On the way down the mountain, a group of tourists came toward them. Several young men and women shouldered coolers and carried bags stuffed with cola and beer. They appeared to be heading up for a picnic. None of them were very old—likely college students or recent graduates, still brimming with youthful vigor. The steep incline didn’t dampen their lively chatter and laughter.
Ye Chan fiddled with her phone amid the noise, glancing up with a tsk. “Youth really is something else.”
Long Li smiled. “Are you that old now?”
Ye Chan’s fingers flew across her screen as she let out a hey. Before she could reply, whistles pierced the air from behind. The group erupted in laughter. “Hey, beautiful ladies! Does that tree up top really grant love wishes?”
“I think I just spotted my lovebird!”
“Scram—that’s my bird.”
Ye Chan didn’t bother turning around. “I used to find people like that so annoying,” she said calmly, “but I’ve changed. After dealing with all that underworld nonsense, my mindset’s aged. Watching them now is like a grandma eyeing her grandkids.”
Under the bright sky, two worlds collided: order and chaos, mirroring the inside and outside of reality itself. They shared the same mountain path, yet passed like parallel lines briefly intersecting. To others, a mountain was just a mountain. To them? It was dragon veins!
Gu Xianwang glanced back thoughtfully. Her serious expression must have unnerved the youngsters; they took her cool stare as anger and hastily apologized, shoving one another as they scrambled uphill.
Long Li asked softly, “What’s wrong?”
Gu Xianwang shook her head. “I was just wondering—if all this scenery, the so-called ingot stones, is man-made, then before the villagers crafted this Star-Plucking Peak, what kept them alive?”
“Farming, hunting, fishing,” Ye Chan replied. “The classic mountain folk toolkit.” Right out of the Peach Blossom Spring.
Gu Xianwang continued, “If memory serves, Shaanxi started its Grain for Green policy in 1999. If this valley was ever farmed, that’s about fourteen years of reforestation—but the surrounding ridges have no trees under thirty years old. No cash crops, no real grazing potential. Supporting a whole village wouldn’t be easy.”
“But remember, everyone we asked gave the same story: Golden Hook Town settled here ages ago to escape wars, generations in hiding, so no one leaves for city jobs. If that’s true, what sustained the generations before the seventies—the ones missing from the village?”
Ye Chan got it. This was straight out of the historian’s playbook: economic base shapes everything. Ancient settlements? Start with geography. Golden Hook Town’s spot wasn’t village-friendly. “Did they migrate from another valley?”
“Sheep Bend Gully,” Gu Xianwang mused. “Could Golden Hook Town connect to Sheep Bend Gully somehow?”
Long Li blinked, puzzled. “Huh?”
“Oh! Right—the code we cracked before.”
Gu Xianwang explained, “Remember when I said I joined the Guizhou tour because of an email to the nursing home?”
“The day before yesterday, back in Suzhou, another email arrived with a weird floppy disk inside. It had three number codes. Ye Chan and I figured it was a fanqie code. Decoding gave us Sheep Bend Gully.”
“No hits in normal searches, but it shows up on maps in the mist mirage. And in the yin vortex, I ran into an ambush—one kid as bait. He talked normal, no disguise, claimed he was from Little Pear Blossom Village in Sheep Bend Gully. Makes you think: was that the old site of Golden Hook Town?”
The points piled up endlessly. Long Li listened through it all, then frowned. “Trouble at home?”
Her phone still wouldn’t power on after charging—sabotaged in the yin vortex, no doubt. She’d missed every message, clueless about Gu Xianwang’s Suzhou trip.
Gu Xianwang paused, startled, then said curtly, “Yeah, it’s fine. Nothing major.”
Nothing major? Long Li studied her face. They’d parted late that night; a two-day round trip meant no sleep, gone by dawn. That urgent—how could it be nothing?
Could it be…
Long Li gave her shoulder a deep look, her expression fading from profound intensity to calm composure in mere moments.
“Good as long as nothing’s wrong,” she said. “Ordinary folk can’t survive in a Yin Vortex. Sheep Bend Gully might just be an old name that fell out of use after being abandoned. It’s no surprise you couldn’t find anything. Locals are in the habit of sticking to the old terms, and that child you saw might truly be warning you off.”
“With the sky darkening, let’s head back, rest up a bit, and think it over later.”
