Deepcore: When Cave Breath

During the Northern Zhou dynasty, political circumstances shifted abruptly. A place once at the height of prosperity was reduced overnight to rubble and cold smoke.

Amid the catastrophe, an unnamed artisan who lived at the monastery and carved devotional images for a living was drawn into the turmoil by chance… An ordinary commoner with only his craft to sustain him, he spent his days chiseling images for worship. When the monastery was destroyed, the abbot entrusted him amid the flames with a final request: "If the world can no longer offer it shelter, hide it within stone." The dying charge struck his heart like a hammer. He withdrew deep into the forests of Qixia Mountain and opened a grotto in a remote mountainside. Working without rest, day and night, he carved the wonders within the cave with his own blood and sweat…

Chapter Director: Yiyi Qian

Across the desert stood a thousand grottoes, their walls cracked and niches ruined. In the twenty-sixth year of the Guangxu reign, Wang Yuanlu entered a hidden corner by chance. Brushing away a millennium of dust, he opened the most secret page in the history of the Mogao Grottoes: Cave 17, sealed with mud, where scriptures were piled high and the scent of ink still lingered among writings and paintings. Living at the end of an age, Wang resisted the collapse of the caves alone. He chose to sell manuscripts in exchange for bricks, tiles, and timber, struggling to fund repairs. In history, this may be counted as merit; for culture, it became a calamity.

The British explorer Aurel Stein and the Japanese explorer Tachibana Zuicho arrived in succession, exchanging small sums of silver for countless cultural treasures. Missionaries, archaeologists, and collectors followed one after another, while Wang stood among them—both guardian and gatekeeper. He remained secluded within the grottoes for the rest of his life and never again traveled far.

In the mid-Tang period, stonework thundered across Longmen Mountain beside the Luo River. Below Fengxian Temple, work sheds crowded the site as thousands of artisans labored day and night by imperial command. When the ruler had newly ascended the throne, a decree was issued in the first year of Tianshou (690 CE): "The Buddha is the Son of Heaven; the Son of Heaven is Buddha." A woman artisan worked with her chisel beneath the cold cliff, charged with carving an image. A Buddha modeled on the sovereign became a symbol of crowning heavenly mandate through Buddhist form. Yet in her eyes, the Buddha did not resemble one person alone. She subtly adjusted the proportions of the brows and eyes to introduce the features of ordinary people, and concealed the bearing of common folk within the falling folds of the robes. The unmoving stone Buddha seemed to gaze upon the joys and sorrows of all beings, while also seeing through the solitude of an emperor. More than a decade later, the image was completed. Visitors worshipped and incense flourished. The affairs of ages were buried among fractured cliffs, wind, and rain, and no one sought to investigate them further.