The Floating World and All Its Faces Part 1

The Floating World and All Its Faces

"The Songshan Sect?" Liaojing's brows climbed in fury. "You want me to go to Songshan?" A contemptuous smile crossed his face. "Abandon my master to his fate, and then become a thorough, full-fledged traitor to Shaolin? And you call that helping me?"

"Where is Shaolin?" Ming Buxiang asked in return.

Liaojing pointed up the mountain, the road he meant to walk back. He started to speak, then stopped himself.

Ming Buxiang was not a man who wasted words on idle questions. His meaning was always precise, with a precision that belonged to his intent. The time they had spent locked against each other had taught Liaojing this man well, and he understood now that when Ming Buxiang asked where Shaolin was, he did not mean the temple on the mountain above.

"With Shaolin gone, where is there for you to return to?" Ming Buxiang asked.

Liaojing lowered his finger. "You mean," he said flatly, "that I can either live like a dog, or die like a worm."

"Or you could be a hero. Depends on your luck." Ming Buxiang's voice was even. "This is as far as I take you."

Liaojing burst out laughing. "And you'd be that kind to me?" he sneered. "Bugui trusted you too."

"That was his own choice."

"You push a man off a cliff, and when the rocks at the bottom kill him, that's no fault of yours. Is that what you mean?"

"I only led him to the edge. He jumped himself," Ming Buxiang said. "Yao Yunda and the others didn't jump."

"You drove Benyue mad, you got Liaowu killed. That was you, wasn't it? And Lady Yuan's husband—" Liaojing said. "They didn't exactly choose to go mad and die!"

"You killed them. And now you want to kill me as well," Ming Buxiang countered. "Did Benyue not deserve to die?"

Liaojing laughed coldly. "You weren't moved by any great mercy. You were afraid Benyue would let it all spill out and drag your name into it. That's why you finished him."

"And you—are you so merciful?" Ming Buxiang seemed weary of the subject now. "Is it your mercy that takes you up that mountain?" He shook his head. "It only means more people die."

"Since when have you flinched at a few corpses?" Liaojing laughed harshly. "Don't tell me you don't kill!"

Ming Buxiang considered it, as though the question carried real weight, and a long moment passed before he answered. "Perhaps. Perhaps I will, in time."

When he spoke of killing, his face held no expression at all, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and the only matter still to be settled was when, and where, and by what turn of circumstance the deed would be done.

A sudden chill ran through Liaojing. "Who do you want to kill?" he demanded.

Ming Buxiang shook his head. "I don't know yet. We'll see when the time comes."

"And if I don't go back to the temple," Liaojing pressed, "have you some way to save my master? Even if I stay off the mountain—won't a war still break out between the proper monks and the lay monks?"

"I can't save your master, and neither can you," Ming Buxiang said. "The war between proper and lay was not set in motion by me, nor by you. Neither of us has that kind of power. It is cause and effect, shared karma. No one can hold it back."

"How neatly you wash your hands of it all," Liaojing said.

"Bensong and Lady Yuan haven't gotten far yet. They'll be caught and brought back—two more lives lost." Ming Buxiang pointed south. "Go the way of Wudang and you can overtake them. With your skill, you can see them safely there. Then cut across to Jiangsu and on to Shandong, to the Songshan Sect. That is where you return to lay life."

When he had finished, Ming Buxiang looked once more toward the mountain. "I should go back."

"And who do you mean to ruin next?" Liaojing asked. "Abbot Juejian? Head Monk Juekong?"

Ming Buxiang shook his head. "You still don't understand."

"No, I don't," Liaojing said. "With your wits, your gifts, you'd never need such methods—the abbot's seat would be yours sooner or later anyway. What is it you're really after?"

Ming Buxiang said nothing more, and started up the mountain alone.

Liaojing watched his receding back, hesitating, and then a surge of rage rose in his chest and he shouted: "Ming Buxiang! Even if I can't beat you, one day someone will put an end to a monster like you! And when they do, I'll have my share in it!"

