A Prophet - Chapter 22 (Part 1)

Chapter 1 - Grandpa's Unveiling of the Mystery of Nayin Divination

Once you enter the rivers and lakes, worries are as vast as the sea; the rise and fall of all affinities bury one's grace and glory.

The rice of the rivers and lakes is not easy to eat; the water of the rivers and lakes is not easy to wade. Out of the three hundred and sixty trades, every trade has its own hardships, and the fortunes of fortune-tellers are even more like the extremes of ice and fire. Those who mix well roll in fame and fortune, reaping both wealth and beauty; those who do not mix well are left with a nose full of snot and a mouthful of thin porridge, dragging a small wooden stool to the roadside in the bitter wind, while never forgetting to spread out their Yin-Yang Eight Trigrams diagram to demonstrate to the world that they are practically immortals.

Ever since Grandpa became a fortune-teller at the age of fifteen, with a single long gown, a white paper fan, and an iron abacus, a flick of the abacus before any client and a dance of his fingers would instantly reveal how much someone's fate weighed, whether it was fortune or misfortune. He was the sole person throughout the Jianghuai region who used an iron abacus for divination, and the common people revered him as a god.

Yet, when Taishang Laojun dwelt in the mortal realm, he once said: "Misfortune is what fortune leans upon, and fortune is what misfortune hides within." Fortune and misfortune are like the entwined and embracing Yin and Yang fish in the Taiji; the greater the fortune, the greater the misfortune. Born from the same womb, they wax and wane. Over the past thirty years, Grandpa had fought demons, spirits, and grand deities. Through all the dramatic ups and downs, the brushes with life and death, he had worn himself out in both body and mind, his temples turning grey. He was old, and he was tired, longing to stop and rest for a while.

Yet the ruthless hand of fate pushed him once more onto the crest of the storm. Perhaps figures of a warlike, dominant nature are born carrying a baleful aura, one that cannot be severed throughout their entire lives and lingers beside them forever.

The Military Statistics Bureau suddenly issued an order to arrest Grandpa! This time, he could not run.

That day, Grandpa was deep in thought by himself. Second Baotou rushed into the headquarters in a flurry.

"Grandpa, this is bad! Someone has broken in!"

Grandpa glanced at him, remaining completely unperturbed.

"Someone has broken in!" Second Baotou added once more.

"Since they've come, receive them," Grandpa said with a cold gaze.

"They have guns! They aren't here to have their fortunes told."

Before his voice had even faded, a loud shout echoed from outside: "Is this the residence of the Iron-Plate Master?"

Grandpa strode out: "Indeed it is my humble home. What instructions do you honored officers have?"

"Trouble the master to take a trip with us."

"Where to?"

"You'll know when you get there!"

Hearing this, Grandpa instantly felt that something was amiss. After Dai Li crashed his plane into the mountain, Grandpa had mentally prepared himself for trouble, because he had once advised Dai Li to adopt a name with the Earth element in the Five Elements; no sooner had Dai Li adopted the name "Gao Chongyue" than he crashed into Mount Dai. Yet Grandpa also found it hard to believe that the Military Statistics Bureau could convict him based solely on this—humanity could not possibly be stupid enough to believe that a mere name could kill someone.

Yet Grandpa did not know how enormous the shockwaves of Dai Li's death were within the Military Statistics Bureau. The Bureau had grown from a secret investigation team of a few dozen people into an organization numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and Dai Li's contributions were monumental. Internal personnel affectionately referred to him as "Boss Dai," a title that clearly reflected a heavy master-servant dynamic. Moreover, Boss Dai was an extremely superstitious man; he was the sole person within the secret service systems across the entire world to introduce fortune-telling and physiognomy into the training curriculum for secret agents. Inspired by him, secret agents great and small had all learned a trick or two, believing they held the cosmos in their palms and could manipulate Yin and Yang. To the extent that during interrogations, rather than reading case files, they directly observed the prisoners' facial features, using the laws of the Five Elements to determine a person's loyalty or treachery.

In the eyes of the agents, Dai Li was not merely the embodiment of the Military Statistics Bureau; he was a living deity.

