Curious, Huxian trotted west again. He passed the temple with the simple statue of the Buddha and headed behind it. There was no shadow where there should have been, of course. He’d been back here many times. He didn’t linger but passed the temple and went to the back of the plateau, where, for the first time, he saw a set of steps leading downward. He trotted down the wide steps, his careful paws feeling dust for the first time.
The steps hadn’t been swept.
He continued down them and was surprised to see something he hadn’t in a long time: darkness. It clung close to the back of the mountain, like a child holding on to its mother for dear life. Despite its large size, only nine feet of shadow remained at the base. And within those shadows, Huxian saw something he’d missed before. Another monk, one wreathed in darkness.
Huxian went down the steps and entered the shadowy region, and to his surprise, he felt a sense of warmth course through him. He looked down and saw that his shadow, which had been absent for so long, had returned to him. His eyes glowed, and the deeper he went, the more shadows he saw, jumbled and clustered together. He saw Ao’s shadow, Li’s shadow. He saw the children’s shadows and the temple’s shadow. Even the broom’s shadow rested here, hiding from the half-hidden sun Huxian knew existed beyond the mountain.
“The monks laughed at the city’s proposal,” an old man’s voice said. “Most of them thought tethering the sun was outrageous. It was an impossible feat, they said. What’s more, they wanted nothing to do with the enormous karma that would be sown. The city, they said, could do what it wanted, but they would have to live with the result. They didn’t try to stop the city, and by the time the curse affected it, it was already too late to save them.”
The city? Huxian asked. The voice came not from a shadow, but from a cross-legged body within it. The body was dry, decrepit, and empty of life.
“Not the city,” the old man said, chuckling without moving his lips, without breathing. “The monks themselves.
“They erred on two parts. The first part was their obsession resolving personal karma. Instead of taking on the sin of the city and trying to free the sun, they let them do as they pleased.
“Their second mistake was believing the curse wouldn’t affect them in the first place. When the city was cursed, their thoughts and beliefs persisted. They’d escaped the city’s fate, but many were remorseful about it. Yet how could they free an entire city of ghosts? This initial reluctance, combined with the impossibility of the task, led them to ignore the outside world. They never realized that, just like the city persisted eternally, their minds would as well. They could live out their entire life apart from the city, ignoring it, but the shadows remembered them. They would relive their life endlessly, for all eternity.”
And what of you? Huxian asked. Do you relive your life every day as well?
“I did, at first,” the old man said. “Unlike them, however, I had spoken out against their non-interference. I’d traveled to the city and tried to convince their head priest to abandon this madness. I left something there to give them hope.
“It seemed this difference was enough for me to realize something was wrong. I continued to keep my awareness through repeated lifetimes. Unfortunately, the experience wore on my soul. I knew I didn’t have much time left, so I searched for a way out.
“Finally, after much trial and error, I found myself here, among the shadows. My life stopped repeating, but by then, I was too weak to move. I could only wait for someone else to share my experience with.”
Huxian gulped. “That thing, to give them hope,” he said, “was it the Candle Dragon’s tear? Was it that jade character, Spirit?”
The man fell silent for a moment before speaking.
“Yes, I see it now,” the man said. “You’ve acquired the character.” He laughed the dry laugh of a dying man. “After all these years, someone has come with the character.”
“Then how do I resolve this? How do I free the city?” Huxian asked.
“I once obtained two of three pieces of a tablet when I was wandering in my youth,” the monk said. “After obtaining them, I journeyed to the west for many years, preaching the Buddhist way. My followers became numerous, though many evil spirits tried consuming me. Two pieces were not enough to reverse the curse, but perhaps with the third piece, it would be possible to break it.”
“What must I do?” Huxian asked.
The man didn’t answer. Instead, a small golden light appeared on the speaking corpse. It turned into a soft golden mist that congealed into a single golden character that said Scripture. The character shot into Huxian’s forehead, and the moment it did, the mountain changed. He no longer saw the pool of writhing shadows as something coincidentally there. It was a prison, with chains extending outward toward the monks, tethering them to their reality. They hadn’t stopped the sun from being chained, and thus, the shadow of their regret had chained them to this plane. They would relive their life every day without end.
As he saw these chains, he also saw a boundary, a way out of the shadows. As long as one avoided the chains on the mountain, one could leave this prison. Excited, Huxian tried to break one of the chains binding a shadow to a monk up above. It was Ao’s shadow. He bit down on it, but to his surprise, the chain didn’t break.
“The karma sown here is too thick,” the monk said. “You require greater power than these two characters. To find the third
