‘Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.’
– Immanuel Kant
‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.’
– Wilfred Owen
‘The world is the totality of facts, not of things.’
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
It was almost noon the next day.
Yang looked over his shoulder toward Judge Dee, who was once again sitting straight-backed in the carriage.
‘Look, Master. Once we’ve turned around the corner, we soon shall see the Dingguo Temple. You have to take a much-needed break when we arrive. Last night, I saw that the candle in your room at the inn was still lit almost till dawn.’
‘As always, you worry too much about me, Yang,’ Judge Dee replied. ‘It will be quiet and peaceful in the temple. The atmosphere there is supposed to contribute to rest, to self-cultivation and to poetic inspiration. And it may prove helpful to my contemplation over the cases too.’
Yang did not make any immediate response to his master’s argument, having had more than enough metaphysical talk over the last several days from his pedantic master. He thought he could have guessed something about Judge Dee’s dramatic metamorphosis into a poetry-addicted bookworm. If anything, it probably served as a cover for the ongoing investigation as well.
A couple of small apricot-colored banners streaming in a breeze by the roadside soon came into view, indicating that the Dingguo Temple was located in the vicinity.
As the carriage rattled round another corner of the road, Judge Dee thought he could hear a bell – or a couple of them – striking, reverberating in the air, presumably coming over from the ancient temple in question.
‘So many temples in this area. A poem from the contemporary poet Du Mu is crossing my mind again,’ Judge Dee said to Yang, with a wan smile.
Among the four hundred and eighty temples left
behind from the earlier dynasties,
how many of them in the south are mantled
in the mist and the rain at this moment?
‘Yes, those bells must be ringing from the Dingguo Temple, Master.’
Unexpectedly, the ringing from the temple turned into a cacophony of numerous bells ringing all together. The sound seemed urgent, even panic-stricken, to the bewildered master and servant.
Poking his head out of the carriage to see further into the distance, Judge Dee caught a glimpse of the sky inflamed in the eclipsed sunlight. He contemplated it in confusion and then was hit with a shocking realization. The temple was being engulfed by fire.
‘What’s happening?’ Yang exclaimed.
‘The temple is on fire, I’m afraid,’ Judge Dee responded. ‘Possibly a big fire.’
Weird, inexplicable things had been happening around him since the beginning of the investigation. Judge Dee was still astonished by the discovery that he had become a harbinger of death or tragedy, though he’d not had time to elaborate on it. But so far, the deaths had occurred after his visit to each of these places.
This time, tragedy was occurring at the Dingguo Temple, which was being consumed by fire, before he’d even arrived.
What could that change possibly mean?
‘Let’s wait here by the roadside for a short while, Yang,’ he said, wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, feeling another wave of terrible sickness approaching. ‘There is no need for us to do anything in a hurry right now.’
Judge Dee’s instructions made a lot of sense to Yang, and he nodded vigorously. There was no point in rushing headlong into the temple when it was being consumed by fire. Especially not for his aging master, who was more than tired at this moment.
‘What else can we possibly do, Master?’ Yang began grumbling again after he’d helped Judge Dee out of the carriage and on to a pile of cushions on the ground. He spat three times forcefully in another superstitious attempt to ward off bad luck. ‘That woman in the Forbidden City keeps on bringing you one trouble after another on this trip.’
The identity of ‘that woman in the Forbidden City’ was a no-brainer for Yang’s master, and his servant’s words just added to the judge’s sickening sensation.
Could all of this have been a coincidence? Once again, Judge Dee had to rule out the possibility, stroking his white-streaked beard in depressed contemplation of all the possible conspiracies that surrounded the investigation.
‘That woman in the Forbidden City—’ Judge Dee echoed mechanically and stopped. He did not want to think about it, either.
But the question remained, staring hard at him, giving him no break …
For what purpose had the temple been set on fire?
Empress Wu had repeatedly compared him to a staunch pillar of the Tang Empire. To be fair to her, Judge Dee believed she was quite sincere in saying so. She trusted him, in her way. And she had chosen to dispatch him out of the capital for this special investigation into Luo’s disappearance.
But other theories, particularly the one about the empress’s hidden agenda, began overwhelming him.
‘I have a bad headache, Yang,’ Judge Dee decided. ‘I’ll dash off a herbal prescription – something I’ve learned from Doctor Hua. Poor old Hua! I will wait here while you check the state of the temple. You may then give the prescription to a nearby medicine store before you return to me.’
There often seemed to be a tacit understanding between the two. Judge Dee was capable of thinking of this or that, or a lot of things simultaneously. Yang might not be able to understand his schemes immediately, but he always made a point of playing along, without raising too many of his own questions.
Yang took the prescription from the judge’s hand and inserted it into the pocket of his gown. He stood up, ready to set out on his errands.
‘Another thing,’ Judge Dee continued, still leaving the woman in question out of his discussion with Yang, ‘do we have something like a white towel in the carriage?’