Ming Buxiang paid him no mind. His figure dwindled into the distance.

Liaojing knelt facing the direction of Shaolin Temple and knocked his head three times against the ground, knocked until his forehead split and bled. Then he turned and went quickly down the mountain.

He did not believe Ming Buxiang. But he knew what Ming Buxiang had said was true.

His master would not want him to return, and he could not return. If he did, he would bring catastrophe down on Shaolin.

This parting would have no appointed reunion; what waited for him was a future no one could foresee. He told himself that one day he would come back to Shaolin, and face Ming Buxiang again.

The figure going down the mountain moved faster and faster, until it vanished into the forest and was gone.

......

Juekong's first difficulty was the coroner's report on the seven bodies found at Songshan, which Juejian handed to him. It read: "Likely killed in a brawl. Doubts remain; further inquiry needed."

Why not write "cause of death unknown, killer to be found"? Juekong understood what Juejian was about. Had Juejian written it that way, Juekong would have had something over him—if Liaoxin were found and the deaths proved to be lay monks and proper monks killing one another, or if the truth later came to light, then Juejian would have been shielding Liaoxin and concealing the facts. The matter could be made large or small. The cleaner course would have been to pass over Juekong entirely, send it straight to the abbot, convene the Council of the Four Courts, and have Liaoxin convicted at once of murdering his own brethren and fleeing to escape justice. That would be the consensus of the Four Courts, with nothing to do with the proper-and-lay divide. Juekong had always assumed that, worldly as Juejian was, this was the course he would take.

So when he saw the report, he was genuinely shaken.

The Samantabhadra Court governed all discipline and enforcement within Shaolin and without. Once the matter reached his hands, to send it up to the Council of the Four Courts would be to admit he could not resolve it himself. Had even Juejian begun to play these little games? The only recourse after that would be to return it to the Samantabhadra Court for retrial—and surely Juejian had foreseen that possibility too. Having sent it up, he did not intend to take it back.

Should he write "cause of death unknown, killer to be found," and close the case? To shield a proper monk would cost him nothing. Proper and lay had always borne the same guilt but not the same punishment; a lay monk's offenses were waved lightly aside, especially those against the monastic precepts. But the murder of one's own brethren was a capital crime even for a lay monk. What was Juejian playing at? With proper and lay quietly squaring off as they were now, did he mean to saddle Juekong with the name of a man who had shielded a proper monk—so that Juejian himself came off as the strict guardian of the precepts, while Juekong could not answer to the lay monks and bore the charge of favoritism besides?

This Juejian...

In the end, Juekong let the verdict stand: "Killed in a brawl. Doubts remain; further inquiry needed."

The lay monks had to believe that he would protect their standing, that he would stand up for them.

So long as he held authority and kept the lay monks' faith, he could govern the nearly sixty percent of Shaolin that they made up, and keep them from mutiny, from breaking into open chaos.

Power was a dangerous weapon, and had to be placed in hands wise and resolute enough to hold it.

And the way to keep authority was to allow no one to encroach on it or test it. Let a man step on your foot once, and he would climb that foot to step on your face—and watching, others would think they too could plant a foot or two.

What he had not foreseen was that the Bugui affair, small as it was, would stir up no small commotion. The lay monks held that Bugui was a proper monk's disciple; the proper monks held that Bugui's master kept close company with the lay, which made Bugui one of their kind. He became a pretext for each side to attack the other.

Less foreseeable still was that Jueguan and Jueru, of all moments, should choose this one to raise the matter of renaming the lay monks.

Two fools, Juekong thought. Jueru's cleverness reached no further than the tip of his tongue. All his eyes could see was proper and lay; he never looked to any higher ground.

The Bensong affair was a crisis. It was also an opportunity.

If Jueru died, the lay monks' anger could be quieted, and the question of renaming them could be laid to rest.

Then Shaolin would be secure.

Juekong remembered a thing his own master had once said.

It was, for Shaolin, a statement that could only be called heresy. For that very reason he had never repeated it to anyone.

It was the creed he held to all his life.

......

