Chapter 57

Zhou Yue always thought that the temple that Jiang Huai often visited was the kind of temple with unusually prosperous incense, but in fact it was not. The ancient temple was deserted and located on the top of the mountain. Zhou Yue stood under the plaque on the mountain gate, looking up at Cangjie's powerful words "Don't seek outside", and listening to the bell echoing in the heavy twilight.

The temple is quiet and empty, with layers of grey tiled roofs surrounding a towering black nine-story pagoda in the center.

And this is just the layout from a bird's-eye view. If you are in this low-rise building complex, standing under the layered black eaves, you can see a road that goes deep into the clouds.

It had rained all night, and the stone steps were wet and covered with black moss. Looking up, the black "ladder to heaven" became more and more ethereal and shrouded in swirling clouds, as if as long as you climbed the steps with a sincere heart to seek Buddha, you would be able to ascend to heaven and become an immortal.

The elder's scarlet cassock and Buddhist banners fluttered in the wind. The open space around the nine-story pagoda was filled with novice monks chanting scriptures. They put their hands together, bowed their heads and closed their eyes. No one looked up at the woman in black who was bowing her head with every step on the ladder.

The stone steps were too slippery. Exhausted, she had to kneel down on them every time she stood up. She would fall down two or three steps for every step she climbed. In the end, she could only hold on to the steps with her hands and drag her body up.

The black veil could not cover her long, fluttering hair. A faint silver flash could be seen in the gloomy sky, echoing the dull thud of her kneecaps.

The mountain wind was howling, and in a trance she really left this world. The people and Buddhist banners under the tower... all turned into small dots.

Jiang Huai, surrounded by monks in three layers, became a small white dot. He sat in a rosewood armchair, trembling violently due to coughing, and his white clothes and white hair fluttered in the wind.

"Madam." Liao Jie walked up without changing his expression or heartbeat. He stood five or six steps behind her and called her.

She continued to climb the moss-covered stone steps without saying a word, leaving a long trail of blood behind her, but she was still in pain, a pain she could not relieve. She racked her brains to search her memory, but there was not a single frame in which he was angry with her. He always smiled at her, a smile without regrets.

But she was shaken. She was tired of being poor. She loved money and wanted the things that other girls liked. Compared with the dazzling jewelry and gold and silver in the mall, his candied haws, his ragged white T-shirt covered with coal dust and the change soaked with sweat in his trouser pockets were so shabby that she couldn't raise her head. She didn't want him anymore.

He was so smart, how could he not know that the so-called "for his own good" was a lie that even she believed in. She could deceive herself, but she couldn't deceive him.

But he never blamed her once, like a dog that had been abandoned by its owner across thousands of miles to find him, enduring humiliation and torture along the way. But the moment he saw her, he wagged his tail at her. If she raised her hand, he would stretch his head towards her for her to pet, following her closely and asking her, "Would you like some candied haws? I'll buy you some."

She knelt on the slippery stone steps, her head resting on the sticky, blood-stained moss, and broke off the last nail.

Liao Jie raised his eyebrows and said no more. He followed her from the dusk to the starry sky. Finally, when he saw the flickering candlelight in the main hall, the night had become thinner.

"Madam's sincerity is witnessed by heaven and earth, even Buddha would be moved." Liao Jie looked down at his watch, then raised his head to face the Buddha statue standing upright in the temple and sighed silently.

"What kind of person is Buddha?" Zhou Yue knelt on the bright yellow cushion with her head bowed, her hair scattered in clumps. She laughed faintly and could not even finish a sentence. "Boss Jiang is much more useful than Buddha."

Liao Jie smiled, sat down on the red cloth platform, glanced back at the Buddha statue enshrined in the shrine, and said, "Madam, you are a smart person. You know how Mr. Jiang feels about you. Even if you don't kneel down on the steps today, he won't do anything to you or the child."

Zhou Yue said nothing, staring at his bloodied hands without looking up. He lit a cigarette and puffed away for a moment at the mottled red eaves. Then he stood up, threw the butt on the ground, and stomped it out. He said calmly, "Boss Jiang asked me to tell you something. He said that since you've been kneeling all the way here today, whether it was for him or someone else, we won't talk about the past."

Liao Jie smiled politely and looked at Zhou Yue's face. "Isn't that what you mean? Don't make Mr. Jiang sad in the future. It will be difficult for us to be his subordinates."

…

"Don't worry." Zhou Yue looked up at the towering Golden Buddha in the Buddhist hall. He had half-closed his eyes and looked down at her compassionately. "It won't happen again."

Jiang Huai's illness really got better slowly. Not long after, Aunt Xu said that he went back to "work". Sometimes she also said that he went to Li Songzhu. Li Songzhu was more pregnant than Zhou Yue thought and was about to give birth. Zhou Yue didn't know how Aunt Xu knew all this, so she chose not to ask.

