Chapter 20: Trading Lives

Have you ever had your fate swapped?

It is the phenomenon where the good fortune that should have been yours is stolen by another; the person who took your fate assumes your destiny and enjoys the life that was meant for you.

I discovered that my own fate had been swapped starting with a session of scrolling through TikTok.

That morning, I was idling in bed, scrolling through the app, when I stumbled upon a video of a woman whose best friend had used metaphysics to swap their fates. By the time she discovered it, more than half of her life had already passed. The friend who had stolen her fate had married into a wealthy family in Hong Kong, while the woman whose fate was taken was not only destitute but also suffered through a miserable marriage. A sense of stifling oppression settled in my chest. I swiped down again and found a Korean drama, "The Golden Spoon," which tells the story of a poor boy who swaps identities with a rich classmate. No matter how much I scrolled that entire day, every recommendation was, without exception, about swapping fates.

It was bizarre. While the app does recommend videos based on personal interests, it shouldn't have been exclusively about fate-swapping!

That night, just as I drifted off to sleep, a child who appeared to be about ten years old suddenly appeared above my bed. His skin was a sickly, pale white, and his expression was as solemn and composed as an old man's. He wore the robes of an ancient judge and held a bamboo scroll in his small hands. His pale, bloodless lips murmured, "Changed, it has changed again... Her fate has been altered once more. How could this be?"

I suddenly remembered who this child was. When I was eighteen, I had a dream where I entered the underworld, and this child was the one who greeted me. At that time, an old man served as his attendant. The child claimed to be the judge in charge of my Book of Life and Death, and he had stated quite bluntly that my fate had been altered and that I would die an unnatural death at the age of twenty-seven. As it turned out, when I was twenty-seven, I didn't even catch a cold; I passed through the year without a single disaster.

When I first met Teacher Xing, I was only a month away from twenty-eight. I had anxiously told him about this, but Teacher Xing said I had been sent to the mortal realm with a mission, and until that mission was complete, I wouldn't be departing so easily. He told me to set my heart at ease.

The little judge’s eyes flashed with a sudden realization. "Someone performed a swap. Who exactly stole her fate? No, it was altered from the very beginning."

"What are you talking about? What swap? What was altered?" I asked, bewildered.

"I must check the Wheel of Destiny." Without acknowledging my question, the little judge turned and vanished into the wall.

The next day, I asked Teacher Yang to use the divination rods to see if my fate had been stolen. I asked three times, and every time, the answer was yes.

Teacher Yang asked me, "If you believe someone has swapped your fate, who do you think it might be? I need you to provide some candidates so I can help you filter them."

I hesitated before mentioning a name: "Bai Juan..."

Bai Juan was a childhood friend. We had been classmates since kindergarten, though we didn't become close until middle school. Bai Juan had a tomboyish personality; she was the type to have a wide social circle and travel anywhere. Unlike me, a greenhouse flower raised under protection, I had always liked her as a friend. We had never had any conflicts or arguments; it was only due to growing up and our respective careers that we had slowly drifted apart over the years.

If there was any reason she would cast a dark spell on me, I could only think of one: writing.

Like me, Bai Juan had harbored a dream of writing since she was young. However, she only saw the glory and prestige that writing brought and couldn't handle the hardship and bitterness. She was naturally lazy and loved to play; she couldn't stand the idea of staying home all day to read and write quietly. She didn't even last a week before she lost heart and gave up early. When I learned she had quit, I felt a sense of regret for her and tried to persuade her several times to stick to her writing dream.

I was only met with a rebuttal: "Are you sure that as long as you persist and work hard, you will definitely succeed?"

I was speechless, because I didn't know how my own efforts would turn out in the end, either. I just felt that a person needed a dream to have a direction to walk toward in the long, drawn-out journey of life.

Even when my novels weren't good and I was suffering from the worst writer's block, I never thought of letting go. But once my first debut novel began serializing online, Bai Juan’s attitude toward me gradually changed. She began to frequently urge me to give up writing, her words filled with disdain for the craft and a compromise with reality: "These are impractical dreams. Dreams will eventually be defeated by reality."

But I never listened to her. The look she gave me after her final unsuccessful attempt to persuade me still makes me shudder whenever I recall it.

The divination rods spun a few times before slowly and firmly pointing toward Bai Juan. The massive stone that had been hanging over my heart crashed down, shattering it into pieces.

"It really was her who swapped your fate. I just don't know who she found to help her," Teacher Yang said, gathering the rods. "Your original destiny was excellent; you could have achieved both fame and fortune through writing. Feng Huyuan had previously tried to siphon your wealth multiple times because he coveted the prosperity in your birth chart. Bai Juan took the easy way out and simply swapped her fate with yours."

"And the name Bai Juan," Teacher Yang said, scribbling the characters on a piece of paper. She tapped the tip of her pen on the name and looked at me with sharp eyes. "Can you see anything in these two characters?"

I took the paper, stared at it for a long time, and shook my head, saying I didn't see anything special.