Jueguan and Juejian went to see Jueru in the cells. Jueru was still grinning.

"You can still smile," Jueguan said, "after stirring up trouble like this."

Jueru laughed. "I saved my disciple. Of course I'm happy."

"You failed to keep your disciple in line." Juejian's face stayed grave; he found nothing here to smile at. "Bensong broke the precepts, and Liaojing actually covered for him and helped him flee."

Jueru laughed. "Bensong isn't my disciple, he's Liaoxu's. And Liaoxu is the proctor of the Right Action Hall, which falls under your charge. So if anything, your own lax governance is what's ruined my disciple and me."

"Do you know where your disciple has gone?" Jueguan asked.

"Head Monk, why even ask?" Jueru said. "I don't know, and even if I did, would I tell you? Or do you think I'm sitting in here for the pleasure of it, sleeping in a cell because I love prison?"

"These are not ordinary times," Jueguan said. "The burden you bear is heavy and the road long. If the renaming of the lay monks cannot be settled here and now, what becomes of the Three Treasures?"

Jueru blinked, lifted his head to glance around, and let out a sigh. "Then the Buddha simply isn't watching over us."

"You wreck the true Dharma for your own selfish ends," Juejian said, "and then lay the blame at the World-Honored One's feet? This is karma of your own making, ripening upon you."

"I'm as good as dead anyway," Jueru said. "I'll make my confession to the Buddha after I die."

"I'm afraid you won't get to meet the World-Honored One," Juejian said.

Jueru laughed aloud. "Give it a few hundred lifetimes and anyone can meet the Buddha. I'll tell him then. Cultivation is the accumulated merit of countless eons—what is this trifling error of mine against so long a road?"

"Sophistry," Jueguan said. "This is no trifling error. Lay monks, under the name of the Three Treasures, foul the Buddha's good name out in the world—keeping company with whores, taking wives and fathering children, gambling and drinking themselves stupid, with not the least look of cultivation about them. Ask yourself: in the eyes of ordinary people, how are they to tell a true monk from a false one? They'll think every disciple of the Buddha's gate is just the same."

"The abbot hasn't ruled yet. There may still be turns to come." Juejian looked at Jueru. "Lucky for you the proper monks hold one vote more than the lay. Otherwise you really would be smiling into your grave."

Jueru only laughed on.

After Jueguan and Juejian left, Juewen came to see him.

"Even you came," Jueru said, genuinely surprised. Though the two of them were both abbots of the Avalokitesvara Court, Juewen was a lay monk, and besides their temperaments did not mix. Juewen had always been stiff and guarded; none of Jueru's jokes had ever touched him, and his company was a dull affair.

"At the Council of the Four Courts, I voted for your death," Juewen said, sitting down on the floor. "It was not what my heart wanted."

"I know. Head Monk Juekong wants me dead, doesn't he?" Jueru said. "If I die, the renaming of the lay monks dies with me."

"Renaming the lay monks is not born of a divided heart," Juewen said. "I understand what you and Head Monk Jueguan want."

Jueru laughed. "Then tell me. How do you understand it?"

"By Shaolin's rule, none but a monk may enter the halls. That cannot be touched," Juewen said.

Jueru nodded. "Mm, mm. It can't be touched. Otherwise lay disciples would outnumber the monks, and what would become of us then?"

"Renaming the lay monks changes no law within," Juewen said, "yet it declares our position to the world without, and spares ordinary people their misunderstandings of the Three Treasures. It was a good thing from the start."

"If it's a good thing, why didn't you support it?" Jueru said. "Are you really so afraid of Head Monk Juekong?"

Juewen shook his head. "Fifty years ago our forebears could not see this far. Fifty years on, today, it is already too late."

"Too late is still better than never," Jueru said. "Leave it any longer, and how will Shaolin go on calling itself the orthodox seat of the Buddha's gate?"

Juewen fell silent.

"We should have traded masters from the start," Jueru said. "You'd have made a proper monk—if not a Juejian then a Jueming—and I'd have been a lay monk holding Jueji's seat, and we'd be spared all this awkwardness now."

