Chapter Twenty-Eight: Magistrate Bao

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I had taken time out to give birth to a baby boy—soft, chubby, and impossibly adorable, cute enough to melt anyone’s heart. I gave him the nickname Little Round Cake.

Whenever I visited the Bodhisattva Guanyin in her Purple Bamboo Grove in the South Sea, I loved teasing the lively little white cat she kept there. During my pregnancy, I once dreamed that Guanyin sent her beloved white cat to be reborn as my son. I had been overjoyed, assuming that Little Round Cake’s true form was that white cat spirit. Who could have guessed that the moment Teacher Xing saw the baby, he declared with certainty that the child was a divine dragon?

I asked, somewhat disappointed, “What happened to the white cat?”

My dream of cuddling a cat had been shattered!

“It lost the contest for the place in the womb and was driven away by this dragon.”

I fell silent.

Teacher Xing consoled me. “You once did this divine dragon a kindness in the celestial realm. It descended to repay that debt.”

Regardless, Little Round Cake had already become my son. I gathered myself and continued caring for him. It was only later that I discovered there was something extraordinary about him.

That night, after soothing the baby to sleep, I suddenly heard a faint yet distinct scratching at the door. A moment later, the door opened from the outside, and a pitch-black cat silently slipped in. It crept along on tiptoe until it reached the crib, where its jewel-like, strangely brilliant eyes stared without blinking at the peacefully sleeping Little Round Cake.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked ominously.

The black cat’s fur shot up in fright. It trembled violently and took quite some time to calm down.

“Meow…”

A flash of spiritual light shone in those jewel-bright eyes, and a memory belonging to the cat was transmitted into my mind.

In the capital city of Northern Song, morning dew had dampened the glazed roof tiles of the palace, making them cold and dangerously slick. Black Pearl carefully placed one paw in front of the other, walking across the tiles like an elegant lady, yet its paws suddenly slipped. It nearly fell and became a literal cat pancake.

Fortunately, as it slid downward, its hind legs splayed apart, allowing it to land in a seated position on the sharply raised tip of the eaves. With a frightened yowl, its fur exploded, and it clung to the eaves with both paws, trembling and afraid to move.

A cat’s life was truly difficult.

Before entering the imperial palace, Black Pearl had been a stray mountain cat that survived by catching mice. It had been so greedy that, despite cultivating for several decades, it had failed to attain human form. The other spirits in the mountains often spoke of the palace where the emperor of the human world lived, claiming that it contained the finest food under heaven.

Black Pearl could not resist the temptation. Even if it failed to eat anything in the end, entering the palace would count as an experience that lent prestige. Once it returned, it could boast that it had transformed from a wild village cat into a member of the imperial household.

The sun climbed higher and higher. Only after the dew on the glazed tiles had completely evaporated did Black Pearl cautiously climb down along the eaves.

Black Pearl had already been in the imperial palace for half a year. Apart from the imperial kitchen, the place it knew best was the sleeping quarters of the consorts.

It was not that Black Pearl did not want to go home. The trouble was that once one entered the palace, the depths of it were like an ocean, and every other cat became a stranger. The palace was simply too vast. Black Pearl had long since forgotten the way in.

The people in the palace completely misunderstood its proud black coat. They often cursed it as an ill omen, and whenever they saw it, they beat and berated it.

Once, Black Pearl missed home so terribly that it resolved to leave, no matter what. Yet however it wandered, it could not find its way out of the enormous Northern Song palace. It nearly starved to death there.

At the time, it was lying weakly in a corner by the palace wall when a palace maid named Pearl happened to see its pitiful state. She took it back and fed it. From then on, Black Pearl often went to visit her.

Pearl seemed to have no friends. Every time she saw Black Pearl, she smiled with delight. Whenever she fed it, she would gently stroke its fur and chat with it. She was also the one who had given it the name Black Pearl.

When Pearl spoke with it, she sometimes complained about her troubles. She served a consort named Lady Liu, who was domineering and vicious. After becoming pregnant, Lady Liu had grown even more difficult, and low-ranking maids like Pearl were frequently beaten by her.

The emperor had once declared that whichever consort gave birth to a prince first would be made empress. Lady Liu was constantly afraid that Lady Li would deliver her child before she did.

Black Pearl lowered its head and chewed on a strip of dried fish, silently scoffing. Black cats were born with yin-yang eyes. It had seen from the very beginning that Lady Li would certainly give birth to the crown prince first. What was more, the fetus in her womb radiated a dazzling aura of fortune. He was undoubtedly the true Son of Heaven.

On the day Lady Li gave birth, the atmosphere throughout the imperial harem was strange.

Black Pearl slipped through a window that had not been properly closed and hid behind a table. It saw a midwife with sharply raised brows and hollow cheekbones enter to deliver the child.

After Lady Li’s screams had grown louder and louder for what seemed like half a day, the cry of a newborn finally rang out.

“It’s a boy…” the midwife muttered unhappily. “How are we supposed to explain this to Lady Liu? We should strangle the little prince.”

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A eunuch standing nearby could not bear the thought. After hesitating, he said, “This is the emperor’s son, a descendant of the imperial line. If the matter is exposed in the future, our entire families will suffer. Besides, if the prince is strangled, do you think the Imperial Medical Bureau won’t be able to discover the cause?”

“But if we let the prince live, how are we supposed to answer to Lady Liu?” The midwife knitted her brows, her face troubled.

Hearing them discuss how to murder the prince without leaving a trace, Black Pearl turned to slip away. Instead, it crashed into the leg of the table. The vase placed upon it fell with a resounding crash and shattered on the floor.

Black Pearl’s head struck the wood. Dizzy and limp, it collapsed on the ground. A powerful hand seized it by the scruff of the neck and lifted it into the air.

