“Alas, the Heavens and Earth are but an inn for all creation… and Time, a fleeting guest passing through countless ages. Like sun-dried gossamer, our lives are but a dream, a fleeting joy… followed by sorrow beyond measure.”

The month of the Verdant Dragon held Su City in its embrace. Gone was the season of awakening, and in its stead bloomed a riot of color – a thousand blossoms vying for the sun’s favor. The air, thick with the sweet perfume of flowers, danced with the ethereal descent of willow catkins. They swirled and eddied, as if summoning their last vestiges of strength to whisk away the lingering threads of passing time.

These airy specters, adrift like summer snow, painted a scene of delicate beauty. When the wind grew bolder, they spun in frenzied ballet, a chaotic waltz of rootless existence. A bittersweetness clung to their beauty, a subtle echo of melancholy.

Homeless yet yearning for home, these wanderers surrendered to the whims of the wind. Their destiny remained unknown, their path uncharted. Some would be swept onto the river’s face, becoming fleeting embellishments in the water-sky tableau for passing eyes. Others would fall to the unforgiving earth, merging with dust and debris, swept into whirling dervishes by capricious gusts.

Their fates were dictated by the wind – a different breeze bestowing a different life.

A solitary wisp, pure white and impossibly delicate, pirouetted in the azure expanse. It finally settled upon the outstretched palm of a lone figure standing proudly on the prow of a modest pleasure barge. He, a youth clad in pristine white robes.

With his left hand, he raised a flagon of wine to his lips, swallowing deeply. Words of boundless ambition and heroic verse escaped his tongue, his voice echoing with a yearning to chase the very edges of Heaven and Earth.

Behind him stood a man in the garb of a manservant, his face etched with worry and disapproval. Each draught taken by the youth seemed to deepen the servant’s pained expression.

“Seven silver coins for a flask of Osmanthus wine! Extravagance beyond belief! Each swallow costs nigh half a coin!”

The willow catkin, barely settled on the youth’s palm, seemed to hesitate, as if unwilling to embrace its final resting place. A subtle sigh, almost imperceptible, carried on the breeze as it lifted once more, dancing past the youth’s eyes and away into the distance. An air of mad abandon filled its flight, as if it, too, sensed its impending end, and now rushed headlong towards the all-consuming embrace of the ultimate, weary rest.

Along the riverbank, a peach orchard still stubbornly clung to the last of its blossoms. Intermingled with the floating willow down, petals, loosened by the wind, spiraled into the river, becoming miniature, rosy boats upon the jade currents.

“Mad willow catkins dance upon the wind, frivolous peach blossoms chase the current!” The youth, Wang Lin, declared, draining his flagon and releasing a laugh that echoed across the water.

Besides the boatman and the fretful servant, three maidens adorned in silken finery graced the barge. One plucked at the strings of a zither, while the other two swayed in dance, their movements as graceful as the swirling catkins. The barge, with its melodious cargo, glided through the waterways, passing beneath ancient stone bridges, its journey a gentle passage into the distance.

“Da Fu, more wine!” Wang Lin called, turning to his long-suffering servant.

Da Fu, his face a mask of misery, reluctantly retrieved another flask, presenting it to Wang Lin with a near sob.

“Young Master, the coffers are truly dwindling… between the rent for this ancestral barge, the wine, and the company of these lovely ladies, the costs are mounting each day… perhaps… perhaps we should make for shore? A modest inn would surely be more… prudent.”

“Patience, good Da Fu,” Wang Lin chuckled, shaking his head. “The one I await has yet to appear.” He accepted the wine, taking another long draught before settling back to listen to the zither’s gentle melody. Though pleasing enough, the music failed to penetrate the depths of his soul.

“Young Master, I have emptied my secret stashes! May the ancestors forgive me, but I have calculated… at this rate, in seven days we shall be begging in the streets!

A month, Young Master, a full moon cycle! Whom do you await with such unwavering devotion? Why do they tarry so long?” Da Fu lamented, his voice a tapestry of anxiety and exasperation.

His distraught expression drew a soft, stifled giggle from one of the dancing women, momentarily resting from her exertions.

Da Fu glared at her, muttering under his breath before seizing a flask himself and taking a defiant gulp.

“I shall partake, too! This is fine wine, after all! Half a coin a mouthful…”

“The melody… it is not quite right,” Wang Lin murmured, leaning against the barge’s railing. After some time, the wine began to loosen his tongue and stir his memories. He rose and approached the woman at the zither, placing his right hand upon the instrument. The woman blushed, quickly withdrawing her own hands.

“I recall a melody, nameless, yet etched within a dream… It should be played thus…” Wang Lin whispered, closing his eyes. He tentatively plucked at the strings, his fingers stumbling at first. The notes were disjointed, far from forming a cohesive tune. But gradually, as Wang Lin poured his very essence into the music, the fragmented notes began to coalesce.

