Chapter 21: Atractylodes

The dilapidated temple in the remote wilderness was shrouded in the silence of the deep night. Four people sat upon a pile of straw, the flickering candlelight casting long shadows. Wen Ci, Ye Miwei, and Xie Yuzhu surrounded Cang Shu, their three gazes fixed upon him with the intensity of a tribunal. Cang Shu, however, remained remarkably composed. He tapped his fingers together briefly and said, "Ask quickly, everyone. The hour is inconvenient; I am about to rest."

"Who, exactly, are you?" Wen Ci demanded coldly.

"I am but a nameless nobody; there is no need to delve so deep."

"It is said that Ce Yin is a master of divination, yet you found us before he did. Does that mean Ce Yin is inferior to a nameless nobody?"

"Those who excel in battle boast of no great achievements; those who excel in medicine bear no grand reputation. The same is true for those who excel in divination. You may simply consider me an obscure hermit of the wilderness."

Cang Shu lacked even a shred of modesty. Yet, draped in a tattered Taoist robe, his frame skeletal and wrapped in strips of cloth, he looked entirely like a man down on his luck—hardly the image of a master.

He adjusted the cloth strip over his left eye and said with a faint smile, "Do not worry, friends. I practice neither dark arts nor cultivation; I merely know how to cast a few lots. What could I possibly do? Since I have come here, it is because I know you need me, and in the end, you will take me with you. With me by your side, even Ce Yin will be unable to find you."

Wen Ci chuckled. Resting his hands on his knees, he leaned toward Cang Shu. "We need you? You are certainly helpful. Do you not want to gain something from us?"

Cang Shu fell silent for a moment. Under the gaze of the others, he leaned back against the wall and smiled. "It is a pleasant spring night, and since you are all so interested in me, I shall tell you a story."

Unexpectedly, Cang Shu told a very long story. If it were true, it was frank to the point of being visceral.

He said that many years ago, a man learned the art of divination and happened to have a natural talent for it. Then, he sadly calculated that his own life was cursed—destined to be plagued by misfortune, wandering, and an early death in his prime.

He was unwilling to accept this, and since his divinatory skills were indeed exceptional, he searched high and low until he found a way to change his fate: to steal the good fortune of others. He used a certain method to take the luck from other people's lives to fill the holes in his own.

"So that is why we are so unlucky..." Xie Yuzhu interrupted, her finger tracing a circle between herself, Ye Miwei, and Wen Ci, her meaning clear.

"Oh, you are all born unlucky; it has nothing to do with me," Cang Shu replied without hesitation.

"..."

Xie Yuzhu did not know whether to be happy or sad.

Cang Shu smiled and continued his story.

Relying on stolen luck, the man managed to survive as he had wished, though the stolen lifespan was fraught with hardship. During his extended life, he was coerced into divination by various factions. Through these readings, he learned too many secrets, only to be discarded, hunted, and forced into a life of wandering, escaping death by a hair's breadth time and again.

His life was miserable, yet amidst this chain of disasters, something good suddenly occurred: while being hunted, someone saved him.

That person had initially intended to kill him; why she saved him, he did not know.

She was a quiet girl in her early twenties, yet her movements were incredibly swift. She killed as effortlessly as one might slaughter a chicken or sheep, her blade descending without a blink. He had never seen a girl so ruthless at such a young age.

By saving him, the girl betrayed her own organization. Yet, without a word, she took him on the run, fighting against those who sought his life. Under her protection, he experienced the longest period of freedom in his stolen life.

Back then, he felt happy for the first time in ages. He thought this girl must want him to divine something, just like those who had tried to use him before. But that didn't matter; whatever she asked, he was willing to calculate.

However, until the moment she died under a hail of arrows while drawing away their pursuers, she never asked him a single question.

On her deathbed, she answered his question instead. She said she saved him simply to repay a debt of gratitude.

As a child, she had been separated from her family and forced to beg on the streets. One year, the snow was heavy and the cold bit deep; she was on the verge of freezing to death. A young man walked by, took off his cotton coat to cover her, warmed her up, and even took her to eat a hot meal.

Later, she wandered for years and became an assassin, but she always remembered the warm cotton coat in the snow and that meal, the most delicious she had ever known. It was the deepest kindness in her memory.

She thought that if she could see her benefactor, she would repay his kindness, even if it meant walking through fire or facing death.

"The moment I first saw you, I recognized you. I never expected to meet you again—it is truly wonderful."

She was drenched in blood, yet as her breath faded, she smiled, content.

The girl was cold on the outside but warm within, holding onto a small act of kindness for so long. Had she grown up with her parents, she would have been a very happy woman.

But she did not.

He finally remembered who she was. As he held her corpse, he felt only a bone-chilling cold. She was, quite simply, the most absurd and tragic person he had ever encountered in his long life.

She knew nothing of the man she protected.

She did not know that the snow-covered street where they met should have been the end of her suffering.

If she had only waited there for another incense stick's time, her lost family would have found her. She should have been reunited with them, living in comfort, well-read, marrying a wealthy merchant, enjoying a harmonious marriage and many children—a life of splendor, joy, and smooth sailing.

