Chapter 4

After the first time, the second was much easier.

I was no longer the ignorant child who believed eating meat would offend the Three Pure Ones. And a doctor down the mountain had told me that people needed meat, especially children, if they were to grow properly.

I helped Huiyan catch sparrows. Sometimes I secretly bought a chicken and left it behind the mountain, coaxing her to catch it.

Once she did, I sent her off to keep watch and roasted the meat until it smelled delicious. We shared it and took a little back to Teacher.

We did not eat it often. I feared we would grow plump and the temple’s head would notice.

Yet later, even that little meat filled me with regret. Had I fed Huiyan too well, so that at thirteen or fourteen she was healthy and lively, like a carefree spirit of the mountain?

She was too beautiful. So beautiful that even the noble consort who came from the capital feared her looks.

That year, the first child among us turned fifteen.

On an ordinary day, she was called to the eastern compound. Her teacher made a show of sprinkling a few drops of holy water on her head, then pushed her into a room.

Early the next morning, the head of the temple gathered those of us who would soon turn fifteen outside that room.

She pointed at the older girl still lying in bed. “Today Huixin has received a great blessing. An immortal lord came to consecrate her. She is now formally a holy woman of Yiyun Temple and may ascend to bliss. You must study your scriptures diligently too. Learn them well, and I will arrange for your consecration here in the eastern compound.”

Ascending to bliss was the dream they had planted in us since childhood. All the girls standing there looked at Huixin with envy. They had no idea that no immortal lord would come. Only evil spirits.

I swallowed the urge to vomit and looked at Huixin in sorrow. At least she did not understand what had happened. At least there was that.

But just as I took comfort in it, Huiyan tugged my hand and asked excitedly, “Sister, Sister! If I learn my scriptures well, can I see an immortal lord too?”

At the longing on her face, cold swept through my whole body.

My Huiyan knew nothing either. One day she too would walk into that room smiling.

I knew I had to take her away. I could not let her become another Huixin.

Teacher felt the same. Counting the money we had barely managed to save, she said, “You’ll turn fifteen in two months. We have to leave as soon as possible.”

Within a month, we had obtained the false registrations. But two days before we meant to leave, a great many soldiers arrived. They surrounded Yiyun Temple and confined us to our rooms.

For a moment, I thought joyfully that the authorities had discovered what went on here and had finally come to arrest the head of the temple. We would all be saved.

But the news was better than I had imagined. The emperor was coming.

They said the soldiers had come ahead to inspect the security. The imperial procession would arrive in a month.

For all Teacher had taught me, she did not understand what an emperor was herself. Since she could not teach me, everything I imagined about him came from folk tales.

In those stories, people who suffered injustice often went to the capital to petition the emperor. Once an imperial decree was issued, justice was restored.

With that hope, I awaited his arrival as though I were waiting for a real god.

He came with a great many guards and palace servants, and a beautiful noble consort.

I had thought it would be difficult to see him. But the matrons from the palace began teaching us proper conduct.

First they gathered us together. Every young nun came except Huixin.

The matrons treated us like goods, forcing us to undergo an examination to see whether we met the palace’s requirements.

Huiyan was ticklish. Giggling, she asked, “Patron, are you going to help me bathe?”

One matron looked her over and said ingratiatingly, “A young mistress as pretty as you will have plenty of people to help her bathe in future.”

I remembered that matron’s face and immediately asked Teacher to pay for information. Only then did I learn that the emperor had come to Mount Tai to take us into his bed.

He was twenty-eight and had reigned for ten years. There was still not a single child in his harem.

For the first seven years, he had favored Noble Consort Liu alone, hoping she would bear his eldest son. But she had never conceived.

As pressure from the court and harem grew, the emperor became anxious. In recent years, he had taken many more consorts. Still no one became pregnant.

People believe most in gods and Buddhas when they are helpless. An occult practitioner in the capital told him he had calculated the auspicious location precisely: Yiyun Temple, at the summit of Mount Tai. If the emperor went there to add to his harem, he would surely be blessed with a son.

The emperor half believed it. Then he sent people to investigate. They found a women’s temple full of young girls who had been reciting scriptures since they were five or six. That convinced him of the other half.

So now he had come himself, bringing Noble Consort Liu in the hope that the sacred ground of Mount Tai would bless his favorite with a pregnancy too.