Chapter 1

My father was a fake Taoist who had spent his whole life swindling people.

For his final fortune-telling, he calculated the date of his own death.

“Daughter, my readings have never been accurate. This one probably isn’t, either,” he told me.

Then he died on that very day.

Before he passed, he shoved an old, battered book of divination into my hands and said there was something real hidden inside.

I turned it over three times and found nothing.

Only much later did I discover that the book’s cover had a double lining.

Inside was a land deed.

The name written on it wasn’t my father’s.

It belonged to the Grand Preceptor of the current dynasty.

I took the deed to the Grand Preceptor’s residence and demanded an explanation.

The gatekeeper glanced at the deed, then at me.

He went inside to report it. By the time half an incense stick had burned, someone came out—not a steward, but the Grand Preceptor himself.

He stared at me for a long time.

Then he said something I couldn’t understand.

“You look so much like your mother.”

My mother died on the day I was born.

Father said she’d died in childbirth.

The Grand Preceptor’s surname was Pei, and his name was Pei Yanchu.

He was a senior minister who had served three emperors, an honored Imperial Tutor whose students could be found throughout the realm.

Yet standing in front of me, he didn’t look like a Grand Preceptor at all.

He looked more like an old man with a knife at his throat.

“What… is your name?”

“Liu Qingping.”

“The surname Liu?” His Adam’s apple bobbed.

“My father’s surname was Liu.” I held out the land deed a little farther. “Old sir, is this yours? Why was it inside my father’s book of divination?”

Pei Yanchu didn’t take the deed.

His eyes fell on the wooden sword pendant at my waist. Father had carved it out of an old kitchen-knife handle. It was terribly rough, but I’d worn it for more than a decade.

“This little sword…”

“My father made it to ward off evil.”

“Your father was skilled.”

I laughed. “His greatest skill was swindling people, not making crafts.”

He didn’t smile.

He gestured for the steward behind him to retreat beyond the screen.

The long covered walkway was left to the two of us.

The early-summer breeze stirred the bamboo blinds beneath the eaves.

Pei Yanchu’s voice was very soft. “What was your mother’s name?”

“I don’t know.”

He froze.

“Father never mentioned her name. He only said she died in childbirth. He didn’t even leave me a portrait.”

That was the truth.

Whenever Father got drunk, he would clutch that book of divination and mutter, “If only she were still alive…”

The next morning, once he sobered up, he’d remember nothing and go back to being the glib, irreverent old swindler he always was.

Pei Yanchu closed his eyes, as though struggling to hold something back.

Then he did something I never expected.

He bowed to me. Not deeply, but for a Grand Preceptor, it was a breach of etiquette.

“The matter of the land deed cannot be explained in a sentence or two.”

“If you aren’t in a hurry, stay at the residence for a few days. I’ll tell you about it properly.”

I had only meant to ask for an explanation and leave.

The deed clearly described a three-bay residence in Anle Ward, in the eastern part of the city. I—a daughter of a wandering Taoist—had no use for it.

If it belonged to the Grand Preceptor’s household, I could simply return it. I only wanted to know why it had been hidden in my father’s divination book.

But Pei Yanchu had said, “You look so much like your mother.”

He had known my mother.

A Grand Preceptor who had known the wife of a wandering Taoist.

Something about that was clearly wrong.

So I nodded.

“Then I’ll trouble you. But I should say this up front: I’m a Taoist. I don’t eat vegetarian.”

Pei Yanchu’s mouth twitched, as if he wanted to laugh but held it in.

“The kitchen will prepare meat dishes.”

The steward assigned me to Bamboo Court, in the northwest corner of the residence.

The courtyard wasn’t large, but it was immaculate. Beyond the window stood a grove of bamboo, with two doves perched on the upper branches.

I tossed my bundle onto the bed and went through the things Father had left me.

One book of divination. I had already taken the land deed from its double-lined cover. A few talismans were tucked between the pages—all-purpose charms with the usual “By the command of the Most High Lord Lao” formula Father liked to use.

A handful of copper coins. Six of them, strung together with red cord, the ones Father used for fortune-telling.

A white jade pendant, about the size of my little finger, crudely carved. It was the only thing in my memory connected to my mother. Father said she had left it for me. I’d run my fingers over it for more than a decade until its edges had gone smooth.

An old cloth pouch. Inside was the silver Father had saved: seventeen taels and three mace in all.

That was the entire estate of Liu the Half-Immortal.

It was almost laughable.

My father had called himself Liu the Half-Immortal and traveled from village to village telling fortunes for twenty years.

Were his predictions ever right?

No.

He read the Zhang family’s marriage fortune and said the match was blessed by heaven. Their daughter-in-law ran off with the neighboring butcher, a man surnamed Wang.

He read the Li family’s financial fortune and promised them a thousand gold pieces in a day. Three months later, their shop had lost every last coin.

He read the romantic prospects of Widow Zhao and promised she’d meet her destined husband the following year. She waited three years without ever seeing the man—and got a wild boar from the mountain crashing through her courtyard wall instead.

But Father did have one talent.

Every time a prediction failed, he could invent such a convincing explanation that people felt the reading wasn’t wrong—they had simply failed to follow his advice.

“I said the match was blessed by heaven! Why didn’t you work harder to make it happen? Your wife ran away, and you didn’t even go looking for her!”

“A thousand gold pieces in a day meant you had to open your shop by a gold mine. What did you expect if you set up in town?”

