Yin Yang Diviner

The night we returned from the riverbank, Lao Liu didn't let me leave.

"Just one night." He said this while sitting on his sofa, holding a teacup in both hands, his knuckles still white. "Just one night."

I glanced at my second grandfather, who had already walked to the door with his cloth bag, without turning his head, only saying, "Come back by yourself tomorrow."

The door closed, and footsteps echoed down the stairs, sinking to the bottom, until the motion-activated lights went out.

Old Liu's house has two bedrooms and a living room, and he lives alone.

The coffee table in the living room was piled with takeout boxes and empty beer cans. The TV was on, the volume turned down to the lowest setting, and the light from the screen flickered on the white wall opposite.

He made the bed in the second bedroom; the pillows were new, and the creases on the pillowcases hadn't been washed off yet.

I lay down on the mattress, and it was so soft that I sank into it.

The streetlights outside the window tinged the curtains with orange, and light streamed through the gaps, drawing a thin, bright line on the ceiling.

I heard the sound of Old Liu turning over next door; he kept turning for a long time.

The next day was Saturday.

Old Liu got up very early; the sizzling sound of frying eggs and the hum of the soy milk maker could be heard from the kitchen.

When I went out, there were already two plates, two cups of soy milk, and a dish of pickles on the table.

He stood in front of the stove wearing a checkered apron, flipping eggs with a spatula. His back view looked completely different from yesterday.

"I thought about it all night." He scooped the fried egg onto my plate, sat down opposite me, took a big gulp of soy milk, and his Adam's apple bobbed.

"I want to learn something from my second grandfather."

"What should I study?" I asked him.

"Anything is fine. Drawing talismans, chanting spells, reading compasses." His eyes were fixed on the fried egg on the plate. He poked the yolk with his chopsticks, and the bright yellow egg liquid flowed out and soaked into the white rice.

"When the woman was carried out of the wall, her face was blue, and her fingernails were full of wall dust. I squatted next to the sofa watching her, not thinking about whether she would die—but about who would be next."

He put down his chopsticks, rested his hands on his knees, and his knuckles turned white again.

"I've figured it out. This time I didn't run away—because I knew it would be useless. Not because I've become bolder, but because you and your second grandfather are here. But you won't be here forever."

The soy milk maker beeped in the kitchen.

"I want to learn," he said.

"It's not about catching ghosts and exorcising demons, but about knowing what to do if we encounter them again next time."

Even just knowing where to run, who to look for, and what to say is better than squatting by the coffee table chanting Amitabha Buddha.

I looked at him.

The playful, smirking look that was always on his face was gone.

It wasn't serious; it felt like something heavy was falling down my throat, all the way to my stomach, weighing me down.

"Whether Second Grandfather will accept you or not is not up to me. But I can teach you to recognize qi." I finished my soy milk.

"After we eat, I'll take you somewhere."

The antique market is located behind the City God Temple, occupying a narrow street.

At the street corner, there are stalls selling walnut bracelets; further in, there are stalls selling old books and newspapers; and still further in, there are stalls selling copper coins, porcelain, and antique furniture.

The weekend was crowded, with people packed together. The air was filled with the scents of sandalwood, old paper, fried stinky tofu, and incense wafting from the City God Temple.

Old Liu followed beside me, his eyes darting around, finding everything new and interesting.

It's too early for me to teach him about "qi" (vital energy), but showing him what "qi" has accumulated is faster than reasoning with him.

I stopped in front of a stall selling old bronze artifacts.

The stall owner was an old man in his sixties, sitting on a small stool, twirling a pair of walnuts in his hands, his eyes half-closed.

The stall displayed copper locks, copper mirrors, copper bells, copper coins, and some other old items whose names I didn't know, each one polished to a shine.

"How much is this string of five emperor coins?" I asked, pointing to a string of copper coins strung together with red thread.

Five pieces, dating from the reigns of Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, and Jiaqing, in good condition.

But something felt off—I glanced at it with my ancestral aperture, and the layer of worldly aura on the copper coin was extremely thin, so thin that it was almost invisible, as if it had been washed by something.

"One hundred and eighty." The old man opened one eye halfway.

"The item is not right." I put the Five Emperors Coins down.

"The worldly spirit has been washed away. It wasn't nurtured using the old methods; it was soaked in vinegar and then sanded. It's shiny, but the spirit is gone."

The old man opened both eyes wide and stopped playing with the walnuts.

"Young man, are you in the business?"

"No, that doesn't count. I learned from my second grandfather for a few days."

"What is your second grandfather's surname?"

"His surname is Qin."

The old man's walnuts fell from his hand, landed on the stall, bounced, and rolled to the side of the brass lock. He picked them up, didn't play with them anymore, and held them in his palm.