A haunting sorrow, impossible to describe, began to resonate from the zither, weaving a delicate tapestry of sound and emotion. The melody spread across the barge, reaching out to enfold the world around them.

The two dancers, now still, stared at Wang Lin with vacant eyes, their souls touched by the pervasive sadness. A fragile lament that shook them to their core.

Without realizing how, Wang Lin had taken the musician’s place. She, in turn, sat beside him, her gaze fixed on his hands with a rapturous expression, her very being lost within the somber, sighing notes.

Even Da Fu stilled his lamentations, his worries forgotten. He stared at his own right wrist, lost in reverie as he continued to drink.

This melody… it was reminiscent of a song played by Li Muwan long ago. A different tune, perhaps, but carrying the same spirit, the same resonance that had once echoed from the blind girl in the Land of the Demon Spirit.

Tears now streamed from Wang Lin’s closed eyes, falling onto the strings. They seemed to merge with the music, dissolving into the sorrowful notes that drifted on the air.

His dreams came nightly, seeking him out in the realm of slumber. Within them, he saw many things, though not all figures were clear. Some, though shrouded in mist, evoked a profound grief, a sorrow that cut deeper than any wound.

The barge drifted onward, borne by the melody and the river’s currents. It passed beneath the ancient bridges, its journey continuing until twilight painted the sky and another night descended.
For over a moon, Wang Lin waited, yet the figure from his dream, the one destined to appear, remained elusive.

As the painted barge drifted beneath a stone bridge, two figures materialized upon its ancient stones, watching in silence, the mournful strains of a qin wrapping around them.

Both were elders, their hair like spun moonlight. One, clad in robes of青衫 (azure linen), stood tall and unyielding as a pine, his face etched with the wisdom of ages, eyes gleaming with knowing. An aura of scholarly grandeur, of a sage of renown, emanated from him.

This was Su Dao.

“Such a lament, a song of souls adrift. A melody that would elude most in their lifetime… and within its sorrow, echoes of timeless沧桑 (bitterness), as if gazing back across countless eras, a tragic memory forever haunting the heart. 苏三 (Su San), this journey has not been in vain.” Su Dao spoke, his voice filled with a profound understanding, his gaze fixed upon the retreating barge and the lone figure of Wang Lin at his qin.

Behind him, the other elder sighed softly. Were Wang Lin to see him now, he would surely recognize the examination proctor, the man whose gaze had lingered upon his paper until the very end.

“I did not know he possessed such skill with the qin,” the proctor replied, bowing his head respectfully. “I merely sensed something… uncommon within him after reading his work. When I saw his barge upon the river during my recent visit to you, master, I thought it worthwhile to bring it to your attention.”

The barge continued its journey, the music fading with the distance. Then, with a gentle smile, Su Dao approached the bridge’s edge, his hand resting upon the weathered stone. He called out to the boat below, his voice ringing with gentle authority:

“Young man, tell me: what, in your estimation, is 因果 (Karma)?”

Wang Lin’s hands stilled, the music ceasing. He opened his eyes, turning back with a confused gaze, and saw the azure-robed elder standing upon the bridge. From his vantage point, he could only see Su Dao, not the other elder lurking in the shadows on the far side.

Night had fallen, and a full moon hung in the heavens. In the moonlit gloom, the old man’s form seemed to waver, the bridge itself veiled in an ethereal glow.

“因果 (Karma)…” Even Wang Lin’s own vision seemed to blur. He stared at the elder, at the bridge, at the hazy world around him, and muttered to himself, “It should not be like this… If this is a turning back of time, if this is reincarnation, if all this is but a dream, then what I should be meeting is the me from that dream… Why, then, is it that I see this old man… why is it like this…”

For more than a moon, Wang Lin had been awaiting the scene from a dream, the vision that had left him shaken and confused, drowning his thoughts in wine. In that dream, he had glimpsed another version of himself, here in the canals of 苏城 (Su City), upon this very stone bridge.

But now, he encountered not the dream-self, but this elder.

“This makes no sense… I know of the 炼魂宗 (Soul Refining Sect), even the figure who will emerge from it centuries hence, a figure I suspect is my own dream-self… but I believed I understood all of this. Why then, am I not seeing him here…?” A deep bewilderment filled Wang Lin’s eyes. He could not grasp the meaning of it all. Even his own sense of self seemed to be fading.

As Wang Lin’s confusion deepened, the barge drifted further away.

Seeing that Wang Lin did not answer, the elder on the stone bridge smiled and called out once more.

“Young man, tell me why you believe it is 因果 (Karma)?”

“因果 (Karma)… I am the cause… I, am the effect…” Wang Lin’s voice drifted back, carried on the night air, fading with the receding barge.

The azure-robed Su Dao smiled, watching the boat vanish from sight. He turned to his student standing behind him.

“What is his name?”