Cyber Ghosts

“The belief trustee in the secular world?” Hao Ning felt amazed, “Don’t you have any temple in the real world? How can you get a belief trustee in the secular world?”

“Did you forget?” Liu Shuai got the point and pushed Hao Ning, “Xiao Hong has another identity, Sudhana.”

“Oh, yes. That’s it!” Hao Ning saw it instantly, “Avalokitesvara possesses temples in reality. Not only temples but also Bodhimanda. In turn, Sudhana who stayed by his side, although not mentioned very often, was more or less concerned somehow. He literally counts one of your belief trustees in the secular world.” At that thought, Hao Ning felt even weirder, “Then why did you go back to Three Kingdoms times?”

“One day in the cave, a thousand years on the earth.” Xiao Hong didn’t speak, and Liu Shuai picked up the words, “The sentence is to depict the gods’ power. While it actually indicates the relation between incense and time. I understand now. Did some accident happen to the power of incense when your parents sacrificed themselves, and that took you back to the Three Kingdom Times?”

“Yes.” Xiao Hong nodded and continued, “Meanwhile, the sacrifice should have influenced the belief in other books, which engendered that Kong Ming in Romance of Three Kingdoms also fled from the book and came to the same times as I was in ‒ Precisely, I doubted that he had brought me to the times there at the order of Zhuge Liang in real history.”

“Wait! Let me get it clear!” Hao Ning got messed up while listening. He waved his hand in the air and pondered, “Your parents, to keep you safe from the disaster of May 4th Seal God event, had sacrificed themselves so that you could escape from the book. Owing to the overstrong power of sacrifice, not only the timeline but also another book Romance of Three Kingdoms was affected, which made the Kong Ming in the book return to the real Three Kingdoms times in history ‒ I get it. The Kong Ming in the book surely knew about the Shang Fang Valley Event, so it’s not unnatural that he reconducted in the past history to set Shang Fang Valley on fire!”

“Meanwhile the Kong Ming in the book should be more than clear that the Shang Fang Valley Event would end up with heavy rain, and in the case, Sima Yi fled. He certainly couldn’t hold back the rain with his own ability.” Liu Shuai continued, “But he ran into you by coincidence and came to realize that your Samadhi True Fire was immune from water. With your aid, Sima Yi would be doomed to death!”

“Yes, that was exactly his plan.” Xiao Hong nodded, “The Ghostly Man ‒”

“The Ghostly Man?” Liu Shuai hadn’t made sense of that yet, “Why do you call Premier Zhuge the Ghostly Man?”

“Not he. It’s supposed to be Lu Xun who firstly called Zhuge the Ghostly Man, right?” Hao Ning came to learn the vein of these stories. Though seeming grotesque, a vague underlying line was linking all the incidents, “Lu Xun commented Romance of Three Kingdoms that Zhuge Liang’s resourcefulness made him nearly a ghost. That’s why you call him like that, yes?”

“Em, it should be.” Xiao Hong’s eyes brightened, and he nodded, “I was wondering why Brother Zhang Chi Hang had always called him “Ghostly Man”. It proved to originate from that. ‒ The Ghostly Man promised to build a temple and accumulate incense for me after the triumph of Shu Han so that I could collect faith. At least my spirit wouldn’t go out.”

“Aye…” Hao Ning sighed. It turned out to be like that. He recalled that he had stabbed Xiao Hong with so many strokes of the sword and he felt compassionate. He patted Xiao Hong’s shoulder in guilt, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have thrust you so many times.”

“No no no, Brother Hao Ning, you thought it wrongly.” Xiao Hong waved his hand eagerly, “I owe you a “thank you”. Brother Zhang Chi Hang told me later that the power of time was more than metaphysical. If you had not intervened then, even if I could stay alive at that time, after Journey to the West came out, I would be absorbed back to the book because of the faith in it. In such circles, I would never be able to jump out of it to the real world.”

“…” Though Xiao Hong was making sense in that way, Hao Ning got a headache reordering the timeline. He scratched his head, “But that’s still illogical. If Zhuge Liang killed Sima Yi with the help of you, maybe there wouldn’t be a book called Journey to the West owing to complicated causality?”

“No.” Xiao Hong smiled and explained, “Brother Zhang Chi Hang said that the Ghostly Man Zhuge couldn’t succeed. All roads lead to Rome. The changes there had no impact on the eventual historical outcome ‒ Don’t ask me. I don’t understand either ‒ To say the least, Brother Hao Ning, you’ve already killed the Ghostly Man Zhuge that day when you exerted your power, haven’t you?”

“Me?” Hao Ning was bewildered, pointing at himself. While the other good boys listening to the story were peering at him in surprise as well. “When did I ‒ Oh yes, I had claimed to stab you with 36 strokes of Celestial Dippers, while I made a bloody mistake and went for 37 actually. The last blow covered with Qi got diverted and injured Zhuge Liang directly. Was that?”

“The “divert” was literally…” Liu Shuai gazed at Hao Ning in blankness and patted his shoulder, “perilous.”

Xiao Hong nodded in agreement, “Brother Hao Ning you don’t have to be modest. I thank you for more than that reason. My suffering of 36 hits was inevitable. But it was because you, who were from the real world, executed me that I got released from my causality in the books. I evolved from Great Saint Infant King to Sudhana at that moment, not being revealed in books but in the real world. Only in that way would I be able to cultivate with Avalokitesvara in the real world.”

