In April 1859, Hong Rengan arrived in Tianjing.

Hong Rengan was a younger clansman of the Heavenly King and one of the first two men beside their hometown pond to convert to the Heavenly Kingdom. In the days when the King was still Hong Huoxiu, feverish in bed after failing the examination, it was Hong Rengan who kept watch beside him. But when his elder clansman set out to preach, Hong Rengan's family detained him because he was too young. In the years that followed, while his clansman founded a kingdom in a storm of glory, Hong Rengan went from person to person telling his history and looking for a way to Tianjing. No one believed him. By twists and turns, he reached Hong Kong and found work as a missionary's assistant. There, he was formally baptized. He became an aide to the highly respected Scottish missionary James Legge, teaching and translating classical texts, and through this work acquired European knowledge of astronomy, politics, medicine, and science. The missionaries praised his intelligence and humility and helped him build a comfortable life. His thoughts remained fixed on his distant clansman.

In 1858, he left Hong Kong in disguise. He traveled by water, climbed hills, crossed mountains. He dressed as a porter, a peddler, even a government soldier. He walked through villages looted bare and cities without a trace of human life. In December 1858, at the docks in Anqing, he saw Elgin's fleet. From far away, he saw Elgin and me talking on the deck of a small gunboat. He shouted the name of the Heavenly Kingdom, sometimes in Chinese and sometimes in English, desperate to attract the attention of anyone aboard. The soldiers stopped him. He had no choice but to continue alone, risking himself once more.

In April 1859, he returned to Tianjing in rags, his round, full face sunken inward. He washed the mud carefully from his body and went to the palace. The Heavenly King was already waiting. When word of Hong Rengan arrived, the King had been too excited to sleep all night. Miracle followed miracle. Dream after dream was fulfilled. He lifted the prostrating Hong Rengan to his feet. "Young clansman," he called with deep feeling—and found himself looking into eyes he did not entirely recognize. They contained something other than worship now.

The Heavenly King brought Hong Rengan to his study and introduced me enthusiastically. "The man of the West is My military adviser. He is also helping Me revise the sacred books," the King said. Hong Rengan's brow tightened slightly. The King continued, "The man of the West is searching for evidence that Me and My Heavenly Kingdom were already revealed in the sacred books." Hong Rengan glanced at me with alarm. He asked the King, "Can this military adviser from the West govern state affairs?" The King said, "State affairs are not worth mentioning." Hong Rengan gave an awkward smile. He politely stepped forward, asked my name, then asked from which country of the West I came. I told him Russia. With impeccable courtesy, he asked, "Russia may also be called the West?"

The Heavenly Kingdom remained in chaos, with no one in command. Qing forces had formed a great encirclement, and only one supply route into Tianjing remained open. But comforting news arrived. Everyone had believed Anqing, the heartland of Tianjing and under siege for years, was about to fall to the Zeng brothers. Then a spring surprise attack relieved it. The attack was Shi Dakai's. His force appeared unexpectedly in Hunan, throwing the Hunan Army besieging Anqing into confusion. Its officers and soldiers declared that, even if they captured Anqing, they could not accept the loss of their own homes. Zeng Guofan had no choice but to order the army to reinforce Hunan with all its strength. At that moment, Shi Dakai vanished like a spirit and withdrew to Guangxi. This advance and retreat bought the Heavenly Kingdom precious time to recover. By then, Zeng Guofan no longer seemed to regard Shi Dakai's forces and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in Tianjing as the same rebellion. In a memorial to the court, he wrote that he was fighting two kinds of rebels at once: the title-stealing bandits of Nanjing and roving bandits such as Shi Dakai.

Meanwhile, in the front hall of the Heavenly King's palace, Hong Rengan was expounding his program of government to his elder clansman without pause. By now, his strength had returned and his great round face had filled out again. His ringing voice echoed among the dragon-wrapped columns. "The program in the mind of your younger clansman Rengan has three principles: reform custom through custom, enforce law through law, punish through punishment. First, the Heavenly King must lead the reform of custom from the top downward, praising virtuous acts and despising corrupt habits. Second, we must honor the rule of law. England is called the strongest country in the world because its laws are good. Finally, we must treat minor offenders with mercy, while those guilty of the greatest evil should receive death. Though the Heavenly Father says in the sacred books, 'Thou shalt not kill,' the condemned are not killed by the punisher. They bind themselves and seek the Heavenly Father's punishment."

The Heavenly King reclined on a dragon chair opposite Hong Rengan while two palace women knelt and loosened his ankles. I stood to one side of the front hall. Supporting his jaw on one wrist, the King said thoughtfully, "Good. There is reason in this."

