It’s a farmer just passing by. He asks Duan Ling several questions, and Duan Ling tightens his grip on the dagger so that if the farmer makes any wrong move he’ll throw himself at him and put an end to his life. Fortunately, when the other man realises that Duan Ling is Han he doesn’t seem all that suspicious and merely indicates that Duan Ling should get into his ox cart. He hangs his lamp on the ox cart and continues on his way.
Duan Ling lies back on the pile of hay in the cart. Days of running have exhausted all of his stamina, and curling up in the hay pile he falls into a deep slumber. He has no idea how much road they cover, but at dawn he feels himself wrapped around a warm body.
A dog’s tongue is licking at his face. Duan Ling wakes immediately and reaches for his dagger, but the big dog sensibly fetches the dagger in its mouth and brings it to him. At a loss for words, Duan Ling awkwardly gives the dog a pat on the head.
With the sky stretching wide above them on this cool, dry autumn day, the farmer is sitting at the side of the path chatting with some people, while a bustling village waits at the end of the road.
Duan Ling gets off the cart and kowtows at the farmer to thank him. The farmer calls out ay, ay to stop him from leaving and hands him a cloth sack with several flatbreads inside.
Duan Ling wolfs them all down while he walks, and when he gets thirsty he takes a drink from the mountain stream. It gets colder and colder; on a bright, sunny day, Duan Ling strips down to nothing while it’s still warm enough to bathe in a brook. As he’s crouching to scrub his face and wash his hair, his naked body is reflected in the water. He no longer looks like a child. What he sees in the water is the figure of a handsome young man.
I’ve grown — Duan Ling thinks to himself.
Next year, he’ll be fifteen. He has gotten a lot taller, and his arms are thicker and more solid than they used to be. Frequent use of the bow has made his shoulders wider, and he can see the dim silhouette of pecs on his chest. The healthy young man’s body in the water doesn’t feel real to him.
He launders his clothes, dries them in the sun, puts them on, and throws the cloth sack over his shoulder. With a whistle he continues on his journey, forlorn.
Winter arrives as the last yellow leaf leaves its branch, and Duan Ling has also stepped onto the road leading into Yubiguan.
The area outside Yubiguan is crowded with south-going refugees. He blends into the crowd, listening to everyone speaking Khitan, Xianbei, Han, and Tangut, their intermingling accents from all corners of the continent. They’re either travelling with family or have lost their wives and children, some not a soul to keep them company but their own shadows. Some cry, some grumble, and all proceeding south at a snail’s pace.
He stares out from his position in the crowd and finds that there are people as far as his eyes can see — thirty, forty-thousand of them flowing together like a great current. He can’t even tell where it ends.
The people in charge of Yubiguan doesn’t want to open the gate, so the refugees can only try to climb over Mount Jiangjun. Some are shot dead by Mongols, some fall off the mountain cliffs to horrible deaths, and all along the way are dead bodies with their belongings and clothes stripped clean. Duan Ling has become inured to the sight of death on his journey but still he cannot help but shed tears when he sees them.
Thankfully Yubiguan finally opens before the arrival of the first snow. The refugees gratefully push into the central plains. Facing a fork in the road, Duan Ling is momentarily lost as to which way he should go.
“Excuse me,” he asks, “which way is Xichuan?”
“Xichuan?” Someone replies, “That’s really far …”
Before he finishes speaking, the crowd behind them pushes them to move faster, and their jostling separates Duan Ling from the one he’s speaking with. So he asks again, how do I get to Xichuan? and someone else asks him, “Why you off to Xichuan for?”
“To find my dad!” Duan Ling yells over at the person five steps away, across an unresponsive man standing between them.
“It’s called ‘Xichuan’, west plains, so you’d have to go west naturally!” That person replies.
Thereupon Duan Ling steps onto another path. Yet a human’s footsteps are never faster than ice and snow and it grows colder and colder with every single step he takes. Winter has come to the country south of the Great Wall.
His clothes have been hanging off of him in rags ever since he left the Xianbei Mountains, and he looks like a beggar. Whenever he manages to steal some clothes along the way he simply wraps them over himself. His hair is a veritable bird’s nest and his feet are covered in bloody blisters.
By the time I get to Xichuan my dad probably won’t even recognise me anymore, Duan Ling laughs at himself inwardly.
