Wei Tansheng woke up.
His head felt heavy, limbs weak.
His stomach churned, nausea overwhelming, his entire body burning like a branding iron.
He was desperately thirsty.
With great effort, he opened his eyes.
What greeted him was not a dim, foul-smelling hut, but bright sunlight and dappled shadows of trees—so familiar it seemed as if he had merely dozed off by the latticed window at home after reading and had just woken up.
Wei Tansheng stared blankly, lost in thought.
It felt as though he had dreamed a very, very long dream.
Before he turned ten, his life had indeed been like a distant, illusory dream, never quite grounded in reality.
He was intelligent.
From the moment he understood the world, everyone around him had said so.
"Young master is exceptionally bright."
Praise was tolerable once or twice, but hearing it endlessly only made him weary.
A single glance at a page was enough for him to memorize its contents.
While his siblings toiled over memorization, he could already recite entire passages flawlessly.
The entire Wei Family marveled at his brilliance.
Yet he often found himself bored.
Born into the Wei Family of the capital, his ancestors had once served as Grand Preceptors for two dynasties.
Though not imperial relatives, the Wei Family was a lineage of scholars, steeped in poetry and propriety. The family had always been small in number, and by his father Wei Zonglin’s generation, signs of decline had begun to show. Wei Zonglin and his brothers held middling positions in court, neither rising high nor falling low, so the entire family pinned their hopes on the younger generation.
From childhood, Wei Tansheng displayed extraordinary talent, excelling in everything a step ahead of his siblings.
Wei Zonglin placed the burden of reviving the Wei Family’s fortunes squarely on his shoulders.
His life was one of books and discipline.
While his siblings gathered to play games or fly kites, he sat beneath the green gauze window, reciting texts.
As for "reviving the Wei Family," Wei Tansheng didn’t truly understand what it meant.
From birth, he had obediently followed the family’s arrangements without question—whatever his father demanded, he did.
His health had always been frail. Fearing his brilliance might lead to an early demise, his family kept him tightly controlled, forbidding many ordinary activities.
Old Madam Wei, a devout Buddhist, had him dedicated to the Bodhisattva, giving him the childhood name "Tannu." She also lit a long-life lamp for him at Kongshan Temple and often took him to listen to Master Liaoshan’s sermons on Buddhist teachings.
Wei Zonglin, meanwhile, hired martial instructors to train him in archery and horsemanship, hoping to strengthen his constitution.
Every morning, monks and ascetics would circle the capital’s alleys, striking iron plaques and chanting sutras to mark the hour.
Yet Wei Tansheng rose even earlier—he had books to study, assignments to complete.
The entire household doted on him, each in their own way, but he found it all tiresome.
Due to the elders’ favoritism, the other children avoided him, deliberately or otherwise, leaving him isolated.
Wei Tansheng didn’t care in the slightest.
He seemed born without the capacity to feel attachment to others. Flowers, animals, people—they were all the same to him, no different.
His obedience to his elders stemmed solely from their status as "elders," and because the books taught filial piety.
In truth, Wei Tansheng disliked Wei Zonglin. His father’s affection was conditional on his intelligence and compliance. When in good spirits, Wei Zonglin would tease him; when disobeyed, his face would darken, and he’d rebuke him harshly, masking his anger with lofty rhetoric.
He didn’t like his mother either—she favored his eldest brother, preoccupied with jewelry and cosmetics or squabbling with the second and third branches of the family.
At five, his Fifth Sister from the third branch adopted a cat. She adored it, carrying it everywhere.
Then, somehow, the cat escaped and wandered onto his archery range, where he accidentally shot it dead during practice.
She wailed, tears streaming, demanding he compensate her.
Wei Tansheng watched impassively, puzzled.
He didn’t understand why she cried so bitterly—when a potted plant she’d nurtured died, she hadn’t shed a tear.
To him, a cat, a flower, a person—there was little difference.
Old Madam Wei, fearing he might be distressed, called him aside to console him.
"That cat bore heavy sins in its past life, hence its rebirth as an animal. Its death today was fate—you’ve unwittingly freed it from the cycle of suffering."
This was Wei Tansheng’s first encounter with the concept of death.
He had always held a faint awe for his grandmother—not because of her status in the Wei Family, but because of the aura she carried, so unlike his own.
The aura of "age," "sickness," and "death."
To cheer him, the family bought him a fashionable "Mohele" doll—a delicate figurine clad in golden threads and sheer green gauze, its tiny face smiling sweetly.
Once, he too had longed for toys like his siblings.
Yet when he finally owned one, he quickly grew bored. The expensive Mohele was soon discarded in a corner.
Seeing this, Old Madam Wei set him to copying sutras, believing it would calm his mind.
So he copied—from the Diamond Sutra to the Heart Sutra, from the Lotus Sutra to the Hundred Parables Sutra.
How much of it truly sank in, even Wei Tansheng couldn’t say.
At ten, Wei Zonglin offended the emperor by speaking in defense of a disgraced official and was demoted to Qingyang County. Wei Tansheng accompanied him.
But before they reached Qingyang, bandits from Piao’er Mountain captured him, upending his monotonous existence.
Despite his intelligence, he was still a child—faced with such terror, panic was inevitable.
He knew he had to escape.
He planned his first attempt.
But he was overconfident, convinced of his own brilliance, and it cost him dearly.
His left leg was broken.
What followed was a haze.
After the injury, he drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes certain he would die.
No one tended to him.
They locked him in a thatched hut, where he ate, slept, and relieved himself in the same filthy space. Like a dog—fed only when remembered, left to starve otherwise.
The scraps thrown to him occasionally were barely fit for swine.
Wei Tansheng was proud, perhaps influenced by Wei Zonglin. He’d sooner starve than grovel like a stray, eating from a trough.
His body weakened, teetering on death’s edge.
Yet he didn’t die.
In his delirium, he felt a bucket of icy water dumped over his head.
Opening his eyes, he saw a bandit looming over him, eyes wide with inexplicable delight.
Like a hideous asura from Buddhist lore.
The man reeked.
The stench assaulted his senses, and Wei Tansheng turned his face away in disgust.
