For years, the strange occurrences following Old Sheepskin's death have haunted me, along with that bronze dragon talisman Ding Si-tian tossed onto the grassland. These questions have always lingered in my heart, though recalling those past events brings a pang of sorrow. Coupled with years spent constantly fleeing, there was little leisure to revisit the past. Seeing Old Sheepskin in this old photograph today, I can't help but recall the stories he told, some details of which are certainly worth a closer look.

In his youth, Old Sheepskin was a tomb raider, apprenticed under a chieftain of thieves surnamed Chen. This man later headed south to Yunnan for a major score, but met with disaster there and his whereabouts have been unknown ever since. Could this man be Chen the Blind Man I met in Shaanxi? That fortune-teller Chen who went tomb raiding in Yunnan? Thinking it over now, so many characteristics align. Although I knew Chen the Blind Man had accompanied an expert from the Xieling school to the Worm Valley in Yunnan seeking the tomb of the Xian King, he never mentioned ever being a chieftain of thieves. But I can understand why; after all, since Chen the Blind Man lost the use of his eyes, he’ll never raid another tomb in this lifetime. Now that he earns his keep by telling fortunes and casting lots, he naturally claims to be the reincarnation of Immortal Master Chen Tuan, and would hardly admit to having once led a major group of grave robbers.

The moment I considered this, I snapped the album shut and got up to leave. Most of the old tales Old Sheepskin mentioned to me in the Hundred-Eye Cave are hard to verify, but Chen the Blind Man lived through the old society, and he might know some lore concerning the Yellow Weasel spirits, the Ghost Yamen, or the bronze dragon talisman. Most critically, I needed to ask him the real reason Old Sheepskin was struck down by lightning and fire after his death, in order to resolve the confusion that has plagued me for so many years.

Taoranting Park was Chen the Blind Man's usual haunt, but his movements were erratic, and he hadn't dared show his face in the park recently. Across from Taoranting is Beijing South Railway Station, and lately he’d often set up his stall reading fortunes in a small alley behind the station. It took me quite some effort to find him.

When I arrived, Chen the Blind Man was in the middle of reading the palm and bone structure of a female comrade. The woman was in her thirties, plump and fair-skinned, looking quite prosperous. I couldn't tell what difficult predicament had driven her to seek guidance from an expert. The Blind Man first felt the bones on her face, pinching hard between her forehead, eyes, and nose, muttering to himself: “A person's appearance has many forms, why rely on physiognomy to determine wealth and status? A blind man has the guidance of immortals, feeling the peaks of the Five Mountains within the bones.”

The woman, her face pinched painfully by the skeletal old man, bristled: “Can’t you be gentler? Your hand is like an iron clamp.”

The Blind Man replied: “This is the immortal’s touch, old man. It penetrates flesh to the bone, touching what ordinary mortals cannot even perceive as pain. Only those who are celestial star-lords descended to earth know its true force. It seems Madam must be a person of origin. I just don't know what this Celestial Maiden wishes to inquire about? If it concerns heavenly secrets, it is ten yuan per question, and no credit is extended.”

The woman, with her wide face and large ears, had been told since childhood that she possessed a third of fortune’s appearance. Hearing the Blind Man call her a Celestial Maiden now, she was even more convinced she was no ordinary housewife, but indeed someone special, and she began to greatly admire the Blind Man. Though his eyes were sightless, this old man truly seemed to divine the future with accuracy. She then began to recount her troubles.

Though I was eager to speak with Chen the Blind Man, I didn't want to interrupt his business, so I waited nearby. After listening for a good while, I understood that the woman’s husband was a merchant who used connections to resell official permits. They had a money tree at home, so they were certainly secure in food and clothing. However, lately, she and her husband had been having a strange recurring dream: a black dog gnawing at her toes. They would often wake up in a cold sweat. Having the same nightmare simultaneously left them both sleepless, physically and mentally exhausted. Worse yet, the toes bitten by the black dog in the dream had gradually begun to fester, ooze pus, and rot foully, with no improvement despite seeking help from doctors everywhere. Someone told her of the blind divine calculator, Old Ancestor Chen Tuan, near Taoranting, so she specifically came to ask the Old Ancestor to illuminate her path—first, to inquire about the cause of this strange dream, and second, whether the running sores on her feet could be cured.