Jiang Huai still lived in that old house that looked like a snake's den, and Zhou Yue still lived in a villa halfway up the mountain. On weekdays, no one visited each other's place.

It was as if he didn't want to see her anymore, and it was as if he suddenly didn't know how to get along with her. Sometimes he would call her out of the blue, and then be silent for a long time on the other end of the phone, and then ask her, "Are you okay?"

"fine."

"Um."

"What's up?"

"It's okay." He said it was okay, but the almost inaudible sound of his breathing was still clearly audible in the quiet of the night. "Aunt Xu said you are still in a wheelchair."

"Well, I can't stand up."

There was silence on the other side, but the breathing sound was still there.

"I need milk every day, I'm hanging up."

"Oh, okay."

She hung up the phone and sat in front of the floor-to-ceiling window in Tiantian's room, looking at the dim car lights on the distant winding mountain road. The phone tapped against her knees again and again. She had almost forgotten the dance she had learned over the years. The only advantage was that her bones and ligaments were stronger than those of ordinary people. Of course she could stand up, but some things could not be rushed.

After that, things were quiet for a long time. Jiang Huai would occasionally call her and tell her, "The principal called me and said you can go back to class anytime."

"No, I'd scare the students." She sat in her wheelchair, looking at her mechanical skull and newly grown white hair in the mirror, and smiled, "I'm old too."

“It’s okay to open a shop.”

…

"No, thank you."

Later, someone from Jianghuai found Xiaocao from somewhere and sent someone to bring him over. At first, he ran around the yard and Aunt Xu couldn't catch him. Later, when he saw Zhou Yue, he stopped running and came out from the bushes, with his big fluffy tail raised and swaggered around her legs. He then strolled around the villa and finally stopped at Tiantian's room. He stood up like a human, supported himself on the railing of the crib to look at him, sniffed his kiwi-like little head, jumped up with a meow, and fell asleep beside him.

At noon on the Mid-Autumn Festival, Zhou Yue was pushed by Aunt Xu to the backyard to bask in the sun. The sun was shining brightly, making her too sleepy to open her eyes. Her nose was filled with the warm fragrance of grass and bellflowers. She sat in a wheelchair and looked at the bushes in the backyard. She heard a faint sound and turned around to see a black Rolls-Royce and a silver Bentley swimming silently out of the dense forest like sharks, one after the other, and stopped in the driveway in front of the door. The white wall blocked her view, and she could only hear the sound of the car doors opening and closing.

She turned around. The floor-to-ceiling window in Tiantian's room faced the backyard. After a while, she saw Jiang Huai walking into Tiantian's room from outside. He was wearing a light blue satin shirt and white trousers. His gold-rimmed glasses were shiny and cold. His face was still pale, but his complexion was better. He no longer had that gloomy and cunning look. His feminine face was soft, almost weak. Zhou Yue turned her back before he could look at her.

The window was open, and the melodious sound of a children's song could be heard. "Long time no see," Zhou Yue heard him whisper, "Did you miss me?"

Tiantian whispers in a baby voice, like a kitten's meow: "I want to."

"I miss you too," he said.

After that, the two of them chatted in whispers for a while, but I couldn't hear clearly what they were saying, and I could only hear Tiantian's laughter.

When she could no longer hear the sound, Zhou Yue turned around. There was no one in the room, but there was the sound of a piano in the living room. It was like a child's hands pressing on the keys to play a messy tune. It seemed that Jiang Huai had taken Tiantian to the living room to play. It was past dinner time, and Tiantian was so excited that he would not take a nap for a while.

Zhou Yue straightened the blanket covering her legs and continued to bask in the sun. A white cloud floated across the blue sky, like cotton candy. On a sunny day like this, you should be able to see stars at night. Sometimes Tiantian cried at night, so she would carry him to the yard, where there were flowers, grass, and unknown little insects. He would soon stop crying, his round little head turning around, sucking his fingers while pointing to the night sky for her: "Stars, Mommy, stars."

"What's that next to the star?"

"Yueyue."

He is almost two years old, but still doesn't talk much. Sometimes Zhou Yue would start to daydream while playing the piano. When she came to her senses and looked back, she found him sitting on the carpet looking at her. When she noticed him, he would smile silently at her, showing his small teeth that looked like plant buds, and he would happily pick up his toys and chew them, making his saliva all over the place.

Zhou Yue thought that it might be because Jiang Huai spoke Cantonese and Shanghainese to Tiantian when he was just born, and now she spoke Mandarin, which confused Tiantian. Until one time he took a bath, wrapped in a bath towel and lay in her arms like a hot little potato, sucking her nipples greedily, staring at her for a long time, and suddenly said in a clear voice: "Be good, Mommy, don't cry, Tiantian is here." She realized that he just liked silence.

