“Mr Xue.”
The woman carried a bamboo basket, dressed in a plain yellow robe, her feet dusted with mud and sand. Her brows curved like crescent moons; her eyes, bright as stars, shimmered with a gentle wisdom.
Xue Cuo gave a startled sound, as though glimpsing something beyond the mortal. His body stiffened. He turned aside and bowed to her, his courtesy almost fearful.
“No need, no need,”
The temple keeper, ever the meddler, chuckled. “Little lady, your husband is utterly devoted. He’s turned down a fine opportunity, all for your sake. So then, you still won’t…”
Before he could finish, Xue Cuo cut him off, wiping cold sweat from his brow. “Gege, might I have a private word with her?”
He slipped a few tokens of thanks into the man’s palm. The temple keeper weighed them, tucked them discreetly into his robe, and waved expansively. “Go on, go on. But one hour only!”
Xue Cuo gestured politely, ushering her to a quieter place to talk.
“Have a good chat with your wife.”
He nearly slipped as he turned, catching himself on the old millstone. Taking a deep breath, he managed a half-smile that looked almost like a sob. “You… this way, please.”
The two of them walked down to the shore. The sea breeze was mild and quiet, gentle and hidden. Xue Cuo bowed first. “I’ve offended.”
The woman did not reply. She simply looked into his eyes, her gaze deepening until her face grew still… almost claylike. Then her eyelids fluttered, and her lips curved with a faintly amused tone. “How did you recognise me? Do you know who I am?”
Xue Cuo wiped his forehead, tucked the restless little golden dragon back into his robe, and said carefully, “I… don’t know your true name, but I may have made an offering to you in my childhood.”
The woman laughed softly. Her bangles chimed, and beneath her feet, ripples formed. There was water glimmering with traces of sand and silt. Her voice drifted like an echo from a distant age, threaded with wistful longing.
“I awoke too late. Otherwise, you would have been my disciple. The Great Loch would never have dared to compete with me.
Still, it isn’t too late. Are you willing?”
Xue Cuo dared not answer. He retreated several paces, his spiritual core quivering. Then, behind his head, a lotus of Daoist resonance unfurled. It circled him once, then again, swelling larger and grander until its petals spread like layered light.
The woman waved a hand. “Only jesting. Ten thousand years have passed, and you’ve grown terribly stingy.”
The lotus light Dao resonance folded back into his brow. Dizzy, Xue Cuo pressed his temples, then bowed deeply. “Might this honoured one have any commands?”
The woman clasped her hands behind her back and paced slowly, her steps stirring faint ripples. “That Golden Crow slipped through the back door on connections. I’m not so shameless. I’ve come in person to tie a bond of goodwill.”
From her basket, she lifted a small tortoise shell and handed it to him. “This is fated to be yours, Mr. Xue. It now returns to its rightful owner.”
A bond of goodwill?
He was a timid person, please don’t scare him!
Xue Cuo waved his hands frantically, but the woman only smiled. She reached out and tapped a finger between his brows. Her form dissolved into fine mist, vanishing into the air.
Xue Cuo’s vision blurred. Before him spread vast veils of vapour. When they cleared, he saw an immense winding yellow river, with nine bends and eighteen turns. Beneath the waves, a shadow slumbered.
Time shifted. Ages flowed.
By the riverbank, a ragged child scavenged among the silt… thin, sickly, deaf and blind, squatting at the water’s edge, picking up stones.
One. Two.
Eh.
His hand brushed something hard. He lifted it up. It a wounded little tortoise.
“Are you lost?”
“Can’t find your way home either?”
He sighed softly, commiserating with it’s circumstances. Carrying the small creature, he waded into the shallows, meaning to set it free before a bird could snatch it.
But a sudden wave struck. The child was swept under and drowned.
The tortoise stayed by his body, guarding it from fish and shrimp. It never left until it too grew old and died.
When Xue Cuo blinked back to the present, his heart thudded. Somehow, he knew. The child was him.
He looked down at the tortoise shell in his hands, unable to decide whether to keep it or let it go.
[Nine-bend Yellow River]
[Three Mountain Emperors. Ten True Lords. Five Directional Goddesses.]
[Her Ladyship is the goddess of the southwestern loch; the Nine-bend Yellow River flows through the Central Continent. She must have been an old acquaintance of the Great Loch Goddess.]
“Eldest shixiong, why did it suddenly go dark just now? I couldn’t see or hear a thing.”
The little golden dragon darted out, eyes wide with fright. Xue Cuo caught it mid-air. “Nothing. Children shouldn’t ask too many questions.”
The dragon craned its head. “Eldest shixiong, what are you holding?”
Xue Cuo stroked the tortoise shell, sending a thread of spiritual energy into it and felt the pulse of an ancient spirit within. It was a venerable turtle, white-bearded and white-browed, steeped in immortal aura. It must have perished just short of ascension.
“Seven thousand years,”
Xue Cuo was astonished. He tucked the shell into his robe. It was an exquisite spiritual treasure, yet greed did not stir in him.
Why had this old turtle, waiting seven millennia, never attained immortality?
Could it be because he owed him a karmic debt? Seven thousand years of reincarnation without the chance to repay? Xue Cuo recalled the saying: when one ascends, if mortal karma lingers unresolved, the thunder tribulation will not let one pass.
Why had that goddess given him this shell? What did she mean by it? Had she foreseen this very moment, ten thousand years ago?
Lost in thought, Xue Cuo slipped the shell back into his robe. The little golden dragon, startled by its presence, caught sight of something stirring within. It immediately curled into a neat spiral, pretending to be a pendant.
