Chapter 44 Postscript

After listening to people’s thoughts after reading “Ten Years”, I thought for five days after 8/17 before I found what I wanted to say. Although I talked a lot in the interview, I kept feeling that I should finally write something to give back to the fans in the comment section. Maybe it’s a complex called “falling leaves come back to the roots”. From the time I first started writing “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles”, I just quietly listened to your voices, and now at the end, I want to go back to the comments and continue listening to your voices.

Previously, many friends asked me why it was called “Tranquil Sea”. I’m sorry I pushed it for a long time. Maybe digging pits is my style and I can’t change it. I had called it “Tranquil Sea” because writing was like a sea of bitterness formed by countless deep pits. In this sea, all I did was wander around and get myself lost several times. I used to struggle alone in it, very quiet and depressed. But because of you, who have been supporting me during my most difficult time, the sea has blossomed and borne fruit, and now there are trees that can survive and flourish.

In fact, I have been reading the messages on Weibo and the replies in the comment sections the whole time. This silent support has stayed in my heart, and gradually converged into a driving force, which supported me to the end.

The Bodhi Tree (1) represents my longing for the finale. After fasting under the Bodhi tree for seven days, the Buddha finally became enlightened. The Bodhisattva turned the willow branches in the jade bottle into towering trees to extradite the refugees in the flood. Maybe in the world of “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles’”, we all need such a big tree to extradite us. Maybe someone has discovered after reading “Ten Years” that the whole tomb-raiding adventure, from “Tibetan Sea Flower” to “Sand Sea”, is interwoven by entwined roots, and the blood of this root extends to the foot of Changbai Mountain.

Sometimes, when a person stays at home for a long time, he will suddenly feel that the world is like a huge TV, and we are just fragments in one of the movies, which will be gone once it’s over. Remember the single-player games you played as a child? Every game has a final Boss and a final destination. Just like “Legend of the Sword 3” (2), the dying Jing Tian and Xue Jian returned to the pawnshop in Yuzhou, and like Xiao Ding’s “Jade Dynasty” (3), Zhang Xiaofan and Lu Xueqi returned to Caomiao Village. At that time, I envied that kind of sad and beautiful ending. Biyao’s life and death were uncertain, but the dark green ends of a cloth and the tinkling of a bell still accompanied Zhang Xiaofan.

I still remember the paragraph to this day:

“The two of them stood still, gazing into each other’s eyes. After so many years, the worries and feelings of the mortal world seemed to flash within this this deep gaze. Then, the both of them laughed at the same time… A light breeze blew past, causing the bell under the eaves to chime, and the ends of the green cloth to gently float in the air, as if it were also smiling. The clear ringing of the bell floated up with the wind and reverberated between the heavens and the earth…” (4)

I’m sorry that “Ten Years” didn’t give you such a beautiful ending and ended abruptly. As for why this happened, I’ve already said it before. Some people say that the Sphinx is still perfect without its nose, and the Venus is still perfect without its arms. Even the last piece Bach wrote before he died was unfinished, so the notes came to an abrupt end. But even when there’s no sound, the intoxicating feeling seems to continue. I don’t want to find excuses for myself one way or another; the fans have a right to experience their own moods.

If the hands on the clock can turn back, I hope they’ll always stay at the moment when the three people “Wu Xie”, “Fatty”, and “Poker-Face” get together. The story is over, but their friendship will continue. I hope this “feast” will never stop…

Let’s go back to a summer night many years ago when I was a senior in high school. As I was sitting alone on the playground, I started thinking about dreams and so-called life for the first time. Before that, I merely used writing as a tool to attract girls’ attention. Time brought me back to reality, and those countless days and nights of feeling helpless. Those wishful thoughts I came up with when I was bored eventually became stories that touched thousands of people’s hearts. At that time, I only thought that I didn’t have any skills besides writing stories, so why didn’t I write them out and continue writing them? I didn’t expect this writing to be an obsession that would continue for ten years.