Chen the Blind Man then inquired about the physical build and demeanor of the woman's husband. After hearing the description, his expression remained calm, as if he had a clear plan. He shook his head and calculated on his fingers: “Just as I expected, Celestial Madam is the reincarnation of a Golden-Winged Carp from the Celestial Pond’s Jade Terrace. Your husband, thin-boned and short and slight, was originally a Golden-Threaded Sparrow under the Jade Emperor’s throne. You are both spiritual officials once ranked in the celestial court. Your life as husband and wife in this world was meant to settle a karmic debt. However, in a previous life, you two offended the Howling Celestial Dog of the Erlang True Lord. That vicious dog would not let the matter rest, which is why you dream of a black dog gnawing your feet. It is fortunate that this old man has learned of it, or great misfortune would not be far off.”

When the stout woman heard that she and her husband were mere beasts in a past life, the words were truly offensive, and she began to suspect the Blind Man was merely spouting nonsense off the cuff.

Chen the Blind Man quickly explained that his words were a golden decree, revealing heavenly secrets, how could they be mere nonsense? A blind man’s heart is naturally clear; he sees the forms unseen by others and understands the Way unknown to the world. What is form, and what is the Way? The Great Way is formless, it begets heaven and earth; the Great Way is pitiless, it moves the sun and moon; the Great Way is nameless, it nurtures all things. I know not its name, so I forcibly call it the Way. The ancients said: “The Way is wordless, the Buddha is empty.” The language of this world cannot accurately describe what the Great Way is. In short, all things in the world belong to the Great Way; whether human or bird, all are fixed forms within the Great Way, with no distinction of high or low, noble or lowly. One cannot judge nobility by beauty or ugliness; ignorant common folk insist on elevating humanity, but in reality, life takes the form of beasts and birds, the fate of fish and sparrows. It is like a dragon soaring or a phoenix flying—truly a destiny of great wealth and status. If you ask how noble this fate is? Heh heh... ineffably noble.

This is what is meant by the saying that flying fowl and crawling beasts all have their destiny; some people were indeed transformed from beasts in their previous lives, and this manifests in their physical appearance. This is the creation of destiny, one's own fortune. What is there to be ashamed of? There is a secret to observing people by feeling their bones and skin: those who are thin and long should be viewed in the context of birds; those who are stout should be viewed in the context of beasts. A bird that is fat surely cannot fly; if a beast is thin, how can it eat? The Blind Man rambled on with a mouthful of classical phrasing, yet he spoke with convincing coherence, completely winning over the woman. By the end, she even began to take pride in her and her husband's resemblance to birds and beasts. Handwritten by Sun Feng.

But the Blind Man’s tone shifted, and he then negated the woman’s lifelong fortune. He said, Fate is the boat, and Luck is the wind. “Destiny” and “Luck” are actually two different things. Though one possesses a destiny for wealth, they might be paired with bad luck for half their life—it’s like having a massive ship, but lacking the wind to propel it, leaving it stranded on a shallow shoal to rot. You and your husband both have the destiny of carefree immortals, but you are shackled by karmic debt. The black dog gnawing your feet in dreams surely portends that the Black Star is overhead, and bad luck is imminent. This is truly perilous; at best, your family will be ruined, at worst, you will be trapped in the Ghost Palace, suffering endless calamity.

The stout woman was nearly paralyzed by fright from the Blind Man’s words and frantically begged the Old Ancestor for salvation, stuffing a roll of banknotes into Chen the Blind Man’s hand. The Blind Man felt the money—it was generous enough—and only then, unhurriedly, offered his advice. He insisted they must move house as soon as possible and set up a memorial tablet in the new residence inscribed with the six characters: “Prefect Li Bing is here.” Why? Li Bing was the administrator of the Shu region who constructed the Dujiangyan weir during the reign of King Zhaoxiang of Qin. The Erlang True Lord of Guankou in Shu was Li Bing’s second son. With Lord Li’s tablet present, the Celestial Dog would not dare attack again.

The Blind Man then took a brush and wrote a prescription on a torn piece of paper: one inch of bark from Dragon Tiger Mountain, three seeds of the Flat Peach, two each of Southern Pearl and Northern Gall, three ounces of Hundred-Flavor Stone, one Yellow River fish. Brew this in water from Dongting Lake, reducing three bowls of water to one. Drink one bowl daily for three consecutive days, and your mind will surely be peaceful, and the sores on your feet will heal on their own.

The stout woman was baffled when she heard this. What were these ingredients? She had never even heard the names of a few of them. She feared that even with money, she couldn’t acquire them—were they all miraculous elixirs from heaven? How could she possibly gather them?