~~~
It was said rain would come at night, but in truth, the clouds had begun piling up thick and heavy since the afternoon. The air pressure hung so low it made breathing a chore, while clammy, bone-chilling dampness burrowed relentlessly into the napes of their necks.
Ye Chan hurried back, hands jammed in her pockets and feet stomping against the chill. By the time they had made the round trip to Star-Plucking Peak, the village shops were opening their doors, the streets buzzing to life. There were plenty of genuine vacationers around after all—not the lawless Jianghu Rat-Walkers she’d imagined lurking everywhere.
If anything, true jianghu folk had probably grown scarce these days.
Lost in her wandering thoughts, Ye Chan suddenly saw someone burst from the alley beside Earth Immortal Residence. In the blink of an eye, he planted himself in front of Sister Long. Now that she got a good look, he was drenched in dew and snagged with leaves, one foot caked in mud. While they had been sightseeing, this guy had been out foraging in the wild.
Yang Baibai’s face was etched with gravity. “Dragon Spine Fire Line, crossing through scalding waters—this is a dead dragon. No, scratch that. This isn’t a dragon at all. Damn it, this place is hiding a Qilin Spitting Water Child-Mother Acupoint, isn’t it?”
“And not just any Child-Mother Acupoint—the child acupoint is a double,” he went on, eyes darting as his mind raced. “One true, one false. Its fate is disastrously ill-omened. So this is the Lian Zhen Star the Long Family pinpointed.”
He was thinking aloud as he spoke, his voice low but his expression so intensely serious that any uninformed passerby might mistake it for hostility. Sure enough, curious glances poured in from all sides, people assuming the group was quarreling right there at the shop entrance.
Gu Xianwang’s brows knitted tight. Those stares felt like needles pricking her back—who knew how many were truly spying? She hustled Yang Baibai toward the door. “What do you mean, Lian Zhen Star? Keep it down; we’re outside—”
But Yang Baibai could scarcely contain his agitation. “You don’t know? Haven’t you remembered yet?”
Gu Xianwang froze. She watched his lips move in a soundless snarl, mouthing the words with gritted teeth: “Water Rhythm Qi Lian Zhen, One Flower Flies to Lake.”
What did that mean? Was she supposed to remember it?
Judging by her blank look, Yang Baibai let out a tsk, raking a hand through his stubbly chin. “Forget it. Pretend I never said a word. I know what’s really going on here. Anyway, I’ve settled my debt to you. Tonight, it’s every man for himself.”
With a huff, he shot a glance at the silent Long Li, then turned on his heel and strode inside.
Just then, Sister A was descending from upstairs, broom in hand—she might or might not have overheard. Spotting them, she beamed and waved them in. “Hey, perfect timing! Come on, everyone—head to the restaurant and try some authentic Shaanxi home cooking.”
One moment Ye Chan thought he was about to go his separate way; the next, Yang Baibai was marching straight toward the dining hall. The guy was eating their food, crashing at their inn, and still spouting cryptic nonsense. She couldn’t help muttering, “Kid handles things like a total blockhead. Bet he got his ass kicked plenty as a child.”
Gu Xianwang only frowned in silence. That line of poetry he’d recited—she did have some vague impression of it. But the memory was a muddled haze, impossible to pin down right now.
“Eh, whatever. No point getting worked up over him. Come on, let’s eat. Don’t just let this—” She broke off midsentence as the phone in her grip buzzed to life with the chime of an incoming video call. She glanced at the screen and yelped in surprise. “Whoa, this expert actually took the job!”
“What?”
Ye Chan jabbed a finger at the caller ID, where a Taiji symbol grinned back at her. “The God Stick I told you about. I just placed a 388-yuan fortune-telling package order online, and boom—he’s video calling.” She tapped to accept and tilted the screen sideways. The connection was spotty, the image lagging and stuttering. She called out a few hellos before a noisy echo finally crackled back.
“Hello? Master? Master? Can you see me?”
The static fizz and pop shattered Gu Xianwang’s train of thought. Curiosity piqued, she leaned in to peer over Ye Chan’s shoulder. In that instant, the signal steadied—and there was the so-called master, hollering for the boss lady, Sister A. In the background, Yang Baibai’s lanky, slouching figure ambled past.
Ye Chan’s eyes bulged. “Holy shit, talk about a coincidence!”