Hong Rengan said, "In these years studying abroad in Hong Kong, your younger clansman glimpsed the great tendencies of the world. Every rich and powerful country—England, America, even small states such as Siam, Japan, and Ryukyu—repairs its government within and displays good faith without. Consider America in particular. Its national leader holds office for five years. When the term ends, he retires into honored ease and the provinces elect again. To select talent for office and decide public matters, they place a great cabinet in the central court. Officials and commoners write ballots and place them inside. The person chosen by the most is worthy; the proposition approved by the most is public. The country is rich. There are no beggars in its cities!"

The Heavenly King nodded. "Interesting."

Hong Rengan continued. "Today, even small states such as Siam and Japan can imitate steamships and great vessels because they have learned the institutions of the West and opened themselves to trade. Turkey, Egypt, Malaya, and Peru worship false idols and do not know how to adapt, and thus remain weak and stagnant. Throughout the Heavenly Kingdom, everything awaits renewal. Now is precisely the time to learn from their lessons!"

"My younger clansman possesses insight," the Heavenly King said.

Encouraged by the approval, Hong Rengan described the details of his ideal system with still greater excitement. There should be news officers and postal stations. Roads for horses and carriages: twenty-one great roads through the twenty-one provinces, forming the circulation of the country. Banks and insurance. Mines, municipal companies, associations of scholars, citizens, and workers, hospitals, relief homes. Opium, theaters, temples, and monasteries should be prohibited... He poured out every institution not yet described in his vision, as though he had spent not the last few years, but his entire life, sleeping on brushwood and tasting gall in the West. His eyes moved everywhere like a diligent history book, racing to record names and functions so that all could be released at this moment. Finally, he closed his eyes and quickly reviewed whether he had missed anything. "We must also build steamships and steam trains. A Western steam train can travel seven or eight thousand li in one day and night. With it, the arteries of the country would flow freely," he said.

The Heavenly King had been drifting toward sleep, but now he suddenly revived. "The steam train of which my younger clansman speaks—is it a railway?"

"It is precisely a railway!" Hong Rengan said.

In that instant, the Heavenly King and Hong Rengan reached the most important consensus of the entire day: railways must be built. The railway joined the Heavenly King's vision to Hong Rengan's years of wandering. It awakened their nearly vanished trust from boyhood. The King sat straight and turned toward me, as if reminding me: man of the West, do not miss this transcendent moment. He proclaimed, "Throughout the Heavenly Kingdom, only My younger clansman understands My mind! My Heavenly Kingdom will build railways. Railways will reach in all directions. We will build them on the earth, beneath the earth, in the sky! A hundred million railways, connecting Tianjing to Beijing, to Canton, to the West!"

Several days later, an edict arrived. The Heavenly King made Hong Rengan the Shield King and placed all affairs of government in his hands. On the day of the investiture, the great commanders of the Heavenly Kingdom, with the exception of Shi Dakai, gathered before the palace for the first time in years. All were resentful. They cast guarded, reserved looks at the stranger who had left no trace for a decade and now abruptly held power over the court. Trembling, Hong Rengan ascended the high platform. Never in his life had he worn gold at his waist and purple on his body as he did that day. Behind him stood the utterly confident Heavenly King himself, wearing a still more ridiculous golden dragon robe, followed at a slow pace by dozens of female officials holding yellow silk parasols. Hong Rengan raised his head, closed his eyes, and prayed to no one visible: "Behold, your king." The Heavenly King looked down upon his ministers and prophesied to no one visible: "The wind and waves may surge for a while; in time, they settle themselves."

Throughout this period, I still went every day to the Heavenly King's study to collate the Bible. By the middle of 1860, I had finished The Sacred Book of the Old Testament, The Book of Genesis, The Book of the Exodus from Egypt, The Book of Joshua, and The Gospel According to Matthew. I was working on The Gospel According to John and expected to finish by the end of the year. Evidence of the Heavenly King and the Heavenly Kingdom remained nowhere to be seen. Yet after laboring so long at a futile task, even I began to wonder whether a miracle might occur. The King's temper remained unpredictable. At times he encouraged me, saying that the discovery of even one sentence would constitute a great service to the Heavenly Kingdom on earth. Then he would suddenly lose patience, set a deadline only days away, and say he was about to print a new edition of The Sacred Book of the Old Testament. My laziness, he accused, had already delayed the execution of Heaven's mandate. For me, he said, he had devised a detailed punishment that would appease the Heavenly Father's wrath.