The Blind Man assured her that this was no obstacle; this generation of his acts as an agent for medicinal supplies. He took more money from the stout woman, found a broken bowl, set the prescription alight, and handed the resulting ash in the bowl to the stout woman, instructing her to divide it into three portions and take it with clear water, emphasizing the importance of this instruction.

I listened from the side, inwardly amused. Only when the Blind Man had sufficiently fleeced the woman and sent her away did I say I needed a quiet place to ask him a few things. I took his blind cane and led him to a pavilion in Taoranting Park. On the way, I asked the Blind Man if his divination for the stout woman just now was accurate.

At first, I thought Chen the Blind Man was just talking nonsense, but when I heard him tell the stout woman’s family to move, there was indeed some logic to it. In Volume "Ghost" of the Sixteen-Character Secret Art of Yin-Yang and Feng Shui, it is described that if one dreams of a black dog or cat gnawing at their feet under the bed, the residence is inauspicious and unsuitable for habitation. If one digs a few feet down, they might uncover a piece of black charcoal, indicating that someone had hanged themselves there previously, and their lingering spirit condensed into an evil influence in the earth, or perhaps there is an ancient grave beneath the house. The stout woman’s family might very well be occupying such an ill-omened house; moving away from the place of strife was certainly the best option. Handwritten by Sun Feng.

The Blind Man’s smugness was obvious. He laughed: “Whether there is anything under her house, this old man does not know. But that fat woman’s family must have engaged in too much profiteering and speculation, having bribed and accepted bribes, and embezzled funds aplenty. Reselling permits is unavoidable, and they must have committed many deeds against their conscience. As the saying goes, sores on the head and pus on the feet means they are rotten to the core. People like that are bound to suffer anxiety and fear, constantly on edge, making them prone to believing strange rumors. Even without being blind, this old man could calculate this fate. Touching her bone structure, I could tell she was a stingy and unfilial creature of the beastly kind. All the wealth in her home is ill-gotten; taking it is no offense. Back in the day when we gathered the Xieling school to plunder tombs for profit, if we had encountered such contemptible, wealthy, and unjust people, this old man would have cleaved them one by one and sent that thieving pair to suffer in the netherworld…”

When I heard Chen the Blind Man mention the days of the Xieling school gathering to plunder tombs for profit, I took the opportunity to ask him if he had been a chieftain of thieves before, and if he knew any Shaanxi men named Old Sheepskin and Sheep Er-dan who knew how to sing Qin opera.

The Blind Man paused upon hearing this. Xieling strongmen were tomb robbers and grave excavators, equally famous as Mojin Captains and Banshan Daoists. After the Chimei Rebellion failed and was suppressed during the Han Dynasty, some remnants formed roving bands, scattering to various places to continue their acts of killing officials and rebelling. In those days, the Chimei army had thoroughly ransacked the Han tombs, and their remnants maintained this tradition; upon discovering an ancient tomb, they would gather their forces and plunder it extensively. Before the Song Dynasty, Xieling tomb raiders maintained the custom of smearing cinnabar or pig's blood on their eyebrows when conducting operations, washing it off afterward with a medicinal solution. This habit of dyeing the eyebrows red to ward off evil was gradually abandoned later for greater operational secrecy.

The Xieling faction always had a leading figure, the chieftain of thieves. "Kui" means the chief; when there are many people and complicated affairs, they cannot be without a head. The chieftain decided everything regarding the division of spoils and matters of righteousness. The chieftain held extremely high prestige and possessed the power of life and death. Not only could they plunder tombs using the "Circle of Holes Technique," but they were also the self-proclaimed emperors of the Green Forest roads—truly figures who could summon the wind and rain. Chen the Blind Man had indeed served as a chieftain of thieves during the Republic of China era, but he had truly forgotten those old matters since they were never brought up.

Of course, Chen the Blind Man was not blind then. He was a famous figure in the martial world, relying on his silver tongue and his reputation for being righteous and generous enough to infuriate Song Jiang. At that time, due to the chaos across the land, the strength of the Xieling bandits had greatly weakened compared to previous dynasties, but they still firmly controlled the bandits and outlaws in the major provinces of Shaanxi, Henan, and the two Hu provinces (Hunan and Hubei). Their main stronghold was in Hunan, the land of three Xiang rivers. When Old Sheepskin and Sheep Er-dan joined him, he was preparing to rally forces to deal with the "Corpse King of Western Hunan," an occurrence that happened once in a century.