Chapter Three: Fate

Chen Chuyi pressed a few points on my wrist, reminiscent of a traditional Chinese doctor taking a pulse.

“For twenty-four years, you have lived in peace, all thanks to the mighty power behind you. I don’t know who he is, but I can tell you this—his mastery far surpasses mine. The life-blood grand formation within your body was originally meant to protect you until the age of thirty. But this woman has gradually loosened it piece by piece. If you hadn’t run into me today, that formation would have been broken tonight!”

I stared at him in utter confusion, not understanding a word of what he was saying.

“Life-blood grand formation?”

Chuyi nodded, then withdrew his hand and lit a cigarette.

“Actually, both the northern and southern offices have been keeping an eye on your existence for a long time. Don’t ask me why—I don’t know either. Orders from above told us to watch you closely. If I hadn’t observed the heavens last night and seen the whole Chengdu Plain shrouded in darkness, the moonlight twisted into a ghostly face, I wouldn’t have hurried back from Taiyuan this morning. I know a thing or two about your background. We never approached your family before, mainly out of fear of bringing disaster upon them. But now, it seems that invitation is the beginning of your fate with the world of yin and yang.”

A storm of questions flashed through my mind, but just as I was about to ask, Chuyi interrupted me.

“No need to ask. I’ll explain what I can, and if you don’t believe me, treat it as if I said nothing.”

“One of your ancestors was certainly a person of great ability. He calculated the exact date and time of your birth, and at the cost of his own lifespan, set up a life-blood grand formation inside your mother. This forced you to avoid the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth days of the seventh lunar month. The wandering spirits in the ghost city who sought reincarnation couldn’t enter your mother’s body, and so couldn’t affect you. In other words, from the very beginning, this formation determined that when you turn thirty, you must set out on the path of your yin-yang destiny if you wish to survive.”

“What do you mean by ‘yin-yang destiny’?” My mind was in turmoil.

“Yin-yang destiny means, like us, you eat the food of the living and the dead—you become a master of yin and yang.”

I was at a loss for words. A yin-yang master? In this day and age, when planes, trains, and even spaceships reach Mars, who still believes in yin-yang masters? Maybe he’d watched too much television.

But I kept my thoughts to myself.

“Heh, you can doubt all you want. Tonight you turn twenty-four. Though you have the life-blood grand formation in your body, I’ll be frank—it’s already been worn down by that woman. That formation in you is now like grass in the wind—one more powerful ghost and you’re done for!”

“Let me give you an example. Remember the earthquake a few years ago?”

I nodded. How could I not know?

“During that earthquake, a woman was trapped under steel and concrete for twenty or thirty days without a single grain of rice or drop of water, yet she survived in the end.”

“That really happened?” I asked.

Chuyi nodded and continued, “At the time, we were tasked with guiding the souls of the dead to prevent vengeful spirits from appearing. My senior brother discovered her. Using earth-shifting techniques, he rescued her. Though the woman survived, she became a lunatic, because, like you, she had a soul-sealing formation in her body. Though she didn’t die, countless spirits and evil energies passed through her during those days, shattering her soul formation. My senior brother saved her life, but she was left simple-minded.”

I forced a bitter smile, beginning to suspect this old man was a little unhinged himself.

“Enough digression. Let’s talk about you.”

“Though I’m not as skilled as my senior brother, I am a true disciple of Dragon Mountain, so let me be clear: tonight, in all of Chengdu, only I can save you. Believe that or not as you wish.”

He took a deep drag of his cigarette.

My heart sank. Truthfully, I didn’t want to believe any of this, but how else to explain that invitation with the ghostly face?

As the saying goes, better to believe than not.

“Grandpa Chen, what exactly is my situation? Please explain in detail.”

A faint smile appeared on Chuyi’s face. “Show me that invitation first.”

I quickly handed him the black plastic bag.

He reached in and drew out the invitation, which, astonishingly, was once again blood-red.

“How… how is this possible—?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll reveal its true form.”

Chuyi formed his hand into a sword-finger, and, aiming at the blood-red invitation on the table, traced a few patterns in the air before striking it sharply and exhaling a long breath onto it.

Before my eyes, the invitation gradually transformed into a face.

The features were all too familiar.

I shuddered involuntarily.

Chuyi’s brow furrowed deeply.

“It seems you’ll have to get through tonight’s ordeal on your own. This is a contract between human and ghost.”

“A… a contract between human and ghost?” My heart pounded wildly.

“Did you ever make a promise to this woman—say, vow to marry her or something like that?”

Instinctively, I nodded. I didn’t even need to think about it. Su Ying and I had been together for four years. By our third year, we were already calling each other husband and wife in jest; we’d done everything together except consummate the relationship. Of course promises were made, especially in that little grove. I still remembered it clearly—senior year, just before graduation, we met in the woods on my birthday. I held her tightly in my arms as she lay against me. The moonlight was perfect. She gazed at me and asked, with deep emotion, if one day she were gone, would I still love her, would I marry her? I answered naturally. We’d written marriage vows in our love letters long before. That night, she insisted I cradle her face and repeat my vow, and I did, telling her she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

As I recounted this to Chuyi, he stopped me.

“Ah, such is fate. Illness enters by the mouth, disaster comes from careless words.”

“Right now, you are shrouded in heavy yin energy, and someone has infused ghostly qi into your heavenly palace. That means, if you don’t go to the woods tonight for the wedding, the life-blood grand formation in your body will collapse, and you will die bleeding. Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter. My orders are to save your life, so I must cast a divination for you. This will cost me three years of my lifespan. For now, I won’t ask for payment, but you must remember this favor.”

Faced with this old man who spoke endlessly of yin and yang, I was half in doubt, half convinced.

I hesitated, then nodded.