"Qin Tianyang is your second grandfather?" The voice was very low, so low that only Lao Liu and I could hear it.

"Do you know him?"

The old man did not answer.

He took the string of five-emperor coins from the stall, stuffed it into a canvas bag at his feet, and then took out another item from the bag and placed it on the stall.

It is a jade thumb ring. It is emerald green, with a warm and lustrous texture, and a very light patina on the surface.

It wasn't anything new. I glanced at it with my ancestral aperture—there was a layer of grayish-white light around the jade thumb ring, extremely faint, like the mist on a river surface on a winter morning.

It wasn't worldly air, nor the scent of incense, but a kind of heavy, indescribable feeling.

"This thumb ring was sold to me by a young man a month ago," the old man said, lowering his voice even further.

"Three thousand yuan. He said it was left to him by his grandmother and he needed the money urgently. I took it, and regretted it that very night."

Why?

"I tried it on my thumb. That night, I dreamed of an old woman in a gray cloth jacket standing by my bed, her mouth opening and closing as if she were saying something. I couldn't hear her voice, but I knew what she was saying. She was saying a name. Over and over again."

The old man's Adam's apple bobbed.

"I took off the ring first thing the next morning and put it in the box. I dreamed of her again that night. This time she wasn't standing by the bed—she was standing next to the box, looking down at the ring inside."

Old Liu, who was listening nearby, turned pale.

I held the jade thumb ring in my palm, and Zhenyuan felt slightly warm inside my satchel.

The golden light deep within the amniotic sac did not rise to the surface—it was waiting.

Let me see clearly what's stuck to this ring.

"Whose name is that?"

The old man remained silent for a long time.

Someone stopped to look at the brass locks in front of his stall, but he waved his hand and said he wasn't selling them today.

The man left, and he packed everything on the stall into his canvas bag, leaving only the jade thumb ring on the stall in the end.

The name she said was Zhang Jinsheng.

My hand stopped above the ring.

Zhang Jinsheng?

The young man who spent 30,000 yuan to buy a jade ring for collecting souls, excitedly went to an old monk to perform a ritual to help the souls of the deceased, and ended up losing his life because of it.

The ring was likely taken by the police and sealed in the evidence room after that transaction.

This story has become legendary in our industry.

"Zhang Jinsheng's thumb ring is emerald green." I held the thumb ring up to my eyes, and the jade gleamed with a moist light in the sunlight.

"But not this one."

"Not the same one?"

"The color is similar, but the aura is wrong. His was a ritual artifact for collecting souls, and its aura was black. This one's aura is grayish-white—not malevolent, but 'thought.' The old woman's thought."

I put the ring back on the stall.

"What does that young man you're talking about look like?"

The old man thought for a moment.

"Early twenties, thin, wears glasses, and has a shifty gaze when he speaks, avoiding eye contact. He's wearing a gray windbreaker with worn-out cuffs."

Old Liu suddenly interjected, "A gray windbreaker? Does it have a red letter embroidered on the left cuff?"

The old man was taken aback. "It seems so. You know him too?"

Old Liu looked at me, and his lips moved slightly.

"Before Zhang Jinsheng died, I went to the antique market to look for him. He showed me around and pointed to a stall, saying that it was his cousin, wearing a gray windbreaker with a red Z embroidered on the cuff."

Z, Zhang, is Zhang Jinsheng's cousin.

"That thumb ring was taken by Zhang Jinsheng from his grandmother," Old Liu said, his voice strained.

"His cousin said that the old lady had two thumb rings, one an original piece and the other a replacement. Zhang Jinsheng sold the original piece and kept the replacement for his cousin. The one he sold to the sorcerer was the old lady's original piece. The one his cousin has—"

"It's the one the old lady wore herself," I continued.

"The old lady has been chanting Buddhist scriptures her whole life. This thumb ring has been with her for decades. It's not tainted by evil spirits, but by the power of her chanting. She chanted Buddhist scriptures for decades, not for her own rebirth in the Pure Land—but to ask her grandson to turn back to the right path."

The stall quieted down.

The sound of the City God Temple bell came from the other end of the street, deep and resonant, striking the air one note at a time.

The old man's canvas bag was half-closed, its opening wide, revealing old copperware inside with a dim gleam.

"She didn't pronounce Zhang Jinsheng's name," I said. "It's Zhang Jinsheng's childhood nickname."

The old man looked up at me, his lips trembling slightly. "How did you know?"

"Because when she pronounced it, her mouth didn't form three words."

I held the ring in my palm, and the heat from Zhenyuan emanated from my bag, throbbing against my hip bone.

I slowly uttered a few words: "She was calling for home!"