Hao Ning didn’t find his words for a response. He didn’t expect such sequential causalities there. Then Hao Ning turned to Liu Shuai, “Liu Shuai, don’t you find it odd?”

“For what?” Liu Shuai was still in meditation on all the inner relations.

“If it had not been for Zhou Yuan’s affair, we wouldn’t have turned to Zhang Quan. If we had not turned to Zhang Quan, we would have not met Zhang Chi Hang either.” Hao Ning moved on step by step, “If we hadn’t met Zhang Chi Hang, we couldn’t have saved Zhou Yuan. To save him, we had no choice but to help such a miserly Buddha as Zhang Chi Hang and suppress Xiao Hong. Moreover, it was exactly when we were at his place that Zhang Chi Hang “happened” to receive a wish from Sima Yi. Then, though we seemingly were saving Sima Yi, actually we helped Xiao Hong out of the causalities in the book and settled the catastrophe caused by the May 4th Seal God event.”

“It seems true based on your words.” Liu Shuai got some nuance on his face while listening, “You mean that…”

“I’ve been figuring everything that we underwent before fortuitous.” Hao Ning glanced at Zhou Yuan, then peered at Liu Shuai, “But now it seems that all above were arranged on purpose. While in all these incidents ‒” Hao Ning turned to Xiao Hong, “Zhang Chi Hang wasn’t involved in any causal relations.”

“That’s it!” Liu Shuai beat on his thighs, “It was us who went for him. It was you who retrieved Xiao Hong. Even if the panacea to save Zhou Yuan was obtained because of your favor to Avalokitesvara. And the panacea was smashed in the end. In fact, it was you who sealed the god! Avalokitesvara wasn’t entwined with any causality, but everything turned out to be like this!”

“That’s amazing…” Hao Ning whispered, “Without tangled with any causality he associated so many fortuities together. How did he make it?”

“He returns to the world full of hardship after his own success in cultivation and delivers others from torment. He is literally an Avalokitesvara, though he seems to deviate from the norms,” Liu Shuai kept nodding in such stir that he didn’t catch Hao Ning’s words. He rubbed his hands, “He is really different. He acted in a miserly way and was fussy about it when Xiao Hong cursed him “sometimes a male and sometimes a female”, but he was really admirable when dealing with the serious righteousness and wrongness.”

“Yes.” At that point, Hao Ning got a flicker in his eyes, “What did you say?”

“I said when dealing with serious righteousness and wrongness…” Liu Shuai got a bit nervous at his question.

“No, the sentence before.” Hao Ning grabbed Liu Huai’s hand urgently.

“Xiao Hong cursed him sometimes a male and sometimes a female…” Liu Shuai glimpsed at Xiao Hong. Xiao Hong grinned timidly.

“That’s it!” Hao Ning hit the table and unconsciously used his inner strength in the stroke. All the cups on the table bounced up. He said, “No wonder he refused to tell Monkey King about the information of his body. But that’s odd as well. Based on Xiao Hong’s saying, Monkey King should have entered his nirvana, right? Why does it start to be illogical?”

“Hao Ning? Hao Ning?” Liu Shuai, watching Hao Ning mess up himself, waved the hands before his eyes hurriedly, “What’s in your head?”

“Xiao Hong,” Hao Ning gazed at Xiao Hong and spoke seriously, “I’ll tell you the story about how I met your uncle in Creation of the Gods. Though I have no idea about your absence of memories on that ‒”

“Any need for an ‘idea’?” Liu Shuai scorned at his words, “You once told the idea yourself. Why can’t you make sense of it?”

“Em? What’s the idea?” Hao Ning, buried with too many stuff, kept no impression on that.

“You once told about the like dissolves like principles of chemistry, didn’t you? And you applied that to explain the souls, right?” Liu Shuai said in a smirk.

“Yes. It’s like mixing alcohol with water.” Hao Ning said as Liu Shuai mentioned that. That was where his expertise lay, “And the alcohol will get dissolved in water.”

“Exactly. People foster faiths on books, so the world made by books from faiths, “Liu Shuai stated, “is essentially people’s incense of faiths, right?”

“Right. And then?” Hao Ning got perplexed at Liu Shuai’s reference of that at the moment.

“Xiao Hong is a god, so he belongs to the incense of faiths, right?” Liu Shuai pointed at Xiao Hong. Xiao Hong nodded submissively.

“Right.” Hao Ning was still puzzled, “So?”

“So, when Xiao Hong, as an incense of faiths, went through a barrier made from the incense of faiths in a book,” Liu Shuai drew a circle in the air, “what would happen?”

“The incense of faith would melt with the incense of faith?” Hao Ning got it this time, “It’s as if Xiao Hong were alcohol, the book Creation of the Gods were water and they melted when alcohol went into the water.”

“That’s it!” Liu Shuai nodded in a smile, “And then it would be hard to separate the alcohol from the water. And even if they were separated, they would forget what they used to be.”

“But why did Xiao Hong remember me when I entered the world of Creation of the Gods?” Hao Ning recalled the scenes then. Xiao Hong had called him Brother Hao Ning as he did now. “I didn’t notice that but now it seems more and more strange.”

“Because at that time I entered the world by you.” Xiao Hong nodded. He appreciated the metaphor of Liu Shuai as well, “One point of my spirit was conserved in your body. You’re not a god, so it was like you used a bottle to contain the alcohol and threw it into the water. Water was still water and alcohol still alcohol.”