Chapter 135: Bazi

He Yu gave me a nudge and told me to pay. I was reluctant because I felt in my heart that this guy was nothing but a scammer. He Yu pulled me to the side and whispered in my ear:

“Don’t be so stubborn. Since Old Lu brought us here, there’s no way he got the wrong guy. What’s a few cheap rings compared to the poison in Old Lu’s system? Who knows if that corpse poison will flare up later and threaten his life? Let me just grit my teeth and get this over with. If this guy’s scamming us, do you really think the three of us would let him get away?”

Hearing this, I thought about it and realized he was right. This was no time to be stubborn. Whether the man in front of us was the real deal or not, Bai Shenxian was our only option. Even if I managed to coax Lu Ayao into going to the hospital, I wouldn’t know how to explain the porcelain shards on his face to the doctors.

Besides, with so many rings to toss, winning a prize or two wouldn’t be a total loss.

So I walked over, took the plastic rings from Bai Shenxian’s hand, pulled two hundred-yuan bills straight out of my pocket, and asked Bai Shenxian, “Is this enough?”

Bai Shenxian snatched the two hundred yuan from my hand, smoothed the bills out to check them against the sunlight, then flicked them twice near his ear to listen to the sound. He gave me a sly grin. “Start tossing first. If this isn’t enough, you can add more later.”

As he spoke, he lifted two bundles of plastic rings out of his beat-up tricycle. I stopped him. “No need to play. Is this enough to cover your earnings for the afternoon? I’ll make up for your afternoon sales if you just treat Old Lu.”

“Hey, that won’t do. I’m a man of professional ethics and I never scam people. However much money you give me, that’s how many rings I have to give you. Business is business. You have to toss all of these before I can treat him.” Bai Shenxian waved his hand and took the plastic rings from my hands. “If you don’t want to play, I’ll give the money back to you.”

He Yu quickly stepped in and stuffed the two hundred yuan back into Bai Shenxian’s hand. “Who said we aren’t playing? We’re playing! Come on, Xiao Yao!”

He Yu immediately shoved twenty plastic rings into my hands and gave me a look. As the two of us walked over to the toy stall covered in red cloth, he whispered, “Just bear with it and let’s get them all tossed quickly.”

I took a deep breath and began throwing the rings two at a time toward the toys. The process felt excruciatingly long. In all my life, I had never realized ring toss could be such a torturous form of entertainment. He Yu was better at it than me, and his mindset was completely different; he was genuinely strategizing on how to minimize our losses and win back enough prizes to get our money’s worth.

During this time, Bai Shenxian even came over to pry for information. “Do you two have money to burn? Why are you helping that guy named Lu?”

I glared at him with a dark expression and replied, “What’s it to you?”

Bai Shenxian shrugged, shut his mouth, and went back to using a long pole to help us retrieve the rings.

We tossed rings for over three hours, long enough that passersby gathered to watch the spectacle, which drummed up quite a bit of business for Bai Shenxian’s unlicensed stall. By the time we used up all the plastic rings, He Yu and I had each bought a bottle of iced water and were slumped on the ground drinking.

The sun had set, and Bai Shenxian finished packing his things into his rickety tricycle. He grabbed a large teddy bear, half as tall as a person, and tossed it to He Yu beside me. “Your prize. Let me know when you’re ready—didn’t you want to see a doctor?”

He Yu and I exchanged a glance, then scrambled up off the ground at the same time.

Bai Shenxian smiled at us and patted the tricycle, gesturing for us to get on. The three of us climbed into the cargo bed, squeezing in among the children’s toys.

Bai Shenxian inserted the key and started the engine. The battered tricycle sped down the road, its rusted frame creaking and groaning at every turn. He drove fast, and as I sat on the edge of the bed, I finally felt a trace of cool summer breeze.

Half an hour later, the tricycle stopped beneath a massive, abandoned chimney in the suburbs. The chimney looked ancient, built entirely of red bricks. There was a small door at the back, and Bai Shenxian opened it to let us inside first.

Lu Ayao entered the chimney first. He Yu and I followed close behind, pausing only for a moment before stepping in. The space inside was much larger than I had imagined. I observed the surroundings and realized he had dug out a section beneath the original space, expanding it further while maintaining structural stability.

