The road of exile leading from the banks of the Dai Ha River into the vast outside world was longer than Hoi Minh had ever imagined. When he left the ferry that morning, mist still veiled the road, but by midday, the sun reigned overhead. Golden sunlight poured down like ripe honey over wild rice fields that had yet to be harvested after the flood.
The desolate red-earth road stretched beyond sight between two rows of ancient silver bamboo. Whenever a furious wind swept past, the bamboo leaves struck against one another with a dry rustling sound, like whispers beckoning from a distant memory ten thousand ages old.
Hoi Minh strode forward with steady steps, gripping his bamboo staff tightly, yet his mind was awash with thought. He had never traveled more than half a day's journey from his village, and yet everything before his eyes stirred a feeling both strange and eerily familiar—as though he had once witnessed this landscape in some other realm, in some mist-shrouded lifetime that mortal eyes could no longer recall.
The Teahouse at the Fated Crossroads
As the setting sun began to cast long shadows, the red-earth road led him to a three-way river crossing—the intersection between his expedition route and the mountain path descending from sacred Linh Son Peak. A humble teahouse stood there, its thatched roof and leaf walls hastily erected beneath an ancient banyan tree a thousand years old, exuding an air of solitude and melancholy.
A weathered, middle-aged teahouse keeper quietly boiled water beside a blazing wood fire. Seeing Hoi Minh stop, he did not rush to greet him. He merely nodded and said in a deep, warm voice:
“Traveler from afar, if you're thirsty, come in and finish a cup of rough tea.”
Hoi Minh chose a low wooden stool beneath the banyan tree, feeling the late-afternoon breeze begin to cool the heat and wash away the dust of his long journey. He had just raised the coarse teacup to his lips when his ears suddenly pricked at an exceedingly unusual set of footsteps behind him.
They were neither the hurried steps of a panicked commoner nor the heavy footfalls of a traveler familiar with the road. The rhythm was steady, drifting, and light, like a crane gliding over snow, yet as cool and clear as wind chimes ringing through a silent wilderness.
Hoi Minh turned his head before he knew it.
At the end of the footpath descending from Linh Son Peak, a young woman was slowly approaching. She wore a pale, plain cloth robe and carried a small bundle over one shoulder. Her cloud-black hair was loosely tied behind her back. A few fine strands drifted in the evening breeze, accentuating her graceful, otherworldly face, as pure as an immortal untouched by mortal dust. She walked very slowly, as though listening to the voice of the road beneath her feet, each step seeming to tread into a silent void. She was Vien An.
The instant Hoi Minh's eyes touched that figure, the bamboo staff propped beside the bamboo daybed suddenly trembled with an invisible pulse, sending a warm current straight into his palm. Hoi Minh's heart clenched without warning and missed a beat in painful shock. The longing and familiarity he had felt in the White Realm of last night's dream surged up at once, searing his heart and soul.
Vien An quietly entered the teahouse. Without a word, the old keeper placed another earthenware cup on the table and asked mildly:
“Coming down the mountain from far away?”
She lowered her head slightly, her voice clear as jade chimes striking one another.
“Yes, Elder.”
Their four eyes met. For one brief instant, shorter than a breath, neither spoke a word, yet the universe around the crossroads seemed to freeze.
A brittle bamboo leaf fell on the wind and landed neatly at the edge of the wooden table between them, as though it were a fated cipher deliberately placed there. Hoi Minh instinctively brushed it aside with one finger. Yet the moment his fingertip left the dry leaf, he suddenly froze. A numb current raced down his spine. He was certain he had performed this very gesture for her before, somewhere above the nine layers of cloud, an immeasurably long time ago.
In that profound silence, everything around the teahouse seemed to hold its breath. The banyan leaves overhead stopped falling, and the raging wind outside abruptly fell still.
Vien An slightly furrowed her delicate brows. A strange chill ran through her consciousness. There was no danger, no apprehension—only a suffocating sense of familiarity closing around her. How could the storm-dark eyes of the man before her look so much like the lonely back of the figure standing amid the crimson flood in last night's dream? She asked herself: Could this be the person the Heavenly Dao has ordered me to find?
The Call of a Name
A rotten branch suddenly snapped in two and fell straight across the road, forming an invisible boundary laid down by creation. Hoi Minh stopped. The young woman in the plain robe behind him immediately halted as well, her clear eyes flickering with wariness as she glanced around.
