Chapter Seven A Thousand Years in an Instant
After Yanluo left the Wangchuan Tea Pharmacy, he did not immediately return to the night of the mortal realm.
With one step, the ground beneath his feet had already changed to the cold stone slabs of the Yellow Springs Road.
The wind of the underworld always carried a rotten sweet stench, like countless tears never fully cried mixed with aged blood, clinging stickily to the skin, impossible to shake off.
This was his daily life.
He walked along the edge of the Naihe Bridge, the hem of his black robe sweeping across the ground with a faint friction sound.
The bridge was forever lined with endless souls, each face bearing the same emptiness.
They lowered their heads, stuck out their tongues, waiting for Meng Po—no, waiting for the next ferryman—to ladle out that bowl of black soup.
When Yanluo passed by, they did not even dare to raise their heads, only shrinking their bodies smaller, like a group of insects long accustomed to being ignored.
He walked into his own palace.
The hall was vast and cold, with a huge black stone table piled high with thick Books of Life and Death, beside which burned an ever-unchanging bronze lamp.
The lamplight was a ghastly white, like pairs of hollowed-out eyes.
He sat down, opened one of the books, his fingertips sliding across rows of names, each followed by dense records of sins, merits, and cycles of reincarnation.
This was his life in the underworld.
Orderly, cold, endless.
He judged cases, signed documents, and had ghost messengers send souls to be reborn or cast into the eighteen layers of hell.
Everything proceeded in perfect order, like a massive machine already rusted yet still mechanically turning.
He never felt tired, for the word “tired” had long lost meaning to him.
But tonight, he felt a tightness in his chest.
He rose and walked outside the palace, standing by the Wangchuan River.
The river flowed darkly, occasionally surfacing a distorted face before quickly sinking again.
He extended his hand and gently brushed the air; an extremely fine golden thread of fate appeared—that was Ah Meng’s.
The thread was dimmer than before, covered in tiny cracks, like a blood vessel repeatedly pulled and on the verge of snapping.
Yanluo closed his eyes.
For a thousand years, he had watched her in different times and different skins, yet she was always the same person.
In Tang dynasty Chang’an, the night market glowed brightly.
She wore Hu attire, standing before a small pharmacy, ladling soup for a man who had lost his wife in war.
After drinking, the man’s eyes instantly emptied, yet he also smiled lightly.
She stood in the lamplight, her profile softened by the candle flame, yet also profoundly lonely.
In Song dynasty Lin’an, under misty rain.
She appeared at a tea stall by West Lake, bringing a bowl of soup to a scholar who wished to drown himself after failing the imperial exams.
After drinking, the scholar stared blankly at the lake, then turned and left, as if he had never considered death.
She stood in the rain, her cheongsam hem soaked heavy and sticky, as though wrapped in tears that could never dry.
In Ming dynasty Nanjing, she appeared at a brothel by the Qinhuai River, erasing the memories of a woman betrayed by her lover.
After drinking the soup, the woman smiled like a flower blooming anew.
She stood by the river, watching the lantern boats come and go, her eyes holding an emptiness deeper than the water.
In Qing dynasty Beijing, she stood outside the Forbidden City in a small pharmacy, ladling soup for a eunuch nearly broken by palace intrigues.
After drinking, the eunuch walked out with empty eyes, like a completely hollowed-out walking corpse.
In every life, she was so beautiful.
Beautiful enough to make his heart ache.
She always wore the garments of different eras, yet always carried the same exhaustion.
It was not physical exhaustion, but the weight of a soul repeatedly used and long since emptied.
She was like a body endlessly borrowed by time, never truly possessed, its surface maintaining an elegant shape while inside only a thin, cold membrane gently twitched.
He loved her.
A love quiet, sticky, heavy, like a golden flame pressed tightly at the very bottom—burning, enduring, yet forever unable to approach.
In every dynasty he had secretly drawn near her, yet never revealed himself.
He had watched her, when alone, dip her fingers into the icy waters of Wangchuan, as if confirming whether she was still alive;
Watched her sleeping in the stone chamber, brows always lightly furrowed, as though still ladling soup for souls even in dreams;
Watched her occasionally lift her head toward the mortal realm, a fleeting, almost longing light flashing in her eyes before being swallowed again by exhaustion.
That feeling was like an extremely fine, barbed needle, piercing again and again into his softest place, unable to be pulled out, only swelling, inflaming, and festering day after day.
Until the year before last, he could no longer endure it.
He permitted her to descend to the mortal realm.
He granted her a portion of his power, allowing her to open a shop in the human world that appeared only for the despairing.
He told himself this was to make things easier for her.
Yet only he knew—he also wanted her farther from him.
Because every time he saw her standing by the Naihe Bridge, the torment of wanting to pull her entirely into his arms yet never being able to touch her had nearly driven him mad.
And now?
He stood in the night breeze of Taipei and gave a bitter laugh.
She had indeed opened the shop, and indeed begun uprooting the suffering of the living, sealing it into one beautiful bottle after another.
She had grown colder, emptier, more indifferent, like a completely hollowed-out shell still walking with elegance.
And he could only, like tonight, secretly come to the mortal realm, smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of wine, pretending he too was merely an ordinary man capable of heartache, loneliness, and longing.
The cigarette burned to the end, scorching his fingertips.
Yet he did not let go, allowing that burning sensation to remind him again and again—that in this moment, he was at least like a mortal, able to feel pain, desire, and lie awake all night for a woman he could never have.
The distant high-rises glowed brightly, like countless small, luminous bottles.
Each one contained a memory no one wished to keep, yet could not bear to discard.
Yanluo flicked the cigarette butt into the night and turned, walking into deeper darkness.
His silhouette gradually merged into Taipei’s neon lights and the sound of rain, as if he had never appeared.
And in the deepest part of the Wangchuan Tea Pharmacy, that extremely faint golden bottle trembled lightly that night.
The smoke within slowly swirled, as if responding to a distant call suppressed for thousands of years, or as if issuing a silent, fated warning of the storm yet to come.
(End of Chapter Seven)
Postscript: Insomnia at night makes me miss the days when taking sleeping pills could let me sleep straight until dawn.
Waking in the middle of the night feeling nauseous, yet still cooking a bowl of instant noodles and eating it in the living room lit by only a small lamp...
The more I wanted to vomit, the more I forced myself to eat...
The old gastritis problem has flared up again