Chapter 174: 268 chapters, the person crossing the desert

268 chapters, the person crossing the desert.....

268 chapters, the person crossing the desert

――――Liu Guozong

The desert slowly, boundless and endless.

Here, there is no sound of chickens and dogs, nor any sight of people coming and going to farm. Here it is mysterious and abstract, concrete and mysterious. Mysterious like a dream, abstract like truth; concrete like right before one's eyes, this life path that is difficult to ascend to heaven.

Here, there is no cooking smoke, but I nevertheless recall the mother laboring hard beneath that cooking smoke; here, there is no goal, but I have already set my goal in my heart.

Farewell, homeland; farewell, mother.

This is a choice I cannot make! I cannot, like those birds in the thicket of short trees, forever watch over the fields of my homeland. For others, for myself, and also for the fulfillment of childhood dreams, I must leave the fields of my homeland, leave the thicket of short trees, leave my kinfolk, leave my mother, go to the strange, go to the distant, to open up a world of my own!

Here there are no fresh flowers, no green leaves, no bird songs, nor the clamor and fading human warmth of the bustling market; in this place rarely visited by people, we do not speak of lust, nor of wine and carnal desire.

Here is a paradise in the realm of fantasy, a mirage amidst smoke and waves, the Peach Blossom Spring in Tao Yuanming's dream……

Here, everything must start anew; here, I am fragrant, I am young; here, I can freely soar, joyfully rejoice……

Enduring the thirst, fatigue, and pain of the journey, on the sand of time, on the pathway of years, in the arduous progress, blood and sweat soaked the desert, each of my sunken footprints……