And the monotonous ride on the bumpy road eventually lent itself to a wave of drowsiness, which appeared to be more than acceptable to him.

Much to his annoyance, a blue-headed fly was bumping in the carriage, buzzing, flipping, humming, and circling stubbornly around his head.

The carriage space was small, suffocating. He pulled up the curtain and waved his hand about forcefully. The droning ceased. The moment the curtain fell back down, however, the monotonous noise returned.

He felt terribly bugged.

‘You don’t recognize me, do you?’ the fly flew over and whispered in a sweet, seductive voice. ‘I was the one that kept licking her bare sole in that dark prison cell. You stared long and hard at me, I knew.’

‘No, I thought it was a small smudge at the arch of her foot.’

He recalled gazing at her bare feet, smooth and shapely, in sharp contrast to the rusted black iron chain, all the more appallingly alluring.

‘The execution order was given just a short while ago. She was so grateful for the ending, in which she believed she finally found the ultimate meaning of her life. So she wanted to thank you again, Your Honor.’

‘But I haven’t been able to save her.’

‘You have saved the Great Tang Empire.’ The fly abruptly burst into a crazy dance, whirling around. ‘And her beautiful image in the mind of the prince, too.’

Fly, fly, fly,

I’m going to die.

No need to sigh or cry,

In a peaceful shadow I lie.

Judge Dee woke up with a start, his palms sweaty with the unsuccessful effort to wave off the insistent fly fizzing in the dream. He found himself disoriented by the confusing juxtaposition of appearance and reality.

The message he had just obtained in the dream appeared to have been a true one. About her execution, Mayor Pei too had said something to that effect in the letter.

The carriage was rolling on, a bit more steadily than before. He pulled up the curtain again. The road became wider, smoother, with the distant mountains vividly verdant after the rain. White clouds unfurled in leisure against the horizon. The view looked so enchanting, as if intent on making a spendthrift offering of its beauty to a thankless world.

A small black animal was suddenly seen shooting along the gravel roadside – possibly a black fox.

He took out the copy of Diamond Sutra Han Shan had given him at their parting. It was conventional for people to chant Buddhist scripture for the dead, but he thought it would be too dramatic for him to do so for the moment.

Without opening the booklet, a passage at the end of the Diamond Sutra came flashing back to mind like the fly, and he started weeping, all of a sudden, like a young sentimental man again.