Xin Hexue had no idea where Du Zhi found the material for this story.
In any case, he suddenly became the newlywed wife marrying into the Zhou family to bring fortune to the gravely ill Zhou Shanheng, while the groom who came to receive the bride and drink wedding wine was Zhou Shanheng’s younger brother, “Zhou Jiangkuo”.
For some reason, Xin Hexue had a sudden thought.
Could Zhou Jiangkuo be this stinky monk’s secular name?
He had asked Du Zhi before about his past before becoming a monk.
Du Zhi only told him that he had been adopted as a child by the only Buddhist temple in the countryside, and later, he happened to encounter Master Liao Yi when he was traveling and gave him the dharma name Du Zhi. From then on, he was taken under the master’s wing and brought to Taichu Temple in the capital for cultivation.
As for his secular name and life before entering the temple, Du Zhi never mentioned it.
Xin Hexue didn’t immediately tell Du Zhi that this was a dream and that everything around them was an illusion and fake.
He didn’t believe that the key to breaking the dream would be that simple. How could the dreamer believe it was a dream before waking up?
But even if breaking the dream wasn’t that easy, it wasn’t impossible either.
According to the information they had gathered earlier, the scholar Su Jia, desperate for fame, wrote a brilliant scroll in the dream, and someone who loved money as much as their life dug up gold buried in their back courtyard in the dream.
This suggested that the dream was a reflection of the dreamer’s subconscious desires.
One could even say it was a kind of wishing well that could make dreams come true. In fact, Su Jia had indeed been able to write the same scroll from memory after returning home.
So Xin Hexue wasn’t in a hurry to find a way to break the dream.
His real body could still sense that the surroundings of the Huxin Tower were safe.
Since it was safe, Xin Hexue had time to waste with Du Zhi. He wanted to find out what Du Zhi’s subconscious truly desired.
It couldn’t really be receiving his brother’s bride and stealing his brother’s bride away, right?
Xin Hexue glanced at Du Zhi’s back as he left the bedroom.
………
Zhou Jiangkuo, courtesy name Du Zhi.
Born to a poor farming family, with the typical structure of the man farming and the woman weaving. Because Father Zhou was a hardworking man, the family of four could at least stay warm and fed all year round.
Xin Hexue stood beside the field ridge.
He was dressed in a white robe and had cloud-stepping shoes on his feet. His skin was so white it was almost translucent under the sunlight, and his long black hair was loosely tied with a simple wooden hairpin, half of it flowing behind him like mist.
His temperament was nothing like someone from the countryside, more like an immortal descended to earth.
Zhou Jiangkuo, or rather, Du Zhi, happened to look back and catch a glimpse of him. He paused, put down the hoe in his hands, and walked over from the field.
“This place is muddy. Why has Sister-in-law come here?”
The dream’s setting was spring.
A gentle spring rain had just passed, and the air was filled with the humid scent of newly planted green shoots and the steam rising from the wet paddies.
Clear distant waters shimmered with light.
He didn’t know why, but though they had clearly only met for the first time at the wedding yesterday, Du Zhi felt a strange sense of familiarity with Xin Hexue…as if they had known each other for a long time. The moment he saw him, an inexplicable feeling of closeness welled up.
Xin Hexue didn’t respond, so Du Zhi asked again, “Why has Sister-in-law come here?”
‘Are you addicted to calling me “Sister-in-law”?’
Xin Hexue gave him a glance and said indifferently, “To see you.”
Du Zhi was confused, so he asked, “Sister-in-law, why did you come to see me?”
Xin Hexue replied directly, “Call me by my name.”
Du Zhi smoothly changed the way he addressed him, “Hexue.”
The young man’s courtesy name slipped from his throat without hesitation, almost as if he hadn’t needed to think. As soon as the words left his mouth, Du Zhi froze.
They hadn’t exchanged names last night, so why did he know the young man’s courtesy name?
Just as a sense of strangeness rose in Du Zhi’s heart, it quickly blurred like a curtain of rain, and his expression returned to calm.
Xin Hexue asked, “Are you taking this year’s provincial exam?”
Du Zhi nodded, “Yes, I passed the county-level exam last year.”
Xin Hexue didn’t question him further.
