4.
“Divine master, you really are a divine master! My wife got pregnant the month after she started wearing your talisman.” Mr. Vương grabbed my hand and shook it over and over.
His wife was there too. I looked toward her belly. I couldn’t see very clearly, but there was a dark shadow over the woman’s uterus.
This definitely wasn’t over.
I looked at the talisman on Mr. Vương’s chest. It had no spiritual power left and could no longer stop the dark mark from spreading.
My brows stayed tightly knitted. Mr. Vương probably had no idea; he kept introducing another man to me, and I didn’t hear a word.
It wasn’t until the other man stood up to offer me a drink that I came to my senses.
“Hold on. Your matter can wait. I have to deal with Mr. Vương’s first.”
The man was a little displeased at being brushed off, but he didn’t say anything rude. None of these rich people dared offend someone in my line of work.
“Young master, is there something else you need?”
I took out ten talismans and handed them to Mr. Vương. “The one around your neck doesn’t work anymore. Throw it away.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you.” Mr. Vương stood up and accepted them with both hands.
“I’ll put one on as soon as I get home. Don’t worry, I’ll transfer the money to you tonight.”
I cursed inwardly. He really looked down on me, thinking I’d come here to swindle him.
“They’re not for you. They’re for your wife. Stick one on her lower abdomen and replace it each month. Don’t let the talismans get wet.”
“What are these?”
Seeing Mr. Vương’s innocent expression, I got a little annoyed too. “What are they? What the hell do you think? You know perfectly well. I told you, this isn’t over.”
I pointed to the dark mark on Mr. Vương’s chest, now much thicker than before. “You can’t rely on my talismans forever, understand? If we don’t resolve this, aren’t you worried it’ll affect your wife and child?”
My words hit a sore spot, but Mr. Vương didn’t try to dodge the issue. “Young master, I understand. Let’s deal with Mr. Ngô’s problem first. I’ll come ask you for help with mine in a few days.”
“What’s your problem?” I turned to Mr. Ngô.
He hadn’t expected me to be so direct. He froze for a moment, then said, “Grandmaster, can you catch ghosts?”
Mr. Vương and I went to Mr. Ngô’s house together.
According to Mr. Ngô, he’d once returned from a business trip to find a large smear of blood in the bathroom. It scared him half to death. That night, in the middle of the night, he heard a man crying in the house. Both he and the housekeeper had heard it. Ever since, the crying had come every few days.
He’d invited several feng shui masters over, but none of them could solve the problem.
With no other options, he’d thought about selling the house.
I looked around. Mr. Ngô’s house was spotless, clean and tidy, with nothing out of place. There was nothing unusual.
A Mao Shan priest’s eyes are sharp, honed beneath the first light of dawn and cleansed with water that has never touched the ground at dusk. If anything unclean were here, I definitely wouldn’t have missed it.
But there really was nothing in Mr. Ngô’s house.
“Show me the bathroom.”
The bathroom was spotless too, and I didn’t hear any crying.
Seeing my confusion, Mr. Ngô explained, “It doesn’t happen every day, and there’s no set time.”
“Do you have a ladder?”
“Uh… yes.”
I used a damp towel to cover half the bathroom vent, then switched on the exhaust fan. “Does the sound you hear go something like this?”
“Y-yeah… kind of like that…”
“Then that’s it.”
“But what about the blood in the bathroom?”
“Call the police.” I patted Mr. Ngô on the shoulder.
“What?”
“Have faith in science!”
5.
My master told me to come down the mountain to save all living beings—to help people and do good. So even though I could tell Mr. Vương wasn’t a decent man, I’d still help him.
Now Mr. Ngô was in trouble. Even if I couldn’t save him, I had to try.
Mr. Ngô clearly didn’t understand what I meant. He turned to Mr. Vương and asked, “Wait, you said this guy was reliable?”
He said it right in front of me. He really must have been angry.
“Of course he’s reliable. How could he not be…?”
I cut in. “Are you two going to call the police or not? If not, I’ll do it.”
When the police arrived, Mr. Vương looked bewildered, Mr. Ngô looked miserable, and I was supremely confident.
“Từ Phong?”
Từ Phong was my name before I became a priest.
I turned around. It was an old high school classmate. “Lâm Nam?”
I was about to hug him, but he pushed me away. Thinking about it, that wouldn’t have been very appropriate anyway, since he was working a case.
“What happened? Did you call the police?”
“Yeah. There’s definitely something wrong at his house. Take a look—you’ll see it’s a big case.”
Lâm Nam glanced at Mr. Ngô. “What did you find?”
“There’s blood in his bathroom.”
Lâm Nam looked at me as if I were an idiot. “There’s blood in someone’s bathroom and you call the police? Do you know what happens when you file a false report?”
