The Stage Is Set

“Not at all, not at all. Might I ask, venerable sir, are there any famous sects or schools around here? Someone like me, for instance?” Li Huowang asked the thing that bothered him most.

“There are! Of course there are! There’s a Buddhist temple in Xijing City. They say the Buddha there is especially effective for praying for sons!”

A Buddhist temple? Li Huowang remembered Danyangzi once mentioning that he had been hunted by monks. He wondered if this was that same temple.

Li Huowang made a mental note of this. Regardless, anyone who opposed Danyangzi, that cannibalistic beast, ought to be a good person.

“But, young Daoist, it wouldn’t be appropriate for you, a Daoist priest, to go to a Buddhist temple, would it?”

Li Huowang looked down at his Daoist robe. The man had a point. He wondered if he should change his clothes. He wasn’t a real Daoist, after all.

“How’s business been lately, old sir? Keeping well?”

Sensing Li Huowang was trying to change the subject, Lü Zhuangyuan quickly picked up the thread.

“Aiyah, well enough! This area had a great drought, and then a big flood. The common folk have no money these days. Even fewer are willing to pay to see a show. Rich folks won’t even hire a troupe for their funerals anymore. They just have a funeral feast and call it done. Pah! No filial piety at all!”

“It’ll pass. Just have to tough it out for a few more years.”

“Yeah. Tough it out. Got to find a way to live, haven’t you?”

“I figure, if the years get better, I can run a few hundred more trips. Once this old man has saved up enough, I’ll buy a proper theater in Xijing. A theater for the Lü family. Hey, I could die a happy man then!”

“With a theater, my sons and granddaughter won’t have to suffer out here like me. They can stay home and study. Maybe in a few years, the Lü family ancestral grave will smoke with good fortune, and one of them will become a real Zhuangyuan! By then… hehehe.” Lü Zhuangyuan sucked on his pipe, wearing a foolish grin.

Li Huowang listened quietly to Lü Zhuangyuan’s dreams for the future. He was actually a little envious. At his age, to still have a goal worth striving for.

Led by Li Huowang and Lü Zhuangyuan’s conversation, the tension between the two groups loosened considerably.

At least Lü Juren and Lü Xiucai had stopped treating Gouwa and the others like monsters. They now understood they were just people. Sick people.

And what could you do about getting sick? Everyone gets sick. They were all just poor souls.

By the time they reached Wuligang, Luo Juan had already become familiar enough with Bai Lingmiao to let her hold her daughter.

Standing on the flat ground used for drying rice, Lü Zhuangyuan looked at the villagers eating dinner under their eaves. “Alright, Wuligang has enough people. We’ll set up the pot and draw the circle here. Lü Family Troupe, open the chest! Get the stage up!”

They were going to perform an opera. Li Huowang wasn’t in a hurry to leave. They had all traveled a long way and were tired. It was a good chance for everyone to rest.

Li Huowang wasn’t particularly interested in this old form of entertainment, but clearly the others were very curious. They all ran over to help.

Tall bamboo poles were cut and propped up, holding large pieces of red cloth. The skeleton of a stage was taking shape.

Li Huowang was lying on a pile of yellow rice straw in the field, trying to catch up on sleep, when he felt someone poking his nose. He opened his eyes to find a smiling Bai Lingmiao.

She raised both hands, and a shiny golden object appeared before him. She said excitedly, “Senior Brother Li, look! Such a bright bronze mirror! You can see yourself so clearly! The opera performers use these to put on their makeup!”

“It’s not even dark yet, why did you take off your eye covering already? Aren’t you afraid…”

Li Huowang’s words died in his throat. He stared at his reflection in the bronze mirror, stunned. The person in the mirror was a stranger.

“Senior Brother Li? What’s wrong?” Bai Lingmiao sensed something was off.

“Junior Sister Bai… when I was at Qingfeng Temple, did I really look like this?” Li Huowang hesitantly touched his own face.

“Yes, you’ve always looked like this. Why? Is there something different about the reflection?”

Li Huowang lowered his hand from his face and reached out toward his reflection in the mirror. The face was still the same face.

But he was no longer a youth. He hadn’t just arrived in this world. He had been here for a while now.

If the hospital is real… then I was probably seventeen then. How old am I now?

He could ask the question, but he couldn’t answer it. Besides his jumbled memories, he had also lost his age.

He could only guess from his appearance that he was probably not yet thirty.

Li Huowang searched through his chaotic memories, but found nothing.

“Senior Brother Li? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Don’t scare me.” Seeing his reaction, Bai Lingmiao grew worried.

“I’m fine. Just remembered something. Hurry up and return the mirror. The Lü family will need it for their performance soon.”

“Mn.” Bai Lingmiao hugged the mirror and ran toward the back of the newly erected stage.

“Eeeeehhh~~ Aaahhh~~” Watching Lü Juren warming up his voice in the distance, Li Huowang let out a self-deprecating laugh. He lay back down on the rice straw. “Hah… my life is really just a joke.”

He had thought he would feel more intensely, but he was surprisingly calm. He just had one more goal now: to find out his own age.

Night fell. The sky was cloudless, the bright moon hanging high, illuminating the crude stage with perfect clarity.

News of the opera troupe’s arrival had brought out nearly everyone in Wuligang.

For a farmer whose life consisted of plowing fields and sleeping, an opera troupe was a rare and irresistible form of entertainment.

The Lü family troupe was very small. Besides a two-year-old who couldn’t yet speak, there were only six people.

With playing instruments, singing, applying makeup, and acting all to be done, they were stretched far too thin. They had to cut some parts of their program.

Thankfully, the villagers weren’t picky. They sat on their own stools and watched with great relish.

Li Huowang and the others lay on the rice straw pile, watching from a distance as the troupe sang their “eeees” and “aaaahs.” He didn’t know the opera, and he didn’t know which one they were performing.

He only recognized Lü Zhuangyuan, who was wearing a black face, a long beard, and wielding a Guan Dao. The man was shouting and swinging his blade on stage, putting in a tremendous amount of effort for his age.

“Excellent!!!” A sudden roar of cheers made Li Huowang jump.

One act followed another. The rice-drying ground was packed full. The Lü family on stage were sweating profusely, and the audience below were beaming with joy. Only Li Huowang felt like a detached spectator.

Without him noticing, the moon had reached its zenith. The Lü family troupe’s performance was nearing its end.

Just then, Li Huowang saw Lü Zhuangyuan’s daughter-in-law walk onto the stage. Her clothes were tattered, but she was still in her makeup. She carried her daughter in one arm and a grass basket in the other, her face filled with sorrow.

“My heartless uncle has cast me out~~”

“Like a solitary wild goose, adrift in the wind~ ah-ah-ah~”

“Like roadside weeds, trampled underfoot~ ah-ah~”

“Mother and daughter, cold and starving, can barely endure~ can barely~ en~dure~”

“We can only beg for our meal on the street~”

As she sang this, Luo Juan gave her daughter a gentle pinch on the bottom. The two-year-old child, right on cue, burst into loud wails.