Several times he sees the soldiers of Southern Chen pass him by, and whenever he does he gets this sudden impulse to stand in their way and tell them I’m your crown prince, take me to Xichuan already.
But it’s no more than a passing thought. Even in his fancies he knows they’re only going to believe he’s crazy. Duan Ling has no other option but to keep moving forward — until he makes it to the city walls of Luoyang, when he really can’t walk anymore.
If he keeps walking like this he’ll only end up freezing to death on the road.
The entire north is locked in the throes of winter. Duan Ling can do nothing but enter Luoyang to escape from the cold.
The first snowfall descends without any warning. Snow flutters down gently, covering the earth; overnight, the city becomes ornamented in crystalline ice, glittering in the sun. In the ruins of old temples and on every corner of the streets are refugees displaced by the war. Fortunately Duan Ling manages to force his way into an old, dilapidated temple, and finds a spot next to a drafty wall to keep himself alive.
Erstwhile feelings once familiar assault his senses once more: hunger, cold, pain; those memories that carved themselves into him the most in childhood are relentlessly devouring his soul. Hunger gnaws at him like a ravenous wolf, biting at his insides, mercilessly clutching them into a singular mass; the cold caresses his body that was draped in nothing but a single layer of coarsely woven cloth; pain attacks every inch of him like countless needles. One torment after another has his entire person spasming.
Duan Ling hugs himself tightly, curling into a ball. Through a little hole in the wall he can see warm lamp light shining from the city as he shivers and the snow falls. The snow is falling on everything, blanketing the living and blanketing the dead, over thousands of miles and across the eons.
Behind him, the temple’s old Buddha statue, varnish peeling with age, sits with one hand in the karana mudra2 and a kindly expression on its face as it looks down upon the grieving, cold souls before it.
Overnight, more than a thousand and four hundred people freeze to their deaths in Luoyang.
The next day, when Duan Ling staggers to his feet to walk out of the temple, nearly half of those who made this place their temporary home have stopped breathing.
He must find some sort of livelihood in the market, otherwise in another night he’ll end up dying here too. People are coming and going in the marketplace, and everyone is wrapped in an overcoat. Duan Ling stands in the snow, giving everyone who examines him beseeching looks, so cold he can’t even speak.
“Will you sell yourself?” Someone asks him.
“No,” Duan Ling replies as he shivers.
Those local ruffians are just amusing themselves with him. They give his mouth a pat to make him open it, checks to see if his teeth are whole and even, and asks him to take a few steps. As soon as Duan Ling takes the first step they run off to check out crickets.
He wonders if he should pawn the dagger, or maybe he should take the dagger and hold it up against someone’s back to coerce them for money. Even if he just grabs some money from a street stall and runs, it may be enough to save him from his current dire situation. After all, every stretch of land in this empire and every last copper is rightfully his — but ultimately he doesn’t do any of that.
“I didn’t steal money! I didn’t steal the madam’s money!”
Those words keep echoing in his head until dusk comes and out of nowhere a commotion spreads. Someone is yelling, “Come warm up by the fire!”
The market stalls are closing up, so Duan Ling runs with the crowd. A house is burning up inside a lane, with many people outside gathering around warming themselves by the flames. Duan Ling can hear the sound of a baby crying somewhere in there, and hastily grabbing a handful of snow he stuffs it into the cloth sack, wraps it over his face, and dashes inside.
“Whose child is this?!” Duan Ling asks worriedly.
No one answers him. Duan Ling asks around all over, and no one wants it either.
He’s saved an infant out of a fire. No one wants it. How come? How does that make any sense? The watch comes by but they can’t do anything, just stands around watching it burn. There’s nothing for Duan Ling to do but hold that baby close to him, and wearing a numb expression, he sits at the door of the apothecary.
Dad, I’m so cold. I’m going to die …
Duan Ling sits there lethargically with these thoughts running through his head. The cries of the infant in his arms soften to a whimper. He wonders if the baby’s either tired of crying or dead, and gives him a few light pats. As though the baby can feel some semblance of hope, he tries his darndest to cry again, as loudly as he can.
The door of the apothecary opens.
“Aiyoh, what’s this?” The shopkeep inside the apothecary says, “Come in.”