Yet all of that vanished into smoke because the man she considered her benefactor took her away, causing her to miss her family.

He was not her benefactor; he was the primary culprit of her lifelong suffering. What she cherished, what she was grateful for, was merely a base theft.

And his theft finally bore its rich fruit in that moment: she had traded her kindness, her loneliness, her misfortune, and her very life for his survival.

And she had actually called him her benefactor.

She had actually said it was wonderful to meet him again.

It was all twisted, upside down, and utterly absurd.

"For years, I only cared about how to steal luck to extend my life. I deliberately chose not to know what became of the people whose luck I stole, or how they were led to fill the void of my existence."

"I thought that by doing so, I could pretend to know nothing and continue living, opportunistic and brazen."

Finally, one day, he crossed paths with his own sins and bore witness to the blood-soaked, ruined life of the person he had destroyed.

He suddenly saw that this wretched body was filled with the misfortune of others, so heavy that it left him breathless, unable to move forward.

He feared this life, pieced together from the misfortunes of others.

"Since then, I have resolved to pay my debts. I track down those from whom I stole luck and return it to them one by one. If they are still alive, I grant it to them in this life. If they are dead, I bestow it upon their next."

"To this day, my debts are almost paid in full. Only she remains," Cang Shu whispered with a sigh.

In the silence of the wilderness night, the world was still. The candlelight danced, illuminating the narrow corner of the ruined temple, reflecting silently on the faces of everyone present. Not far away, the damaged statue of the Buddha sat with lowered eyes, keeping its silence.

Amidst the quiet, Xie Yuzhu broke the silence first. She cleared her throat and said carefully, "Cang Shu... Brother Cang Shu, although what you did was underhanded, the past is the past. Right now, I like tall, handsome, powerful, and profound men; I don't like someone like you..."

She spoke with great difficulty, as if struggling to find the right words. Before the conversation could drift in an even stranger direction, Cang Shu promptly interrupted her: "It is not you."

Xie Yuzhu let out a long sigh of relief, clutching her chest. "That's good! That's good! You had me sitting on pins and needles! If it's not me... then... could it be Master?"

Xie Yuzhu pointed at Ye Miwei with a look of confusion, but Cang Shu immediately put an end to her outlandish speculation.

"It is not her, either."

Xie Yuzhu asked, puzzled, "If it's neither of us, then why are you following us?"

"By following you, I will naturally see her."

Wen Ci probed, "Are you trying to say that despite your brilliant ability to calculate and alter the fates of others for your own gain, you do not know where this girl is and must follow us?"

Cang Shu responded calmly, "I naturally know where she is. However, the Bodhisattva fears the cause, while mortals fear the effect. I wish to encounter her through the best possible chain of causality. And following you is the best cause."

Wen Ci's gaze deepened, but he said nothing.

Cang Shu turned to Ye Miwei and asked proactively, "Great Master of All Phenomena, why are you so silent? Do you have no questions for me?"

Ye Miwei nodded and said, "I do."

Then, she began her long deduction.

"You say that you stole this girl's luck, thereby ruining her life. This assertion is not necessarily logical. If the 'Heavenly Mechanism' follows a fixed path, it is like a ball rolling on an ice rink walled on four sides; from the moment it slides, its trajectory is already determined. You were merely a fixed wall set by the Heavenly Mechanism; it struck you from one direction and slid off toward the next wall. Your choice was not your own, but rather the will of the Heavenly Mechanism. In fact, no one has a choice; her life was determined from the moment she was born."

"If the Heavenly Mechanism has no fixed path, it is like a ball on an infinitely vast ice sheet. You were simply a wall that suddenly appeared on her path, and she hit you and turned. In her subsequent sliding, she would have hit countless other walls that appeared suddenly. She failed to turn completely in any of those collisions and ultimately fell into a deep hole in the lake. How much of this, then, can be attributed to you?"

Xie Yuzhu and Cang Shu stared at Ye Miwei, eyes wide. Wen Ci, however, was not surprised; he merely let out a mocking laugh.

After Ye Miwei finished speaking, she looked at them in turn. Seeming to realize something was amiss, she added, "Therefore, I believe your influence on her was far less significant than you imagine."

Cang Shu remained silent. Xie Yuzhu added a timely jab: "Master, by your logic, hasn't he been paying his debts for nothing all these years?"

Cang Shu's complexion turned a rather striking shade of pale.

Ye Miwei began to draw symbols on the ground earnestly. "What I stated is merely a hypothesis. This thing called the 'Heavenly Mechanism' is extremely profound. If the factors influencing one another are partially fixed and partially variable..."

As she spoke, the candle burned to its end, flickered out, and a thin trail of white smoke rose into the air. The temple plunged into darkness instantly.

Cang Shu let out a sigh of relief, as if finally liberated. "Wonderful. In truth, I have been deaf in both ears; I only read lips. Now that there is no light, I cannot hear anything at all. It is best to rest early; maintaining one's health is paramount."

As he spoke, he lay down on the ground, groping for a pile of dry hay nearby and tossing it over himself. Soon, the sound of steady breathing emerged from the shadows.