Silently, yet not in tranquility, whether in the light or in the depth of night... I played the flute all night long. All night, the sighs could not be severed, and gradually, they became the rhythm of my breathing. Each sound surged through my clumsy fingertips, slowing down, lingering, entangling, stagnating, unable to form a complete melody. Like the rain sticking heavily outside the window, every drop, every point, was nothing but the coldest chill at its peak, quietly, delicately vibrating the eardrum, ripples picked up by the fingertips, yet still unable to connect. Point by point, densely compacted and swaying in the misty air, close, as neighbors of the same night and moment; distant, separated from heaven to earth across past and present. Ultimately, point by point, losing closeness, submerging distance, silently, like sighs that eventually crumble into silence.
Silent, the sound of sighs, from the beginning of the night, where the light thinly fails to outline its shadow. Only the fingers know what kind of vortex it is, pressing, shaking, sucking, biting the tender touch filled with the most sensitive nerves. The delicate touch engraves the vortex onto the soft fingertips, the slightly full redness in that lonely tip makes even the silence of sighs turbulent and curled into trembling sensitivity, flowing through bit by bit, highlighting minutely. Sighs have never been so clear, though they have always been so close to me, filling my intestines, chest, lungs, as if an indispensable part of my body. Indispensable, otherwise why does an involuntary stir in my mood bring forth a faint sense of loss when it slips through my throat and escapes unintentionally from my lips? But that sigh has already become heavy into the distance, never to return, while new sighs instantly fill the originally empty spaces. Emptiness ultimately withers into the excess that leaks through the gaps between my fingers, excess, losing one sigh, which then laments over mountains and rivers, fills day and night, and resonates through the comings and goings. Inhaling, always breathes in air laden with sighs. But, are the different sighs really different from each other?
Different, in the differences of each sigh, yet sighs remain similar. Those sighs are clouds, yet deeper and shallower than clouds; winds, yet cooler and hotter than winds; rains, yet softer and stronger than rain. Sighs, even if they are natural spirits, are hard to compare, only a purple bamboo can discern the subtleties of each sound, like wind cannot escape from every corner of the night. The worried purple, concentrated enough to melt into the night's color beyond the lamp, reverting back to a bitter bamboo weeping in the rain, just like countless nights before. Unknown how many profound nights have passed to let the melancholy expression of the night adhere to its skin, drying its flesh and blood into bones, exhausting its heart into emptiness, standing straight regardless of whether there’s a moon in the sky or how cold or warm the world is, tightening its annual rings deeply, using the ink of the night to lacquer its coffin. Standing, slender leaves, each capturing the sounds of the night, it is the lonely confidant of the night, always keeping the night's worries for itself, letting the night's silence condense into tears, sobbing into its hoarse voice, naturally worrying about every night it envelops.
Now, the fragments of the past have already bent, the fallen body still stands upright, supporting my fragile, distracted fingers, coating my disordered worries into a speckled blemish in deep purple, just like facing the silence of the night hundreds of times before, only silent now, would this newly chanted sigh be heard by the night, and would it make a confidant for this person who is like the night, like the bamboo, accompanying the bamboo and the night?
Fingers caress, like pale light slipping into the night, flowing with bitterness, rugged bamboo joints, a lean and hard sensation touching like one's own body, blood sinking, indistinguishable who is me, who is it, who is the night beyond it and me. Sighs breathe out, long and winding, sliding into a leisurely fish dragging shallow traces in a lean hardness, leisurely but unaware of having lost former composure. Beyond the lean hardness, eight holes round and smooth, fingers hesitating on them clearly unskilled, this should be the inherent taste of sighs. A finger like fishing, ten fingers like scooping, flexible sighs inevitably escape not, their struggling tails dragging into a prolonged sound, coiling around the tips of ten fingers, crawling all over the deep walls of the purple bamboo, and suddenly extending a tender sprout towards the humid night. As a performer in the dead of night, I cannot and will not let worries deepen, let the deepening turn into gracefulness, let the gracefulness ripple layer by layer, like water spreading bitter petals. I can only learn from the rain outside the window, falling sporadically and straight, that pure and diffused tapping should be the essence. Fortunately, I can still possess the essence of sighs, though hard to form melodies, yet already filled with deep emotions. Fortunately, this sound of sighs, I exclusively tell it, and only it, a cold purple bamboo flute, cares only about being melancholic and sighing in my embrace, without laughing at me.