He turned and broke the stillness with his steady voice:
“Miss, are you taking this road too?”
Vien An nodded slightly, her long lashes lowered.
“Yes.”
A brief, stifling silence settled over them. Hoi Minh gazed deep into the maze of ancient forest ahead, where interwoven trunks blocked the way.
“This road leads deep into the wilderness. I've heard the locals say that once twilight falls here, the place becomes terribly unsettled, with evil energy coursing through it.”
Vien An looked up at the thousand-year-old canopy as it gradually darkened into the deep blue of evening shadow. Her expression was serene, her voice as calm as wind passing through the old forest.
“It's all right. I'm used to secluded mountain roads.”
Hoi Minh nodded lightly and said nothing more. They continued on, one walking ahead and the other following behind. The sun slowly sank behind the cloud-wreathed mountains, casting the trail in brilliant streaks of dying gold like shards of broken mirrors from heaven and earth, weaving an otherworldly, wondrous scene.
After they had traveled quite some distance, Hoi Minh broke the silence. His deep, warm voice echoed against the cliffs.
“I'm Mo Phong. The people in my village call me Hoi Minh.”
The young woman behind him raised her head slightly, her gaze colliding with his sturdy back. The image matched perfectly with the back of the man standing amid the raging flood in her dream the night before. A sharp ache pierced her chest. She pressed her lips together and answered in a voice clear as jade chimes.
“Vien An.”
The instant she lowered her head in greeting, the blue scarf tying her cloudlike hair suddenly slipped loose and fell onto the red earth. Hoi Minh spotted it first. He bent to pick up the ribbon.
“This belongs to you.”
Vien An accepted the familiar object, momentarily startled.
“Thank you.”
When the tips of their fingers accidentally brushed across the coarse ribbon, a lethal poison of longing flashed straight into both their hearts. In Hoi Minh's consciousness, the image from the Prologue of the red thread binding two souls through ten thousand cycles of reincarnation suddenly flared for an instant, then vanished. He stared at the ribbon in her hand, certain that he had once held this very object through countless mist-shrouded lifetimes.
They were only two ordinary names spoken amid the mortal world. Yet the moment those sounds fell into the void, a violently ominous gale suddenly spiraled through the wilderness. The leaves overhead shook like wave upon wave crashing against the shore, roaring out an earth-shaking welcome from an ancient fate. Beneath the high heavens where the sunlight had not yet faded, the two guardian stars of their destinies suddenly flashed brilliantly before all the immortals, formally bearing witness to this great reunion in the mortal world.
In Beyond-Thought Palace in the celestial court, Nam Tao, the High God, slowly raised his jade brush.
On the celestial Book of Fate, which had once been pure white, the two blood-red lines bearing the names Hoi Minh and Vien An had always run parallel. Now, for the first time, they tilted toward each other, intersected, and merged into a single line of causality. Two rivers of fate separated by ten thousand miles had finally joined into one crimson current.
Nam Tao watched those two lines for a long time. His cold face showed not the slightest trace of surprise. Only a deep sigh slowly escaped him.
“The bitter wheel... has begun turning again.”
The Keeper of Fated Bonds stood behind him, red threads winding around both hands as they trembled faintly. In a voice full of emotion, he murmured:
“After passing through countless births and deaths, they have finally found each other.”
Nam Tao did not answer. He slowly turned his wrist and pressed the jade tip of his brush hard against the edge of the Book of Fate. A drop of ink black as eternal night fell and seeped mercilessly into the page. He wrote not another word, using only that drop of ink to seal a moment of fate.
The moment when two people who had once been broken apart and scattered through countless lifetimes of reincarnation finally used their obsession to force a reunion at a desolate teahouse beside a nameless crossroads no one remembered.
Sections V & VI
At the fated crossroads, a desolate teahouse,
A thousand-year-old drop of water, a thousand-year-old breeze.
Tea smoke drifted silently by,
Bamboo leaves fell softly, and the mountain wind came to a halt.
A name was called, clear and bright,
The stars softly glowed; their bond drew near, then far.
A dry bamboo leaf was brushed aside, and the heart suddenly stirred,
A bond awakened through three lives... and turned the page.