“The romance did arrive. The wild boar just got there first.”

Thanks to that mouth of his, Father’s predictions were never right, but no one ever beat him up.

At worst, they chased him down the street, cursing.

He was a fast runner, too.

Yet a man like that, just before he died, had suddenly said, “Daughter, I only ever made one accurate prediction in my entire life.”

I asked him which one.

“You.”

He said he had predicted that in a certain year, month, and day, he would pass through a certain place and find a little girl.

He really went there.

And he really found me.

It was the only time in his life that one of his predictions had come true.

Back then, I’d thought he was rambling again.

Now, sitting in the Grand Preceptor’s Bamboo Court and stroking the jade pendant my mother had left me, I suddenly thought…

Father said he had “found” me.

Not that he had “fathered” me.

He had found me.

The next morning, the steward came to invite me to breakfast.

According to the Grand Preceptor’s household rules, each family member ate separately in their own quarters; a proper family banquet was held only during festivals.

But Pei Yanchu had someone escort me to a side hall off the main reception room. He was there, too.

Four dishes and a soup were laid out, with both meat and vegetarian options.

One dish caught my eye: fish slices stir-fried with vinegar. It had been made with white vinegar, not black, and the fish was sliced as thin as a cicada’s wing, with shredded ginger underneath.

I knew how to make that dish.

Father had taught me.

He said it was my mother’s favorite.

“Old sir, your cook is quite good.”

“He has worked here for over thirty years.” Pei Yanchu lifted his bowl and ate slowly.

“Who asked for the fish with vinegar?”

“I did.”

“How did you know I liked it?”

Pei Yanchu set down his chopsticks.

“I didn’t know what you liked. This dish… was often made by someone who once lived here.”

“Who?”

“A maid. She sliced fish even better than the cook. When you ate just now, you furrowed your brow. I imagine you found the knife work a little lacking.”

I had, in fact, furrowed my brow.

Father had taught me to guide the knife close along the bones, so the slices would be thin without falling apart. Two or three pieces on the plate were too thick, their flesh broken along the grain.

“What happened to that maid?”

Pei Yanchu fell silent.

After a moment, he said, “She left.”

He held those two words in his mouth as though they were a lump of iron.

I didn’t press him.

There was someone else at the table. A middle-aged woman stood outside the side hall, dressed in a dark blue cross-collar silk robe, with a solid-gold phoenix hairpin in her hair.

She didn’t sit down to eat. She stood in the doorway and looked at me.

Her gaze slid from my face to my clothes, then to the wooden sword pendant at my waist.

The steward whispered, “That’s the First Madam.”

The Grand Preceptor’s wife. Pei Yanchu’s lawful wife.

I nodded to her in greeting.

She didn’t return it.

She turned and walked away.

After breakfast, Pei Yanchu still didn’t mention the land deed.

He only said, “The residence has been unsettled lately. The servants in several courtyards say they hear strange noises at night, and the Old Madam has been having nightmares. Since you’re of the Taoist school, if it wouldn’t trouble you…”

I understood.

He didn’t intend to tell me the truth outright. He wanted an excuse to keep me at the residence by asking me to “perform a ritual.”

That was fine.

I, Liu Qingping, had traveled north and south for more than a decade. Since the age of seven, I’d followed Father to his fortune-telling stall—no, to his swindling stall.

Feng shui for graves and houses, matching birth charts for marriage, exorcisms and warding off evil—those were all my specialties.

I wasn’t exactly as accurate as Father, but I could put on a convincing show.

First, I made a round of the rear garden.

The Grand Preceptor’s residence wasn’t overly lavish, but every detail was refined. The carved wood in the covered corridors was the work of Suzhou craftsmen; the flowerbeds held Luoyang peonies; the ornamental rocks had been shipped from Lake Tai.

But in the southeast corner of the rear garden stood a dry well.

A stone slab sealed its mouth, with a lump of pig iron weighing it down.

That wasn’t right.

A stone slab was enough to seal a well. The extra weight of pig iron suggested it wasn’t the well they were trying to keep shut.

They were afraid something inside might climb out.

I didn’t touch the stone slab. I crouched to smell around it.

There was no strange odor. Only a kind of grass growing in the crevice of the stone, with long, narrow leaves and tiny white flowers.

I recognized it.

It was called Returning-Watch Grass.

It usually grew beside graves.

That afternoon, I officially began “performing rituals.”

I started with the servants’ quarters.

The Grand Preceptor’s residence had four courtyards. The main courtyard belonged to Pei Yanchu and his wife. The eastern courtyard had once belonged to Pei Huaijin, the Grand Preceptor’s late eldest son, and now stood empty. The western courtyard was occupied by a distant collateral relative of the Pei family, Pei Yuanbai, a Hanlin Academy editor in his thirties who had never married. The southern courtyard housed the servants’ rooms and kitchen.

I went to the southern courtyard first.

I burned a stack of talismans and muttered prayers for half an incense stick.

In truth, I was saying, “Most High Lord Lao, lend me your wise eyes—I can’t see anything wrong with this courtyard.”

My only gain was getting to know an old matron.

Her surname was Zhou. She had worked as a servant in the Grand Preceptor’s household for forty years, starting as a kitchen maid tending the fire and working her way up to overseeing the inner courtyard’s laundry.

Matron Zhou was over sixty, but her hearing and eyesight were sharp, and her back wasn’t bent. She looked like a woman full of energy.

I read her fortune.