The City God Temple

Since Tuoba Danqing had left, there was no point in Li Huowang lingering alone in the tavern.

He had learned a great deal today. He needed to go back and digest it all.

Just then, Hongzhong’s clapping rang out beside him. “Nice one, nice one! Truly worthy of one of the Big Three’s lot. That lie—truth mixed in with the false, false mixed in with the truth. Even if that old bastard tries to check up on it, he won’t find a single flaw.”

Li Huowang shot him a glare and opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment, a waiter with a white cloth draped over his shoulder walked in.

Seeing the waiter bow to him, Li Huowang held his tongue and stepped out the door. But just as he did, the waiter’s voice came from behind him.

“Honored guest, you barely touched most of the food today. Should I pack it up in a box for you to take home, like last time?”

Li Huowang’s expression turned ice-cold in an instant. “Pack it up? No! I don’t want it!”

The waiter watched him leave with a bewildered look on his face. “He took it last time… why not today?”

—

The next day, Li Huowang rode in a carriage along the wide avenue. The City God Temple of Yinling was, of course, impossible to miss.

He found it soon enough—a towering, magnificent structure at a crossroads.

Looking up from the carriage to take in the full view, he saw the temple grounds surrounded by green trees and clusters of grass, apricot-yellow monastery walls, and bluish-grey roof ridges. It was hard to believe that such an impressive temple was not some major religious monastery, but merely the City God Temple that every town possessed.

“Amitabha. Amitoufo.” The monk beside him pressed his palms together and bowed reverently toward the temple.

The whole temple was thick with the smoke of burning incense. An unbroken stream of Yinling’s residents came here to pay their respects.

Standing off to the side for a moment, Li Huowang noticed that the most frequent worshippers were actually the prostitutes from the Pagoda of Delicate Beauties—those women with dark-blue ceramic patterns on their faces.

These women were utterly devout. They pressed their palms together, raised them past their chests, their foreheads, their heads, then prostrated themselves flat on the ground. They did this every single day, to the point that many spots in the stone floor had been worn concave.

Li Huowang’s sharp hearing caught their whispered prayers.

“Grandpa City God, I beg you—send any man at all to redeem me and take me as his concubine…”

“Please, City God, have mercy on this poor girl… Let me be reborn as a man in my next life! Let me be a man!”

Li Huowang stood outside the temple and peered in from a distance. Three black-faced City God statues sat in the center of the hall, each holding a crescent-shaped tablet.

Towering, oppressive Ox-Head and Horse-Face figures stood on either side of them. Somehow, these City Gods didn’t look like the type who would grant such wishes.

Li Huowang flicked his whip against the horse’s rump, and the carriage rolled slowly toward the temple’s outer wall, where a few stalls had been set up. Fortune-tellers, script-diviners, and letter-writers for hire.

He soon spotted the Blind Chen he had met once before. The man was squatting there, telling a woman’s fortune.

“This fate of yours… not good—not good at all. As they say, a woman who offends the Officer of Harm will surely destroy her husband. A dry-land lotus cannot take root. Either she will eat from two households, or she will scrub three families’ pots.”

When Blind Chen finished his singsong recitation, he naturally earned a string of curses from the woman. He didn’t seem bothered, just sat there calmly waiting for her to finish.

Once the woman had left, he turned his milky-white eyes toward Li Huowang. “Don’t look at me like that, heh heh heh. I only read fates—I don’t explain them.”

Even though the man was blind, Li Huowang felt an unmistakable sense of being stared at.

“Heh heh heh, young man—if I’m not mistaken, you’re the benefactor who’s come to return my Eight Trigrams Mirror, aren’t you?”

Li Huowang was in a hurry and didn’t want to waste words. He pulled the mirror out of the cart and set it down on the stall.

A pair of wrinkled hands reached out and felt it. When they touched the mirror, Blind Chen’s old face broke into an ugly smile.

“Good, good. This is the one I lost. By the way, that Zuowandao who pretended to be my granddaughter—where is he?”

“He’s dead. I killed him.”

At this delightful news, Blind Chen burst into uncontrollable laughter. “Hahaha! Good! He deserved it! Bullying a blind man, pretending to be my granddaughter to cheat me! He had it coming!”

Watching this, Hongzhong let out a disdainful snort. “Pathetic loser!”

“Master Chen, about the agreement you made with Brother Tuoba—please honor it now.”

“Of course, of course. I wouldn’t dare play games with someone from the Supervisory Heavenly Office.” With that, he lowered his head, picked up a bamboo basket beside him, and began rummaging through it.

Soon, a dark-blue, thread-bound book was presented to Li Huowang with both hands.

“This is a cultivation method that our temple has never passed down to outsiders. A pity, though… ever since the founding master went mad for no reason, the mud statue toppled, and the people’s hearts scattered.”

Li Huowang opened it and flipped through the pages. The drawing of talismans, how to draw them and what incantations to chant, what they were used for, what kind of blood and what kind of turmeric paper to use—all of it was recorded clearly.

The functions were quite varied as well: warding off evil from the home, expelling ghosts, healing the sick, divination—it even covered the blessings for raising roof beams and settling into a new house.

It was comprehensive enough, and the only materials needed were his own blood and turmeric paper. The only question was how effective it actually would be.

But these talismans were strange. Unlike the ones from that Luo Sect boy, every single talisman had a very subtle, twisted human face hidden within its distorted script.

Just as Li Huowang was about to ask, Blind Chen spoke up. “Young man, a gentleman’s word is his bond. What I’ve given you will certainly work well, but there are also taboos.”

“First of all, no single talisman can be used more than three times in one day. Second, when you’re drawing a talisman, or when you’re using one—you cannot look at it.”

“And if I do look?” Li Huowang asked.

“Look?” Blind Chen let out a low, dark chuckle, fixing his completely white, milky eyes on Li Huowang.

“Then the talisman will come to life. It will set its sights on you. If you want to survive, you’ll have no choice but to do as I did—gouge out those eyes of yours.”

After weighing the pros and cons, Li Huowang’s expression didn’t change at all as he nodded. “That’s acceptable.”

With that, he slapped the horse’s rump with his whip, preparing to set off.

“Mm? That’s it?” Blind Chen was stunned. He clearly hadn’t expected such a reaction.

“Hey, don’t rush off. Since you avenged me, I owe you, and I need to repay the debt. I don’t like owing people things. Here—sit down, and let Blind Chen read your fortune for you.”

“No need!” Li Huowang instinctively reached up to touch the copper coin mask on his face.

But Blind Chen lunged forward, his hand shooting out to grab hold of Li Huowang’s shadow on the ground.

“Mmm… mmm…” He felt the shadow carefully, as if pondering something.

Li Huowang frowned, watching the old man’s bizarre behavior for a moment. When Blind Chen remained still and silent, he took the reins with a wary expression and turned to leave.

Just as he had gone a few paces, Blind Chen’s voice floated after him from behind.

“A single round moon, full then fading— a few cold stars surround the waning moon. A sand lantern hangs high before the gate— within the empty pouch, passing the years of autumn.”