Yin Yang Diviner

The night Old Liu had his accident, I was copying the "Qingxin Jue" in the east wing.

The moonlight tinged the window paper with a thin layer of bluish-white, and the shadows of bamboo leaves fell on the paper, pushed by the wind, swaying stroke by stroke on the character "Ning" that I was copying halfway.

Zhenyuan felt a slight warmth under his pillow—not a warm feeling of alertness, but more like a cat that had been curled up for a long time finally turning over.

The bronze mirror at the wellhead sat quietly in the satchel, its surface shrouded in a grayish-white mist, like a layer of frost about to dissipate.

Ring ring... My phone rang. I picked it up and glanced at the caller ID; it was Lao Liu.

"Old Qin! I...I can't go back." His voice was noisy and very strange.

The noise wasn't the usual street noise of cars and people.

It sounded more like someone had shoved static into his microphone.

Old Liu's voice squeezed out from my phone receiver, "We've been walking for forty minutes and we're still in the same place."

"Where are you?"

"The alley in the east of the city, the one where I take a shortcut back to my place from the secondhand market. I've walked this road at least fifty times; I could walk to the end with my eyes closed. Tonight, I've reached the end—not the end, but the beginning."

"What head?"

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone.

I could hear his breathing, one breath at a time, like someone pressing their palm against his chest.

"At the end of the alley is the intersection where I started."

A maze of ghosts.

I closed the copy of "The Heart-Cleansing Manual," and Zhenyuan took it out from under his pillow and put it in his satchel.

Second Grandpa's door was closed, and no light shone through the crack in the door.

I didn't call him.

There was more than just fear in Lao Liu's voice—there was also something else: doubt.

He walked the road fifty times and suddenly it didn't recognize him. What he was afraid of wasn't the ghost, but the fact that his decades-long belief in "recognition" suddenly no longer held true.

Even if my second grandfather went, it wouldn't make a difference in this matter.

The phrase "ghosts hitting the wall" doesn't mean ghosts are hitting the wall; it means people are inside the wall.

I'm riding the bicycle that Lao Liu left in the yard last time.

The bicycle chain was out of lubrication, and it squeaked with every pedal stroke, like a mouse whose tail had been stepped on.

The moon was huge, abnormally huge, hanging to the west of the old locust tree, golden yellow, like an old copper lamp just moved out of the warehouse.

The moonlight made the road surface appear white, so white it didn't look like asphalt, but like a layer of solidified ashes.

On both sides of the road are ruins of urban villages that have been half demolished. A few steel bars that have not been completely removed are stuck in the piles of broken bricks and tiles. When the moonlight shines on them, they have a cold, silvery-gray hue.

I found Lao Liu next to those ruins.

He squatted at the intersection, leaning against a crooked telephone pole, his hands in his pockets, clutching the seven copper coins tightly. A section of hemp rope peeked out from between his fingers, dark and grimy, like a small piece of hanging rope taken from the stove.

He saw me, but didn't stand up; he just looked up.

The moonlight made his face look bluish, not from fear—but as if something was slowly sucking away the color from his face.

"When did you arrive?" he asked.

"Ten minutes."

"I walked for an hour."

He pointed to the alley in front of him. It was an ordinary alley, with red brick walls on both sides, unplastered, and a few clumps of withered grass growing from the cracks in the bricks, motionless in the moonlight.

The alley is about two people wide and extends straight ahead. At the end is a street lamp, whose orange light illuminates the alley entrance as a warm, funnel-shaped opening.

At the other end of the alley is the intersection where Lao Liu started.

He walked back for an hour, but couldn't find his way out.

I took Zhenyuan out of my bag.

Golden light from deep within the sac rose up and spread across the mirror surface.

I aimed it at the street lamp deep in the alley, and what I saw in the mirror wasn't an orange light—it was a very faint grayish-white, as if it had been soaked in water many times.

That layer of grayish-white wasn't floating on the streetlights; it seeped from the brick walls on both sides of the alley, from the cement on the ground, and from the few clumps of motionless withered grass in the cracks between the bricks.

The entire alley was oozing a grayish-white mist, like a tightly clenched sponge slowly loosening.

"The alley you've walked through fifty times isn't this one." I tilted Zhenyuan's angle slightly, letting the golden light shine obliquely into the depths of the alley. "The one you walked through is real, and this one is real too. The two alleys overlap, like two film negatives superimposed. Tonight, you stepped on the overlapping line."

"Why me?"

I did not answer.

In the mirror of Zhenyuan, grayish-white vapor slowly circulates in the depths of the alley, like an invisible river.

The river doesn't flow from one end of the alley to the other—it pours into the ruins on both sides of the alley. The same grayish-white color seeps out from the cracks in the broken bricks, the broken steel bars, and the black holes left by the removed window frames of those half-demolished old buildings.

These ruins are breathing.

It slowly squeezed out the worldly atmosphere left by the people who had lived there over the decades, from the cracks in the bricks and corners of the walls, and into this alley.

Old Liu didn't stumble upon a ghost wall tonight; he stepped into the "memories" of this ruin.

How many people lived in this area before it was demolished?

Old Liu thought for a moment. "There are at least a hundred households. It's the dormitory area of ​​the old textile factory. After the factory closed down, the houses were allocated to the employees, who lived there for thirty or forty years. The year before last, when the area was demolished, everyone moved away, and half of the houses were demolished. The developer ran away without money, so it's just been left like that."