He would tie me to a wooden pole in the middle court of the palace and use a small knife to peel away my flesh, slowly and attentively, as though pruning a potted plant. He would perform the work himself until, he said, my internal construction lay completely exposed. He had long suspected that I was not a creature of blood and flesh at all, but a machine of iron and copper joined through structures resembling mortise and tenon, while in place of my heart was a delicate wooden carving that released steam without end. "Like a white lotus." This carving allowed me to speak and run fast. He described every detail of my body, as if it was my construction, not the will of God, that had occupied his speculation all these days. He reached toward the left side of my abdomen and pressed it gently. "Here," he said, "I will find a Western copper watch with a chain."

I do not know why he spared me. Several days before the deadline, I discovered that two pages had been torn from chapter fourteen of the French Exodus, or The Book of the Exodus from Egypt. They were the pages in which Moses led the people across the Red Sea and God divided the waters. I compared the other editions, circled the missing passage, and reported it to the Heavenly King. "Man of the West, why do you think two pages are missing?" he asked with a smile. I told him the book's former owner might deliberately have torn them out and kept them close for consolation of body and mind. "You are pretending to be stupid," the King said. "These two pages are the key we have sought for the past year. They speak of Me and My Heavenly Kingdom. Petty men feared that the people of the Heavenly Kingdom would learn the truth."

Having fixed upon the missing clue in Exodus, the Heavenly King turned his attention to other books. By then, through Hong Rengan's eloquence and charm, groups of foreign missionaries were setting out from the Shanghai concessions to pay respects to the Shield King in Tianjing. The Heavenly King took many translated books from his younger clansman. He was especially fond of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan began: "As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I came to a place where there was a den. I lay down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream." The passage moved the Heavenly King deeply. His Heavenly Kingdom, too, had begun with a dream, adding another measure to his certainty of his own divinity. He also ordered Hong Rengan to ask foreign visitors for railway diagrams and maps in Chinese. As I collated the sacred books, the King spread the maps opposite me and drew lines across them with a fine brush. Like a patient woman embroidering, he took Tianjing as the center and densely joined an entire spiderweb of railways.

By 1860, Hong Rengan had broken the Qing's northern and southern Jiangnan camps through a brilliant stratagem, lifting the siege of Tianjing. He ordered the Loyal King Li Xiucheng to travel secretly by small roads toward Hangzhou, the only place in the surrounding region the Qing had left weakly defended. At the first rumor of movement, before the Taiping army even appeared, the government troops in Hangzhou began slaughtering and looting their own citizens. As if becoming a bandit required only a single thought. The city's women proved most loyal. It was said that tens of thousands killed themselves within a few hours. The northern and southern camps of Jiangnan were horrified and split their forces to march south, not knowing that the Taiping movement was a feint and that their own headquarters was the true objective. After breaking the two camps, the Heavenly Kingdom took the two richest provinces in all China, Jiangnan and Zhejiang, and advanced toward Shanghai.

Hong Rengan and Li Xiucheng understood perfectly that Shanghai, the center of wealth, had to be taken, but that the foreigners in the concessions must not be offended. Elgin's Anglo-French fleet was traveling north along the coast for the second time. This time, not only would they sign another treaty; they would burn the emperor's Old Summer Palace. Hong Rengan and Li Xiucheng sent two secret letters to the plenipotentiaries of Britain, America, and France who remained in the concessions, including Elgin's younger brother Frederick Bruce. The letters said that the Taiping army respected its foreign brothers and promised not to harm their lives or property. It would occupy only the Chinese districts of the Qing court. Bruce did not reply. In fact, he never opened the letters.

News that the foreign brothers were slaughtering the Taiping army arrived while the Heavenly King slept soundly on his dragon throne. At one side, the recording official once again laid out brush, ink, paper, and inkstone and smoothed the yellow silk as if stroking a horse's mane. Then the Shield King hurried into the hall and fell heavily to his knees. The Heavenly King rolled over. "Heavenly King," Hong Rengan said, "your younger clansman brings news from Shanghai." The King opened his loose, sleepy eyes. Instead of answering, he loudly recited the dream from which he had just awakened. "I dreamed of Father and Elder Brother's heavenly soldiers and generals," he said. "From the clouds, they fired guns toward the earth like fireworks in the court of Heaven."

Hong Rengan continued his report. We sent them a secret letter praying for peace. We did not fire one bullet. Yet they swept us with gunfire from the city towers. They used powder, they used shells, and bombarded us for one day and one night. Hong Rengan knelt and admitted his failure. Heavenly King, your younger clansman could not take Shanghai.

