My name is Baishou — Hundred-Years. A hundred I won't claim; eighty-some, certainly.
You walk into this cave and smell blood. I walk in and smell the old days. Fifty years ago — when this was the true Water Curtain Cave, not demon ground — I visited once. Living water, stone benches and beds, the curtain falling from the roof, rainbows wall to wall when the sun hit. The monkeys held fruit feasts here, played finger-games, sang, taught their cubs to read.
I remember when this cave was good.
Now I'm penned here, cutting the wall every day. While I cut, I tell the young monkey beside me: shift three parts left before you strike. Why? I touched this wall fifty years ago. I remember which stone takes the blow and which is hollow. He asks: Grandpa, how do you remember?
I say: Grandpa drank wine in this cave once.
They don't believe me. I can't be bothered to argue. When the shift ends, I lean against the wall and tell it the old stories. How the King gnawed peaches on his throne. How the waterfall sang. And as I tell them, the whole pen, old and young, gathers round to listen.
Does the wall hear? I believe it does. Because with every story, the chisels fall a little more in time.
This cave is good. It isn't cruel — it's sick. When its sickness passes—
We'll have kept its healthy face for it, so it can find the way back.