He just found this dream really bizarre. Du Zhi, who had become a monk, had turned into a poor scholar…
He had also gone to see the gravely ill elder brother, Zhou Shanheng, who was lying unconscious in bed. His features, like those of Father Zhou and Mother Zhou, were blurred, as if shrouded in mist, impossible to distinguish clearly.
This indicated that Du Zhi probably didn’t have a deep impression of them.
But thinking about how Du Zhi had left his family from a young age to enter the Buddhist path, it was understandable.
Still, Xin Hexue noticed that the other party was doing farm work very efficiently.
As he stood to the side, Xin Hexue suddenly said, “I thought someone like you, who distanced himself from the secular world, wouldn’t be familiar with such toilsome labor.”
This remark was directed at the Du Zhi outside the dream, not the Zhou Jiangkuo within it.
But the Zhou Jiangkuo in the field looked up and replied subconsciously, “All the hardships of the mortal world are part of cultivation.”
Xin Hexue raised his brows slightly, his previously casual tone lifting with interest, “What do you mean by that?”
Du Zhi frowned, “I don’t know… the words just slipped out.”
It was probably instinct.
To test Du Zhi’s instincts, Xin Hexue deliberately stood in front of him when he was going up the mountain to the Buddhist temple’s Sutra Library to study after a few days of farming and said he wanted to go out, “I’ll go with you.”
He leisurely watched Du Zhi.
Du Zhi reacted entirely out of reflex..
he turned his back and bent his knees, “I’ll carry you.”
Without any psychological burden, Xin Hexue lay down on his back.
So even with no memories in the dream, the stinky monk still retained his instincts.
This further proved that the dream was a reflection of the subconscious.
So… what exactly did Du Zhi desire?
The poor scholar carried him up the mountain.
The incense offerings at the temple seemed quite prosperous, and the road there was full of people.
As expected, all the passersby’s faces were indistinct; gray, black, and white shadows and lacking detail.
Xin Hexue heard their whispering. With every step on the stone stairs, idle gossip drifted into his ears.
“Is that the Zhou family’s second son, Zhou Jiangkuo? Isn’t his elder brother bedridden?”
“You didn’t hear? The Zhou family held a wedding recently and took in a male wife to bring good fortune to the eldest son!”
“Then the one on his back is?”
“Aiya, it’s the male wife for the fortune-bringing!”
“How can Zhou Jiangkuo be entangled with his sister-in-law? In broad daylight, carrying back and forth like this…what kind of propriety is this?”
“Is there no sense of morality left? I’m going to tell Madam Zhou!”
“Is he still considered a scholar? He’s swallowed all the Three Bonds and Five Constants!”
“I don’t know what it’s like in their Xushou Village, but in our village, if a younger brother-in-law and sister-in-law commit adultery, they’d be drowned in the river…”
Xin Hexue turned to glance back.
The whispering figures looked like black shadows and were grinning with blood-red mouths. The words they spat out formed into continuous, tangible shapes that floated in midair.
It brought a sense of absurdity only found in strange tales.
Du Zhi noticed Xin Hexue’s movement and calmly said, “Don’t listen, don’t look.”
Xin Hexue withdrew his gaze. Lying on Du Zhi’s back, he quickly realized that although he could hear those idle whispers, they were clearly not aimed at him, but at Du Zhi.
Those solid black words formed chains and shackles like black iron, passing through, wrapping around, and binding, slithering through the air like agile black snakes.
Du Zhi’s pace obviously slowed a bit, but even so, he continued climbing step by step, carrying Xin Hexue into the temple.
Xin Hexue saw the stone tablet outside the mountain gate, the cinnabar characters spelling out the words “Huifu”.
Huifu Temple.
The scenery here was much clearer than outside, perhaps because Du Zhi was more familiar with this place.
It seemed this was the temple where he first began his cultivation.
Du Zhi studied inside the sutra library.
Xin Hexue wandered around outside. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt every blade of grass and tree here seemed familiar, although he shouldn’t have ever been here.
Suddenly, Xin Hexue came to a complete stop.
Outside the Jialan Hall stood a centuries-old banyan tree. Its branches were lush and dense, with countless red thread fluttering in the wind like ribbons.
Xin Hexue touched the red thread buried within the veins of his wrist and could sense the other thread buried in Du Zhi’s hand.
Had he really been here before?
Because his memory was cleared every seven days, Xin Hexue had no recollection at all.
Xushou Village, Huifu Temple…
Xin Hexue’s gaze darkened.