At the time, Hong Rengan still naively believed the Anglo-French defenders had slaughtered people because the Heavenly Kingdom and its foreign brothers had failed to communicate. In truth, the defenders did not care, and the Taiping soldiers were not the only people they slaughtered. At dusk, the defenders saw that the Taiping army could not withstand their artillery and had taken shelter in a busy market between city and countryside. They concluded that the Taiping intended to disguise themselves as civilians and enter the city. So they decided to destroy the entire market and eliminate the terrible risk. In the morning, the market was crowded. Men and women moved in and out of warehouses and shops. The French came carrying guns in orderly, well-trained ranks, marching and firing on both sides. Men, women. Old people, children. They fell at each report. Fire rose in the market and burned for days and nights. Even when the soldiers soon began raping the women who survived, it did not alter their original conclusion: everything had been done in the civilized man's self-defense. Even a babbling child might conceal a Taiping sword. Civilization had only one weakness against barbarism: compassion. It must therefore be hard upon itself first.

The Taiping army did not lose many soldiers in the battle. But from that moment, the momentum of the war had changed, though no one yet perceived it.

Hong Rengan quickly recovered his generosity and composure and continued receiving an unending stream of missionary friends. Through the missionaries' retellings, he became a mysterious figure of considerable charm in the English newspapers. One day, a foreigner brought a friend Hong Rengan had not seen for years: Yung Wing. The first Chinese person to graduate from Yale, Yung Wing had not yet begun his great undertakings. He was occupied instead with brokering tea for foreigners in the concessions. He and Hong Rengan had met in Hong Kong. He claimed he had come to ask Hong Rengan for a pass through the Heavenly Kingdom so that he could travel into the deep mountains of Jiangsu and Zhejiang and search for new teas the foreigners might enjoy. But not long after their conversation began, Yung Wing offered him seven proposals for strengthening the country. I have considered all of these deeply, Yung Wing explained with measured ease. To build a powerful nation like those of Europe and America, first establish military academies, naval academies, industrial schools, good government, a banking system... Hong Rengan interrupted him with a smile. The proposals were good, he said, but must await a vote of the kings. He patted Yung Wing's shoulder and lowered his voice. Brother Yung Wing, you know in your heart that you and I are the only Chinese men on the entire continent who understand the West. Together, what can there be in this country that we cannot obtain? He handed Yung Wing a bundle. Yung Wing opened it. On top lay a travel pass. Beneath it was a magnificent embroidered official robe and the seal of a fourth-rank noble title. Yung Wing smiled, shook his head, and took the pass. I think I will continue selling tea, he said.

In October 1860, Luo Xiaoquan finally reached the Tianjing of his dreams. This time, no government soldiers could stop him. Even the emperor's ancestral home had burned to ash. After the long wait and the accumulation of his violent temper, his beard had gone entirely gray. To his astonishment, he discovered that, though he was the Heavenly King's teacher, he did not receive the highest honors. He was merely placed in a suite at Hong Rengan's residence to wait for an audience on some unknowable day. I saw him one day before the Heavenly King's palace. On the stairs, he cursed the guards and princes who barred his way while trying, breathless, to climb. I recognized him and shouted his name from behind. He turned. "You," he said with a cold smile.

I did not accompany him when the Heavenly King finally received him. But I heard a rumor that Luo Xiaoquan knelt. He had insisted that he would not bow to the King. Yet when he entered the hall and heard Hong Rengan roar, "Luo Xiaoquan, bow before the Heavenly Father!" his mind went blank and he dropped to the floor. The Heavenly King appeared pleased that his former teacher now knelt before him. Luo's stubborn turn of the head gave him still greater satisfaction. At the evening banquet, he went to Luo's table and recalled the regret of his green youth, when he had not been baptized. "Honored... Heavenly King, if you do not object, I can baptize you on an appointed day," Luo said. "You misunderstand Me," the Heavenly King answered. "I mean that, as you have come ten thousand miles, I can grant you the baptism of the Heavenly Kingdom."

The Heavenly King appointed Luo Xiaoquan minister of foreign affairs and gave him a noble title. But titles in the Heavenly Kingdom now multiplied like a forest. Wearing Hong Rengan's old clothes—faded robes of blue satin and a fraying red headcloth—Luo wandered the city at a loss, knowing neither what he was responsible for nor when the Heavenly King might listen to his advice. He was astonished by things to which we had long grown accustomed. Every shop in Tianjing, for example, had been closed because the King feared infiltration by Qing spies. Luo tried preaching to people in the streets. When they saw him coming, they praised God with intense emotion. What is the Holy Spirit? he asked. The East King, they said. Where is the Heavenly Father? In the Heavenly King's palace.

