Chapter 492
In Jingzhou, nestled amongst the cluster of mountains, is a small hill. In the middle of it, lies a valley. Within the valley, a lake exists, by which stands a straw-thatched nunnery.
The hill is so small that it does not even bear an actual name. The lake too, is nameless. Yet, the nunnery goes by the name of the Listening Moon.
In the Listening Moon Nunnery resides a nun clad in white, the origins of whom no one knows. She farms in the valley leisurely, harvesting in the autumn what she has sown in the spring. Or she subsists on the mountain fruits she gathers, and so, her days pass in tranquility.
The night was bright, the stars sparse. The moon's reflection in the lake was so clear it was as though the moon itself was floating in it. The white-nun, washing her hands in the lake, buries a bloodied head in a dug pit by the waterside.
"Master." A woman in a hemp robe stood by the lake.
"Yinniang, how many does this make?"
"The eighteenth," replied Nie Yinniang.