As for the finale, meticulous people may find that the “snake cypress” in the “Seven Star Lu Palace” story, the bronze tree in the “Qinling God Tree” story, and the “centipede trees” and stone people “umbilical cord trees” in “Ten Years” have always revolved around a “tree”. Unlike the “sea” in “Deadly Desert Winds” and “Sand Sea”, the “tree” is more likely to act as a clue that runs throughout the whole series. Then how can the ultimate of everything just be a tree? I doubted myself so much. Before Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution” was written, people didn’t believe that they came from “monkeys”. Now, however, we accept that people came from “monkeys”, “monkeys” came from lower animals, and lower animals came from immobile plants. These plants first came from the sea, but there were only simple “bacteria” in the sea at first.

The magical thing about this world is that under its originally simple appearance, an extreme complexity is often hidden. There are hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way, hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, hundreds of billions of neurons hidden in everyone’s mind, and tens of millions of species on Earth. All these complicated things may have been the simplest things in the beginning.

Buddha said: one flower becomes one world, one leaf becomes one bodhi (5). God said: let there be light, so there was light. Daoism says: Dao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, three begets all things (6).

My first idea was that maybe one day, more than three billion years ago, a black meteorite crossed the night sky and fell into the sea. The “bacteria” on the meteorite multiplied in the sea and grew into plants… and finally became a tree of life that bred all life on Earth. The branches and leaves on the tree would be as complex as the patterns on the bronze door. But when “Grave Robbers’ Chronicles” was first conceived, it didn’t fit within the scope of “novel” or “historical”, and considering this was the field of science or theology, I didn’t write it in. If any readers wanted to ask again, I can only say that there’s nothing and everything behind the bronze door. It’s a huge mixture that contains infinite possibilities and covers all forms. From chaos to order, from simple to complex, it’s as boundless as the universe. That’s why I can’t describe it.

In fact, like you, I’ve thought more than ten thousand times about what’s hidden behind the bronze door and what the ultimate of all things is. There are actually many answers. The bronze door may be the beginning of this story, or maybe it’s the origin of Chinese civilization. Just like the creator in “The Matrix”, who hides in an empty room and looks at this seemingly bland world indifferently, while those of us outside ignorantly continue our trivial lives, this bronze door might represent a bug in this game-like world.

Then where’s the bug in our real world? No one knows. Maybe it’s in the majestic Changbai Mountain, buried under thousands of years of ice. Or maybe it’s some ancient sleeping god, like the “leopard-tailed, tiger-toothed” Queen Mother of the West, or the “human-faced, snake-bodied” Fuxi (7)… or some other god.

If they really exist, I think they certainly don’t want to be disturbed by our noisy world, so we need a guardian—Zhang Qiling, who must live for a long time, not feel any worldly desires or emotions, never enter the cycle of reincarnation, and stubbornly stick to the path. But this kind of life for him is very cruel. It brings to mind that pianist who was buried at sea in the movie “The Legend of 1900”. Why couldn’t he leave the cruise ship? Because he was born on that ship. That was where his life—his whole world—was. Zhang Qilin’s heart was bound to the bronze door from the beginning, and the warmth of the world was beyond his reach—until Wu Xie appeared.

Buddha said that if two people are predestined, they can meet unexpectedly even after ten years of separation. “Wang Zanghai came down the chains, saw the giant bronze door standing at the bottom of the mountain crater, and the thousands of stone people inside. The stone is like a womb, and the umbilical cords connecting these people to the stone eliminates any ruthless desires or calculating hearts. It goes on and on, and is seemingly endless.” Will the Zhang Qiling who can’t go home solidify like that stone statue in the Tibetan lama temple? And for whom were those tears hanging from the corner of his eyes? Only you can judge.

As for Wu Xie, where’s his destination? Or, what has he been looking for and why? Wu Xie isn’t a man who covets fame. He has seen selfishness from “Qiu Dekao”, “Chen Pi Ah Si”, “Wang Zanghai” and even “Wu Sanxing”, but what Wu Xie wants isn’t money or power. All he has is a fatal curiosity and obsession with his friends. He just wants to solve the puzzle he accidentally fell into. He was getting deeper and deeper, but now he’s reached the end.

Fate is often double-sided. On one hand, everyone is happy; on the other hand, everything is burning. In front of the bronze door, Wu Xie finally realized his original intention. He can withstand every minute and every second after those ten long years, and let go of his obsession like the passing rain. He doesn’t care about the truth behind this door, or where Zhang Qiling comes from, or even if he’s the same person. All he cares about is the “Poker-Face” in his heart.