About a hundred households, for thirty or forty years.

Those people cooked, raised children, argued, got sick, celebrated the New Year, and had funerals in this house. Every single event left a very faint trace on the walls, the floor, and the windowsills.

The people moved away, but the traces remained. They had accumulated over decades, and the noise of the demolition loosened them from the cracks in the bricks.

The moon is so bright tonight that it seems to have evaporated the lingering dust from the ruins and poured it into this alley.

When Old Liu stepped in, he wasn't stepping on brick floor, but on "memories" accumulated over decades by a hundred or so households.

"How do we get out?" he asked.

I took the ink line out of my bag.

The ink thread on the reel was wound tightly, the ink soaking through the cotton thread, revealing a very deep, very dark indigo beneath the black. I

He pulled out a piece of thread, dipped the end in cinnabar and black dog blood, and flicked it across the ground at the entrance of the alley.

The ink line fell onto the cement floor with a hiss, like a red-hot iron wire being quenched in water. Grayish-white vapor parted from both sides of the ink line, as if an invisible knife had sliced ​​it open from the middle.

"In the realm of ink lines, life and death are intertwined. The memories of these ruins are not malevolent, nor are they evil; they are 'constancy.' Ink lines cannot stop constancy, but they can draw a path for it. Follow the direction of the ink lines and do not look back."

I handed the ink line to Lao Liu.

He took it, and the reel trembled slightly in his palm.

It wasn't a shaky hand—it was that the "boundary" within the ink line core, after sensing the surrounding worldly energy, awakened on its own.

When the world awakens, it will draw a path for those who hold the line.

Old Liu, clutching the ink line, walked into the alley.

Grayish-white vapor surged in from both sides, clinging to the edges of the ink lines, like a river confined by a embankment, only able to flow in the direction of the embankment.

He walked forward step by step, the orange streetlights casting long shadows on the concrete ground behind him, which were gradually obscured by the grayish-white mist.

When he reached the middle of the alley, he paused. It wasn't that he wanted to stop—something floated out from the cracks in the bricks of the nearby ruins, brushing against his shoulder, like a hand that had been idle for many years, trying to grab him.

"Don't look back," I said.

His back stiffened for a moment, then he continued walking forward.

The ink line was in his palm, the reel slowly turning, the ink thread slipping inch by inch through his fingers, stretching into an extremely thin line in the moonlight, somewhere between black and blue.

The "boundary" within the core of the thread flows slowly, pushing the grayish-white worldly atmosphere to both sides, creating a path that can only accommodate one person at a time.

Old Liu walked to the end of the alley. Under the orange streetlight, he turned around and looked at me.

The moonlight turned his face from pale to white, and the seven copper coins in his pocket peeked out from between his fingers, the hemp rope swaying slightly in the wind.

"I've made it out," he said.

The ink line stretched out in an extremely long arc behind him, from the entrance of the alley to the end.

The gray-white atmosphere on both sides of the boundary line is like two rivers bound by embankments, flowing slowly and undisturbed by each other.

"The world's energy will subside after the sun rises tomorrow." I put Zhenyuan back into my bag. "But before that, the ink thread can't be put away. If it's put away too early, the world's energy won't have fully subsided and will follow you."

Old Liu looked down at the ink line in his palm.

A small spool of ink thread was still wound on the reel, the end of which dangled between his fingers, swaying slightly in the moonlight. He tucked the inkwell into his pocket, next to the seven copper coins.

"I heard you say 'remember' when I left just now." His voice was very soft. "Not with my ears. I heard it here." He pointed to his forehead.

"What did you hear?"

"Someone is cooking. The wok sizzles against the spatula. Someone is soothing a child, humming a tune I recognize, but I can't remember which song it is. And—" He paused, "someone is crying. Not howling, but the kind of sobbing that's trapped in their throat. They've been crying for a long time, until they're too weak to continue, and then it turns into quiet sobs."

About a hundred households, for thirty or forty years.

They moved away, but the sizzling sounds of cooking, the lullabies, and the suppressed sobs still lingered in the cracks and corners of the walls. Tonight, the moon steamed them out, poured them into the alley, and Old Liu stepped on them.

He didn't encounter a ghost; he stepped into the lives of others.

"When the ink line is drawn back, these sounds sink away along with the world's atmosphere." I pushed my bicycle over from the telephone pole; the chain creaked because it was out of lubrication. "They didn't want you to stay; it's just that no one listened anymore. You heard them tonight, and now they're gone."

Old Liu glanced back at the alley.

The orange streetlights illuminated the alleyway entrance like a warm trumpet, and the ink line stretched from the trumpet all the way to the ground, with the "boundary" inside the line still flowing slowly.

The grayish-white worldly atmosphere slowly sank down on both sides of the line, like the tide receding from the beach, little by little, unhurriedly.

"I won't take this road at night anymore." He straddled the back of his bicycle, the copper coins and inkstone in his pocket clinking together.

I got on the bike.

The moon moved from the west side of the old locust tree to the center of the sky, and the light changed from a golden yellow to a silvery white, shining on the road we came from. The road surface no longer looked like ashes, but like a thin layer of freshly fallen frost.