Now, this deity was dead, and he had died right after adopting the name "Gao Chongyue." This could not help but set the agents' imaginations running wild—Boss Dai's birth characters lacked Water, and his entire life he had given himself names containing the Water radical. Exactly what kind of monstrous entity had bewitched him into breaking his usual pattern and adopting a name whose Five Elements directly conflicted, causing him to perish in the rivers and lakes?

Outside the Bureau, senior Kuomintang figures were also pondering in secret. They did not believe Dai Li had died in a simple aviation accident; rather, they believed he was murdered. As for who murdered him, the waters ran too deep to easily say.

Meanwhile, the agents responsible for the investigation and interviews regarding the Dai Li case had also returned. They brought back a piece of intelligence: a sheep-herding old peasant had witnessed that Boss Dai's plane was already billowing thick smoke before it hit the mountain. This proved the plane had caught fire prior to the crash; either there was a mechanical failure in the cabin, or someone had planted a bomb.

amidst the uproar, only one person remained completely calm. He carefully perused the thick case files on his desk, combing through every single detail of Dai Li's final itinerary: In February, Boss Dai secretly arrived in Shanghai to meet the number one fortune-master of the Jianghuai region, the Iron-Plate Master; the Master was known in the rivers and lakes as "Grandpa," a disciple of the Tiebuzi Daoist sect, who had long-standing associations with the fierce bandit Wang Yazhi...

"Heh. Things just got easier." This person smiled faintly and shouted toward the door, "Someone come here!"

An agent ran in.

"Send a telegram in the name of the Bureau's Third Department, notifying Feng Siyuan to arrest the Iron-Plate Master of Jianghuai," this person ordered.

"Yes!"

"Wait a moment. Take some reliable men of your own and go ahead to stake out the place first."

"Director, what is the meaning of this?" the junior agent asked, puzzled.

"How do I know whether this Feng Siyuan, who constantly runs around with spirit-medium women, has already defected? In case he deliberately leaks the information and stages a fake empty raid..."

"Brilliant, Director!"

This department director was none other than Liu Hanshan, a core figure of the Military Statistics Bureau's Third Department. Liu Hanshan, a native of Pingyang, Zhejiang, was ruthless and full of crafty schemes. In terms of kidnapping, assassination, and sowing chaos, none surpassed him, and he enjoyed the deep favor of the Bureau's upper echelons. In his early years, he had roamed the Green Gang before eventually throwing in his lot with Dai Li.

Very quickly, Feng Siyuan—who was still lingering in a tender embrace with Jiang Feiyan—received the telegram sent by the Bureau. After all, Feng Siyuan was a man who had followed Dai Li for many years, and a multi-faceted, ever-changing career as a secret agent had long since forged his habit of thinking thrice before acting in any situation.

"No, this isn't right... something is wrong..."

"What's wrong?" Jiang Feiyan asked.

"The 'Secret Societies' line was operated by me assisting Boss Dai. In the past, any cases involving secret societies were handled exclusively by me. Liu Hanshan wanted to muscle in, but Boss Dai never allowed him to touch it. Yet now that Boss Dai is dead, the entire Bureau knows that Liu Hanshan and I are at odds. Liu Hanshan could entirely have moved to make the arrest himself, but instead he took a roundabout route... It's bad! This is bad!"

"You mean he knows our background?"

"Not confirmed yet. But at the very least, he suspects us!"

"Then what should we do?"

Feng Siyuan did not speak. He paced back and forth, clutching the telegram, then suddenly raised his head and said, "We must arrest Grandpa."

"No way!" Jiang Feiyan shouted.

"Sister Yan! Think about it carefully. If we don't arrest Grandpa, we will walk right into Liu Hanshan's trap. When that time comes, the secrets of the 'River-Merchant Faction' will likely be brought out into the open for all to see. Forget about just Grandpa—your hundreds of brothers will likely all suffer! The only way is to arrest Grandpa first, and then discuss a plan of expediency!"

Jiang Feiyan pondered for a moment, then nodded helplessly.