The King finally remembered Luo when I completed my collation of The Gospel According to John and still had not discovered clear evidence of the Heavenly Kingdom. Furious, he sent for Luo and strode ahead while Luo hurried behind him, carrying both firm resolve and eager anticipation. So when Luo entered the study and saw me sitting there, he could not suppress the embarrassment of betrayal.

"If one man of the West is not enough, then two!" Still angry, the King dropped the sentence and left.

As I explained the impossible assignment, I could plainly feel that Luo was not listening. "You know you are a fraud, don't you?" he said with a bitter smile. "You do not believe in the Lord at all. You are a fraud."

I did not answer.

"If it were not for me, do you know where you would be?" A strange fervor entered his voice. "By now you would be dead in an unknown sea, your body lost among atheists on the reefs. Great waves would lash your remains without end."

I tried to return to our assignment. He interrupted me again.

"The place where you sit is my place. Everything you possess belongs to me." He glared. "But my life's work has been wasted by you! You are the one who made him this way."

I said that, if he wanted it, he could take it. I had no attachment to this place.

"Lying again. Suddenly magnanimous again! Ha! I understand—" Enlightenment crossed his face. "Because you already obtained what you wanted, didn't you? Once you have it, you can leave. How easy!"

I told Luo that I had been here so long I had nearly forgotten I was looking for something.

At last he seemed to understand my desolation, or perhaps regretted his discourtesy. He looked away and leaned against the wall. "What we are looking for is here," he said without strength. "Where else could it be? I cannot wait any longer."

"I feel Him telling me this is the final step. Only this final breath remains," he said. "We are old men now. Tell me: how many chances does a person have in one life to witness the Heavenly Kingdom on earth?"

Luo Xiaoquan refused the task of collating the books with me. During this period, he devoted himself to work he considered more important: informing readers in the West how sacred and just was this uprising in the East, an uprising he had personally helped create. He wrote for many English newspapers. Naturally people disliked revolutions, he wrote, civil wars especially, for civil war was brutal—and this contest between Christianity and the ignorant people of a demonic dynasty was especially brutal. However. His brush turned. However, now was not the time to speak of peace! This movement had grown so mighty and swept so far because God stood behind it. God would punish those who did not serve Him. Besides, he wrote, I see no problem at all. Consider, from the loftiest perspective: if killing half the people in this country allows the other half to recognize justice, is that not better than preserving a rotten present?

The Heavenly King did not hear Luo's praises. He cared about fewer and fewer things, apart from my work. Searching the ancient sacred books for evidence of himself had become a habit. He began driving visitors from the palace. He ordered his attendants never to stop fanning because he always felt hateful insects biting his body. "Man of the West, keep watch beside Me," he commanded. At every moment, he feared that a palace woman might suddenly betray him, or that an evil Western visitor might release a tiny mechanical insect whose sharp feelers would open his skin while he slept.

Perhaps because vigilance consumed too much of his time, he became increasingly enamored of sleep. He still craved dreams and encouraged his sons and more than eighty wives to dream with him. He recruited vast numbers of recording officials. Like moles in the palace, they appeared wherever an auspicious dream occurred. During those days, omens gushed like petroleum from every corner of the Heavenly King's palace. At the same time, however, the King himself dreamed less and less. Often he awoke in a trance and tried to say something, but nothing came. He could only close his eyes again and continue searching for a dream. Until one day, he woke drenched in sweat. The recording official hurried to dip his brush in ink. The King sat up, his eyes round, panting heavily. Everyone waited anxiously for his prophecy. He said nothing. The attendants fanned in rhythm, and his breath gradually settled. At last, exhausted, he announced: "Today, there was no dream."

One day, I stood for a long time in my home in the former Manchu quarter. Before me was a mirror as tall as I was, held by a rosewood frame. I had found it in the cellar, where it lay under heavy dust, as if declaring that it wanted never again to see sunlight, never again to witness ugly people and old events returning. But now I stood before it. I wiped away the dust and ran my fingers over its fine scratches. Then I stepped back and discovered something astonishing. I did not recognize the person before me, though he seemed familiar. I soon understood why. The person in the mirror resembled not me, but the two-hundred-year-old man I had invented. Until then, this face had existed only in my imagination.

I went to the desk and opened my manuscript. From the creases in the paper, I could tell I had nearly finished it, as if when I first bought the thick notebook I had already determined its length. But when I opened the most recent chapter, my heart trembled again. The new chapter was called "The Mirror." Fear entered me. Had my memory declined so far that even the pages I had written most recently left no impression? I began at the opening.

