Yin Yang Diviner

Early in the morning, I had just gotten up and hadn't even had time to wash up when I heard a knocking sound at the door.

When they opened the door, they found that people from the town had come.

The woman who arrived was in her forties, wearing a faded floral short-sleeved shirt, with a bamboo basket slung over her arm containing two old hens with their feet tied.

She stood under the locust tree at the entrance of the alley, not daring to go in, only leaning half her body out to peer into the depths of the alley.

The shadow of the old locust tree divided her face into two halves, one light and one dark, the other half covered in sweat.

When I came out of the east wing, my second grandfather was already sitting at the stone table.

The woman was invited into the courtyard, where a bamboo basket was placed at her feet. Two hens fluttered around in the basket, making muffled clucking noises.

She didn't sit down, but stood on the blue brick ground, twisting the hem of her floral dress in her hands until her knuckles turned white.

"Mr. Qin, my child—" she began, but her voice seemed to be blocked by something.

Each word had to be squeezed out forcefully: "Something's wrong with my child."

Second Grandpa put down his teacup. "Tell me slowly."

The woman's surname was Sun, and she lived in Sunjiazhuang, the westernmost village in the town.

My husband works on a construction site in the city and comes home once every six months.

She raised her five-year-old son alone, cultivating two acres of land and raising more than a dozen chickens.

Life was tough, but things were relatively peaceful. About two weeks ago, my son started acting strangely.

"He keeps saying someone is standing at the foot of the bed." Aunt Sun's voice was very low, as if she was afraid that something would hear her.

"At night, I coaxed him to sleep, turned off the lights, and bolted the door. In the middle of the night, he woke up crying and pointed to the foot of the bed, saying, 'Mom, there's someone standing there.'"

I turned on the light, but there was nothing there. This has been happening every night for several days in a row.

"And then?"

"Later, he not only talked about it at night, but also during the day." Aunt Sun's lips trembled slightly.

"The day before yesterday at noon, when the sun was high in the sky, he was sitting on the doorstep eating a steamed bun when he suddenly looked up and called out 'Grandpa' to the empty courtyard."

His grandfather has been dead for three years.

The bamboo leaves rustled, and the shadow of the old locust tree peeked over the wall, landing at Aunt Sun's feet, turning a small white flower on the hem of her floral dress gray.

Second Grandfather didn't say anything.

He stood up from the stone table, went into the house, and after a while brought out a rough porcelain bowl.

The bowl was half-filled with water, with a small bamboo leaf floating on the surface. He placed the bowl on the stone table, took out the inkwell from his cloth bag, and pulled out the ink line.

He dipped the end of the thread in the water in the bowl, then pinched the end of the thread, letting the ink thread hang above the rim of the bowl, with the end of the thread dangling into the water.

"What's the child's name?"

"Xiao Bao. Sun Xiao Bao."

Second Grandfather lifted the ink line out of the water.

A drop of water stuck to the thread fell back into the bowl with a clinking sound.

A thin ripple spread across the water's surface, and the bamboo leaf spun halfway through the ripple before coming to a stop.

Second Grandfather stared at the direction where the bamboo leaf had stopped for a while.

Which way does your gate face?

"Facing south."

Which room does the child sleep in?

"West House".

Grandpa put the ink line away. "Isn't the window in the west room facing an old tree?"

Aunt Sun paused for a moment. "Yes, there is one. A locust tree. It's older than me, right outside the west wall of the yard."

Something was buried under that locust tree.

Aunt Sun's face turned pale instantly.

"I was buried there... my father-in-law's father was buried there back then..." Her voice seemed to be choked by something.

"The grave was moved later, but the locust tree remained untouched."

Second Grandfather nodded. "When we moved the graves, there was one thing we didn't take with us."

"What?"

"Pillow."

The courtyard was so quiet that only the sound of bamboo leaves rustling could be heard.

Aunt Sun opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

"When a person dies and is placed in the coffin, the pillow under their head is called the 'final pillow.' The final pillow is touched by the deceased's last breath and is the most intimate item they carry."

When relocating a grave, the coffin and the remains can be moved, but the final resting place cannot. It must remain in the original burial site and rot away with the old soil.

When your family moved the grave, they left the pillow under the locust tree roots. Three years have passed, and the pillow hasn't completely rotted away; its breath is still there.

The locust tree is considered yin; its roots envelop its final resting place, and the yin energy nourishes that breath, thus creating an "echo."

"echo?"

"It's not a soul, not a ghost. It's the last thing the deceased said to the living before they passed away."

That sentence was sealed away by the pillow, pressed under the locust tree root, and remained there for three years. The child had clear eyes and sharp ears, able to see things adults couldn't.

He didn't see his grandfather—he heard the words that hadn't faded away from the base of the locust tree.

That sentence lingers outside the west room window every night, yearning to come in. A strand of it lies among the things blocked by the chalk line.

Aunt Sun's legs went weak, and she slumped down next to the bamboo basket.

The two hens were startled and fluttered around in the basket, clucking loudly.

She ignored it, only looking up at her second grandfather, her lips trembling, and after a long while, she managed to squeeze out a sentence: "Then... what should we do?"

Second Grandfather stood up from the stone bench.

"Go back and dig under the locust tree. Dig three feet south, and you'll find a tattered rag."

Do not touch it with your hands. Use a peach wood twig to take it out and place it in the sun to dry. After drying for three hours, the cloth will crumble into a clump of ash.

Collect the ashes and scatter them on the new grave. While scattering, call out your father-in-law's name, scattering a handful with each call.

