Cangmang Asks the Way 1: Guardian of the Lamp

Prologue: The Lamp of the Heart Reflects the Snow

On Eagle Cliff, there is an unnamed thatched hut.

No one knew who lived in the thatched hut. The villagers at the foot of the mountain only knew that every winter, before the heavy snows closed the mountain, someone would come up. After the snow melted in the spring, he would disappear again. Year after year, without fail.

That December, the snow fell exceptionally heavily.

Inside the thatched hut, an old man sat cross-legged. In front of him was a rough earthenware cup filled with clear water, reflecting the leaden-gray sky outside the window.

He held an old pocket watch in his hand. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

He had been sitting like this for seven days and seven nights.

My breathing became slower and lighter, as if it might melt into the swirling snow outside the window at any moment.

He saw through the illusions of life. All those struggles, glories, loves and hates, honors and disgraces, were like marks on snow, melting away with the rising sun.

It was just one last thought away.

Twenty years ago, on a snowy night just like this, he sat in a secluded cave deep in the Zhongnan Mountains and reached the same state. At that time, he thought that after that thought, he would attain ultimate Nirvana.

But at the very last moment, his gaze pierced through the meditative state and saw that he still had an unfinished destiny in this life—a disciple he had not yet met.

So he got up, left Zhongnan Mountain, and came to Eagle Cliff, a thousand miles away. Every winter, he would come here to wait for that person. He knew that person would definitely come to find him when the snow was falling heavily.

During his time at Eagle Cliff, in his spare time, he would sometimes descend the mountain to travel and search for the boy he had seen in the meditative state. He did some good deeds and saved a few people, though he couldn't remember exactly how many. However, there was one family surnamed Cang who would send him New Year's gifts every winter, leaving them in front of his thatched hut when he wasn't there. They did this for over a decade. Such a loyal and devoted family was rare. However, he vaguely sensed that this family was connected to his future disciple, and to the rest of his life.

At that moment, a snowflake slipped through the crack in the door of the thatched hut and landed in the cup in front of him.

The water surface rippled gently.

The old man opened his eyes. His gaze pierced through the ripples in the water and through the wind and snow, landing on a child he had never seen before, yet who was all too familiar to him.

The child, somewhere unknown to him, gritted his teeth and walked forward step by step. The wind and snow fell on his shoulders, but he didn't brush them off, just kept moving forward, his eyes fixed on the distance.

He didn't know that someone was watching him.

The old man didn't know the child's name, where he came from, or where he would go.

All he knew was that this child was connected to him, and to the rest of his life.

The old man stared at him for a long time. Long enough that his pocket watch ticked a hundred times.

Then, he put down his pocket watch, picked up the cup of melted snow water, and drank it all in one gulp.

The taste of water is clear and slightly cool. It carries the purity of the beginning of time, and also the bitterness of that child's life.

He put down his cup and closed his eyes.

The pocket watch is still ticking. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

Outside the thatched hut, the wind and snow continued.

Beside the thatched hut stood an old tree. Snow fell on its branches, bending them down, but it never broke.

Inside the thatched hut, everything was crystal clear.

Only the rough earthenware cup remained in its original place, with a small ring of water stains at the bottom, reflecting the faint light coming in from the window.

The pocket watch sat right next to the cup. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

The light was faint and weak, but it never went out.

Years later, that child will come to this thatched hut.

He would kneel in the same spot and drink from the same cup of water.

He would carefully take out an identical pocket watch from his pocket and hold it to his ear. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

He would look at the long-extinguished oil lamp in front of him and suddenly understand—

Some lights don't need to be turned on. They're always there, waiting to be seen.

Just like him, he was always being waited for.

Waiting for him to grow up, waiting for him to get hurt, waiting for him to find his way, waiting for him to come back.

Only then can that person leave in peace.

Chapter 1 The Man Under the Lamp

Cang Tianci was a premature baby. He was born at seven months old, at the foot of a cliff in Wild Boar Gully, and his life hung by a thread from birth. His mother often said that he earned his life himself.

When he was three years old, the Cang family moved back to Xiqiao Village. They were given a few acres of meager land, a few dilapidated houses, and the villagers' disdain. Wang Zhenkun's gaze swept over the thin child in Su Yumei's arms, as if looking at something worthless.