The two-hundred-year-old man stood for a long time in his home in the former Manchu quarter. Before him was a rosewood mirror.

In the rosewood mirror, he saw a stranger. Stranger was perhaps not the word. If he had to describe the figure, it resembled himself at two hundred. Profuse wrinkles cut into his face like growth rings and almost gave off color, making him look like a shaman in a rainforest. Had he gone so long without looking directly at his own face that he had lost all conception of time passing, of aging, of himself?

Standing before the mirror, the old man discovered that, throughout all his memories and experiences, he had told the stories of others with considerable ardor and omitted only his own. The world in which he lived was a world of other people. Within it, he was simultaneously present and absent. He saw everything, yet nothing seemed to concern him. With terror, he sensed that though he, too, belonged to humanity, he would carry no weight in history. The stories people passed from mouth to mouth in the future would contain heroes, politicians, gods, prophets, and frauds, but not him. He was one voice in the great wind of the background: cheering, screaming, or silent.

An immense sense of ending covered him. Before the knock sounded in the night, the old man felt that he had done nothing and found nothing, yet was already approaching the end—

At that moment, there was a knock. I closed the manuscript and went trembling to the door. Hong Rengan and his guards stood outside.

Hong Rengan said Luo Xiaoquan had escaped.

What?

Luo Xiaoquan had escaped. He fled to a British ship on the Yangtze without taking a single garment or book. He was in Shanghai now, saying that everyone he had met in Tianjing was insane. Hong Rengan spoke indignantly. Is there one good thing among foreigners?

It was January 1862. I had not seen Luo Xiaoquan for a long time. It sounded as though he had finally abandoned his dream of a heavenly kingdom. A wise choice. By this stage of the war, anyone with eyes could see that the kingdom was tottering. In September 1861, Anqing fell, and Tianjing lost its final hinterland. The Zeng brothers had dug trenches outside the city and were preparing to starve it over a long period.

Hong Rengan took the blame for defeat and lost his power. Within the palace, no one knew what the Heavenly King was doing. Occasionally he issued a sacred edict strictly forbidding his generals from complaining that no soldiers remained: "My heavenly soldiers are more numerous than water!" More often, there was silence. It had also been a very long time since he summoned me to the study.

The next summons came in the autumn of 1862. By then, every household in Tianjing was going hungry. The Heroic King Chen Yucheng, one of the Heavenly Kingdom's most respected commanders, had died beneath a Qing blade in June. With his death, the army's spirit scattered. Shi Dakai's troops had severed all contact with the kingdom. It was said that they entered Sichuan like locusts and were surrounded there by Qing forces.

I returned to the familiar corridor. A female official led me slowly to the Heavenly King's study. The palace remained immaculate. The door opened. Fully dressed, the King stood with his back to me. The official withdrew.

"Man of the West, you have come," he said lightly.

"Man of the West, I have a question for you," he said. "I ask you: have you ever had a nightmare?"

I said everyone had.

"I govern the Heavenly Kingdom through dreams. You know this," he said, still facing away. "Then suppose I had a false dream, a false dream filled with false scenes. Many terrifying hallucinations. Do you understand?"

I said I did.

"Suppose I had such false dreams... suppose these dreams were false. I ask you, how can I know that My earlier, good dreams were true?" he said timidly, struggling to remain calm.

I said nothing.

"Man of the West, speak." His voice rose.

I told him I did not know.

He began to snicker, then heaved his shoulders theatrically, as if performing his abandon for me. Almost to himself, he said, "I nearly fell into the trap... fortunate that I prepared. Fortunate that I have a prophet..."

He turned. His blood-red eyes narrowed. He came close and smelled my neck. Beside my ear, he said, "I knew long ago. Everything is perfectly clear to Me."

He stepped back, lifted his chin, and spoke solemnly. "For the final time, I ask you: are there passages in the sacred books concerning Me and the Heavenly Kingdom?"

I said I had found none.

"Just as I expected!" He roared with laughter. "Man of the West, do you know why?"

Without waiting for an answer, he came close to my ear again and whispered, "Because all the sacred books are false! And these demons have confused My mind, making Me dream false dreams too!"

I did not speak.

"Watch!" the Heavenly King commanded. He went to the desk and hurled the Bibles to the floor one after another, Chinese and foreign. Each time he threw one down, he looked up to see my reaction. Still looking at me, he tore out a random page, put it into his mouth, chewed, then spat it onto the ground. At last, only a long sheet of yellow silk remained across the desk, falling all the way to the floor. "Come and look at this." He beckoned me over.