“Just check it out. You’ll understand when you’re done.”
“What’s gotten into you? We haven’t seen each other in years, and now you’re acting all cute.”
Lâm Nam was still every bit the professional, which pleased me.
After taking statements and looking around, it turned out there really was a problem.
But it wasn’t Mr. Ngô. It was his housekeeper. He took my number, said we should meet again and catch up, then quickly escorted everyone to the police station.
The next day, Lâm Nam invited me out for grilled skewers.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You invited me to eat, so why show up after you’re done? It’s been ages. Let’s have a drink.”
“I don’t drink.”
“How can a grown man not drink?”
Lâm Nam took a big bite of lamb. “All right, if you won’t drink, you won’t drink. I won’t force you. So what do you do now? Are you busy?”
“I’m a Daoist priest. Busy catching ghosts.”
The lamb almost choked Lâm Nam to death.
“You’re messing with me, right?”
“Who’s messing with you? I’m a bona fide Mao Shan priest.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier? Let’s go somewhere else.”
Lâm Nam tugged at me. My face was as gloomy as if my mother had just died, but the guy still couldn’t resist teasing me. “You Daoists don’t eat meat, right?”
“No.”
“Then why do you keep cursing ‘damn it, damn it’?”
“Daoist priests can swear. It’s monks who can’t.”
“So what do you usually do?”
“We usually explain Taylor series to people who talk too much.”
“Explain what?”
Lâm Nam and I saidWe talked for quite a while. He was my closest friend back in high school. Even though I’d become a Daoist priest and lived a life devoted to forgetting worldly affairs, I was still happy to see him again.
He gave me a brief account of the case, without going into much detail—saying too much would violate regulations.
The housekeeper specialized in seducing successful men, then taking photos and videos while they were in bed together. The next step was blackmail.
She also had an accomplice.
That day, while Mr. Ngô was out, her accomplice came over to discuss their plan, and the two of them had a falling-out. She only wanted to blackmail him without making a big deal out of it, but the guy wanted to kill and rob.
Their argument turned physical. He slashed the housekeeper’s arm with a knife, then ran away.
The housekeeper bandaged her wound herself. Before she could wipe the blood off the floor, Mr. Ngô came home. After that, everything happened just as he’d told me.
Lâm Nam asked me, “How could you tell there’d been a crime in this house just by looking at the bloodstain?”
I smiled. “You don’t get it. Ninety-nine percent of the ‘supernatural’ incidents that turn out to be murder cases are just ordinary crimes disguised as something paranormal.”
“Your Daoist training has made you pretty enlightened.”
“Of course. We have to believe in science.”
“Then can you use your fortune-telling to figure out where the suspect’s hiding?”
I counted on my fingers. “West.”
Lâm Nam looked surprised. “How’d you calculate that?”
“Look at our room number.”
“Room 345? What about it?”
“Pythagorean theorem. a² + b² = c².”
“Damn it, are you even a reliable Daoist priest?”
6.
The housekeeper’s accomplice had been placed on the wanted list, so what happened next was no longer my concern.
Mr. Ngô was a little embarrassed. His wife had found out about his affair with the housekeeper, and it had thrown their household into chaos. But he hadn’t forgotten to ask Mr. Vương to send me two hundred thousand.
At least he still had a conscience. If I hadn’t called the police that day, he might have lost several million at best, or his whole family could have been killed at worst. You could say I’d saved his life.
His situation was easy to deal with. The hard part was Mr. Vương’s—I still didn’t have the slightest clue what was going on with him.
Mr. Vương was definitely hiding something from me, but we hadn’t known each other long. Getting a wily old businessman like him to tell me the truth was too much to hope for.
The day Mr. Vương came to see me, Linh Nhi was home too.
She’d probably gotten used to living in the mountains. She said she was afraid of meeting strangers, so I told her to sit in the bedroom while I talked with Mr. Vương in the living room.
That black thread had grown several shades darker. In less than half a year, that fat man was certain to die.
“Has your wife put up the talisman?”
“She has, she has… but…” Seeing Mr. Vương hesitate made me furious.
“If you have something to say, say it. If not, get out.”
Mr. Vương didn’t get angry. “Master, it’s really hard to talk about. Promise me you won’t tell anyone after you hear it.”
“I promise.”
After a moment of silence, Mr. Vương began his story.
Mr. Vương hadn’t always been as well-off as he was now. When he first started out, he was just a penniless kid.
He’d built his business step by step, starting from absolutely nothing.
It was something to celebrate when a poor kid made it big. No one cared what tricks or schemes you’d used to succeed.
That was just how society worked now. If he hadn’t done it that way, he wouldn’t have had a chance. As long as he didn’t go too far, it was fine.