~~~
Since it was a complimentary set meal, there weren’t many fancy dishes, but Shaanxi cuisine more than made up for it with its generous portions. Several large porcelain basins clunked down onto the wooden table, filling it to the brim. Combined with the restaurant’s rustic decor—strings of dried garlic bulbs and red chilies dangling overhead, along with reed raincoats, woven hats, and floral jackets—the vibe boiled down to one word: hearty.
Yang Baibai sat with his legs crossed, eyeing the warm shredded pig kidneys, spicy lamb blood, grand mixed stew, and stir-fried green chilies on the table. The staple dish—a heaping basin of stewed noodles—sat right next to his hand. The portion sizes left the Fujian crowd gaping in astonishment. He hefted his chopsticks, his expression plainly saying, Fine, whatever—there’s plenty of food, so sit if you’re sitting.
Gu Xianwang took the seat across from him, with Long Li on his left. One faced sideways, the other straight on, both quietly zeroing in on the so-called “Master” and Ye Chan.
The pair poked at the feast like human scanners, barely touching it beyond a perfunctory dip of their chopsticks. They were the worst kind of tablemates: distracted eaters who killed everyone’s appetite. Yang Baibai had been ravenous, and he finally lost patience. He slurped down two huge mouthfuls of the noodles, licked his lips, and snapped, “If you wanna stare, go stare from another table.”
“What’s there to see in a fortune-telling godstick? The guy’s got a reputation as the Decline God Mourning Gate Star—wherever trouble brews, you’ll find him, first in line and last to leave, fleecing anyone he can, especially off the bereaved. Bumping into him this time is bad luck enough. You’re practically lining up to hand over your cash.”
Gu Xianwang snapped back to the present. “You know him?”
“Tch, with that massive banner? Who wouldn’t? Stinky Old Man Xiao Sanxiao.”
With an eye roll of her own, Gu Xianwang took a fresh look at the words scrawled on the bamboo pole banner propped against the scrawny old man’s feet. At the top, it proclaimed “Heart Inquiry Place” in bold characters. Below weren’t any services listed, just a few glib verses:
Seeking without brings suffering; sitting in the Way brings no peace.
Ages of teeming masses pass; one fart scatters all the dust.
Paired with his freshly shaven monk’s pate but world-weary face—and the occasional flash of faded chest tattoos peeking from his threadbare long robe—he looked for all the world like a modern-day Lu Zhishen. That alone had sparked their suspicions, sending them off to scout separately.
“Is he famous?” Long Li didn’t seem to recognize him.
Yang Baibai scooped up two spoonfuls of green chilies mixed into the stew and shoved them in his mouth. The heat hit like a freight train; he hacked and coughed, tears and snot streaming down his face as he wheezed for air. “Hiss… infamous… counts as fame too. This guy—I’ve run into him… plenty of times. Seen him chased down and beaten… more than… damn, this is spicy, more than three times.”
Encountering him every single time? Gu Xianwang sensed something off about that detail, just as a commotion erupted from the old man’s table.
Eavesdropping, she caught the old man wheedling the restaurant’s lady boss into cooking for him. In a thick Sichuan drawl, he insisted he’d brought his own chilies since nobody local could handle them right. He hadn’t had a proper meal in days—just gnawing on pickled peppers until his mouth tasted like cardboard. He’d wait as long as it took, he pleaded; all he wanted was some Salt Gang Cuisine.
Wasn’t he supposed to be reading fortunes? Why was he ordering food now?
Moments later, Ye Chan slunk back looking utterly defeated and slid a tissue across to Gu Xianwang. “I got made the second I showed my face.”
She huffed indignantly, peeved at her own fumble. “He claimed my heart wasn’t true—said I had ulterior motives. Next thing I know, three sentences in, he’s pried the whole notebook story out of me. Then he reads it, clams up, and says he can’t make heads or tails of it. The nerve!”
“He wouldn’t refund a dime. Just handed over these cryptic verses—one for me, the other a ‘gift’ off Sister Gu’s face. Here, he wrote it himself.”
Gu Xianwang frowned down at the tissue. Scrawled there in crooked “cursive” was another fate poem. It took her a moment to puzzle it out:
A thousand-foot silk reel drops straight down;
one wave stirs ten thousand in its wake.
At evening’s glance back to the silver hook,
no need to chase the great dream’s swirling tide.