Tianci was thin and silent; at three years old, he still couldn't say "Papa" or "Mama." Occasionally, he would utter a few indistinct syllables, his tongue seemingly tied in knots. A woman at the village entrance muttered, "Dumb boy, karma's coming on."

But Su Yumei, the mother, never gave up. At night, she washed her hands and carried Tianci to the small kerosene lamp. A gust of wind swept through, and the lamp flickered violently, almost going out. Su Yumei carefully cupped her hands around it, and the light stabilized, firmly protecting the figures of the mother and son in the center.

Su Yumei used the yellowed old newspapers on the wall as their textbooks. Her rough fingers pointed to the printed words, her voice hoarse but gentle: "Tianci, look, this is 'heaven'." "This is 'earth'." "This is 'man', one should stand tall..." "This...is 'mom'...Mom..." She pointed to herself, over and over again.

For Tianci, these nights were sacred rituals amidst his daily suffering. His mother's voice, the glow of the oil lamp, and the mysterious symbols on the newspaper together constructed a world of peace. That dim, yellowish glow cast a huge, flickering shadow on the worn-out furniture. Beyond the glow lay a silent and cold unknown world; within it, his mother's voice and the warmth of her fingertips formed a strong fortress against it all. He learned extremely slowly, often repeating a single syllable hundreds or thousands of times before he could barely pronounce it, but his eyes held an extraordinary focus. He wasn't just learning to pronounce words; he was clumsily groping for a force that could penetrate chaos and bring order to his heart. He might not fully understand his mother's words, but the phrase "Have strong bones and a righteous heart," along with the warmth of the lamplight, seemed to be gradually etched into his hazy consciousness with each repetition. Sometimes, his fingertips would unconsciously trace the strokes of a word on a newspaper, drawing them in the air. The shape of the word seemed to evoke a vague feeling in his heart that transcended its meaning, as if it were not a symbol, but some kind of inherent pattern in the universe.

It was another early spring night. As Su Yumei repeated, "Mom...Mom...", little Tianci in her arms suddenly moved his little mouth with difficulty, making a strange "gurgling" sound in his throat. Finally, a syllable, indistinct yet clearly directed at her, burst out: "Mom...Mom..." Su Yumei froze, and hot tears welled up like a burst dam, wetting Tianci's little face.

At that moment, Tianci saw a light in his mother's eyes that shone brighter than an oil lamp, and a strange sense of accomplishment, unlike anything he had ever felt before, surged within him. He vaguely realized that these difficult-to-pronounce syllables seemed to possess the power to change the world.

However, the joy was short-lived. Although Tianci could speak, his stutter was severe. New nicknames rained down on him like hailstones—"The Stutterer."

"Why...why..." Sometimes at night, he would stare at the dark roof and silently ask himself, "Their words are like stones that can hurt people, while my words are like a blocked stream..." This most primal confusion, about injustice and difference, was like a tiny, thorny seed planted in his young heart.

In the autumn of 1988, Tianci started school.

The days at Xiqiao Elementary School were like another pond bestowed by heaven.

In Chinese class, he had just stood up when a murmur of laughter filled the classroom. "Spring...springtime..." he stammered, his face turning bright red, unable to utter the next word. The teacher tapped the podium with her pointer: "Go stand in the corner."

He stood in the corner for forty minutes during that class.

In math class, he was punished again by copying problems. Ten times, twenty times, until his fingers ached.

On the way home from school, Wang Yaowu and a few others stopped Tianci, deliberately mimicking his stuttering. Tianci ignored them and walked on with his head down. Wang Yaowu caught up with him and shoved him to the ground: "Are you mute? Call me Dad!" Tianci got up, still not speaking, only clenching his fists.

Wang Xiuzhu, who was passing by, witnessed this scene. She ran over, helped Tianci up, and shouted at Wang Yaowu, "You're bullying him! I'm going to tell the teacher!"

"Hmph, Wang Xiuzhu, mind your own business. Do you like this stuttering boy?" Wang Yaowu said to Wang Xiuzhu with a grin.

The other students also burst into laughter.