When Xue Cuo returned to the Shiliu temple, the keeper opened his mouth, clearly about to jest. Fearing the man might say something that would cost him his fortune or his lifespan. Xue Cuo rushed to speak first, his words firm and loud: “No! She isn’t!”
“Then who?”
Xue Cuo: “…”
The temple keeper narrowed his eyes slightly. “So you’ve been lying, haven’t you? You’ve no wife at all. You simply don’t wish to bear a child? To gain good karma?”
Xue Cuo: “She’s my yiniang*, whom I’ve never met, come from afar.”
(*TN: address for one’s maternal aunt)
“Yiniang?”
“Yes.”
The relationships among the Five Goddesses should all be roughly similar, Xue Cuo thought.
The temple keeper didn’t press further. He tossed the broom into Xue Cuo’s hands and said, “Fine. Don’t lazy about. Hurry and get the courtyard swept clean!”
Xue Cuo agreed readily, cheerful and diligent by nature. Quick to laugh and quicker to work, he soon got along famously with everyone from the temple keeper to the sweeper boys to the master priests. Before long they were calling each other “brother”, arms slung around shoulders, drinking together like old friends.
A group of heavily pregnant men drank and sang with abandon.
Xue Cuo asked why they didn’t mind their diet, and one of them said, “I had the Great God divine my baby’s fate. It turns out he’s a poor ghost! We Zhous don’t raise useless brats. I had a fifty-fifty chance at a blessed child, and still drew this jinx! No matter how much I drink, I can’t ruin him. Once he’s born, I’ll sell him for a few coins and gamble on the next one.”
“Gamble, gamble. This time I’m betting on [Fortune], I’ll raise myself a little lord!”
“Come, drink up!”
The servants grew riotously drunk, echoing one another’s boasts, while Xue Cuo threw back a cup of wine. It was fierce and biting as fire.
When he sobered the next morning, he went back to work as usual, drifting from place to place. There were seventy-seven temples throughout the city; the Shiliu God’s territory was the smallest, yet his believers were by far the most numerous in all of Qianyun City.
Because they could breed.
Pregnancies here were divided into three ranks. After praying to the Shiliu God, a child’s fate was determined from the very start.
Each life enjoyed the blessings of its own destiny.
If one was dissatisfied, one must simply accumulate virtue and piety, and worship more devoutly.
Some families bore six children of ordinary fate, until the seventh marked with [Prosperity] was born. Suddenly, that one was cherished like a jewel.
The first six were driven into the cowshed to eat, drink, and sleep with the beasts. When idle, they swatted flies; when busy, they wove baskets.
If those children grew resentful, they could only wait until they were old enough to pray at the temple themselves to bear a child and so change their lot.
Or else they could devote their lives entirely to the Shiliu God, washing away sin through worship, and hope for a splendid, wealthy rebirth in the next life.
A bad fate in this life, after all, meant too many sins in the last. To resist only invited greater misery next time, a fall into the beast realm.
As Xue Cuo swept the streets, he often overheard parents lecturing their children:
“You were born ordinary, you’re here to repay debts. The more you suffer now, the richer you’ll be next life.
Look at your brothers and sisters. Since birth they’ve brought wealth and luck to the family, while you sit there eating me out of house and home, sucking my blood.
I raised you for nothing! What justice is there in that?”
Raised on such words, though those children were born of the same blood, they grew up as servants, uneducated yet fiercely devout.
Some, only two or three years old and starving, would kneel and kowtow outside Shiliu’s temple, begging. They knew nothing of worship. They only understood that hunger and cold were punishments for being born sinful.
As for the “good births”, some could talk at three months, run at five, and think like grown men.
Some were born breathtakingly beautiful, charming all who glimpsed them… tiny beauties of two or three years old, famed throughout Qianyun City.
Others were child prodigies, learned from the cradle, reciting poetry between burps and astonishing their elders.
Such heaven-blessed children were the pride of their parents, adored by the masses.
Soon enough, wealthy families or immortal clans would appear, offering vast sums to take them in as disciples, adopted heirs, or good-luck talismans. The parents received riches, luck, and divine favour in abundance.
Who could say the Shiliu God was not a good god?
He was marvellously good.
There were, of course, parents who still loved their “useless” children. They sold all they owned, begging from door to door to atone for their children’s birth-sins. They spent their lives doing good, dying penniless, wrapped in broken mats and buried in haste.
Their children, wracked with remorse yet forbidden to die, lingered outside Shiliu’s temple in lifelong penance, hoping their parents might reincarnate to better fortune.
Xue Cuo once brought food to one such man. He was already bent and trembling with age, but the man shook his head, bowed low, and murmured prayers instead.
Xue Cuo let out a quiet sigh and stood up. The little golden dragon wriggled out, pressed its snout against his chest, and said, “Eldest shixiong, don’t be angry.”
Xue Cuo said, “Mu, these Xianghuo gods truly deserve to die.”
What Eldest shixiong said was right, and the little dragon shared his fury. “Right! Damn them! I hate the Xianghuo Divine Dao the most!”
Xue Cuo said, “So do I.”
A dull clap of thunder rolled overhead. Man and dragon both flinched.
Xue Cuo added, “But there are higher and lower paths in the Dao. Not all are the same. We can’t condemn them all together.”
The little golden dragon nuzzled him in agreement, nodding so fast its horns blurred. “Right! We can’t lump them together.”
Just then, someone came from the temple to fetch him. Xue Cuo, now well acquainted with the staff, looked up “Looking for me? What’s the matter?”
The servant grinned. “Your wife whose love is stronger than gold has arrived!”
Xue Cuo: “…”
Love stronger than what? What’s arrived, exactly?