Duan Ling crawls inside, shivering. In that very instant, he survives again, spends the night curled up next to the medicine refining stove. The apothecary’s clerk has quit his job and gone home, and the shopkeep now fills the prescriptions, prepare the medicinal ingredients, cooks ointment, and makes the poultices himself, planning to distribute them to the wealthy families in the city to cure all sorts of diseases that afflict the rich. Duan Ling is so hungry that his vision is starting to go dim. In the middle of the night, the shopkeep fetches two taels of wine, and pouring for himself, he drinks alone. He tosses Duan Ling a couple of flatbreads, and so Duan Ling pulls them into crumbs to feed the child.
“Where’d you steal him from?” The shopkeep squints sidelong at him.
“I saved him from the fire.”
“The poor thing. Give him to me then. I was just thinking about adopting one.”
Even someone as old as Duan Ling himself has no takers; a little baby managing to survive in a world like this one is a rare enough thing, and so the shopkeep and his wife, who can’t have any children of their own, adopts the child. As for Duan Ling, he gets to make a bed on the floor beneath the medicine cabinets, serving as a temporary clerk for the apothecary.
Most other refugees who’ve come to the city don’t have a lot of skills, and in order to go on living, all they can do is steal, but Duan Ling is very efficient. He can recognise the ingredients, and he can even write; when he copies prescriptions his handwriting is more elegant than anything they’ve ever seen, and he never makes a mistake dispensing. The shopkeep fears the authorities may question him for taking in a refugee, so he lets Duan Ling hide in a dimly lit room filled with medicinal ingredients. Duan Ling chops medicine, refines medicine, dispenses medicine, and the shopkeep gives him food. Occasionally the shopkeep’s wife will come by with the baby, and give Duan Ling a bit of money.
The shopkeep is rather satisfied with Duan Ling, and decides to let him stay. This stopover ends up lasting three months.
Duan Ling has finally survived the coldest months of the winter. He’s picked up several discarded overcoats that the shopkeep doesn’t want anymore. He’s warm now, and they don’t cost him anything. That’s nice. He’s even managed to save up some travelling expenses so he can finally move on to Xichuan.
He asks around to figure out the way to get there, and the road to Xichuan will take him another fortnight. Without documentation, he probably won’t be able to get into the capital, but who cares? He just has to worry about all that when he gets there. Once he gets to the city walls it’s not like he won’t find some way to get in. When the snow begins to melt Duan Ling packs up all his belongings, makes a visit to the hungry child to give him one last pat on the head, then he turns around and closes the door of the apothecary behind him. He leaves behind a goodbye letter and throws his bundle over his shoulder, and steps onto the road home.
Spring has come gradually. The city of Luoyang feels like yet another page in his journey, not leaving much of a mark at all. Duan Ling walks along the imperial highways, and after a half month of walking, he arrives in Jiangzhou.
So this is the Jiangzhou dad told me about, Duan Ling thinks to himself.
It’s just as prosperous as Li Jianhong described it but it doesn’t have any peach blossoms. It’s probably not the right time of year yet.
Duan Ling inquires from the locals but he can’t quite understand the Jiangzhou dialect. Someone agrees to take him to Xichuan, but they’re only trying to fool him. Without even knowing how, he’s conned out of some money. Finally, he boards a boat outside Jiangzhou at a ferry crossing, paying a hundred and twenty coppers for the fare to sleep on the deck alongside the boatmen as they go up river towards Xichuan. The air is warmer as soon as he’s in the south; beneath bright, beautiful sunlight, Duan Ling sits at the far end of the prow, not speaking with anyone.
On either shore the mountains are darkly painted against the sky, like ink, making him recall the evening Lang Junxia took him away from Shangzi.
He arrives in Xichuan.
Mount Wenzhong, Feng River, the City of Xichuan — these are all places Li Jianhong told him about.
Feeling both a bit familiar and sensing a strange air of unfamiliarity, he stands on the highway as warm breezes caress his cheeks. On both sides of the highway are verdant fields of grain; the spring planting has already begun.
From the day he escaped from Shangjing, half of a year has already gone by.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
A gesture often seen in Buddha paintings with one finger pointed upwards and two in the palm. ↩︎
It’s a farmer just passing by. He asks Duan Ling several questions, and Duan Ling tightens his grip on the dagger so that if the farmer makes any wrong move he’ll throw himself at him and put an end to his life. Fortunately, when the other man realises that Duan Ling is Han he doesn’t seem all that suspicious and merely indicates that Duan Ling should get into his ox cart. He hangs his lamp on the ox cart and continues on his way.
