Tibetan Sea Flower [Part II] | Introduction

Merebear note: Just wanted to let you all know that this is the online version from WeChat. It was not included in the published version and I didn’t see it on the dmbj.org website.

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Introduction

1

Sangza didn’t think he was going to die.

The snow had already covered all the yak. They had given up hope of survival and were huddled together, waiting for the snow to seal them in their graves.

Sangza still had the strength to struggle. He didn’t know where he was, but he tried to tell himself that he didn’t think he’d die here. If he was going to die, then surely the Bodhisattva wouldn’t have let him see that thing.

But the Bodhisattva had let him see that thing.

The Bodhisattva was all-knowing, so it must have let him see that thing so that he could go back and tell his people what he saw.

But Sangza was feeling a little helpless right now. He could no longer feel the solid layer of snow around his legs, snow blocked his vision as it was blown around by the strong wind, and he couldn’t find his way home. He was also buried in snow up to his chest.

Bodhisattva, what do you want me to do?

Sangza looked at the sky, the snowflakes hitting him in the face like whips in the darkness. Was this a trial of suffering? Should he surrender himself to the Bodhisattva or was the Bodhisattva testing him?

Sangza tried to wipe the snowflakes off of his face; he had decided to hand himself over to the Bodhisattva.

He took off his clothes and spread them out on the snow to increase his leverage. Then, he climbed out of the snow pit and continued to take off his clothes until he was completely naked.

The biting cold froze him almost instantly.

He knelt down on his clothes and prostrated himself. Then he got up, advanced the distance of an arm’s length, and prostrated himself again.

By the seventh time, he was struggling to continue and a layer of snow had instantly accumulated on his clothes. He knelt there on the beads of snow before finally getting up, his skin already a bluish-purple.

After the eighth time, he didn’t get up.

Everything around him began to turn white and all external sensations began to disappear. He couldn’t remember at all…what had he been doing?

Sangza lay prone on the side of a snowy mountain, forty li away from his village. He knew that he was going to die soon. At the same time, the first verse of a long poem began to ring in his ears.

2

“It’s rotten to the core,” the old man said to the child. “It’s only a matter of time before it collapses.”

The child didn’t respond. He just looked at the old man seriously, without a trace of emotion in his eyes.

“Nothing is eternal and we are no exception.”

The wind outside the temple blew, causing the flame from the oil lamp in front of them to flicker. The temple was located at the back of the mountain, a quiet retreat from the world. Compared with the hustle and bustle at the front of the mountain, few people knew of this place’s existence at the back of the mountain.

“They will choose you as the next Qiling. Everything will be put on your shoulders. After you, no one will take over.” The old man cut off a bit of the oil lamp’s wick. “Time is long. You will lose your past first and then you will learn to forget your future.”

The aged wooden table looked old and terrifying under the lamp’s shadowy light. The child seemed to have heard something but only turned his head slightly.

Someone was probably headed this way.

“What’s left for you is rotten. They’ll take everything that can be taken.” The old man squeezed the wick until it turned into black powder, dipped a brush in it, motioned for the child to hold out his left hand, and then wrote a line of numbers on the child’s slightly longer fingers. “This is the next line of numbers. You can forget everything, but you can’t forget this.”

0220 0059⁽¹⁾

The child carefully closed his hand and the old man exhaled, “If you’re wavering, now is your last chance to leave.”

The child’s ears twitched again and he could feel the approaching footsteps on the stairs. These people hardly made any sound as they walked.

He didn’t move, just offered the old man a bow.

“Zhang…” The old man called his real name, but the pronunciation was masked by the sound of the door opening. Dazzling sunlight came in from the outside, along with some people whose figures were obscured by the backlight.

“Zhang Qiling,” a figure called him. “There is no time.”

The child looked at the old man, who had closed his eyes when the harsh sunlight came streaming in.

He was the last person to call him by his real name; he hoped he could remember it.

He was also the first person to call him Zhang Qiling; he hoped he could remember it as well.

“Goodbye.”

The child stood up, turned, left the temple, and walked out into the sunshine. He saw a huge coffin sitting in the snow. It had been carried over and then placed in the middle of the yard. He went over, drank the glass of red wine that was handed to him, and then lay down in the coffin.

The coffin was then closed. He slowly closed his eyes, feeling everyone breathe a sigh of relief as his surroundings turned into absolute darkness.

He slowly resonated with the darkness. It was very quiet.

He heard a lot of sounds coming from all around him. They seemed to be the breathing of vegetation, the flowing blood in people’s veins, snowflakes crushed underfoot, and dust falling all around. At the same time, the feeling of the passage of time slowly disappeared from him. He suddenly couldn’t tell the difference between one moment and eternity.

He had to go to sleep. With these strange changes, he fell into an abyss where instants and eternity coexisted.

He didn’t know where he would wake up, but he knew that when he did, he would have already lost all of his connections to the world.

“Zhang…”

What was his original name? He suddenly couldn’t remember anything. He only heard someone shouting from outside the coffin, “Qiling!” The coffin was lifted up and began to move slowly. The last trace of cold passing through the coffin also disappeared from his memory.

<Chapter 58 Something Under the Mountain><Table of Contents><Chapter 59 The Mystery of the Bronze Door>

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TN Notes:

(1) Just to note, the raws had the numbers spelled out instead of what I put. So it’d be “zero two two zero zero zero five nine”

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Volume 8 is completely updated now. I never want to see that bitch of a postscript again lol. The pdf and epub docs have been updated in their respective locations so feel free to download them whenever. I’m working through the 2009 New Years Special and then I’ll start fixing Tibetan Sea Flower.

Updated 1/7/2022