Before long, a five-hundred-man special detachment surrounded "Muzi Lian." Seeing this array, Grandpa had no choice but to surrender docilely.

On the road escorting him westward, Feng Siyuan appeared, secretly revealing the truth of the situation. Hearing this, a wave of melancholy washed over Grandpa's heart. As a living creature, humans—just like any other animal—possess a premonition before death; that indescribable feeling stirs the mind into profound restlessness, much like well water overflowing, mules and horses turning agitated, and chickens and dogs refusing to enter their pens before an earthquake.

Grandpa had confidence in his own premonition. Over the years, relying on this intuition, he had managed to evade several major disasters. But this time he felt different—an extraordinary terror, a faint, looming aura of killing closing in from ahead, piercing through the crown of his head and striking straight at his vital destiny point.

Grandpa's premonition was correct; Liu Hanshan truly wanted Grandpa's head.

The "German Gestapo of China" was dead, and public opinion across the nation was in an uproar. Some pointed their fingers at Chiang Kai-shek, others at the Communist Party. Only the junior agents of the Military Statistics Bureau babbled and speculated about destiny and birth characters, while the upper echelons remained chillingly calm. How to defuse this political crisis before the impending National-Communist civil war—this was the moment testing the intelligence of the Military Statistics Bureau.

What an immensely clever person Liu Hanshan was. No one wanted to take on the investigation of Dai Li's death because everyone knew that if this case wasn't handled properly, heads would roll. After all, whether the investigation exposed the deed as the work of their own faction or the Communist army, the Kuomintang would be the loser. Besides, once an investigation unearthed a trail leading all the way to the top, wouldn't one implicate oneself in the bargain? Yet Liu Hanshan had volunteered himself. This precisely demonstrated his cunning and slipperiness; capable people often transform a crisis into an opportunity, while incompetent people turn good things into disasters.

Liu Hanshan viewed this thorny event as a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity. With Dai Li dead, a massive reshuffling was underway within the Bureau. If he could cleanly digest and resolve this affair, his weight in the eyes of the Kuomintang bigwigs would ascend to an even higher level.

Liu Hanshan knew full well that the Dai Li case had to be investigated, yet it must not be investigated too deeply. He had already cooked up his own clever calculation—the conspiracy theory.

Such cases could only be handled with cold detachment. The best way to give the public an account was to find a scapegoat, blow it up into a massive conspiracy, and paint the Military Statistics Bureau side as an innocent victim to win sympathy from society and various democratic parties.

Undoubtedly, Grandpa was the most suitable scapegoat. This man played with superstition, dabbled in the underworld, and had frequent dealings with the fierce bandit Wang Yazhi. The "Axe Gang" led by Wang Yazhi had repeatedly assassinated high-ranking Kuomintang figures. This incident could be completely hyped up as a plot where, on the eve of peaceful nation-building, a rivers-and-lakes charlatan allied with the remnants of the Axe Gang to assassinate the leader of the Military Statistics Bureau.

With this, the focus would shift. The ordinary populace was nothing more than a crowd that gathered to watch a ruckus; once the excitement died down, they would disperse. Meanwhile, the various democratic parties—currently wavering between the Kuomintang and the Communist parties—could use this to clearly see what kind of entity the Axe Gang, once approved and praised by the Communist Party, truly was. On the eve of the civil war, this would not make for a bad public opinion offensive. As for how Boss Dai actually died, perhaps only the King of Hell knew the truth. Previously, the conflict between Dai Li and the Generalissimo had come out into the open; old Chiang was dead-set on dissolving the Military Statistics Bureau, and Dai Li was fighting like a cornered beast... It was entirely possible that once the hare was dead, the hound would be boiled, and once the birds were gone, the good bow would be put away.

Liu Hanshan's scheming was so meticulous that it baffled gods and ghosts alike. This easily explained why, after Dai Li's death, Feng Siyuan fell out of favor, while Liu Hanshan—as a direct lineage subordinate of Dai Li—was able to securely sit in the position of Deputy Director of the Bureau's Third Department.

"Grandpa, how do you... plan to deal with this?" Feng Siyuan asked worriedly.

