Chapter 44 — The Book of Heaven
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 6 of 6
Bili stormed out of the stone chamber and back into the cavern of stalactites, where she nursed her sulks at the skeleton. At first she told herself there was nothing to it, but the more she looked at that fellow the less she could bear him; the more she thought, the angrier she grew. Then she saw the "Heartbreak Flower" at her side, once so lovely, now all black, and at once turned her anger upon the Blackheart Old Man.
Pointing at the skeleton, she cried furiously, "You dead old ghost! Eight hundred years dead and still you harm the living and harm me — you've made my jade flower turn... turn..."
The sentence would not finish. Bili's fury mounted; she said no more, but with a sweep of her sleeve sent the "Heartbreak Flower" flying. It circled once above the skeleton and returned. A moment later came a grating sound of cracking bone — crack, crack — and the skeleton fell apart, scattering in pieces.
Having struck, Bili's anger eased somewhat, and she felt a little regret, not knowing whence such fury had come. But a glance aside startled her: on the stone wall that the skeleton had been concealing there were actually several lines of writing. She hurried over to look closely, and saw four lines written on the wall.
The bell chokes, a hundred flowers wither,
The shadow thins; the temples turn to frost.
Deep feeling brings suffering, and all one's life is suffering;
yet fond infatuation suffers only because it meets with heartlessness.
Note 1: The general purport of this passage draws upon the De Jing, the Diamond Sutra, the Platform Sutra, the "Biography of Ji Zhan" in the Book of Jin, and commentaries on the Tuanzhuan of the Fu Hexagram in the Book of Changes, among other sources.