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Beneath Lushan, beside the murmuring stream, behind the wooden hut, a solitary grave now stood.
The grave was new, its earthen mound freshly turned, its headstone newly carved—yet the one who had once been there was gone.
Even Fei Qian did not know what Uncle Fu's original name had been, where his ancestral home lay, or whether he had any family remaining elsewhere. All of it, buried now with a handful of yellow earth, would remain forever unknown.
Fei Qian sat before the headstone, silent and wordless.
This world was vast, teeming with countless thousands upon thousands of people. The death of any single person would not have the slightest effect upon it—even if that person were a great man, it would be so.
This world was small. Every person within it was alone. The only thing that could prove the significance of one's existence in this world was one's own kin. That, and nothing more.
Inside the wooden hut, Pang Tong, Zao Zhi, and the others still remained. This lonely grave of Uncle Fu's was something they had helped to build.
The Han Dynasty placed immense importance on funerary rites. The wealthy would bury their dead with grave goods worth millions of cash. Even those of modest means would spend around a hundred thousand. The reason Fei Qian had fallen into such dire straits before was largely because both of his parents had passed away one after the other, and he had been forced to sell off the family property just to give them a proper burial. Otherwise, he would inevitably have been branded with the stigma of unfilial conduct.
Back then, Fei Qian had been lying in a coma. The only person left in the household to shoulder all the burdens was old Uncle Fu. To Fei Qian, Uncle Fu was not merely a relative—he was closer than kin. Yet just when Fei Qian had begun to achieve a small measure of success, old Uncle Fu, so simply, without any ceremony at all, had been laid to his eternal rest beneath the earth.
The Heavens are forever this cruel. While you are still merrily striding forward, you glance back and discover that the elders of your family have gained wrinkles on their faces. You walk a few steps more, look back again, and find their bodies have grown bent and stooped. And now, when Fei Qian returned once more to this place, he realized that the figure who had always seemed to stand forever at his side could no longer be seen, never again...
It was a pain so deep it left him speechless. An ache so sharp it wrung him dry of tears.
Though everyone could understand the depth of Fei Qian's feeling for Uncle Fu, in the end, no matter what, Uncle Fu was still a servant. He could never be compared to a member of the master's gentry family. In many noble households, when a servant died, their body would simply be rolled up in a coarse reed mat, or, at best, placed in a flimsy coffin and carted off to the common burial ground outside the city walls. That Uncle Fu had been able to be buried here, on a fine site with the mountain at his back and the water before him, was largely due to the consideration everyone held for Fei Qian.
Fei Qian, having come from a later age, did not subscribe to the belief that lavish burial was essential. It was simply that his heart felt tangled and chaotic, and a terrible sorrow weighed upon him.
Fei Qian sat there in a daze, his spirit utterly unmoored.
Suddenly, an aged hand came to rest upon Fei Qian's shoulder. Unthinkingly, Fei Qian called out, "Uncle Fu!" But when he turned his head, he saw it was Pang Degong.
Fei Qian moved to rise and prostrate himself, but Pang Degong pressed him back down, staying the gesture.
Attendants had long since placed a barbarian-style stool nearby and arranged various offerings for the departed before the gravestone. Then they withdrew, leaving the space to Pang Degong and Fei Qian alone.
Behind them, the stream burbled gently. Above, clouds furled and unfurled across the sky. In the treetops, the wind danced and the leaves swayed in a gentle, rustling ballet.
Although Uncle Fu's passing had been far too sudden, the fact remained that upon arriving at Lushan, Fei Qian had not first gone to pay his respects to his teacher, Pang Degong. Instead, he had sat here, forcing Pang Degong to descend the mountain and come before him. No matter how one looked at it, this was a breach of propriety on his part. Thus, even though Pang Degong had stopped him from kneeling and kowtowing, Fei Qian still said: "...Master Pang! This disciple has been gravely remiss in courtesy..."
Pang Degong waved his hand dismissively. Matters of mere etiquette like this were not what he valued. It was, rather, the depth of feeling Fei Qian had displayed for Uncle Fu that moved him. That was why he had come down from Lushan in person to be here.
"Man arrives from life and departs toward death. No one can escape this," Pang Degong said slowly.
Fei Qian nodded in agreement. This principle, of course, he understood. But for him, beyond a bond that surpassed that of blood kin, Uncle Fu was the very first person his eyes had beheld when he arrived in this world—like a landmark, a waypoint. And now, that waypoint had vanished. That sudden, overwhelming sense of loneliness and abandonment surged over him like an uncontrollable tide.