Its sigh is mine, my sigh is its, in this silent night, everything silently belongs to the night. Sighs, are the life force I give to it, the long-dead it awakens slowly, collecting sighs into its soul, yet the body remains cold, as it received from the night when it was alive. The night is cold, the flute is clear, completely integrated, I am in the night, the flute in my hand, cold and light, as if holding a streak of night. It is named, "Qing Xiao", its name engraved in ancient red characters, like a trace of sincerity, beyond the reach of fingers, resembling a vivid flower blooming on a cliff. A solitary lamp illuminates "Qing Xiao", I no longer remember which deep night I wrote these words, suddenly wanting to use them as its name, as if reaching out into the Qing Xiao to obtain it, tightly grasping it like an uncertain railing, henceforth accompanying me, besides the solitary lamp, there is also it, and that Qing Xiao, those sighs, outside the solitary lamp and the Qing Xiao, inside the Qing Xiao and the solitary lamp, night after night without end. Qing Xiao, Qing Xiao, people, yet for a long time cannot pick up that smile lost in some unknown time.
Only sighs belong to me, like breathing, filling my life. Then I must belong to the flute, using a lifetime of sighs to awaken the second life of the bitter bamboo after hundreds of days, together bitter, like a slight fluctuation accidentally infecting my lips when I sigh. After all, since when did I fall in love with the flute? For a very long time, since I understood loneliness and learned to sigh, then, the distance between the flute and me was only far away, far away like its sound, untouchable yet undispellable, but often at a glance, it always made me feel inexplicably close, as if it was the only one meant to accompany loneliness and sighs. Thus, the seed of the flute fell in my heart, I grew lonely, sighed in vain, until I became as hard and thin as it, gradually aging into the same voice as it. Remembering high school, the teacher asked everyone to give a lecture on a passage, when it was my turn, it was Du Mu's poem "Passing Huaqing Palace", "A rider dashes through red dust, the concubine smiles," exuding infinite charm, yet I favored another line of his, "Where is the jade maiden teaching to play the flute?" I don't know why, but it seemed to sum up my fate. Since asked, naturally nowhere, only seeking refuge in Qing Xiao, Qing Xiao in hand, gentle moonlight, a lingering melody, not waiting for the tail sound to dissipate in the wind, starting the next one, until Qing Xiao tells all of Qing Xiao, human voices bid farewell to the moonlight. But, why ask? What else could the answer be but sighs?
Ha, why bother answering? Yet, asking is equally foolish. A piece of bitter bamboo, turning and falling into my hands, although transformed into a flute, is like the night darkening the bright moon and colorful clouds, all I can give it is sighs, waiting for it to return the sighs to solitude. The original intention, laughable to say, was originally to learn a tune called "Phoenix Seeking Phoenix," but unknowingly, I sank deep into the cycle of "Lonely Star Solitary Chant," perhaps this is the sound I should produce, a lonely star, a lone traveler, a solitary mountain, a solitary chant, names so fitting. Stars fall in the rain, mountains disappear in the night, leaving only the solitary traveler, chanting alone under the night rain.
Lonely sighs, unable to take steps, crushed in the rain, such heavy-hearted affairs, fit only for one person to tell, one person to listen. A solitary Qing Xiao, accompanied by a Qing Xiao for one person, is enough, why seek the jade maiden? Even if found, in such silence, would she truly understand?
Translation provided by AI model may vary slightly in artistic interpretation and fluidity due to the complexity and poetic nature of the text.