Grandpa's brows furrowed tightly: "Misfortune outweighs fortune."

"Then..."

Grandpa suddenly raised his head: "General, I am entrusting you with a matter."

"Please speak, Grandpa."

"If I meet with misfortune this time, I ask you to immediately notify my brothers at 'Muzi Lian' to scatter. The day of the 'River-Merchant Faction's' final demise is not far off... If you have no lingering attachment to the fame and fortune of the Military Statistics Bureau, you can take Sister Yan and fly far away!"

Hearing Grandpa's final words, a pang of sorrow pierced Feng Siyuan, and he did not know how to respond. Grandpa had never broken the surface of this triangular romance, but this time, Grandpa could no longer hold back.

"Grandpa, please don't be overly pessimistic."

"It's better to prepare for the worst," Grandpa said, lowering his head.

After two days of bumpy travel, Feng Siyuan finally handed Grandpa over to Liu Hanshan.

Liu Hanshan wore a face full of smiles: "Please sit, Master."

Wearing heavy handcuffs, Grandpa leaned forward and took a seat.

Liu Hanshan scrutinized Grandpa from head to toe, then suddenly asked: "Does the Master know how to tell fortunes?"

"I understand a little," Grandpa said.

"Have you ever calculated whether today will bring good fortune or disaster?"

This scene reminded Grandpa of the historical Q-and-A between Zhu Yuanzhang and Liu Bowen. Before executing Liu Bowen, Zhu Yuanzhang had also asked him: "Can my beloved subject divine whether today brings fortune or misfortune?" No matter how Liu Bowen answered, he could not escape death.

As Grandpa was pondering how to respond, Liu Hanshan added another sentence: "If today brings great disaster for the Master, how should it be averted?"

These consecutive questions caused Grandpa to lose all face. Striking at a person's life by destroying their spirit—this directly nauseated Grandpa down to his very bones. This was clearly mocking Grandpa: Aren't you a fortune-teller? Aren't you able to divine the past and future? You can't even grasp your own life and death, so what are you talking about holding the cosmos in your palm and transforming all beings?

At that moment, Grandpa was completely defeated, defeated by a man inferior to Dai Li yet far more formidable than him. A warlike hegemon either chops down others or is chopped down by others. When Grandpa was dominating the storm and looking down upon all heroes, had he ever imagined today's awkward plight of "being the fish and the cutting board"?

"Director Liu, speak your mind directly." Grandpa no longer wanted to play along.

"Good! Why did you tamper with Bureau Director Dai's name?"

"Does Director Liu mean to say that a name can kill people?"

"The crucial point is that behind the name lies a heart that wants to kill!"

"Heh, heh, heh, heh." Grandpa laughed.

"What are you laughing at?" Liu Hanshan said coldly. "Are you saying you were wronged? We all know Director Dai's birth characters lacked Water, yet you advised him to adopt a name with the Earth element of the Five Elements! Do you hate Director Dai that much?"

"Where would such hatred come from?"

"From the fierce bandit Wang Yazhi!"

"Ha, ha, ha, ha." Grandpa burst into a wild laugh. "Director Liu, you are wrong."

"Where am I wrong?"

"Wrong in that you don't understand the science of destiny at all, yet you force far-fetched interpretations to fabricate a crime!"

"In that case... I am all ears." Liu Hanshan wore a look of utter disdain.

Grandpa suddenly lose his smile, locked his eyes onto Liu Hanshan, and asked: "How did General Dai die?"

"His plane crashed into a mountain," Liu Hanshan replied.

"Why did it crash into the mountain?"

"The rain was heavy."

"Well said! Bureau Director Dai's plane crashing into the mountain seemed like the mountain peak's fault, but upon closer inspection, it was definitely not so. Director Dai's plane encountered heavy rain that day, leading to very poor visibility, and the raging wind and rain made the plane lose its balance, which is why it hit Mount Dai. In other words, the torrential rain was the direct cause of Director Dai's demise. If Director Dai's destiny truly lacked Water, then with the howling wind and rain that day, the immense volume of water would have precisely made up for the deficiency of Water in his destiny. Director Dai should have enjoyed great fortune and auspiciousness!"