It seemed he still needed to hurry and leave this dream.
However, since this was a projection of Du Zhi’s subconscious, the things in the dream must hold symbolic meaning.
Xin Hexue thought again of the whispers from earlier that formed into chains as they ascended the steps. Du Zhi was a monk, a cultivator who stood alone ,so worldly morality should not have been something that concerned him.
Perhaps it symbolized something else…
But in the dream, Du Zhi was a scholar. Traditional scholars valued the Three Bonds and Five Constants, ethics and moral principles. Corresponding to Buddhist cultivation, that would be the monastic rules and precepts?
Or was Du Zhi apprehensive about something else?
Xin Hexue pondered this as he slowly walked back to the sutra library. Du Zhi was still seated at the table by the window, holding a scroll in his hand.
“Du Zhi.”
Xin Hexue casually leaned an elbow on Du Zhi’s shoulder.
As Du Zhi turned around, his lips brushed right against Xin Hexue’s, and his entire body froze.
Xin Hexue let out a light laugh, “How does it feel?”
Du Zhi thought for a while, then he covered his chest with his hand and said, “It feels like… this place, it’s beating very fast.”
In the silent sutra library, Du Zhi raised his eyes and asked Xin Hexue, “Can we… try it again?”
Xin Hexue straightened up and said softly, “Then come to my room tonight.”
………
The moonlight was like frost.
The ends of Xin Hexue’s hair were damp. He had just taken a bath, so his hair hadn’t dried yet. It carried a faint scent of soapberry and a hint of the cool fragrance of green sandalwood.
His skin was very fair, and under the night, it appeared even more translucent. His whole being seemed colorless like moonlight, only his eyelashes and eyes were as dark as ink, and his lips were tinged faintly red like flower petals touched by dew as he breathed.
Du Zhi quietly stepped back, and under the moonlight, a silver thread stretched out between them.
He stared at Xin Hexue’s slightly red lips. “Can we try it again?”
He didn’t seem to find it strange or out of bounds to come into his sister-in-law’s room at midnight and to make such requests over and over again.
There was no concept of morality or any care for monastic rules.
Xin Hexue calmly refused, “No, I’m tired.”
Du Zhi asked directly, “Then when will it be okay?”
Xin Hexue leaned into Du Zhi’s chest lazily. He tilted his head back, and at this angle, he could clearly see the distinct lines of Du Zhi’s Adam’s apple. Xin Hexue raised his hand and gently brushed his fingertip over it, feeling the bone roll under his touch.
Du Zhi couldn’t wait to ask, “Are you rested now?”
“No.” Xin Hexue’s voice was slow with sleepiness. He said to Du Zhi, “Come to my room tomorrow night.”
Du Zhi lowered his voice. “Mm, I’ll remember.”
Before he left the bedroom, Xin Hexue suddenly asked, “Du Zhi, do you love me?”
It seemed to be a casual question, and his tone was careless, clearly not expecting an answer right away.
Du Zhi paused in his steps and asked in confusion, “What is love?”
Xin Hexue leaned lazily against the head of the bed, hugging the quilt. He recalled a line he once read in a book, “Mm… love is a silent burning. To love someone is to kill everyone else in the fire.”
Du Zhi couldn’t understand. “Why would I kill everyone else?”
Xin Hexue wasn’t sure either. He had never truly been in love. He was just trying to repeat what he had read before.
Xin Hexue: “Probably because… love is exclusive.”
Du Zhi lowered his eyes. “I still don’t understand.”
Xin Hexue lifted his eyelids lazily and said perfunctorily, “You will understand.”
He was really too sleepy. His later words to Du Zhi were so soft they were almost a whisper. He curled up alone in the quilt, “I’m sleepy.”
Du Zhi gently closed the door and left the bedroom.
As he took his first step out, his gaze flickered with struggle. He looked pained and he clutched his forehead as if in agony. The veins at his temples bulged, and his temples throbbed relentlessly.
Du Zhi pressed between his brows and crouched down.
It was as if a monster had taken residence in his body, surging and squirming through his flesh and blood.
His eyes blinked repeatedly, and red slowly flooded his irises.
A cold voice, dripping with overflowing malice rang out, “You idiot, didn’t you realize he was being coquettish just now?”
“You should’ve stepped forward, hugged him, and told him you love him.”
“You should be his grinding donkey, his plowing ox, and his guard dog.”
