Chapter 96: 177 Chapters – I Just Like This Unrest…

177 chapters, I just like this unrest….

--Liu Guozong Spring Diary Fifteen

Walking down the pitch-black wilderness road, the stars were like countless streetlights, illuminating my hurried steps. Suddenly a vagrant appeared before me, as if speaking to me, as if muttering to himself: "I feel so stifled…… I want to eat……"

"This vagrant, his brain's gone haywire again. The air in the wilderness is this fresh, yet he says he feels stifled? In this pitch-black wilderness, with no village or shop, what could there be to eat."

I thought of the vagrant, then quickened my pace.

"The millet is luxuriant, the shoots are growing. I go on, wandering, the center far away. Those who know me say I am worried; those who don't know me say I am seeking….."

What sprouts, oh heart; worries, oh seeking. I can't understand the vagrant's nonsense. I felt a bit timid: "Could I have met a ghost tonight?"

"Friend, you guessed right, I'm a ghost!" the vagrant grabbed me and said.

"Ah! You really are a ghost?" I shouted, mouth open, breathing hard, speaking in panic.

"Where did you come from? Where are you going?" the ghost drew a question mark in the air before me.

Yes, where did I come from? Where am I going? I couldn't answer the ghost's question.

Behind me lay the vast night, before me the boundless wilderness road, my fleeting, illusory life—where should I find shelter tonight? O ghost of the wilderness, coming like wind, departing like smoke, how could you see through my thoughts?

The wilderness was silent, and so was I. At this moment only the wind resting on the tree branches blew lightly on my face. Fortunately my face is thick, having endured many winds and rains in the world—what's this little breeze in the wilderness worth?

Time moved on, and the ghost withdrew.

Free from the wilderness ghost's entanglement, I felt light all over. With this lightness, my steps became extraordinarily far-reaching, as if bestowing vitality upon people.

Ah, friend――

Daytime labor made me weary,

At night I wanted to hurry to bed,

to properly rest my limbs fatigued from the journey.

But the journey in my mind immediately began again,

Physical labor had just finished, mental labor began.

At this moment, my longing knows no distance,

flying from my side to the friend――

by your side.

again causing me to open my heavy eyelids,

gazing at the darkness even a blind person can see,

writing down these lines of poetry for you to see.

Thus, the vast night was renewed,

my lines of poetry are like the stars in the sky,

illuminating your sleeping dreamland.

Look, by day I labor physically, by night I labor mentally.

Friend, for you, and also for myself,

I find no peace day or night.

But I just like this lack of peace.

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