At the far right of the yellow silk, two crooked characters formed a title: The Heavenly Book. It was the Heavenly King's handwriting.

The opening was Genesis. In the beginning, Hong Xiuquan created the heavens and the earth, he wrote. The earth was muddy and difficult to cross on foot. Hong Xiuquan flew through the air holding Snow in the Clouds, and said, Let there be railways. And there were railways.

"What do you think?" the Heavenly King asked beside me.

I read on. Next, he described how Hong Xiuquan created the air and divided night from day, almost copying The Book of Genesis. Then, in the passage on the creation of man, he made another revision. Hong Xiuquan fashioned the bones of man from iron and copper in the earth. From a carved wooden lotus, he made the human heart.

"What do you think?" the King asked again.

I did not answer, nor did I continue reading.

"You are angry because I obtained the truth," he said. "Do you know I have written for an entire year? I summoned you today so you would see it with your own eyes! I tell you, do not dream of deceiving Me again. If the sacred books are counterfeit, I will write a sacred book."

For a long time, he stared at me, waiting for my answer. I gave none.

The Heavenly King yielded. He exhaled deeply and straightened his clothes. "Go home for now, man of the West, and restore yourself. Beginning tomorrow, I will have another great assignment for you, just as in the old days." He gathered his spirits. "I want you to mark the passages in the new sacred book concerning Me and My Heavenly Kingdom—"

I left the Heavenly King, my strides growing longer and longer. But this time, I never returned to see him. I went directly to my home in the former Manchu quarter and packed only a little money and what food remained. Last of all, I placed my manuscript in my bag. I changed into a peddler's clothes and slipped out of the city.

I looked back at Tianjing for the final time. Under the setting sun, the city wore a natural layer of gold. I had not known it could look so quiet and remote. I could have come for its magnificence. I could have come only for beauty, I thought. But not for an answer.

My final fantasy of Tianjing was gone. Or rather, I should have lost it long ago, but I had always avoided thinking. I had already given so much, hadn't I? I had wasted my entire life, leaping between continents, suffering, enduring. I had only one simple plea: "If He exists, let me follow. I am willing to give everything." But either the echo was false, or I could not hear it.

Suddenly, I thought of the perfect title. But when I took out the manuscript, I saw that it was already written on the cover: Notes of a Follower. Then I opened the book to its final pages and, with terror, discovered that the notebook had reached the last line of its final page. I had finished the entire book.

In fear and panic, I closed the manuscript. By then, I was outside the city. I faced a choice: find the British by the river, confess my humiliation and crimes, and follow the current to Shanghai; or go elsewhere and seek a road to death among mountains of corpses and wilderness. It was then that I suddenly remembered Shi Dakai, remembered his eyes. "Liberty is fearlessness," a friend once told me. Now I remembered: what I had seen in Shi Dakai's eyes was fearlessness. Suddenly, I guessed that perhaps fate had not brought me to Tianjing, but had brought me toward him. A doomsday ardor and an almost lucky faith surged through my heart. I turned my horse and galloped toward Sichuan.

On the road, carefully and with everything staked, I looked at the title of the final chapter. It was called "The Dadu River." My heart grew calm.

"The two-hundred-year-old man says he is still looking for an answer—" Yes. He looks through all of time. The act of looking is so stubborn and prolonged that he has nearly forgotten what the question was. He once suffered an illusion: that his question was Uncle Uvarov's question, whether the human soul was immortal. Now, standing beside the Dadu River, he discovers that was not it. "What he asks is: can I be saved?"

For a long time, I searched for word of Shi Dakai. Only in June 1863 did I find him beside the Dadu River. By then, his army had nowhere left to retreat, but floodwater blocked its crossing. "Beside the Dadu River, rain falls from Heaven. The flood rages, the worst in a hundred years." I entered Shi Dakai's camp. "The soldiers sleep heavily or pray in low voices." He was in the deepest tent. His shadow moved with the lamplight. His head hung down. "Honored guest, we meet again," he said.

He asked whether they truly had no chance left. I said, Wing King, the Qing army has surrounded this place.

After a silence, he said, I will find someone to take you away. I said, I have come to follow the Wing King. I am prepared to die.

"I am no longer afraid of death," I emphasized. "I am afraid only that I cannot be saved."

Then I will save all of you, he said. I will die here, but you will live.

"I said, I do not want merely to keep breathing. I do not want to die in ignorance."