With Grandpa's series of specious sophistry, Liu Hanshan felt there was some logic to it.

Yet this was not enough to dispel Liu Hanshan's urge to kill Grandpa. The affairs of the world are simply a game of chess, and everyone might be a chess piece. When others need you to sacrifice yourself, regardless of whether you deserve to die, you cannot escape death. For that is how the chess game works—sacrificing a single piece in exchange for the entire board coming alive is the original intention of the chess player. At this moment, your kindness or your wickedness is entirely irrelevant. Who told you to step onto this chess board?

"What kind of destiny does the Master have?" Liu Hanshan asked another question.

Grandpa knew deeply that every single word from Liu Hanshan harbored malicious intent; the slightest carelessness would cause him to fall into a trap. What kind of destiny a person had was something fortune-tellers often told clients, such as "You have a Water destiny, Great Sea Water" or "You have a Wood destiny, Pomegranate Wood."

A person's destiny was not calculated by a fortune-teller; rather, it was prescribed by the ancients. This system of destiny-arguing was said to originate from Guiguzi of the Warring States period. He incorporated the "Sexagenary Cycle" into thirty types of destinies, assigning one destiny every two years, with a sixty-year cycle. For example, the year 1930 was the "Gengwu Year," and this stem-branch pair "Gengwu" corresponded to "Roadside Earth." Thus, everyone born in that year was of "Roadside Earth destiny," and sixty years later, when the stem-branch cycle repeated, those born then would have the same destiny.

Therefore, as long as a person knew which year they were born in, they could easily look up what kind of destiny they had, without needing a fortune-teller to put on airs and mutter nonsense.

Grandpa pondered for a moment and said, "I don't believe in this."

Liu Hanshan was startled: "A fortune-teller doesn't believe in destiny?"

"I advise Director Liu not to believe in it either."

"Why?"

"Think about it carefully, Director. The 'Sexagenary Cycle' has a total of only thirty types of destinies, while the people in the world number in the tens of millions. Distributing these people into thirty types of destinies means behind every single destiny stand tens of millions of people. Could it be that all their fates are identical? This method was already discarded and abandoned by the sages back in the Ming dynasty!"

Only then did Liu Hanshan realize that Grandpa indeed possessed genuine capability.

"Then, according to the Master's theory, which fortune-telling method in today's world is the most miraculous?" Liu Hanshan asked yet again.

Grandpa carefully scrutinized Liu Hanshan, then said: "Physiognomy!"

"Why?"

"Physiognomy directly observes a person's appearance. Fortune and misfortune, poverty and prosperity, longevity and premature death are all written on the face. This is the most direct collection of human bodily information, requiring no chart arrangement and relying on no stem-branch pairs. Take Director Liu, for instance: full heavenly court, upright and broad center, the Five Sacred Mountains and Four Rivers without damage or flaw. Any physiognomist seeing such a facial structure would know this is a dragon or phoenix among men, destined to reach the highest peaks of officialdom!"

"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" Liu Hanshan laughed wildly until tears streamed from his eyes. "Master, you are afraid."

Indeed, Grandpa was afraid. He did not want to die—at least not at that moment—so he shamelessly threw out some flattery, deliberately shifting the topic to physiognomy and praising Liu Hanshan a few times. In truth, Grandpa knew best in his heart: physiognomy was unreliable too. A person's facial features change. As Buddhism says, "Appearance is born from the mind." The facial features before the age of thirty are given by one's parents, while those after thirty are cultivated by oneself. The goodness or wickedness of one's inner mind can determine whether a person grows more attractive or uglier.

Unexpectedly, Liu Hanshan refused to fall into the trap at all, instead piercing straight to Grandpa's heart. A single sentence of "You are afraid" shamed Grandpa so deeply that he had no place to hide his face.

"Little Liu, let's stop playing games. Do it." Grandpa knew his death date had arrived; rather than wasting breath in vain, it was better to head down to the Yellow Springs early.

"What did you call me?" Mao Renfeng asked, startled.

"Little Liu. Isn't the Director the third child at home?"