Juewen sighed. "In an age like this, even cultivation is hard."

......

Jueming did not go to see Jueru. He came instead to the door of the abbot's chamber and rapped twice.

"Come in," said Juesheng's voice from within. Jueming pushed open the door. The abbot sat upright on his cushion.

"I was just thinking it must be your turn," Juesheng said, gesturing to the two cushions before him. "Sit."

Two cushions? Jueming guessed the gist of it. "Head Monk Jueyun and Abbot Jueguang have already been, then," he said.

"Just so," Juesheng said. "Of the Manjushri Court, only you had not yet come."

"Juejian is abbot of the Right Action Hall; he is bound to stay neutral," Jueming said. "Jueguan is close to Jueru; were he to say much, it would smack of putting private feeling above the order. And Liaozheng is newly raised to abbot, lowest in seniority, and dares not overstep."

"What is it you wish to say?" Juesheng asked.

Jueming considered, then pressed both hands to the floor and made the abbot a deep bow.

"What I wish to say, the abbot already understands." With that single sentence he rose, opened the door, and left. This Jueming, untouched by any leaf that fell, had at last—to save Jueru—spoken his mind in his own way.

Juesheng understood, of course, what Jueming wished to say. As the lodestar of the martial world and at the same time abbot of Shaolin, the highest holy ground of the Buddha's gate, he was—save for the chief of the Kunlun Council—the most exalted man in all that world.

He held in his hands the power to dispose of the lives of countless thousands. And yet he was a compassionate master who grieved over the death of any single one.

How much more, then, over a man like Jueru.

He rose and pushed open the door. The fourth month, the afternoon, gentle wind and clear sun.

Could Jueru still feel this gentle wind, this clear sun?

In his cultivation, Jueru had never been a diligent monk. But he was capable in his work, ready always with a laugh, and more beloved of the disciples than the sterner proper monks. Nor was he simply a man who could not bend. Juejian was worldly; Jueru was suppler still, knew how to calculate, and struck hard when hard striking was called for. He presided over the Right Speech Hall with kindness and authority both, and under him the temple's business passed clearly and was carried out well. Such men were rare among the proper monks. And more than that, Jueru's fierce love for his disciple was a thing to pity; the crime did not deserve death.

But Juekong was right. Without killing Jueru, how were the lay monks to be appeased?

Jueru had to die.

So—was he killing him because he was guilty, or because he could not be allowed to live?

Juesheng lifted his head. In the corner of the eaves a small spiderweb had just snared a grass-fly.

He had given his disciples particular instruction: when they swept, to leave one small patch of the eaves untouched, so a spider might weave there and catch its food. But that web had become the grass-fly's grave. His mercy had killed many creatures even as it spared one.

"Cause and effect..." he sighed softly. Who could say whether saving one man today might not, tomorrow, doom many more?

And yet if today he stood by and let a man die, who could say it would not doom others still in days to come?

His kindly brows lowered, his eyes half closed, and softly he intoned the Buddha's name.

......

Under cover of night Liaojing left Shaolin, came down to the town at the foot of the mountain, found an inn, and called for two catties of strong grain liquor.

A monk drinking was no longer a strange thing within Shaolin's reach; beyond Buddha City, no few of the lay monks took their wine. Seeing the innkeeper set the liquor before him without a single question asked, Liaojing suddenly understood why his master had clung so stubbornly to the matter of renaming the lay monks.

But it was no longer his to worry over. Liaojing smiled bitterly, poured a cup, raised it to his chest, and said aloud to himself: "To the first cup of a man returned to the world!"

He threw it back in one swallow—and with a strangled gulp spat it straight out again.

"It burns! It burns! Innkeeper, quick, a cup of tea!" Liaojing cried in a panic. The innkeeper hurriedly brewed him a pot of hot tea, and Liaojing tipped his head back and gulped it down—and sprayed that out too, sticking out his tongue and yelping, "Hot! Hot!"

So he hastily drank another cup of liquor to quench the scald.