"You...you shameless!" Wang Xiuzhu's face flushed red with anger as she pointed at Wang Yaowu and cursed.

Cang Tianci clenched his fist even tighter, his knuckles turning white.

Seeing that staying any longer would only result in more humiliation, Wang Xiuzhu stopped talking, grabbed Tianci's hand, and said, "Tianci, let's go!"

They bypassed Wang Yaowu and the others, and hurried home.

An even louder burst of laughter came from behind.

Back home, Tianci left the day's humiliation and coldness outside the door. Only at home, beside his mother Su Yumei, in the dim light of the oil lamp, was he able to truly breathe and draw strength.

"Tianci, come here," Su Yumei held his thin hand and wrote on the scrap paper stroke by stroke, "A left-falling stroke and a right-falling stroke, standing tall and upright, that's a person. To be a person, you must have strong bones and a righteous heart."

Su Yumei paused for a moment, then said, "When your great-grandfather was fleeing famine, he saw many people along the way. Some died standing up, and some lived on their knees. He said that there are only two kinds of people in this life—those who stand up and those who kneel down."

Tianci couldn't understand, he just stared at the word. The light from the oil lamp shone on his face, flickering.

"Today we're learning the character '勇' (yong)," she said, pointing to the yellowed newspaper. "It's composed of '甬' (yong) on ​​top and '力' (li) on the bottom. True courage comes from having strength and knowing how to use it. It's not just about daring to fight others, but also daring to fight against your own fear and laziness."

Tianci's little hands trembled as he struggled to write the complex strokes, sweat beading on his forehead in frustration. Su Yumei patiently demonstrated again and again, drawing the strokes on his palm with her fingertips: "Don't rush... take your time... Mother will help you..."

Several smooth pebbles were placed on the table. "Tianci, look," she pointed to the pebbles, "this is like the rations distributed by the team. There are five people in our family," she laid out five pebbles, "and this month we'll lend some to Grandma Li next door for two people in an emergency." She slowly pushed two pebbles aside, "How many people's worth of rations will we have left at the end of the month?"

Tianci bit his lip, staring at the remaining pebbles, his face flushed red: "Three...three...bites!" Despite his stutter, he got it right.

Su Yumei immediately smiled with relief and patted his head: "That's right, Tianci is great! Knowing what's going on makes life less stressful."

Under this solitary lamp, a miracle quietly began. Tianci discovered that when he focused entirely on the words and numbers, the daytime clamor and humiliation would temporarily recede. Those seemingly tedious strokes and calculations seemed to carve out a tranquil and orderly space in his mind. The joy and sense of accomplishment from solving a difficult problem or recognizing an unfamiliar character were like fireflies in the dark night, faint yet truly illuminating his young heart.

However, he did not know that on that summer night, when his mother relit the oil lamp and held his hand to continue tracing the character "人" (person), his grandfather, Cang Houde, was sitting alone in the shadows of the old house, repeatedly stroking a dark gold copper coin by the light of another equally dim oil lamp.

It was left by his great-grandfather, Cangyun Mountain, and had been passed down for forty-three years. He didn't know that many years later, when he held this copper coin in his own palm, he would feel his palm burning—just like the warmth under his mother's lamp right now, burning all the way to his heart.

He didn't know that many years later, on a snowy night, someone would point a gun at him.

At that moment, would he still remember that night? Would he remember his mother holding his hand, teaching him to write the character "人" (person) stroke by stroke?

he does not know.

He had no idea that far away, there was a mountain. On the mountain lived an old man with a pocket watch in his hand, ticking away. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

He didn't know who the old man was. But the old man knew that someone was waiting for him.

Like this oil lamp, it stays lit, waiting for his return.

At this moment, he simply nestled quietly in his mother's warm embrace, listening to her rhythmic heartbeat, staring at the soot from the oil lamp on the ceiling. The flames flickered gently on the stove in the next room, casting his mother's silhouette on the wall, warm and comforting.

He didn't know if, when he grew old and sat under the old locust tree, he would still remember this night, remember his mother holding his hand, writing the character "人" (person) stroke by stroke.

The moonlight was bright outside the window. In the distance, a dog barked once, then stopped.