"Good." Liu Hanshan nodded and said, "Now this is a grandmaster of an era! Someone come! Send the Master on his way!"

Several agents rushed in.

Jingle jingle jingle... The telephone on the desk suddenly rang.

"Who is it?" Liu Hanshan grabbed the phone.

The person on the other end said only a single sentence, and Liu Hanshan instantly softened, his face blooming into a smile: "Oh, it's Commander Bai... Oh, no, no, Minister Bai."

It was a call from Bai Chongshi, the Gui clique warlord who had just been promoted to "Minister of National Defense."

"Understood, understood, understood... Don't worry, Minister, it will definitely be handled impartially... Understood, understood!"

After a stream of compliance, Liu Hanshan put down the phone. He shook his head helplessly, walked over to Grandpa, looked at him for a moment, and finally patted Grandpa on the shoulder, saying: "You have escaped a major disaster."

Grandpa turned his head: "Then there must be blessings afterward?"

"Don't ever fall into my hands again."

"May Director Liu enjoy boundless blessings as vast as the heavens!"

"Go on then, go on." Endless regret filled Liu Hanshan's words.

Grandpa lifted his head and strode out.

Outside, the bitter wind raged. Grandpa tightened his collar, feeling a profound sense of desolation. A surge of heat hit his eyes, and tears almost fell. No one had ever subjected him to such a blow and humiliation. A towering man, his life hanging by a thread, walking from life to death and back to life—what self-respect, what Daoist cultivation, what Yin-Yang Eight Trigrams were all wiped out entirely.

Upon returning to the headquarters, Grandpa wrote a heavy stroke in his diary: I did not die not because my fate was great, but because my time to die had not yet arrived.

Grandpa owed Jiang Feiyan another favor.

Women are precious. They are always labeled as frail, but every single peak moment of history proves that on the brink of collapse, a woman's wisdom and courage far exceed people's imaginations.

Any warlord or hegemon should thank the woman behind him: without Lady Sun, Liu Bei could not have escaped Jiangdong; without Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, Kangxi could not have brought down Oboi; without Jiang Feiyan, Grandpa could not have escaped the Military Statistics Bureau.

At the very moment when Grandpa was utterly helpless and Feng Siyuan was panicking, Jiang Feiyan maintained her calm. She rapidly combed through her various social connections, and from there sorted through the diverse figures Grandpa had contacted over the years, ultimately locking onto the Gui clique warlord Bai Chongshi.

Well-versed in the ways of officialdom, Jiang Feiyan knew the Gui clique and the Central clique had always been at odds. Furthermore, with the National-Communist civil war impending, the Chiang Kai-shek-centered Central faction was attempting to unite various forces, and appointing Bai Chongshi as "Minister of National Defense" was one manifestation of this. Back in the day, Grandpa had assisted Bai Chongshi in the bloody battle of Kunlun Pass, and Bai Chongshi held Grandpa in high regard. If she sought help from Bai Chongshi at this moment, perhaps Bai Chongshi would lend a hand, and Liu Hanshan—in order to maintain intra-party unity—would not dare to reject Bai Chongshi's face.

Clutching a try-it-and-see attitude, she used Feng Siyuan's name to get through on the telephone to Bai Chongshi. Under the guise of "a patriotic scholar embroiled in political disputes," she requested Bai Chongshi to preside over justice and restore peace and unity to the national academic and numerological circles.

Upon hearing that the grandmaster who had once fought alongside him in the war of resistance had been arrested, Bai Chongshi could not help but feel indignant. Isn't this slapping me in the face? The Iron-Plate Master was personally conferred the title of "Deputy Chief of Staff of the Kunlun Pass Defense Headquarters" by me. If he is a scoundrel, wouldn't that make me someone with eyes devoid of pupils?

Bai Chongshi immediately called Liu Hanshan to inquire about the details in depth. When he learned that the Military Statistics Bureau had no conclusive evidence linking Grandpa to the case of Dai Li's death, he used arguments such as "the nation is about to go to war, stabilizing the public's mind is paramount, and all matters must be thought through thrice" to clear Grandpa's name.

Grandpa managed to claw back his life.