He had never drunk before; this was the first time, and his whole face flushed crimson at once.

"What is there to like about this stuff anyway?" Liaojing could not see it.

He poured a second cup. As the first step of his return to the world, he was resolved to begin by learning to drink.

The second cup went down, and the mild swimming in his head loosened the feelings he had been holding back. He felt there was so much he wanted to say, and no one to say it to. The night had grown deep; the innkeeper was clearing up, the place near to closing. He would be lodging here tonight, though he was not sure the coin he carried was enough to pay for a room.

In the inn's main hall, only one figure sat in a corner—a scholar in blue, reading by candlelight over his tea.

"Hey, you, scholar!" Liaojing called. "Any mind to share a cup with me?"

The scholar looked up, regarded Liaojing, closed his book, and came over.

"What's that you're reading?" Liaojing looked at the volume in his hand. The scholar held it up: In Search of the Supernatural.

"I've read that one. Bit of interest to it." Liaojing turned and called to the innkeeper, "Innkeeper, another cup over here!"

The innkeeper hurried over with a cup and asked, "Will the guest be staying the night? We're closing up."

"How much for the night?" Liaojing asked.

"With the liquor, five hundred coppers."

Liaojing felt inside his robe, and a flicker of doubt crossed his face.

"You buy me the drink, I'll buy you the bed. Fair enough." The scholar seemed to see through his predicament, and turned to the innkeeper. "Put his room on my account."

Liaojing knew better than to make a show of pride, and thanked him at once. Looking now more closely at the scholar, he saw a handsome face, refined, a faint smile resting on it.

There's something familiar about that smile, Liaojing thought, though he could not place where he had seen the man. He could only pour a cup for each of them.

"Down it goes!" Liaojing drained his in one gulp, and a wave of dizziness took him. The scholar drank his cup as well.

"Strangers met by chance—that's a kind of fate," Liaojing said. "Where are you bound, sir?"

"I'd thought to go up to Shaolin for the great festival of the Buddha's birth," the scholar said, "but the road delayed me, and I missed the day."

"What's worth going to Shaolin for? There's a monster up there!"

"A monster? The sort in the book?" The scholar lifted In Search of the Supernatural.

"Those are made up. Mine's real." By now Liaojing's head was reeling; his chest felt stuffed full of words, and all the wrongs of these past days were on the verge of bursting out of him—he could not keep them in. He drew Ming Buxiang's notebook from his robe and handed it to the scholar. "Take a look. Do you believe what's written in here?"

The scholar opened the notebook and read by the candle. He turned the pages very fast; Liaojing half wondered whether he was really reading the words at all.

"Well? You don't believe it either, do you?" Liaojing sighed, poured himself and the scholar another cup, and tossed it back. "And that's my own handwriting in there. Doesn't it look like a load of half-cocked nonsense I scribbled out of nowhere?"

"I believe it." The scholar handed the notebook back and asked mildly, "Is he the reason you've turned traitor and gone back to the world?"

The words struck a cold sweat from Liaojing; his head cleared considerably, and he asked warily, "How do you know I've left the order and betrayed the temple?"

"If such a man really exists, and you know this many of his secrets, he'd never suffer you to remain at Shaolin," the scholar said. "You can't hold your drink—tonight's your first time—so you've something weighing on you. Your shoes are caked with mud; you've been walking mountain trails by night. The nearest town to here that sits up on the mountain is Buddha City alone, so you've come down from Shaolin. A man on urgent temple business would ride; with no business, why walk in such haste? Which tells me you slipped away in secret. Which means you mean to leave the order."

Liaojing stared at the scholar before him in astonishment.

"This place is close to Shaolin; word travels fast. I've heard of what's lately happened. You'd be Master Liaojing, wouldn't you?"

Liaojing nodded. Seeming to catch the suspicion in his eyes, the scholar went on: "I won't give you away. You're a good man."

Liaojing smiled bitterly. "How would you know that?"

The scholar raised his cup. "Didn't you just buy me a drink?"

