Novel Center
Chapter 1 - I’m going to the human world to seduce him
Chapter 1: I’m going to the human world to seduce him
From a time unknown, people passing by the River of Oblivion (1) began to call me the Stone of Three Lifetimes (2). Thereafter, some people spurned me, some came hand-in-hand and carved on me their romances from lifetimes past, and there were even those who stood bawling in front of me.
The River of Oblivion is called the Wangchuan in Chinese mythology. It is similar to the Lethe in Greek mythology.
She is called the Sansheng Stone where Sansheng means ‘three lifetimes’. ‘Three lifetimes’ in Buddhist context also means the past life, the present life, and the future life.
And yet, I was just a stone by the Wangchuan riverside. I neither had joy nor did I have sorrow.
I sat faithfully that way by the Wangchuan for one thousand years until I finally formed a soul one day.
All living things were to be subjected to trials of fate, but I continued to sit there harmlessly for over another century until...
My love trial came.
Reading my fortune was a white-bearded priest passing by the Wangchuan. He prophesied my coming trial to the knowing nodding of his head.
I thought he was just making up hogwash.
I was a spirit born from the Sansheng Stone; my soul was that of a stone and my heart was that of a stone. My heart had long been forged into coldness by the perennial darkness along the Wanchuan River.
There was no pain where there was no love. If my heart hadn’t ever stirred, then where would this love trial be coming from?
Or so I thought.
But everything always had its surprises.
On a gloomy afternoon in the underworld, I returned to the eternally unchanging Wangchuan from my walk as usual. I looked up. In that coincidental moment, as if sunlight from the land of the living had broken through the thick layers of fog, the cluster amaryllises lining the Yellow Springs suddenly glistened radiantly.
A man gracefully came forth.
I suddenly recalled the words a human woman passing by me had once whispered many, many years ago: “What a scholarly gentleman, so polished, so refined.” (3)