‘Yes, we do.’
‘Take it out and tie it tight around my forehead. That may help my headache a little. I have heard people talking about it as a headache cure, so hopefully it will also work for me.’
Yang did as he was told. It was conventional for farmers to do that in the countryside, but it struck Yang as weird to see Judge Dee turning into a believer in herbal medicine all of a sudden, an invalid sitting on the ground with a white towel circling his forehead, just like a country bumpkin. But, Yang reflected with a wry grin, a sickly appearance in a man of Dee’s age would not strike other people as surprising or suspicious, after all.
Yang fetched Judge Dee a cup of fresh water from a small gurgling stream nearby. There were tiny, colorful fishes swimming in the stream, bursting out tiny bubbles in the light amid the floating waterweeds.
‘You do whatever you need to do, Yang,’ Judge Dee said, reclining against a gray rock by the roadside and sipping slowly at the water cup Yang had handed him. ‘And you may also take a quick look around for yourself.’
Finally, the hubbub surrounding the temple seemed to be ebbing a little, though a pungent smell of smoldering timbers and burning embers remained stubbornly lingering in the air.
Judge Dee looked up again. A darksome silhouette of the Dingguo Temple was emerging out of the smoke. Probably damaged, it still stood solid, intact. He heaved a long sigh of relief.
He was then treated to the sight of Yang hurrying back from his reconnaissance in the neighborhood, wiping his sweaty face with a smoke-soiled hand.
Yang came striding up to his master, who was still reclining against the rock. ‘I have taken a quick look around the temple, Master, both inside and outside. The fire was put out, but damage was done, especially in the area close to the temple’s back garden. The fire seems to have started there out of the blue and spread all around in no time. Fortunately, there was no loss of life, I’ve just heard, but the monks and the village people are still searching and digging in the debris.’
‘Fortunate, indeed. The news is not too bad,’ Judge Dee echoed, knitting his brows.
‘So what we are going to do now, Master?’
Judge Dee stood up, stretched himself and shook off the dust from his long gown. He took out his official business card and said to Yang, ‘Let’s go there now. Present my card to the abbot of the temple. You may tell him that I unexpectedly fell sick on the road, and that I would like to stay in a room at the temple for a short convalescence period – that is, if it’s not too difficult for the temple to make the arrangements without notice, and if the rooms are not too damaged by fire.’
‘How could the abbot say no to you? Your stay in the temple would bring a huge honor to it, Master.’ Clearing his throat, Yang went on, ‘Still, you’re sick and exhausted from this long trip, and you need to check into a comfortable hostel, definitely not into a temple recently devastated by fire! There is still a pungent smell there.’
‘No, I must stay at the temple. Rumor has it that Luo once stayed in the temple for a period, and if he did, he may have written a few poems on its back garden wall. It’s sort of a fashion among the Tang literati, you know. So, I must search for evidence there in secret. If Luo has a connection to the place, it’s quite possible that after the defeat of the rebellion’s army, Luo could have hidden in the temple or its neighborhood.’
The Dingguo Temple was located halfway up a hill. It was not high, but it took no less than fifteen minutes for master and servant to climb up there in the carriage.
Once they arrived, Judge Dee waited in the carriage while Yang hurried off to meet the abbot.
The abbot, an old monk in his seventies whose Buddhist name was Vanity, readily agreed to Judge Dee’s request to stay there for three or four days to help him recover from his headache. Yang thought the abbot did not seem too surprised by it. There was, after all, nothing unusual or suspicious about such a request from an old man like Judge Dee, whose body was suffering from the fatigue of too much travel. Nor was such an arrangement out of the ordinary for the temple.
The abbot immediately ordered a young receptionist monk, his Buddhist name Disillusion, to hurry out to the gate with Yang to welcome in the celebrated judge.
Probably in his mid-twenties, Disillusion had a square face, alert eyes and a shaven head that was as shiny as a peeled egg in the light. He looked as thin as a bamboo stick in his red, ample-sleeved silk cassock.
He bowed low and respectfully to Judge Dee. ‘Our abbot wants me to apologize to you, Your Honor. But for the urgent matters piling up after the fire in the temple, he himself would have rushed out to welcome such a distinguished guest as you.’
Judge Dee got out of the carriage and stepped over the temple’s threshold into the front yard. With the white towel tied around his silver hair and his brows knit, as if he were still plagued by a splitting headache, he really looked like a sickly old man … which was true, except for the headache part.
Even though a large section of the temple still contained smoking debris, the judge insisted on paying full price for two rooms for a convalescent period of five days. From Disillusion’s perspective, the down-payment for their board and lodgings would certainly have been more than welcome, not to mention the fact that Judge Dee’s choosing to stay there would further contribute to the temple’s fame.
Yang grumbled in a subdued voice as he carried Dee’s luggage into a barely furnished room. Its walls were slightly smoke-stained, but it proved to be otherwise clean and neat. Yang’s own room was smaller, but he did not think he had any reason to complain about that.