"Ha!" Liaojing laughed aloud, poured two more cups, and lifted his. "Then—to the good man!"

The two drank again, and the scholar said, "I find this business of the monster very interesting. Could you tell me more?"

Liaojing had a bellyful of grievance; for days no one had believed him, and now at last here was someone willing to listen, so out it all came in a rush. He talked as he drank, beginning with the torn pages he had found in the Sutra Repository, on through his master taking the punishment in his place, and ending with his flight from Shaolin.

He had never drunk before, and by the time he realized he was drunk his head was already swimming and his words had gone thick.

"All of it... strange enough, isn't it?... He's only fifteen... who'd believe it."

"It seems strange," the scholar said, "but with planning laid beforehand, none of it is impossible."

Liaojing giggled. "Really?"

"You're drunk, Master," the scholar said. "Get some rest."

Liaojing mumbled thickly, "There's more... later on... I saw him again... just when I was about to go back to the temple..."

By now he was too far gone to keep his eyes open or his words straight, and he only managed: "I... you... what's your name...?"

"My name is Xie Gubai," the scholar said. "Until we meet again, Master."

"Xie... Gu..." Liaojing got no further before he sank into deep sleep. He should never have drunk liquor so strong—what was it called, grain spirit... For years afterward he regretted ordering grain spirit that day, and never touched it again.

That same night Liaojing dragged himself up from the bed and was thoroughly sick into the chamber pot, his mouth parched and his head splitting. Groping in the dark he found a water jug and drained it at the spout, then slumped back against the bed and slept.

When he woke the next day, he found a slip of paper on the table bearing only twelve characters—

"Songshan is not Shaolin's alone; there is room here yet for a hidden dragon to lodge."

So now he was being likened to a hidden dragon? Flattering, truly. Liaojing scratched his chin and smiled wryly.

The sense of those twelve characters was the same as Ming Buxiang's: go to Songshan. And of a sudden he understood why the scholar had struck him as familiar. The scholar's smile had reminded him of Ming Buxiang. No—strictly, their smiles were nothing alike. When Ming Buxiang smiled it was like warm, mild sunlight; the scholar's smile was cool and remote. Yet somehow it had called Ming Buxiang to mind, though the two looked nothing like each other.

He asked the innkeeper about the man. The innkeeper said the scholar had lodged there two days; he had seemed at first to mean to go up the mountain, but for some reason had left the night before—perhaps up the mountain, perhaps not.

Liaojing felt the loss of it. He knew the man was no common figure, and he cursed his own failure to make a friend of him.

Songshan...

He had still harbored doubts about Ming Buxiang's words, but now this scholar too had bidden him go to Songshan. If the two were not speaking by mere coincidence, then there had to be some reason waiting for him at Songshan, some reason he was meant to go.

On the road to Wudang he found Bensong and Lady Yuan; the hall monks of Shaolin had very nearly run them down. Liaojing shielded them in their flight into Hubei, and from there on into Anhui. At the least, he had saved two lives.

On the road to Songshan he heard at last how Shaolin had dealt with his master Jueru.

Demoted five ranks, banished from Shaolin, reassigned as abbot of the White Horse Temple in Shanxi.

He did not know whether to be glad or to grieve.

Within Shaolin, the bells rolled out and the chanting did not cease.

Juekong could not undo the fact the abbot Juesheng had announced before all: Jueru exiled to the White Horse Temple in Shanxi, and the new abbot of the Right Speech Hall to be named on Head Monk Juekong's recommendation.

Abbot Juesheng had done all he could to soften the blow, letting Juekong recommend the abbot of the Right Speech Hall—so that across the Four Courts and Eight Halls, proper and lay stood evenly matched.

Only Juekong understood that, amid swollen anger, a ruling that seemed to satisfy both sides with a mutual step back was, more often than not, the very thing that deepened the rift.

Standing before the great hall of the Samantabhadra Court, he found himself thinking again of the words his master had spoken.

That one statement, for Shaolin the rankest heresy of all:

"The Buddha may perish, but Shaolin must not!"

......