Chapter 66: Full Moon

It was time to open the kiln again. Zhao Xiaowei put on white woolen gloves, opened the door, and carefully took out a cup.

This time they designed a wood-fired host cup. Unlike the previous ones, the vessel was not placed in a kiln but was directly exposed to the flame in the kiln. Zhao Xiaowei personally started working according to their detailed drawings, and spent a lot of time and effort on the soil, fire, wood, and kiln.

The cup looked even more delicate in Zhao Xiaowei's big hands. Hang Liumei took it and thought it was just what they had imagined: an ancient teacup and an indistinguishable Buddha statue.

Zhao Xiaowei took out a small flashlight and shone it on the cup. The three of them said, "It's bright! It's bright!" But the circle of Buddha's light was dim and weak. It shouldn't be like this.

Zhao Xiaowei sighed and scratched his head: "Why is it still not working?" It turned out that the method he figured out was to grind fluorite into powder and combine it with glaze to paint.

"I don't know if it's because the ratio is wrong, or if the quality of the fluorite is too low. I'll go to the market and have a look."

As soon as he finished speaking, Qi Xiuchun made a call: "Hey, go to my room, the second one from the right under the bookcase, find a green box, pick out the fluorite inside, and pack it and send it to me now. It's the fastest way to send it, so I need it now. Oh, don't worry about what I'm doing in Dunhuang. I'll talk to you when I get back after I finish my work. Okay, that's it."

When the fluorite arrived, everyone showed up. Hang Liumei, Qi Xiuchun, and Zhao Xiaowei worked together, polishing the fluorite, throwing the pottery, trimming the pottery, glazing it, and firing the kiln. The two elderly women were so exhausted after this whole process that they could barely straighten their backs.

One last chance, after this, it's all over.

Zhao Xiaowei took out a cup and placed it on the wooden table in front of everyone. Aside from the pattern, everything else was natural and unadorned. The pale sand-colored cup, adorned with irregular glazes formed by fallen wood ash, made the Buddha appear as if emerging from the wind and sand. It could be the only white-robed Buddha among the Thousand Buddhas, or it could be any of the numerous others found throughout the Mogao Grottoes murals. Under the light, the Buddha's halo glowed green with a bluish hue. While not the same as what Hang Liumei and Qi Xiuchun had seen on the mountaintop, it held a distinctly ancient and mysterious aura.

"Oh my god, I didn't expect it to turn out so beautiful! Xiaowei, you have made a great contribution!" Qi Xiuchun happily patted Zhao Xiaowei on the back.

Hang Liumei was so excited that she had tears in her eyes: "Great, that's great. If there hadn't been so many things going on before, would we have just finished with the cup we made the first time? How could we have seen this one now?"

After submitting the design and the cup, all that remained was to wait for the results of the competition. Everyone else could wait, but Hang Liumei couldn't. The time limit given to her by the Japanese for consideration had also expired. Tonight, everyone invited Zhao Xiaowei to the courtyard to celebrate, as a farewell for Hang Liumei and Mai Sui; they would be leaving by plane the next day.

That night, Hang Liumei couldn't sleep again. She didn't want to sleep. She wanted to go to the Mogao Grottoes. She was half asleep all night. When the sky was getting light, she woke Qi Xiuchun up and said, "Sister Xiuchun, it's dawn. Let's go to the Mogao Grottoes."

Without waiting for anyone else, the two of them hailed a car and became the first couple to set foot inside the Mogao Grottoes that morning. Hang Liumei seemed to have returned to the day she first arrived at the Mogao Grottoes, when she followed the group step by step into the cliffs covered in grottoes, unaware that she was entering her destiny.

The tour guide asked them to queue along the passageway to enter the Mogao Grottoes, but the two said they weren't in a hurry and found a step to sit on. Before them lay the nine-story building, its vermilion eaves jutting out from the cliff face, and an unknown bird perched on it. At opposite ends of the sky sat the sun on one side and the moon on the other. Since this was Dunhuang, such a sight of the sun and moon shining together was not uncommon.

Hang Liumei leaned on Qi Xiuchun's shoulder and said, "Later, I often heard the sound of bells from the ninth floor in my dreams. Lao Jiang also had this problem. When he was at his worst, he couldn't tell reality from reality. One night, he suddenly called me and said the wind was blowing and making the bells ring loudly. It would be dawn soon and I needed to wear something warm to go to the Mogao Grottoes. My mother-in-law lost track of time that night and I knew Lao Jiang would be gone soon too."