Disillusion was still grinning from ear to ear, bowing repeatedly, as he left Dee and Yang alone in Judge Dee’s room.
‘For the price, you could have chosen a much better hostel, Master,’ Yang complained as soon as Disillusion was out of earshot. ‘How will this half-burnt temple be able to provide either satisfying service or decent meals for you?’
‘For one thing, the vegetarian meals here may turn out to be good for my health,’ Judge Dee said. Then he added, after a short pause, ‘Not to mention the enjoyment of reading the poems on the temple’s back garden walls at my leisure. In fact, I would like to go to the back garden right now for a short walk, I think.’
‘If the walls are even still there, my poetic Master,’ Yang said grumpily, moving back into his own room.
Possibly a large part of the wall would be gone; Yang had reported that the fire had begun in that area, hadn’t he? Still, Judge Dee could, and should, take a closer look there for himself.
If nothing else, he could look for clues as to the origin of the sudden fire.
Besides, he might be able to leave a few lines of poetry behind himself on the remaining walls. It was a fashionable convention at the time, and although Judge Dee had dismissed the idea earlier, he now changed his mind as a new idea occurred to him. Leaving his lines on the temple wall could also serve as written proof for Empress Wu: the bookish judge had truly traveled a long way in search of the missing Luo Binwang.
The empress exercised a powerful network of secret police and secret spies everywhere in the empire – as far as the Dingguo Temple. If the murders that had dogged Judge Dee’s footsteps so far were not at her command, after all, then he could not afford to overlook details like this at such a juncture.
Looking out into the front courtyard, Judge Dee caught sight of a white curly-haired cat napping languidly. It was stretching contentedly in its dream, purring occasionally, as if that was the one and only purpose of its feline life.
A note of eternal sadness unexpectedly streamed over in a fitful breeze from the direction of the back garden. Turning over his shoulder for a glance, Judge Dee noticed a swarthy monk steadily striking a huge bronze bell. Judge Dee must have heard the note before. But why it was affecting him so deeply right now, he could not understand.
After a short nap, and a bowl of noodles topped with wild mushroom and bamboo shoots, along with a cup of freshly squeezed fruit juice, Judge Dee felt recuperated enough to walk out into the temple’s front courtyard. His decision to stay in the temple was proving not to be a bad one so far, though he was still wearing the white towel around his head, and leaning heavily on a handy bamboo cane the temple had considerately provided for him.
There was a large bronze urn for incense burning in the center of the courtyard. It might have been placed there for devoted pilgrims, who traveled to the temple from far and wide. Judge Dee paid for a bunch of tall incense sticks, kowtowed three times with the incense sticks grasped tight in his hand, before he put the burning sticks into the bronze urn.
Enveloped by the agreeable smell of incense, a new – though still evasive and elusive – idea hit him like a thunderbolt out of nowhere. In Buddhism, it was probably called ‘the sudden enlightenment’.
Judge Dee spun round abruptly, heading back to his room. It must have seemed to the temple people that he was still too weak to move from his room for long, and that it would take days for him to recover.
Disillusion hurried over with concern clearly registered on his face. ‘Everything OK, Your Honor? You’re looking a bit tired right now.’
‘I’m fine, Disillusion. I am indeed just feeling tired, so I’m going back to my room to rest a little. Don’t worry about me. By the way,’ Judge Dee said, deciding not to lose any time leading up to the question he wanted to ask, ‘I’ve heard a lot about the famous poetry walls in your back garden. Many celebrities have left their lines on the walls, am I right?’
‘Yes, quite a number of well-known poets have chosen to do so. It’s a credit to our temple. Only, I’m afraid the back garden is still in a mess at the moment after the fire, Your Honor. It may take a day or two for it to reopen properly … or possibly even longer. But I think I may be able to arrange a special private tour for you later this afternoon or tomorrow morning when the debris has been removed.’
‘I see. That will be fantastic. Let me know the exact time. I really appreciate you making the arrangements.’
‘Also, I’m afraid I must share a piece of bad news I’ve just learned, Your Honor. A couple of bodies have been discovered under debris, not far from the back garden. Alas, the two bodies were burned completely out of recognition.’
‘Were they temple monks?’
‘No, we don’t think so. Since no monks are missing in our temple, I am told that the dead must be some penniless people who were taking temporary shelter in the temple for free. Their lodgings were located close to the back garden. Oh mercy, my greatest Buddha!’
‘Take me to the scene of the fire right now, Disillusion,’ Judge Dee demanded. ‘I have to be there.’
‘But you’re still too weak, Your Honor! The lingering smoke in the area around the poetry wall may not be too bad, but the air quality is simply too horrible where the bodies were found. It won’t be good for your health right at this moment.’
‘But don’t forget I am an investigating judge. I have no choice but to go to the crime scene – the fire scene – this very moment. It’s my calling. I cannot run away from my responsibilities, you know.’