Duan Ling lies back on the pile of hay in the cart. Days of running have exhausted all of his stamina, and curling up in the hay pile he falls into a deep slumber. He has no idea how much road they cover, but at dawn he feels himself wrapped around a warm body.
A dog’s tongue is licking at his face. Duan Ling wakes immediately and reaches for his dagger, but the big dog sensibly fetches the dagger in its mouth and brings it to him. At a loss for words, Duan Ling awkwardly gives the dog a pat on the head.
With the sky stretching wide above them on this cool, dry autumn day, the farmer is sitting at the side of the path chatting with some people, while a bustling village waits at the end of the road.
Duan Ling gets off the cart and kowtows at the farmer to thank him. The farmer calls out ay, ay to stop him from leaving and hands him a cloth sack with several flatbreads inside.
Duan Ling wolfs them all down while he walks, and when he gets thirsty he takes a drink from the mountain stream. It gets colder and colder; on a bright, sunny day, Duan Ling strips down to nothing while it’s still warm enough to bathe in a brook. As he’s crouching to scrub his face and wash his hair, his naked body is reflected in the water. He no longer looks like a child. What he sees in the water is the figure of a handsome young man.
I’ve grown — Duan Ling thinks to himself.
Next year, he’ll be fifteen. He has gotten a lot taller, and his arms are thicker and more solid than they used to be. Frequent use of the bow has made his shoulders wider, and he can see the dim silhouette of pecs on his chest. The healthy young man’s body in the water doesn’t feel real to him.
He launders his clothes, dries them in the sun, puts them on, and throws the cloth sack over his shoulder. With a whistle he continues on his journey, forlorn.
Winter arrives as the last yellow leaf leaves its branch, and Duan Ling has also stepped onto the road leading into Yubiguan.
The area outside Yubiguan is crowded with south-going refugees. He blends into the crowd, listening to everyone speaking Khitan, Xianbei, Han, and Tangut, their intermingling accents from all corners of the continent. They’re either travelling with family or have lost their wives and children, some not a soul to keep them company but their own shadows. Some cry, some grumble, and all proceeding south at a snail’s pace.
He stares out from his position in the crowd and finds that there are people as far as his eyes can see — thirty, forty-thousand of them flowing together like a great current. He can’t even tell where it ends.
The people in charge of Yubiguan doesn’t want to open the gate, so the refugees can only try to climb over Mount Jiangjun. Some are shot dead by Mongols, some fall off the mountain cliffs to horrible deaths, and all along the way are dead bodies with their belongings and clothes stripped clean. Duan Ling has become inured to the sight of death on his journey but still he cannot help but shed tears when he sees them.
Thankfully Yubiguan finally opens before the arrival of the first snow. The refugees gratefully push into the central plains. Facing a fork in the road, Duan Ling is momentarily lost as to which way he should go.
“Excuse me,” he asks, “which way is Xichuan?”
“Xichuan?” Someone replies, “That’s really far …”
Before he finishes speaking, the crowd behind them pushes them to move faster, and their jostling separates Duan Ling from the one he’s speaking with. So he asks again, how do I get to Xichuan? and someone else asks him, “Why you off to Xichuan for?”
“To find my dad!” Duan Ling yells over at the person five steps away, across an unresponsive man standing between them.
“It’s called ‘Xichuan’, west plains, so you’d have to go west naturally!” That person replies.
Thereupon Duan Ling steps onto another path. Yet a human’s footsteps are never faster than ice and snow and it grows colder and colder with every single step he takes. Winter has come to the country south of the Great Wall.
His clothes have been hanging off of him in rags ever since he left the Xianbei Mountains, and he looks like a beggar. Whenever he manages to steal some clothes along the way he simply wraps them over himself. His hair is a veritable bird’s nest and his feet are covered in bloody blisters.
By the time I get to Xichuan my dad probably won’t even recognise me anymore, Duan Ling laughs at himself inwardly.
Several times he sees the soldiers of Southern Chen pass him by, and whenever he does he gets this sudden impulse to stand in their way and tell them I’m your crown prince, take me to Xichuan already.