The conditions here were quite harsh. A light was on inside the chimney, and bead curtains hung down, behind which I could vaguely make out a shadowless surgical lamp and a flat operating table. The outer area served as a living space with a sofa, a coffee table, and a cot. He Yu tapped me and gestured for me to look at the wall.

I looked up and saw rows of blades hanging on the wall—Kukris, mountain-cleaving machetes, military bayonets… if they weren’t restricted weapons, they were outright contraband. Not a single one was legal. If he got caught with these, he would easily be locked away for a long time.

He was a doctor, not a butcher. Why did he have so many knives?

Bai Shenxian packed up quickly. Drinking from a can of beer, he walked inside and shut the door behind him. He patted Lu Ayao on the shoulder as he passed, then went around us to fetch some supplies from the back. “Don’t just stand there, sit down. I haven’t had this many people in here for a long time.”

The way he said it was odd, almost as if he were about to dismember us all and pack us into boxes.

I found a small sofa to sit on. Bai Shenxian walked over carrying a sterilized surgical tray, tossed it casually onto the coffee table, and sat down heavily next to Lu Ayao. Lu Ayao cooperatively held out his wrist, and Bai Shenxian rolled up his sleeves to feel his pulse.

While taking the pulse, he looked over at me instead and suddenly said, “I recognize you. Someone mailed me your photo once. That person offered me a large sum of money to do something, but I didn’t agree.”

This sudden shift in topic left my mind spinning. Someone had secretly commissioned Bai Shenxian to do something related to me before I even arrived? Had they predicted I would come looking for him? The method of sending a letter didn’t seem novel to me—could it be the same person who had sent me those photos of dead people?

I asked, “Who commissioned you?”

Bai Shenxian smiled and shook his head, signaling for Lu Ayao to switch hands for his pulse. He looked up again, giving me a cold, mirthless smile.

“I don’t know who sent the letter, but it was indeed a substantial sum—more money than I could earn in ten years of running a street stall. All I can say is, someone has their eye on you.”

After finishing with the pulse, he picked up his beer again and waved a hand at Lu Ayao. “Alright, you’re perfectly healthy. Just stop courting death. Every time you come to me, you’ve either broken arms and legs or gotten yourself poisoned. This time his blood was useful, but next time it might not be. Your time isn’t like that of ordinary people. I suggest you enjoy life and let go of your obsessions while you can.”

I picked up on that detail immediately and turned to Lu Ayao. “How does he know about my blood? Did you tell him?”

Bai Shenxian chuckled and pointed to his eyes. “He didn’t need to tell me. I see everything. You accidentally swallowed something before, something far from ordinary. I can see the blood vessels all over your body, and that stuff has already made you different from normal people.”

I instinctively tried to feel for anything unusual, but unfortunately, I felt nothing. Looking back at Bai Shenxian, I got a sudden shock. I hadn’t looked closely before, but now I noticed the pupil of his left eye: inside the main pupil was another, smaller one. It wasn’t very obvious, the two pupils joined together, one large and one small. Unless you looked closely, you wouldn’t notice it at all.

“What do you mean? Will anything go wrong with Xiao Yao’s body?” He Yu asked.

“No, what he swallowed was good stuff. Before long, he should start sensing how he differs from ordinary people. The effect isn’t an obvious one,” Bai Shenxian said with a smile. “Have you ever heard of someone taking an accidental fall and having their Third Eye opened as a result? What he ate is essentially the same kind of thing.”

My heart sank. I instantly remembered the eerie chanting I had heard inside the ancient tower, and a cold sweat broke out across my back.

“Meeting you today, I saw a few things,” Bai Shenxian said, looking at me. He glanced at He Yu, then finally shifted his gaze to Lu Ayao. I noticed he was looking at the porcelain shards on Lu Ayao’s face.

Bai Shenxian hesitated for a moment, rubbing his chin. “I take back what I said earlier about enjoying life. I don’t think you’re going to die anymore.”

Lu Ayao didn’t react. As a child, I heard my grandfather say that people with double pupils^[1] possessed a spiritual perception and could see things ordinary people couldn’t. So when Bai Shenxian brought this up, I remembered the curse Lu Ayao had mentioned to me earlier, and I couldn’t help pressing him, “What do you mean? How can he avoid dying?”

Bai Shenxian chuckled and pointed at me. “Your fate is cursed—a Four Graves fate^[2]. Your Bazi is terrible, so whoever stays around you will either end up bankrupt or wind up dead or crippled. As long as you leave, he can live.”