Perpetual Peace

Having passed through life’s strange rises and falls, after silence without a sound, Old Xiang is still like a child, a virgin, an assassin. As if that absurd, destitute, broken, vanished first half of his life had nothing much to do with him, and had left not the slightest scar on him.

He is like a knife just drawn from its sheath, its cold air pressing, cutting iron as if it were mud. More than at any time before, he believes in himself.

Still no one knows his thoughts, no one knows his longings, no one knows the road he will walk. The difference is that by now he has been deserted by everyone, and his fortune is scattered to nothing.