Yin Yang Diviner

On the third day after returning from the City God Temple, my second grandfather opened the camphor wood box, took out a piece of yellow paper, and spread it on the stone table.

A talisman was drawn on the paper with cinnabar.

The talisman's core is a tiny triangle—a house-protecting talisman, but not the old kind found in the book. It's newly drawn, with the cinnabar still fresh. The hollow inside the triangle is slightly raised, like an eye that hasn't opened yet.

"Take this talisman."

He folded the talisman into a small square and handed it to me, saying, "Someone will come looking for you tonight."

"Who?" I asked.

"I don't know." He sat down on the stone bench, stuffed tobacco into his pipe, and lit it with a match.

"The rule in this industry is to entrust a task, not a person. Entrusting a person through a person is about relying on a favor. Entrusting a task through a task is about relying on ability. Someone entrusted a task to me, but I'm too old to run around anymore. You go in my place."

"What is it?"

"He didn't say. He just left an address and told me to go there tonight." The second grandfather exhaled a puff of smoke with an air of composure.

"The address is in the urban village near Lao Liu's place. Take Lao Liu with you. He's timid, but meticulous. Meticulous people can see things that bold people can't."

In the evening, I took a bus into the city.

Old Liu was waiting for me at the bus stop, wearing a dark jacket with bulging pockets—seven copper coins strung together, stretching the pocket opening into a circle.

When he saw me, he reached into his pocket and waved, the coins clattering inside.

"I already asked Zhang Jinsheng." He walked alongside me.

He said the seven copper coins belonged to seven dynasties: Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, and Xianfeng.

"One piece is missing, it's not a complete set. He told me to go to the flea market when I have time and try to complete the set."

"What can we do with all of them?"

"I don't know. He said he's saving it up."

Old Liu took the copper coins out of his pocket. The seven coins swayed back and forth on the hemp rope, like a bunch of unripe grapes. "He said his grandmother used to say that things should come in pairs, and money should come in sets."

Things that don't match up can't retain their essence.

The urban village is located in the east of the city, three streets away from the residential area where Lao Liu lives. At the entrance of the village stands a large banyan tree, with aerial roots hanging down from its branches, taking root in the soil, and growing into a small grove.

Several stone benches were placed under the tree, and a few elderly people sat on them, fanning themselves with palm-leaf fans and glancing at us through the edges of the fans.

As you walk further in, the alley narrows and the buildings on both sides grow taller, squeezing the sky into a thin, grayish-blue line. The streetlights are not yet on, and the light deep in the alley is like ink soaked in water, deepening layer by layer into darkness.

The address says it's a self-built six-story building deep in the urban village, covered in white tiles, which looks out of place among a row of gray old buildings.

The iron gate downstairs was closed. The doorbell had a row of six buttons, with a small piece of white tape next to the bottom one. The word "602" was written on the tape in ballpoint pen.

Old Liu rang the doorbell. The sound of the door lock popping open drifted down from upstairs, like a pebble falling into a well from a great height.

The elevator was added later, and it was so narrow that it could only fit two people. The walls of the car were lined with stainless steel plates, which reflected the distorted shadows of me and Lao Liu.

The floor display jumped from 1 to 6. The door opened, and the security door of 602 was ajar, with a sliver of white light shining through the crack.

Pushing open the door, I found the living room to be spacious. The floor was covered in off-white marble tiles, so shiny you could see your reflection in them. The sofa was made of mahogany, with embroidered cushions.

The TV wall was made of marble. The TV was off, the screen was black, and it reflected the person standing in the center of the living room. He was in his fifties, of medium build, and wearing a dark blue polo shirt with a crisp collar.

His hair was neatly combed, and although his face had few wrinkles, they were deep, like they had been carved by a knife. He stood beside the coffee table, not sitting down, holding a string of beads in his hand, the beads gleaming from being twirled.

"Mr. Qin's apprentice?" His voice was not loud, but every word was clear.

"Yes."

"Please sit down."

Old Liu and I sat down on the mahogany sofa. He sat down opposite me and placed his bracelet on the coffee table.

The beads are made of rosewood, with a thick patina like a layer of amber, but one of them is not—it is dull in color and has no luster, like a wooden nail pried off an old coffin.

"My surname is Zheng." He took the dark bead off his bracelet and placed it in the center of the coffee table.

"This bracelet was left to me by my father. It has eighteen beads, and he wore it for thirty years. Last month, one of the beads suddenly changed color."

"How did it change?"

"That day was the anniversary of my father's death. I took the bracelet out of the box, intending to wear it for a day. When I took it out, the bead was still in good condition."

But after wearing it on my wrist for less than an hour, my wrist started to feel cold. I looked down and saw that the bead had changed from its original sandalwood color to this.

He nudged the bead with his fingertip, and it rolled half a circle on the coffee table before coming to a stop.