Suddenly, Teacher Xing, who had been sitting quietly like a silent observer, spoke up: "It's a White Bone Spirit."

What? A White Bone Spirit!

Teacher Yang nodded. "Bai Juan's primordial spirit must be a White Bone Spirit. All I see in these two characters is a pile of bleached, eerie bones."

In a trance, a scene appeared in my mind: a dark night, a skeleton rising slowly from the wild grasses. The friction of the bones made a clattering sound. The skeleton sat cross-legged, worshipping the moon hanging high in the sky to cultivate. Day after day of cultivation passed, and strands of flesh began to appear on the bones, slowly filling out until a physical body was formed. The body took the form of a young girl. Her features were merely delicate, but her eyes were unusually large—so large they seemed unable to fit in their sockets, bulging slightly outward.

The moment I saw her face clearly, I snapped out of the vision, startled. "It's Xiao Jie! Bai Juan's primordial spirit is that same Xiao Jie who once tried to ruin my face."

"It's no wonder she swapped your fate in this lifetime," Teacher Yang said. "A primordial spirit is a person's true nature. Deep in her soul, she actually longed to become you."

Since the fate could be swapped, it could naturally be swapped back. Teacher Xing performed a ritual to break the spell and captured a strand of Bai Juan’s human soul, imprisoning it in the underworld as punishment.

Teacher Yang sighed. "Although Bai Juan’s original fate wasn't as noble as yours, compared to others, it was quite good. Her destiny was very polarized; if she performed good deeds, it would be extremely prosperous, but if she committed evil, it would lead to total ruin. Because she swapped your fate out of jealousy, she is now suffering the backlash. The rest of her life will be one of utter devastation."

That evening, I chatted with Zhong Yang. She was excited and told me that a few days ago, her father, Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li, had come to visit her along with Nezha and her mother, the Golden Flower Goddess.

Zhong Yang told me her mother was wearing a beautiful red ancient gown. Nezha, riding on a multicolored auspicious cloud, looked like a fair-skinned, chubby toddler of three or four years old in a red bellyband. She said she almost couldn't resist reaching out to scoop him up and pinch his cheeks.

How strange. The last time I saw Nezha, he looked like a middle-schooler. Why did he look like a toddler to Zhong Yang? Could it be a different dharma body?

In the divine realm, Nezha always appears as a child. No matter how much time passes, no one has ever seen him grow into an adult.

Since I was getting married early next month, I invited Zhong Yang to the wedding. She said that after attending my ceremony, she would bring a special girl to the Taoist center.

"What makes her special?" I asked.

Zhong Yang gave a naive smile on her round face and held up three fingers. "She has been in a psychiatric hospital three times."

I was stunned. "What?"

Zhong Yang loved the traditional culture scene and had joined the Hanfu Association and the Ancient Style Music Association. That was where she met Wang Aiyan. Wang Aiyan was an online composer who made a living selling music, but she had been briefly blacklisted from the music industry for frequently sexually harassing female singers online.

I don't know if it's true that for artists, the line between genius and madness is thin, but Wang Aiyan suffered from schizophrenia and had been sent to psychiatric hospitals by her family three times.

The reason Zhong Yang wanted to bring her to the center was that she felt Wang Aiyan was not an ordinary person.

Wang Aiyan had a childhood friend working in Beijing who had recommended a famous Taoist temple to her: the White Cloud Temple.

Located outside the Xibianmen Gate in Beijing, the White Cloud Temple is the ancestral site of the Quanzhen Longmen sect and is known as the "First Monastery of Quanzhen." Originally named "Tianchang Temple," it was built by Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty to honor Laozi, and it had a history of 1,200 years.

When Wang Aiyan arrived there, she discovered that the temple was a meeting point for the three realms, with many beings from across the realms practicing inside.

There was a Lu Zu Hall in the temple. The moment Wang Aiyan crossed the threshold, she saw a wild, arrogant youth in Taoist robes drinking wine while practicing swordplay. His movements were unrestrained and carried a hint of romantic flair. By the time he finished the set, the wine in his flask was gone. He tossed the flask aside, leaped into the air, and with a flash of white light, entered the statue of Lu Zu.

Wang Aiyan felt her blood surge. She watched the arrogant youth with ecstasy and envy, feeling an indescribable familiarity with the scene.

She truly hated that she was born a woman in this life; she felt she should have been an untamed man.

A Taoist priest sat inside the Lu Zu Hall. He stroked his beard, observed Wang Aiyan for a moment, and approached her. He asked for her birth date and time, telling her that her destiny had a hidden connection with the immortals and that he wanted to take her as his apprentice.

To Wang Aiyan, no one was qualified to be her master, so she left. On the street outside the temple, there were many fortune tellers. Her friend, Wang Huilin, insisted on having a reading done.

Suddenly, Wang Aiyan felt her heart flutter. A sense of intuition made her instinctively turn back. She saw an old man standing above the White Cloud Temple, accompanied by a young attendant, watching her from afar.