Chapter 45: A Mountaintop Dialogue with Shiqing

Chapter 45: A Mountaintop Dialogue with Shiqing

Yunding Temple.

It stood on Ziyun Peak, one of the seventy-two peaks of Yunding Mountain. Ziyun Peak was not the tallest among them, but its elevation still approached eighteen hundred meters. Every morning, or after rain, a layer of cloud and mist would settle around the mountain gate — a beautiful sight.

Not far off to the right front of the temple gate, there was a thousand-meter sheer cliff. At its edge, a small round platform jutted out beyond the rock face. From there, one could stand suspended over empty air and take in the surrounding sea of clouds and mountains.

In earlier times, the place had been called Sheshen Cliff, after the despairing people who came here to throw themselves off. The monks later renamed it Feisheng Cliff, meaning that those who leaped had perhaps become immortals.

When Shiqing was appointed head monk, he felt that anyone who came here intending to jump deserved to be urged to think twice. So he renamed it again: Wentian Platform.

Ask Heaven. Ask the earth. Ask yourself.

Wentian Platform felt less like a cliff’s edge than a natural place of cultivation — poised among the clouds, sharing the sky with Heaven itself. It had become one of Yunding Temple’s most celebrated spots.

Shiqing was there now, sitting cross-legged alone at the center of the platform, eyes gently lowered, engaged in what appeared to be a conversation between two versions of his own consciousness.

I asked, “Do you know that you’re a puppet?”

“A puppet?” Shiqing answered. “No. I don’t see myself that way. I define myself as your backup.”

“Backup?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“Do you think you can die?” Shiqing said. “Is there a genuine risk that an enemy could kill you?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ve already been attacked several times. If no one had come to my rescue, or if my own abilities hadn’t been adequate, I would truly be dead.”

“That is why you need a backup,” Shiqing said. “When you face truly unavoidable death, your consciousness needs somewhere it can flee to and take refuge. That place is me.”

“So you’re saying,” I said, “that I — or many other people — as long as we have backups, we don’t have to die? We simply escape into the backup?”

“Exactly. Elite people almost never die. Not because they can’t be killed, but because their consciousness can be transferred. Just as you have done now — haven’t you transferred into my consciousness body? Consciousness is the foundation of a person. It exists independently. As for the physical body, it is biomatter at its core, and through biotechnology it can be rebuilt. That is the secret of elite people’s immortality.”

“But isn’t consciousness generated by the human brain?” I said, puzzled. “Isn’t it the product of complex interactions among the thalamic neurons? How can it exist independently?”

“Consciousness is indeed a highly ordered form of organization within the human body,” Shiqing explained. “It cannot exist out of thin air — it needs a material basis. But not every form of ordered matter can generate consciousness. Take a person who has just died. In terms of material order and physiological structure, there is no difference between that body and a living one. Does the freshly dead person have consciousness?”

“That question is too complicated,” I said, “and too academic. We’ll discuss it another time. Let me ask you something else first. How were you made? And how did you come to know who you were? Or let’s change the subject entirely — have you ever met any elite people?”

“Those aren’t one question,” Shiqing said. “I was born knowing who I am. I don’t know who made me. For as long as I can remember, I have lived in this temple. The outside world is vast, but I have only ever been to this small corner of the Ba-Shu region — mostly for safety. That is my mission. When you truly need me, the two of us will merge and become one person. So I hold no grievance about any of it. As for elite people — I have only…