story, Liu Boqin bids farewell halfway through the journey, then never appears again. His story has no ending. He doesn't know how to live, or how to die.
The rain falls. He picks up his hunting spear and walks into it.
From a hunter at Two-World Mountain, to an immortal official in the Celestial Court, to a sage in a new world. From a single hunting spear to an oil-paper umbrella carried through the Three Realms. Years later, every god and Buddha remembers the same scene: deep in the curtain of rain, someone approaches beneath an umbrella. Its paper is yellowed, its ribs smooth and warm. The person beneath it says, “It's all right now.”
Then the rain stops.