But it’s no more than a passing thought. Even in his fancies he knows they’re only going to believe he’s crazy. Duan Ling has no other option but to keep moving forward — until he makes it to the city walls of Luoyang, when he really can’t walk anymore.
If he keeps walking like this he’ll only end up freezing to death on the road.
The entire north is locked in the throes of winter. Duan Ling can do nothing but enter Luoyang to escape from the cold.
The first snowfall descends without any warning. Snow flutters down gently, covering the earth; overnight, the city becomes ornamented in crystalline ice, glittering in the sun. In the ruins of old temples and on every corner of the streets are refugees displaced by the war. Fortunately Duan Ling manages to force his way into an old, dilapidated temple, and finds a spot next to a drafty wall to keep himself alive.
Erstwhile feelings once familiar assault his senses once more: hunger, cold, pain; those memories that carved themselves into him the most in childhood are relentlessly devouring his soul. Hunger gnaws at him like a ravenous wolf, biting at his insides, mercilessly clutching them into a singular mass; the cold caresses his body that was draped in nothing but a single layer of coarsely woven cloth; pain attacks every inch of him like countless needles. One torment after another has his entire person spasming.
Duan Ling hugs himself tightly, curling into a ball. Through a little hole in the wall he can see warm lamp light shining from the city as he shivers and the snow falls. The snow is falling on everything, blanketing the living and blanketing the dead, over thousands of miles and across the eons.
Behind him, the temple’s old Buddha statue, varnish peeling with age, sits with one hand in the karana mudra2 and a kindly expression on its face as it looks down upon the grieving, cold souls before it.
Overnight, more than a thousand and four hundred people freeze to their deaths in Luoyang.
The next day, when Duan Ling staggers to his feet to walk out of the temple, nearly half of those who made this place their temporary home have stopped breathing.
He must find some sort of livelihood in the market, otherwise in another night he’ll end up dying here too. People are coming and going in the marketplace, and everyone is wrapped in an overcoat. Duan Ling stands in the snow, giving everyone who examines him beseeching looks, so cold he can’t even speak.
“Will you sell yourself?” Someone asks him.
“No,” Duan Ling replies as he shivers.
Those local ruffians are just amusing themselves with him. They give his mouth a pat to make him open it, checks to see if his teeth are whole and even, and asks him to take a few steps. As soon as Duan Ling takes the first step they run off to check out crickets.
He wonders if he should pawn the dagger, or maybe he should take the dagger and hold it up against someone’s back to coerce them for money. Even if he just grabs some money from a street stall and runs, it may be enough to save him from his current dire situation. After all, every stretch of land in this empire and every last copper is rightfully his — but ultimately he doesn’t do any of that.
“I didn’t steal money! I didn’t steal the madam’s money!”
Those words keep echoing in his head until dusk comes and out of nowhere a commotion spreads. Someone is yelling, “Come warm up by the fire!”
The market stalls are closing up, so Duan Ling runs with the crowd. A house is burning up inside a lane, with many people outside gathering around warming themselves by the flames. Duan Ling can hear the sound of a baby crying somewhere in there, and hastily grabbing a handful of snow he stuffs it into the cloth sack, wraps it over his face, and dashes inside.
“Whose child is this?!” Duan Ling asks worriedly.
No one answers him. Duan Ling asks around all over, and no one wants it either.
He’s saved an infant out of a fire. No one wants it. How come? How does that make any sense? The watch comes by but they can’t do anything, just stands around watching it burn. There’s nothing for Duan Ling to do but hold that baby close to him, and wearing a numb expression, he sits at the door of the apothecary.
Dad, I’m so cold. I’m going to die …
Duan Ling sits there lethargically with these thoughts running through his head. The cries of the infant in his arms soften to a whimper. He wonders if the baby’s either tired of crying or dead, and gives him a few light pats. As though the baby can feel some semblance of hope, he tries his darndest to cry again, as loudly as he can.
The door of the apothecary opens.
“Aiyoh, what’s this?” The shopkeep inside the apothecary says, “Come in.”