"Really? Do you also have auditory hallucinations? I thought it was just me." Qi Xiuchun hugged his knees with his hands, and the past flashed before his eyes.

Although I am human, I am not in control of my own body, just like the bells and chimes that belong to Dunhuang. Once you have been here, the word "Dunhuang" will become like the wind in the boundless wilderness, and when the wind blows, the bells and chimes will echo.

Qi Xiuchun said, "Actually, I didn't adapt to this place as quickly as I told you at the beginning. I often thought about leaving my hometown with nothing, what would happen to my future? What if I had to stay here forever? I walked around everywhere by myself, and when I came here, I sat down and cried. I wish I could cry, and then I could go back to work the next day. That's when I decided to quit my job and go to Lanzhou. I really couldn't bear to leave, but I didn't expect that later I would have no place to cry."

"This is inevitable. Who in Dunhuang has never thought about leaving?" Hang Liumei paused and added, "But when the time comes to leave, who can really go without any worries?"

"You said that life is both fast and slow. When I first came to Dunhuang and saw the Mogao Grottoes, I thought it was terribly old. Half a lifetime later, I've aged too, even faster than it did. Only then did I realize that compared to it, I'm just a tiny ant."

"But the Mogao Grottoes were created by ants, who live and die every day." Hang Liumei raised her lifelong painting hands and pointed at the grottoes before her. These hands had copied so many murals here that she couldn't even remember. She was so preoccupied with the changes in the murals that her hands suddenly aged beyond recognition.

Hang Liumei looked at the blue veins on the back of her hand: "Life is not just a life... Sister Xiuchun, I don't want to leave."

"Why, if you don't want to go to Japan, can someone force you to go there?"

"I'm not going to Japan," Hang Liumei laughed at the silly thing she was about to say, "I'm afraid the devil will kidnap me."

Qi Xiuchun didn't laugh: "Everyone has that day. If you feel that your life is worth it, that's enough. Those regrets you complained about before should all be fulfilled."

"I have no regrets, I have long since given up." Hang Liumei leaned her head on Qi Xiuchun's shoulder again: "Sister Xiuchun, it turns out that I have guarded the Mogao Grottoes for my entire life, and I don't regret it at all."

"It's good that you don't regret it. If you didn't understand it when you were young, it's good to figure it out when you're older. I don't regret it either."

Qi Xiuchun felt a chill on her neck; Hang Liumei's tears had dripped onto her collar. Hang Liumei sniffed, wiped her eyes, and said, "Sister Xiuchun, I don't want to leave. It's not that Dunhuang can't do without me, it's that I can't leave Dunhuang. We're getting fewer and fewer people here, and I feel sad every time I think about it."

Wherever my heart is at peace is my hometown.

Hang Liumei decided to stay. No matter how much everyone tried to persuade her, they knew it was doomed to fail. Mai Sui declined the Japanese invitation on her behalf; she was returning to Hong Kong for work, and this time, her father would go with her. The sky around the four corners of the courtyard had once been bustling, but now it was bustling with noise, a farewell.

Dad Mai put the last box into the trunk, turned around and said worriedly, "Mom, we're really leaving. Have you thought it through? Otherwise, I'd better stay."

Hang Liumei pushed him into the car: "Don't worry about me, don't you still have your Aunt Xiuchun. Go ahead, we'll both be fine in the future."

Dad Mai turned to his son and said, "You stay here and accompany the grandmas. School will start soon. Go back by yourself and call me anytime." Xiaomai nodded, which was considered an agreement.

After the car drove away, the four of them returned to the house to continue packing. There were hurried footsteps; Zhao Xiaowei was running, panting. "Teacher Hang! Teacher Qi! I thought you'd already moved out. It's great that you're still here! After the competition, no matter what the outcome, I'd like to work with you guys to bring that cup to market. What do you think?"

After much thought, he decided that this cup was far superior to the one he had prepared for the Mid-Autumn Festival. If he used the story of how Hang Liumei and her friends accidentally discovered the caves to publicize the story, and made the cups into limited editions and sold them, it would be a win-win situation.