Humans have emotions.
Fei Qian had never experienced a transmigration before, nor did he know how other transmigrators so swiftly and resolutely cast aside their original parents, wives, and children, along with every small, precious fragment of their former lives, to throw themselves body and soul into some grand revolutionary cause—killing without blinking, setting fires without so much as furrowing a brow...
Fei Qian had thought he had already forgotten everything of the later era, that he had fully immersed himself in this new world. He had never imagined that it would be Uncle Fu's death that made him realize, with utter finality, that from this point on, he would never again have even the slightest connection to that future age.
Most crucially, Fei Qian suddenly understood that Uncle Fu's death was like an omen. From now on, in this chaotic age that was about to unfold, there would perhaps be many more people—especially the kin and friends he knew—who, like Uncle Fu, would suddenly, without warning, die...
And that might even include himself.
This feeling was even more paralyzing than when Fei Qian had faced death alone at Hangu Pass.
In the times to come, the struggle for supremacy among the feudal lords was no jest. Cao Cao would lose a son, fallen on the battlefield. Liu Bei would cast aside wife and child as casually as a game. Sun Quan would not hesitate to imprison for life the widow and posthumous child of his own elder brother, without a flicker of mercy...
Could he, himself, truly prepare his heart for such things? Or rather, could he harden his heart to that degree, to carry out such ruthless acts?
"Master Pang, when the Great Ancestor demanded a share of the flesh... was that right or wrong?"
Pang Degong lifted his gaze to the sky and replied, "Shanmin's mother departed this world twenty-three years ago. Many in the clan have urged me to take another wife. This old man has refused them all..."
Fei Qian did not quite grasp what Pang Degong meant to convey by shifting the topic so abruptly, but he nevertheless answered, "Master Pang's devotion is of the deepest and truest feeling. This disciple both admires and envies it."
"Man is not grass or wood; how could he be devoid of emotion?" Pang Degong looked at Fei Qian, his words laden with meaning. "This old man is indolent and lax, having no heart for official documents and bureaucratic toil. I have therefore entrusted my heart to the mountains and waters, indulging my feelings and whims, to pass my remaining years in peace."
"But this is merely my own private affair. When one looks from the perspective of the Pang clan... this old man is also a sinner." Pang Degong continued slowly, "Firstly, I have not spread our branches and multiplied our leaves. Secondly, I have brought no honors or emoluments to shelter my descendants. Among the sons of the Pang clan, there are many who harbor grievances..."
"This..." Pang Degong's shift was so rapid that for a moment, Fei Qian could not keep pace with the train of thought.
Pang Degong went on: "Stand upon the peak of a mountain, and you can watch the rosy clouds rise and the mists billow. Sit along the edge of the sea, and you can watch the fish leap and the waves surge. Each vista is uniquely beautiful in its own way."
Pang Degong tapped his staff on the ground a few times, then said, "Foolish child. Right and wrong, gain and loss—you must seek these out for yourself. But if you simply linger here, unwilling to move forward, then you shall lose both."
With those words, he did not wait for Fei Qian to react. He simply patted Fei Qian on the shoulder once more and headed straight back up Lushan.
This Pang Degong... truly, he was...
Fei Qian let out a long sigh.
After an indeterminate length of time, Fei Qian suddenly called for someone to bring brush and ink. Upon the gravestone, above the characters for "Uncle Fu," he added a single character: "Fei." And below it, he inscribed: "Erected by His Unfilial Nephew, Fei Qian." He then ordered a new headstone to be carved following this pattern and set in place.
The servants of the Pang household accepted the command and departed.
Fei Qian stood silently before the gravestone. Once, in this very place, Uncle Fu had accompanied him as he sought and found his own "Dao," setting his feet upon this road. Now, the time had come for him to press onward, alone...
On this road, there might be fellow travelers, there might be those who obstruct him, and there might be those who must be sacrificed...
On this road, even if he exhausted every ounce of his strength and offered up all he had, he still might not reach its end...
On this road, there might be a myriad bitter miseries, the curses and spittle of a thousand men, and the bones and corpses of ten thousand more...
Yet this was the road he himself had chosen, was it not?
Even if his hands were hacked off, even if his feet were hewn away—even if he had to crawl on his knees, dragging himself forward—it was a road he must travel to the very end.