You will not die, he said. Then he told me of the agreement he had made in secret letters with the Qing commander. Before dawn, he would walk alone into the Qing camp and exchange his head for the lives of the two thousand men here. He summoned several trusted officers and made them swear to protect me.

"I said, Wing King, I did not come thousands of miles in order to escape—"

Honored guest, he said with a smile. The moment I saw you, I knew why you had come.

"Then let me go to the Qing camp with you—"

Honored guest, he said slowly. I cannot help you, and I cannot deceive you. I do not have the thing you seek. At this point, I no longer believe in anything. Looking back over this life, I feel only absurdity. What I called conquest was flight. Every truth I believed was false.

"I believe," I said.

Then live, he said.

Dawn came quickly. He rose cleanly and said goodbye, as if he were merely going far away for morning tea. Honored guest, here we part. Thank you for traveling ten thousand miles to come.

"We will meet in Heaven," I said.

He smiled, turned away, and vanished one step at a time into the morning mist.

Like a child walking into the woods, searching for the flower crown of his childhood.

But Shi Dakai had overestimated the Qing army's good faith. Not long after he left, Qing troops began rushing the camp. The two thousand exhausted soldiers and I were forced to move again. We hid among the mountains, but Qing forces attacked from every direction. At last, we were driven into a great temple. The monks had already fled. Only the empty central court and the statues of the Buddha remained. Those of us left carried the wounded inside. The soldiers did not yet know that Shi Dakai was being taken to Chengdu to await execution, or that the Heavenly King, too, would soon enter his long sleep. One by one, we sat or reclined. First came the heavy breathing, rising and falling like livestock. Then lightning and thunder, and torrential rain.

I sat beneath the eaves and shivered from cold. Apart from the manuscript against my chest, I had nothing left. For a moment, I thought of burying it beneath the Buddha and waiting for some future archaeologist to find it. He would pass my story to everyone. Then I realized that I myself had forgotten its beginning and end. Amid the clamor of rain, I opened it once more.

He has reached the river at the end of days. His babbling will stop here. His train of words will halt at a terminus set by someone else.

On the final page, it said:

He suddenly thinks that Moses, too, once stood blocked beside the Red Sea. But of the millions upon millions who have crossed rivers from ancient times until now, God opened a path for him alone.

Qing soldiers were battering the door with wooden poles. With every blow, dust fell from the Buddha. The wounded sat on the ground and watched the temple door in silence, like children gathered to see a play that had still not begun.

He seems to have something left to say, and yet he seems to have forgotten everything he said. He always believed it was a failure of memory that led his babbling into confusion. No. Memory was not the problem.

The temple doors broke open. Qing soldiers flooded inside, brandishing butcher's blades. Like the leading players arriving late, they leapt absurdly onto the stage. Heads dropped to the ground one after another. Ears landed against the stone slabs. Several soldiers seized the hem of my clothes. Quick, there is a path here, they said.

It is because only now does he understand that this is the beginning.

We ran and ran along a forest path. The trees grew denser. When I could run no farther, the soldiers took turns carrying me. At last, we reached the end of the path. The surging Dadu River barred our way. At the bank was a little wooden boat. The pursuers would arrive at any instant. The soldiers carried me to the bow. Several climbed in and took up the oars, while the others pushed us into the current and remained behind to hold the line. The boat rocked violently. River water kept entering my eyes.

At every turn, he avoided thinking, avoided asking. But when the end of days came, he understood.

I held the manuscript high and tried to finish the ending:

In a human life, only death is written. It is therefore the beginning.

Only then did I suddenly understand that I had read it in the wrong order. But it was too late. The sky was dark. The river raged. Pursuers on both banks cheered and shot arrows toward us. In panic, I turned the manuscript back to the opening and loudly made out the words:

The present is memory. Memory is the present.

The little boat pitched. In the rain, I continued:

I was born on a winter day in 1810, in St. Petersburg. I died on a summer night in 1863, in the Dadu River in Sichuan.

So it had been written long ago, and all my searching had been destined to come to nothing:

It will brush past your ear like an old wind. At the moment it ends, I will disappear like fire.

The violent wind and waves overturned the boat. My manuscript was swept into the river. Its pages turned like the feathers of a drifting peacock. I, too, flipped into the water. Sunken gold and silver, weapons, and heads rushed toward me. I pushed them aside and struggled to follow the departing manuscript. But it traveled with the current and sank. It is all right. Let it go. A voice brushed my ear. Let it go. Let it sink. I opened my hand. Soon the river rose above my head as well.

Under the water, every noise disappeared. Everything flickered. Everything rose.

Silently, I said: I think I am ready to leave.

—End—