Hang Liumei and Qi Xiuchun agreed to discuss the financial situation later, as they still had a long time to stay in Dunhuang. "The most important thing is to find a good writer to help me write down the story of the 1995 discovery of the caves," Hang Liumei's only wish was.

But Zhao Xiaowei said that no matter how good others were at writing, they couldn't write better than the people who had experienced it. Everyone encouraged Hang Liumei to write it herself.

After nightfall, Hang Liumei turned on the desk lamp and sat down at the table. Qi Xiuchun grabbed a handful of melon seeds and lay on the bed. Seeing Hang Liumei putting on her reading glasses and spreading out the draft paper seriously, he joked, "You used to supervise the children doing their homework, but now you have to supervise the old lady doing her homework..."

Hang Liumei wrote only a few words before putting down her pen, pinching her eyes and saying, "Why do I want to start from the beginning as soon as I pick up the pen? If I keep going like this, it will become a novel. Forget it, there are too many things on my mind. Let's go to the New Grottoes tomorrow and let me sort it out."

The next day, the four of them drove to the cave on the mountainside where the story began.

When she reached the cave, Hang Liumei realized she had left her flashlight in the car and had to ask Xiaomai to fetch it. She leaned against the stone railing, unplugged her headphones, and listened to music from her phone: "A pot of muddy wine, a joyous reunion. So many things, past and present, are now just jokes..."

Pu Zhihe looked at the two people's white hair messed up by the mountain wind and asked, "Grandma Hang, Grandma Qi, if I want to see you next time, do I have to come here?"

Hang Liumei and Qi Xiuchun looked at each other and replied, "Yes, there are still too many things to be done here. Although we are also old, it doesn't matter. As long as we can still do it, we can take it slow, just like when we first protected the Mogao Grottoes. There will always be people behind us to catch up. Life is only a hundred years, and it has been less than a hundred years since the old director began protecting the Mogao Grottoes. As long as there are people around, there is always hope. What about you? Have you thought it through?"

Pu Zhihe nodded and said, "I want to pick up my original job of cultural relic restoration. The research institute has some new information, and I want to give it a try."

Hang Liumei took her hand and said, "This is good news! Your grandmother Qi and I are waiting for your good news!"

Hang Liumei's eyes were just as resolute as when she first saw them in the early spring, reflecting Pu Zhihe's slightly sad expression. Who could have imagined that a joke of impersonation would lead to so much? It turned out that from that moment on, Hang Liumei had already begun to change her life.

She said: "Teacher Hang, actually I am not——"

"I know," Hang Liumei interrupted her gently, "but now you are."

It turned out she knew everything. Her wish had been fulfilled, so Pu Zhihe didn't need to say anything more. She took out two gift boxes and handed them to the two of them: "Grandma Hang, Grandma Qi, you've been taking care of me and teaching me all this time, but I didn't know what to prepare. I finally chose this. I thought since we were brought together by Dunhuang, let's commemorate it with the memories of Dunhuang."

Hang Liumei opened the box and blurted out, "This must be a bixiao! I've seen the archaeological team study it before, but I've only seen the real thing a few times!"

"Where did you get such a rare thing?" Qi Xiuchun picked up the pendant on the xiao, which was decorated with a picture of a bird with a common life. She squinted her eyes and examined it. "Why are there words engraved next to it? 'Flower branches and spring are full'? Am I reading it correctly?"

Hang Liumei also saw the other four words on her own moon - "Full Moon in the Center of the Sky".

“The friendship between gentlemen is as pure as water.

If you hold on to the image and seek it, the distance will be a thousand miles away.

When asked where I was going, I forgot to speak.

The branches are full of flowers and the moon is full in the sky."

Pu Zhihe read out the complete poem and explained, "This is a verse by Master Hongyi. I think both of you can understand its meaning."

"The branches are in full bloom with spring flowers, and the moon is full in the sky." Hang Liumei repeated this silently in her heart. Her life was indeed full of spring and full moon.

Xiaomai returned, and the four of them delved deeper into the cave, until their shadows were swallowed up. The dust on the ground awoke from their footsteps, and the mottled murals and damaged sculptures, the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Apsaras, Heavenly Kings, and Vajra all awoke from the dreamlike dreams of an ancient dynasty.

The cold white light illuminates the painting of "The Story of Sumati", and on the lotus platform is the Sakya's unchanging smile for thousands of years.