The dull surface gleamed with an unnatural, muted hue under the light, as if something had seeped into it from within. "I had someone look at it."

Some said the beads were tainted with evil spirits, others said they had been switched. I took the bracelet back to the old craftsman who made the beads. He said he had crafted each of the eighteen beads himself, from old sandalwood, there was no mistake. He heated a needle, pierced the tip of the bead, and when he pulled it out—"

He paused. The living room was quiet, the marble floor reflecting the ceiling light strips, the light patterns shimmering slightly on the water-like stone surface.

"A strand of hair was pulled out by the needle tip."

Upon hearing this, Lao Liu couldn't help but shrink further into the sofa.

I stared at the bead on the coffee table. Its dark surface revealed extremely fine, thread-like patterns upon closer inspection. It wasn't wood grain—it looked as if something was seeping out from inside the bead, solidifying into a film on the surface.

"Mr. Zheng, besides feeling a coldness in your wrist, was there anything else when this bead changed color that day?"

He was silent for a while.

That night, I dreamt of my father. He was standing by my bedside, wearing the dark blue Zhongshan suit he wore when he was put to the grave. He was looking at me, his mouth opening and closing as if he were saying something.

I couldn't hear him, but I knew what he was saying. He was reciting a number. Over and over again.

"What number?"

"602".

Old Liu's Adam's apple bobbed. 602. The house number.

Mr. Zheng re-strung the bracelet, leaving a gap in the middle of the seventeen sandalwood beads, like a row of complete people missing one.

"My father passed away suddenly. He had a cerebral hemorrhage. He was fine in the morning, but he passed away at noon. He didn't leave a single word. This building was the last house he built before he died."

He reserved one floor for me on the sixth floor. 602 was the best unit on the sixth floor; he said it would be my wedding room when I got married. I'm not married yet, and the room has remained empty ever since.

"Empty?"

"It's empty. Someone comes to clean it every week, and it's fully furnished with furniture and appliances, but no one lives there."

His gaze fell on the bead on the coffee table.

"After that bead changed color, I stopped having that dream. But the cleaning lady told me that sometimes there would be marks on the sheets in bedroom 602 where someone had lain down."

It wasn't an indentation—it looked like someone had lay on it for a long time and then left. The sheets were cold.

Mr. Zheng stood up, walked to the window, and pulled back a corner of the curtain.

Outside the window, the rooftops of the urban village were densely packed together, the afterglow of the setting sun turning the cement walls a worn orange-red. In the distance, the eaves of the City God Temple jutted out from the gray rooftops, the copper bells on the eaves swaying in the wind, but from this distance, they were inaudible.

"Mr. Qin asked me to give you this."

He took a cloth bag from the windowsill and placed it on the coffee table. The bag was made of coarse cloth, tied at the top, and contained something heavy inside.

I untied the rope, and inside was a piece of wood. It was about the size of a palm, rectangular, and dark in color, with a patina on its surface from being touched so many times. It was a spirit tablet.

The memorial tablet bears two lines of text written vertically in vermilion ink: "The Spirit Tablet of My Late Father, Zheng Dehou." Dehou. Zheng Dehou.

"This is my father's memorial tablet. After his encoffining, it was placed in the ancestral hall of our old house. Last month, the incense burner in the ancestral hall suddenly overturned, and the memorial tablet fell off the offering table, chipping off a corner."

He took the ancestral tablet out of the bag and turned it over. There was indeed a small piece missing from the upper right corner of the tablet; the broken edge wasn't new, and its color was the same as the surrounding area.

"The carpenter said he could fix it, but I didn't let him. I think my father didn't want the plaque—he wanted me to see the defect."

"What did you see?"

He didn't answer. He put the ancestral tablet back into the cloth bag, tied it up, and pushed it in front of me.

"Old Mr. Qin said, 'Can you take a look at this room for me? Look at the stains on the bed sheet, look at this bead, look at this ancestral tablet with a missing corner. See what my father really wants to say.'"

Outside the window, on the eaves of the City God Temple, a bronze bell swayed in the wind. I couldn't hear it from this distance, but I knew it had rung.

I took Zhenyuan out of my bag and held it in my palm. The golden light from deep within the Yang membrane slowly rose, spreading across the mirror surface like a lantern just lit in the darkness.

Mr. Zheng stood by the window, backlit, his face showing deep, etched wrinkles, some deeper, some shallower. Old Liu sat in the corner of the sofa.

The seven copper coins in his pocket were quiet and still, and a section of hemp rope peeked out from the pocket opening. It was dark and looked like a small piece of hanging rope that had been taken off the stove.

On the coffee table, the dull bead lay beside the sandalwood bracelet, leaving an empty space. Seventeen beads were intact, but one had been seeped into the sandalwood bracelet by something.

I aimed the Zhenyuan at that bead; deep within the mirror, golden light shone steadily, waiting there.