"Three Steps, One Bow: 100,000 Prostrations from the Plains to the Snowland"

(1) Handan · Departure

At 3-5 AM on the Eighth Day of the Twelfth Lunar Month, 2019, the lingering snow in Zhao Garden reflected the dying ember of the last incense stick. I removed my Buddhist robe and put on a secondhand army coat from the flea market, then kowtowed three times before my parents' bed. The scent of sesame oil rose from ten flatbreads my mother had baked through the night, while my father's secretly gifted Diamond Sutra still bore tobacco flakes on its title page from his hand-rolled cigarettes.

(2) Xingtai · First Enlightenment

Moonlight streamed through broken roof tiles in Linxi County's Goddess Temple, casting eerie patterns on my scriptures. The caretaker Old Li handed me an enamel mug floating with last year's dried jasmine blossoms. "A lama stayed here two years ago," he said, pointing at fading Om Mani Padme Hum inscriptions on the beams, "claimed there's a dragon beneath this temple." As I chanted before peeling door god murals, the ground hummed with metallic vibrations.

(3) Taihang · Tempering

On Huixian's Cliffside Highway, blood from my thrice-scabbed forehead seeped into stone crevices. Shepherd Wang waited every Wednesday at Eagle Beak Cliff, his radio perpetually stuck on Hebei opera The Magic Lotus Lantern. During a rockslide triggered by storms, my flashlight revealed Sanskrit carvings swarming across the culvert walls as I chanted—only to find moss at dawn.

(4) Wutai · Revelation

North Peak's Black Dragon Pool had frozen to obsidian by the tenth lunar month. During my seventh hour of ice meditation, the bronze Buddha against my chest turned scalding. Security footage later showed seven red-billed choughs circling my head in a mandala formation at midnight. When Lama Tashi wrapped my frostbitten feet in a khata scarf, he whispered: "Manjusri's sword cuts only delusions."

(5) Hoh Xil · Ordeal

Rangers found me by Tuotuo River with a body temperature of 31°C (88°F). In delirium, prayer flags became a rainbow bridge to a crimson-hatted monk offering butter tea with three white hairs floating atop—identical to my mother's. I awoke tasting milk, while bare footprints trailed northwest in snow ten meters from my tent.

(6) Lhasa · Fulfillment

When the Potala's golden roof pierced morning fog, my knees had locked permanently. The Jokhang Temple flagstones bore body-shaped grooves polished by pilgrims' foreheads. As mine touched the Buddha Hall threshold, the bronze Buddha split open—revealing soil from my Handan hometown and at its center, the peachwood hairpin my mother broke when I left.