There was a rustling sound coming from the bushes. Zhou Yue thought it was the grass. She focused her attention and looked over. She saw a girl with a few dead leaves stuck in her hair. She was looking around, not knowing what she was looking for.

Zhou Yue tilted her head and looked at her. She was very young, in her early twenties, a few years younger than her, and very pretty, but her eyes were a little strange, not like those of her age. It was more suitable for a child of seven or eight years old.

"Are you looking for the kitten?" Zhou Yue smiled at her. She was stunned for a moment and turned her head away arrogantly. "Ajie won't let me talk to you."

Zhou Yue found it amusing and laughed, "Who are we?"

She was very proud when she heard it and said, "It's someone I don't know!"

"Oh...if you don't know me now, won't you know me next time?"

This question was obviously beyond the girl's scope of speech. Perhaps no one communicated with her in this way, so she stopped talking, but her eyes turned quietly to look at Zhou Yue, and she did not leave.

"You can look for her there." Zhou Yue pointed to the ginkgo tree where there was a cat bed that looked like a small house, bathed in sunlight. "That's where she sleeps."

After hearing this, the girl looked at the cat's bed longingly, then lowered her head to look at her feet, glanced at Zhou Yue with a red face, and turned her head away unhappily.

Zhou Yue looked at the toes of her shoes exposed under her long skirt from behind. They were one big and one small, and the direction was also awkward. She was turned inward very badly.

She lowered her head and thought for a moment, then bent down in her wheelchair and clapped her hands at the low bushes. "Grass? Grass? Suck!"

After a moment of silence, the dry bushes rustled, and a long-haired calico cat emerged, meowing coquettishly. With its graceful cat steps, it rubbed against Zhou Yue's legs. She took the opportunity to pull its neck hair up, held it in her arms and stroked it a few times, then handed it to the girl with a smile, "Here, hold it. Be careful, she's fat."

The girl turned her head to look at her, hesitated for a moment, and finally limped over. She tentatively touched Xiao Cao's head once, twice, smiled, and held her in her arms, stroking her from head to tail and scratching her chin.

Xiaocao was stiff and didn't dare to move at first, but now he felt comfortable being served. He turned over like a boss and lay on his back in the girl's arms like a cat pancake.

"So cute." The girl smiled, her eyes and eyebrows curved into crescents, and she sat down on the long wooden chair under the ginkgo tree, petting the cat.

"It's good not to talk." Zhou Yue leaned back in her chair and looked at the fiery clouds in the sky. "My legs are broken and I can't go anywhere. It's good for us to stay here for a while."

The girl was humming a song, pretending not to hear her words, and also tilting her neck to look at the sunset. Her white skirt was dyed a gentle orange, and her feet hidden under the skirt slowly stretched out. Now Zhou Yue could see clearly that one of her legs was not well developed. It was thinner and shorter than the other. She could walk, but not fast or far. No wonder she had to use a wheelchair.

Xiaocao lay on her legs and snored, and fell asleep in a short while.

"Your bag is so beautiful." Zhou Yue smiled and looked at the small bag she was carrying across her body. It was made of bamboo and was very exquisite. There was also a small sachet hanging on it, which was the kind of embroidered sachet sold everywhere during the Dragon Boat Festival. It was pink and a little dirty. The two leaves embellished on the sachet were very strange, like peacock feathers. At first glance, it was sapphire blue, but when she shook it, it exuded colorful colors like a rainbow and had a metallic luster.

The girl glanced down at her bamboo bag, patted it proudly, and said, "Ajie made this for me!" Then she hummed a song for a while, glanced at Zhou Yue arrogantly, took off the bag and held it under her nose for her to smell. "Smell it! Doesn't it smell good?"

The sachet no longer smells fragrant, and only has a faint smell of traditional Chinese medicine, but the two leaves are very fragrant, neither like flowers nor like grass.

"Smells good." Zhou Yue smiled, gently examining her face. She smiled back, lowered her head, and lovingly stroked the delicate lines on the bag. "Ajie is so nice to me. Whenever they bully me, he beats them all away!" She then raised her chin and boasted, "He treats you better than your husband!"

Zhou Yue thought she was talking about Jiang Huai, so she nodded rapidly, "That's right!" The girl smiled and sat closer to her, "But your husband is really good. He's good to Ajie and to our Weiwei. He's a very good person."

"Really?" Zhou Yue smiled, watching the fiery sunset dye the clouds red, and the blue night sky at the end, as blue as a gem. The fragrance of the flower that was not like a flower, and not like grass, turned out to be Selaginella. She had seen it once in the drawing book that Xingxing bought her, but it mainly grows in Yunnan. Where would it be in Shenzhen?