Chapter Forty: The Fated Yin Maiden

The information Tang Renjie revealed today left me utterly shocked. Even now, I still don’t know what the story about the fool truly means, but there’s no denying that he’s completely piqued my curiosity.

“So what you’re saying is, a fortune-teller abducted the then-normal Xu Ailing, and after that, she went mad and was later taken in by Chen Shitou?” I asked Tang Renjie.

Tang Renjie smiled. “What do you think, Fatty?”

“Cut the nonsense and just tell us,” Fatty urged impatiently, unwilling to guess. But judging from the look on his face, I had a sense he’d come up with his own theory.

“At first, I thought the same as Yezi. I secretly investigated Chen Shitou and found him to be just an ordinary man. But then, I had someone secretly photograph him and, in one trip to Xinye, Nanyang, found Xu Ailing’s village. After confirming with the villagers and Xu Ailing’s family, it turned out that Chen Shitou was actually the fortune-teller who used to set up a stall in Xinye County—one reputed for his uncanny accuracy!” Tang Renjie explained.

“What?!” I exclaimed in astonishment. That honest, rustic man was actually a fortune-teller—and an incredibly accurate one at that?

Tang Renjie nodded. “Yes, in the village, Chen Shitou concealed his identity. He’s actually an adept practitioner of the occult—what you’d call an Onmyoji.”

“Bring me the birth details of that fool!” Fatty said to Tang Renjie.

Tang Renjie grinned. “As expected of you, Fatty. I knew I couldn’t keep anything from your discerning eyes.”

He had clearly come prepared. From his backpack, he produced a sheet of red paper and handed it to Fatty. After reading it, Fatty furrowed his brows and started calculating with his fingers. After a while, he tossed the red paper onto the table and muttered, “Damn, it really is as I thought.”

Tang Renjie looked at Fatty with a smile, while Fatty’s brow remained knit. Watching the two of them, I started to grow anxious. They both seemed to understand, but I had no idea what they were getting at. “What do you mean? What exactly are you talking about?”

“Chen Shitou didn’t go to Xinye, Nanyang, because he happened to meet the beautiful and skilled Xu Ailing and then abducted her out of sudden malice. In fact, his entire reason for fortune-telling in Xinye was to find Xu Ailing—or more specifically, to find a woman born in a yin year, month, day, and hour. He was accurate and his fees were dirt cheap, so everyone went to him for fortunes. Naturally, that meant revealing their birth details. When Xu Ailing, or perhaps someone on her behalf, came to see him, he identified her as the one he needed. That’s why, Fatty, I always say, these days young people give out their birth details to anyone they meet online who claims to read fortunes, not realizing how dangerous that is. Birth details are a person’s innate fate. If someone with ill intent gets hold of them, there’s no limit to the harm they can do,” Fatty lectured.

I waved him off. “Let’s not talk about young people and their birth details. What do you mean by ‘yin year, month, day, and hour’? Why did Chen Shitou need a woman like that?”

“In ancient times, the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches were important. The stems jia, bing, wu, geng, ren are yang; yi, ding, ji, xin, gui are yin. In modern terms, odd numbers are yang, even are yin. Then there are the twelve branches: zi, chou, yin, mao, chen, si, wu, wei, shen, you, xu, hai. The ten stems and twelve branches cycle together every sixty years, known as a ‘jiazi’—the ancient calendar. According to this, the fool’s birth chart is yin for all year, month, and day: a woman like that is called a ‘Heavenly Fate Yin Maiden.’ Women are already yin by nature, so such a woman is typically very beautiful—her chart nurtures her looks. But this ‘yin’ refers to fate, not personality—she isn’t necessarily sinister. Traditionally, such women rarely met good ends. Some Daoist sects believed they made ideal vessels for dual cultivation. Intercourse with such a woman was said to bring innumerable benefits to a man, so some evil priests would collect them to ‘gather yin and replenish yang.’ Powerful men who received dual cultivation manuals from these priests would seek such women as concubines, and the pleasures were said to be beyond compare. However, because their fate was so yin-heavy, these women were often doomed to short, tragic lives—not because Heaven envied their beauty, but because their vitality was drained away by the men around them,” Fatty explained with an almost scholarly air, as if he’d personally practiced dual cultivation.

“So Chen Shitou sought out Xu Ailing because he knew the dual cultivation method and wanted to bring her back for that?” Normally, I’d ask Fatty for the dual cultivation manual—it sounded too intriguing not to—but at that moment, my mind was elsewhere.

“It’s not impossible, but if it were really that simple, that would be the end of it. There were many things I couldn’t figure out before, but with this information, everything falls into place,” Fatty replied.

I stared at him, saying nothing, but my meaning was clear: If you’ve figured it out, then hurry up and tell us!

“Besides being ideal for dual cultivation, ‘Heavenly Fate Yin Maidens’ had another use: living sacrifice—to the gods. Not only were they beautiful, but some believed their fate was so unique they shouldn’t exist in this world. But in reality, living sacrifices to Heaven or the gods were rare. Most often, local spirits like river or mountain gods demanded them. When disasters struck, villagers would consult a Daoist priest, who’d divine that a living sacrifice was needed. The common folk were naïve; if real immortals killed people, that would violate the celestial laws. So the ones who demanded living sacrifices were mostly powerful monsters. Of these, the river gods demanded the most. As I mentioned before, by the Yellow River, there’s an old phrase—ask any old man and he’ll have heard it: ‘Yellow River Maiden.’ This was a living sacrifice—a ‘Heavenly Fate Yin Maiden’ offered to the river god. She had to be a young, beautiful virgin. The ritual involved purifying herself, then being wrapped in silk soaked in fragrant oil, and on the altar, she’d be pushed into the river, naked and draped in silk. That was the sacrifice. These things usually happened during great floods. The villagers, fearing the girl’s spirit might seek vengeance, would give her a reverent title—‘Yellow River Maiden’—and some places even built temples for her,” Fatty recounted calmly. He never explicitly said Chen Shitou wanted Xu Ailing to be the Yellow River Maiden, but the implication was clear.

I couldn’t quite describe how I felt—just a strange unease. I lit a cigarette, looked at Fatty, and asked, “So the fool was killed by Chen Shitou? He pushed her into the Luo River—not because his brother died and needed a wife, but because she was to be sacrificed to the river god? He took her back just for that?”

“That’s very likely. But what I still don’t get,” Fatty mused, “is how Chen Shitou had the nerve. If he was going to sacrifice her, why ‘cuckold’ the river god first? In most places, the Yellow River Maiden can’t even have a birthmark, but this guy took a perfect virgin, had her bear three children for himself and his brother, and still dared to offer her to the river god. And the river god actually accepted her—what a lack of dignity.”

“The river god—is that the being in the stone coffin? And was it because the fool was sacrificed that Uncle Zhuzi saw that scene when he was fishing for bodies?” I asked.

Fatty nodded. “Except for why the thing in the coffin was so undignified, it’s all pretty much as we’ve discussed. Clearly, Chen Shitou is no ordinary man!”

Of course, I thought. Anyone could see that Chen Shitou was anything but simple. I remembered that night from my childhood, when he held me as he cut open the fool’s belly. I felt a chill run down my spine.

I should have realized long ago: he must have been a ruthless man. Otherwise, who would dare, in the dead of night, to split open a woman’s corpse and extract a child from her womb?