That is why Wu Xie is as detached as “Fatty” in the end, and able to let everything go.

Life is like a big dream, and except for some differences between reality and dreams, we are all here to interact with each other. After all the bitter resentment, gains and losses, and right and wrong, he let it all go. The time spent with the people we care about is too short, so you might as well take advantage of those remaining decades. This is the best ending, because from now on, he doesn’t have to take risks and run around everywhere.

Fate’s arrangements are hard to fathom, but they are inextricably linked. For example, when a person should do something, things will end when they’re supposed to. If they haven’t ended, then that person just hasn’t realized it yet, and there’s no way to end it desperately.

It’s just like a dream I had many years ago. Some people say that there’s no color in dreams, but this one was vaguely colored. There was a teenager in the dream. He was as white as snow and his smile was as bright as summer. I asked him what was behind the door, but he just shook his head and said with a smile, “You’ll know when you go in.” But I couldn’t touch the door and ended up waking up. Many years later, I had the same dream again. I pushed open the door in the dream and suddenly saw the young man in front of me. He smiled and said to me, “I’m the one hiding behind the door…”

In order to make a joke, he waited for me in this dream for ten years.

Under the bodhi tree, there’s a tranquil sea glazed with lights. The Sea of Tranquility is gone forever. Ten years gives rise to enlightenment.

Author: Uncle Three’s Bodhi Tree

<Chapter 43> <Table of Contents><Vol 12 The Mystic Nine Introduction>

****

TN Notes:

(1) A large and ancient sacred fig tree located in Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India, under which Siddhartha Gautama, the spiritual teacher who became known as Buddha, is said to have attained enlightenment or Bodhi circa 500 BCE. More info here

(2) It’s a video game. Here’s more info

(3) It’s a xianxia novel written by Xiao Ding. The novel keeps looking for the answer to a question “What is true righteousness?” but concludes that “Heartless World, treat everything as straw dogs!”, which perhaps is the main theme. It got turned into a video game too. Book info here (I found it on novel updates too lol). Game info here

(4) Owlhoot translated that whole paragraph (and the story obviously) here if you prefer their version to what I have.

(5) Tiffany got this one for us lol. It basically ties to the author’s theme about complicated things starting from simple things

(6) “Dao” means way or path. Daoists preferred to understand the dao as the Way of Nature as a whole. Here’s some background info if you want it. You can also read it as “Dao begets One (nothingness; or reason of being), One begets Two (yin and yang), Two begets Three (Heaven, Earth and Man; or yin, yang and breath qi), Three begets all things.”

(7) In early Chinese texts, the Queen Mother of the West was said to have a wild, almost feral appearance befitting her ferocious personality. But around the Tang Dynasty, texts started describing her as having the appearance of a human woman, though she retained some beastly traits—notably, tiger’s teeth and a leopard’s tail. She’s referenced a lot in DMBJ but here’s some more info. Fuxi (or Fu His) was a legendary Chinese emperor 2852-2738 BC. Said to be the mythical creator of fishing, trapping, and writing. Also said to be a creature that had the face of a human and body of a snake. Info here

*****

Dear God, an embarrassing amount of time went into all that research. Have I had 7 TN Notes before? Who knows. I’ll just be over here curled up in the fetal position crying lol. At least it’s Friday though~~~ Oh yeah, and for you people that don’t know “8/17” is August 17th. It’s the day Little Brother (aka Xiao Ge, aka Poker-Face) went into the bronze door. Fun fact, “Chapter 41: The Finale” was posted on 8-17-2015, the exact day Little Brother was supposed to come out. Pretty cool the author did that. I will do the “8/17” extra after “The Mystic Nine” and “Chen Pi Ah Si’s Extra” because I believe it ties in to the New Year’s Specials which tie into Restart/Reboot/Chong Qi (whatever you wanna call it). I know you all are impatient to get to Restart, but there’s a method to my madness lol. The author’s been sticking tidbits in the extras that tie into the main stories. You’ll thank me later, I promise~~~~~

Tiffany’s extra:

• Wu Xie’s Private Notes: Chapter 23 Erdao Baihe