Duan Ling crawls inside, shivering. In that very instant, he survives again, spends the night curled up next to the medicine refining stove. The apothecary’s clerk has quit his job and gone home, and the shopkeep now fills the prescriptions, prepare the medicinal ingredients, cooks ointment, and makes the poultices himself, planning to distribute them to the wealthy families in the city to cure all sorts of diseases that afflict the rich. Duan Ling is so hungry that his vision is starting to go dim. In the middle of the night, the shopkeep fetches two taels of wine, and pouring for himself, he drinks alone. He tosses Duan Ling a couple of flatbreads, and so Duan Ling pulls them into crumbs to feed the child.
“Where’d you steal him from?” The shopkeep squints sidelong at him.
“I saved him from the fire.”
“The poor thing. Give him to me then. I was just thinking about adopting one.”
Even someone as old as Duan Ling himself has no takers; a little baby managing to survive in a world like this one is a rare enough thing, and so the shopkeep and his wife, who can’t have any children of their own, adopts the child. As for Duan Ling, he gets to make a bed on the floor beneath the medicine cabinets, serving as a temporary clerk for the apothecary.
Most other refugees who’ve come to the city don’t have a lot of skills, and in order to go on living, all they can do is steal, but Duan Ling is very efficient. He can recognise the ingredients, and he can even write; when he copies prescriptions his handwriting is more elegant than anything they’ve ever seen, and he never makes a mistake dispensing. The shopkeep fears the authorities may question him for taking in a refugee, so he lets Duan Ling hide in a dimly lit room filled with medicinal ingredients. Duan Ling chops medicine, refines medicine, dispenses medicine, and the shopkeep gives him food. Occasionally the shopkeep’s wife will come by with the baby, and give Duan Ling a bit of money.
The shopkeep is rather satisfied with Duan Ling, and decides to let him stay. This stopover ends up lasting three months.
Duan Ling has finally survived the coldest months of the winter. He’s picked up several discarded overcoats that the shopkeep doesn’t want anymore. He’s warm now, and they don’t cost him anything. That’s nice. He’s even managed to save up some travelling expenses so he can finally move on to Xichuan.
He asks around to figure out the way to get there, and the road to Xichuan will take him another fortnight. Without documentation, he probably won’t be able to get into the capital, but who cares? He just has to worry about all that when he gets there. Once he gets to the city walls it’s not like he won’t find some way to get in. When the snow begins to melt Duan Ling packs up all his belongings, makes a visit to the hungry child to give him one last pat on the head, then he turns around and closes the door of the apothecary behind him. He leaves behind a goodbye letter and throws his bundle over his shoulder, and steps onto the road home.
Spring has come gradually. The city of Luoyang feels like yet another page in his journey, not leaving much of a mark at all. Duan Ling walks along the imperial highways, and after a half month of walking, he arrives in Jiangzhou.
So this is the Jiangzhou dad told me about, Duan Ling thinks to himself.
It’s just as prosperous as Li Jianhong described it but it doesn’t have any peach blossoms. It’s probably not the right time of year yet.
Duan Ling inquires from the locals but he can’t quite understand the Jiangzhou dialect. Someone agrees to take him to Xichuan, but they’re only trying to fool him. Without even knowing how, he’s conned out of some money. Finally, he boards a boat outside Jiangzhou at a ferry crossing, paying a hundred and twenty coppers for the fare to sleep on the deck alongside the boatmen as they go up river towards Xichuan. The air is warmer as soon as he’s in the south; beneath bright, beautiful sunlight, Duan Ling sits at the far end of the prow, not speaking with anyone.
On either shore the mountains are darkly painted against the sky, like ink, making him recall the evening Lang Junxia took him away from Shangzi.
He arrives in Xichuan.
Mount Wenzhong, Feng River, the City of Xichuan — these are all places Li Jianhong told him about.
Feeling both a bit familiar and sensing a strange air of unfamiliarity, he stands on the highway as warm breezes caress his cheeks. On both sides of the highway are verdant fields of grain; the spring planting has already begun.
From the day he escaped from Shangjing, half of a year has already gone by.
I do not monetise my hobby translations, but if you’d like to support my work generally or support my light novel habit, you can either buy me a coffee or commission me. This is also to note that if you see this message anywhere else than on tumblr, do come to my tumblr. It’s ad-free. ↩︎
A gesture often seen in Buddha paintings with one finger pointed upwards and two in the palm. ↩︎
