Lin Luxiao understood immediately: yet another last-minute retreat. He tugged the corner of his mouth. “Don’t mention it.”
As he was about to leave, Nan Chu suddenly caught his arm.
Lin Luxiao looked back. The girl was staring up at him with wide eyes, her voice coming out thick and small: “Does your station have somewhere for patients to stay? Or you could just take me back to yours — I’ll pay you.”
She didn’t know where the courage came from to make that request of a strange adult man. But in that moment, she knew — the sense of safety she felt around Lin Luxiao was something she desperately wanted to hold on to.
Lin Luxiao just thought this little girl was funny — not an ounce of self-preservation instinct. He laughed and teased: “If I took you back to my place — would you dare go?”
But the girl squared her thin shoulders like someone facing a firing squad and said: “Of course I would!”
His teammates burst out laughing. Lin Luxiao’s smile slowly faded.
That year, Lin Luxiao was twenty-four — still a young man who could barely take care of himself.
---
That Saturday, a silver-grey van travelled north toward the outskirts of Beixun City, winding along a mountain road, its tire tracks pressed into the dust.
Eight in the morning.
The car stopped at a small hillside.
A person climbed out and began ascending the hundred-odd stone steps cut into the slope.
Jiumang Mountain Summit. A sacred Buddhist site.
Morning light radiated through the mist. Nan Chu was dressed simply — a white T-shirt, black trousers, a pair of long straight legs, and a grey lettered duck-bill cap on her head. She followed the winding mountain path deeper into the forest.
Through a grove of green bamboo, the corner of a dark red curved eave gradually came into view. At the entrance, a dark reddish-brown plaque hung across the gate, weathered and worn at the edges by wind and sun, with four large characters inlaid in the center:
Qingchan Temple.
Jiumang Mountain, Qingchan Temple — serene and apart from the world, a place to still the mind like a quiet courtyard.
Taoist shrines, Buddhist light — all find their meeting through fate.
And fate, in all things, works this way.
Nan Chu took three sticks of incense at the entrance, climbed the steps, and made her way to a small courtyard at the rear of the temple. It was a modest square space; a little novice nun passed by carrying a water bucket and gave her a small bow.
In the center of the courtyard stood a large black bronze incense burner, sending up thin wisps of pale smoke.
Nan Chu lit her incense, lifted the sticks, and stepped into the main hall. Inside there was not a soul — sandalwood fragrance drifted through the still air. Three meditation cushions were arranged at the entrance. She looked up: the Buddha at the center of the hall gazed out with compassionate eyes.
After paying her respects, Nan Chu made her way to the Hall of Prajna. Someone was seated cross-legged on the low prayer platform.
Nan Chu bowed respectfully. The person on the platform opened her eyes, looked at Nan Chu, and beckoned, passing her a cushion.
“Looking at your complexion, you seem to have been doing well recently,” said the abbess.
The room was thick with sandalwood incense — enough to make one’s eyes water. Nan Chu arranged her cushion and sat cross-legged opposite her. “Not bad,” she answered.
The abbess was nearly sixty, and she studied Nan Chu with a kindly expression. “And your sleep — is that better?”
Nan Chu nodded. “Much improved.”
The abbess wore a dark robe, her hands tucked into her sleeves, and closed her eyes. “Something weighing on your mind?”
Nan Chu shook her head.
The abbess seemed to sense otherwise, still with eyes closed, her voice quiet: “Every time you come to find me, you have something on your mind.”
“I came to return your book.” Nan Chu slid the sutra across toward her.
The abbess glanced at it without much interest. “Is it still because of those people attacking you?”
“No.”
The abbess closed her eyes and let out a slow breath, and didn’t say more.
The room was silent for a long while.
Then the abbess asked: “Is it because of Commander Lin, then?”
That made Nan Chu genuinely surprised. “You remember him.”
“We crossed paths once. When there is a connection, one remembers.”
The two of them had come here to pray together once. Lin Luxiao had no faith in such things — he hadn’t even stepped through the gate back then. It was remarkable the abbess had remembered him at all.
As the words settled, a small novice nun came in with tea.
When she left and closed the door behind her, Nan Chu finally asked: “Does Buddhist teaching say anything about matters of love and fate?”
At that, the abbess turned and looked at her for a long moment. “It does.”
“Please,” said Nan Chu, all attention.
“All loving unions, impermanent, cannot last long. From love arises sorrow; from love arises fear. For one who is free from love, there is neither sorrow nor fear.”
The oil lamp in the meditation chamber cast a soft, warm yellow light. Nan Chu found herself gazing at it without meaning to.
“……Is there more?”
The abbess continued: “Life has eight forms of suffering — birth, aging, illness, death, the parting from those we love, the meeting with those we despise, the failing to get what we desire, and the inability to let go. Four of the eight arise from love.”
Nan Chu pressed a hand to her forehead. “Is there nothing encouraging to be said?”