After shouting three times and scattering three handfuls of powder, that phrase went away with the ashes.

Aunt Sun got up from the ground, forgetting to take her bamboo basket, and turned to walk out. But when she reached the alley entrance, she turned back, took the two old hens out of the basket, and forced them into her second grandfather's hands.

My second grandfather didn't refuse; he took it and handed it to me, who was standing next to him.

The chicken feet were tied with straw rope, and I held it upside down in my hand. The warm chicken body was pressed against my calf, and it struggled little by little.

Aunt Sun left. The hem of her floral dress flashed at the alley entrance, then disappeared into the shadow of the old locust tree.

I carried the two chickens into the kitchen and put them in a bamboo cage.

When we returned to the courtyard, my second grandfather was already sitting down at the stone table with an ink line in front of him.

It wasn't put away—it was taken out again and placed on the stone table. A section of the ink line was pulled out from the reel and lay straight on the table, like a thin snake stiffened by the sun.

"The last thing you'll photograph today before she arrives is the ink line," said Second Grandfather. "Go ahead and take it."

I held Zhenyuan in my palm, mirror side up, and aimed it at the ink line on the stone table.

The ink line is made of bamboo. Over the years, the bamboo skin has been polished by hand to a dark red patina, like the warm, oily sheen on old furniture.

The ink thread on the reel was tightly wound, and the ink soaked through the cotton thread, revealing an extremely deep indigo color from the black.

I focused my mind into the ancestral aperture, deep within the yang membrane of Zhenyuan, where golden light slowly rose, spreading across the mirror surface and enveloping the inkwell.

The ink line changed in the golden light.

It's not that it has added color—it's its original color, which was brought out by the golden light from deep within.

The bamboo blade had a very faint bluish tint, unlike the bluish tint of the peach wood sword, which was clean and without any impurities.

The blue of the inkstone is deep and somber, with a layer of black pressed beneath it, like the mountain colors at dusk on a rainy day.

The ink lines on the reel weren't blue, but rather an indescribable color—something between black and blue, something between water and stone.

Like a strand of waterweed sinking to the bottom of a deep pool.

But what I couldn't take my eyes off was the part where the ink lines were taut.

The ink line, pulled straight from the reel and lying on the table, shone with a light I had never seen before in the golden light—not a color.

It is an extremely fine boundary that flows along the center of the ink line.

Like a mercury column drawn into a thread, it flows slowly through the core of the cotton thread, from one end of the reel to the other, and then back again, endlessly repeating the cycle.

"What did you see?"

"There is a boundary line inside the ink line core."

Second Grandpa stuffed tobacco into his pipe, lit it with a match, and took a puff.

"The ink line is a carpenter's tool, but in our line of work, it has become a ritual implement for warding off evil."

Do you know why? It's not because the ink lines can make blood splatter—it's because of the 'boundary'.

An ink line drawn on wood demarcates straightness and curvature. An ink line drawn on the coffin lid demarcates life and death.

He pointed to the taut ink line.

"This boundary was made of ink and cotton thread. The ink is pine soot, the smoke from burning pine wood, which belongs to the fire element within the wood element."

Cotton thread is made of plant fiber, belonging to the element of wood and earth. When wood and fire are twisted together and sprang to form a thread, it draws a boundary on whatever it touches.

Inside the boundary is Yang, outside the boundary is Yin. For something Yin or evil to collide with this boundary is like a bone striking a blade.

"Today, Aunt Sun's child was entangled by a lingering remnant of a saying. The words are not ghosts, nor evil spirits, and cannot be repelled by ink threads."

But the ink line could stop it. I hung the ink line over the rim of the bowl, with the end of the line dangling into the water—water is yin, and the wisp of words climbed up from under the locust tree roots along the moisture, hit the ink line, and the boundary inside the core of the line bounced it back.

It spun around the rim of the bowl, pushing the bamboo leaves on the water's surface. The direction the bamboo leaves stopped in was the direction it came from.

I stared at that taut line of ink.

The "boundaries" within the thread core continue to flow slowly, from one end to the other, and from the other to the other, like a tireless river flowing through the cotton thread.

How many things has it blocked? I don't know. The echo standing at the foot of Aunt Sun's child's bed, the malevolent energy of a white-furred rice dumpling rushing out.

The black mist seeping from the cracks in the coffin of the Yin-devouring corpse—ink lines that flicked on the coffin lid, stretched around the mourning hall, and hung above the rim of the clear water bowl—each time drew a boundary.

Keep those that should be blocked outside, and protect those that should be protected inside.

"What Mo Dou taught you was 'boundaries'." Second Grandfather tapped his pipe, and the ashes fell onto the blue bricks, where they were swept away by the wind.

"When you use the ink line in the future, remember one thing—before you draw the line, think clearly about what the line will mark."

The boundaries were wrong; those who should have been stopped weren't, while those who shouldn't have been stopped were locked inside, ultimately causing harm.

He put the ink line back into the box, arranging it alongside the Bagua seal, the copper bell, the Five Emperors Coins, and the peach wood sword.

Of the seven old items, I photographed five today. The Bagua seal teaches "suppression," the copper bell teaches "guidance," the Five Emperors Coins teach "constancy," the peach wood sword teaches "slaying," and the ink line teaches "boundary."

There are two things left: the lightning-struck wood and that thin booklet.

The bamboo leaves rustled.

The clucking of the two old hens came from the kitchen, separated by a wall and bamboo shadows, sounding like a peaceful voice from another world.