Reflected in its terrified eyes was the midwife’s delighted, almost crazed expression.

“That’s it! We have it!”

The excitement in her voice was impossible to conceal.

“We’ll use this black cat. We’ll skin it and use its hide to replace the honored prince.”

Black Pearl’s eyes filled with terror and despair. The midwife raised a pair of bloodstained scissors high above her head and brought them down with a vicious snap.

A heartrending yowl echoed throughout the entire palace chamber.

I shuddered. The sensation of being skinned alive from that memory had been transmitted into my own body.

“You’re Black Pearl?” Remembering what I had just witnessed, I felt a pang of pity. “Why have you come to me?”

The black cat’s mouth moved several times before it spoke in a somewhat childish voice.

“I want Lord Bao to clear my name…”

The tale of the civet cat exchanging places with the crown prince was known by everyone. All people cared about was where the crown prince had gone. Almost everyone instinctively overlooked the innocent civet cat that had been skinned alive in the struggle for imperial power.

“Lord Bao?” I repeated uncertainly.

Little Round Cake suddenly began wailing in the crib. I hurried to pick him up and soothe him, only to discover in astonishment that a crescent-shaped mark had miraculously appeared on his smooth forehead, glowing with a faint white light.

In all of history, only one person was known to have borne a crescent mark upon his forehead.

At that moment, an old song involuntarily echoed through my mind:

“Above my head, a boundless sky; within my heart, an unshakable faith. Not the ignorance of youth, but the courage to face every challenge…”

I wiped my face in embarrassment.

Surely not. Could Little Round Cake be Lord Bao?

“Meow… Lord Bao…” Seeing the great incorruptible judge in the crib, the black cat began shedding tears.

“Stop crying for now. You can see that Lord Bao is still a nursing infant!” I soothed the sobbing Little Round Cake while negotiating helplessly with the cat. “How about this? I’ll send you to Mount Kunlun to cultivate. Once your cultivation is complete and you are reborn into the human world, those who harmed you will naturally have to repay the debt they incurred in that lifetime.”

A pure white lotus blossomed in my palm. It drifted gently to the floor and, in the blink of an eye, transformed into an exquisite lotus platform.

Teacher Xing had taught me this spell. He said that considerable power also lay dormant within my body, and that I need not rely on him for everything. Sorcery was like a sword: the more it was honed, the sharper it became; the more it was used, the more responsive it grew.

The little black cat understood that finding Lord Bao now would be useless. It had no choice but to climb onto the faintly glowing lotus platform.

“Send it to Mount Kunlun to cultivate.”

The lotus platform slowly rose into the air, passed through the window, and merged into the night. Before long, it vanished from sight.

I suddenly remembered something Teacher Yang had once told me.

One night, unable to sleep because of her illness, she had suddenly thought of seeking Lord Bao of the underworld to clear her name.

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She sat cross-legged on her bed, closed her eyes, gathered her thoughts, and softly repeated Lord Bao’s name.

Before long, a fierce wind rushed in through the window, making the curtains rustle. She felt as though the wind had spun her around and swept her underground.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself in an utterly silent, pitch-black world. The only thing before her was a solemn, archaic judicial desk, styled like the furnishings of an ancient magistrate’s court.

Though there was no one around, Teacher Yang could clearly sense a gaze fixed upon her from behind the desk.

She understood. Lord Bao did not wish to reveal himself before others, and had concealed himself while hearing her case.

She reverently knelt before the desk and spoke to the invisible figure behind it.

“Lord Bao, I know that more than a thousand years have passed since the Song dynasty. Your official position in the underworld must have risen by now. I do not know what your current rank is, but I have come to ask for your help. Please investigate the problem in my chest. What exactly is this thing that keeps returning? Is some wronged spirit or karmic debtor haunting me, or has someone placed a curse upon me?”

There was no response from behind the desk.

Just as Teacher Yang began to think that Lord Bao did not intend to accept her case, the wooden block on the desk suddenly struck down with a sharp crack.

A white, screen-like image sprang into existence before her eyes.

Across a barren plain, a vast multitude of prehistoric humans dressed in white hemp garments ran wildly. It seemed they had not yet learned to walk upright on two legs and could only charge forward on all fours like beasts, kicking up clouds of dust as they went.

It felt as though a great mass of something had been released from her chest. The pain and heaviness immediately eased.

Only then did she understand. Someone had turned her chest into a prison and locked away the souls of these ancient humans within it. Lord Bao had now granted them their release.

Teacher Yang asked the hidden Lord Bao, “Lord Bao, is there anything else?”

It was as though an invisible hand were writing two glowing white words stroke by stroke in the darkness:

Min Two.

Another image appeared before her eyes.

At the corner of a bustling commercial street stood a bathhouse and massage center. It seemed vaguely familiar. After thinking for a long while, Teacher Yang remembered that she had worked there as a cashier at the front desk more than a decade earlier. Her boyfriend at the time had objected, so she had resigned after working there for little more than twenty days.

There was something strange about that bathhouse. Every employee who joined was required to write down their birth date and time on the registration form.

At the time, Teacher Yang had not yet entered the world of spiritual practices and did not understand the significance of such information. Like the other employees, she had obediently written it down.

The owner’s surname was Min, and he was from Southern Fujian. His bathhouse was large, occupying two floors, and offered bathing, massage, foot therapy, ear cleaning, and other services.

Beside the owner’s office was a small room that remained locked and was never open to anyone. Yet in the underworld’s projection, there were no secrets. Teacher Yang saw that the room contained no furniture at all. Countless little figures woven from hemp and straw had been arranged across the floor.

A piece of white cloth was sewn onto the back of each figure. On one of them, Teacher Yang saw her own name and birth information.

Having spent so much time studying the occult, she naturally understood what those straw figures were for.

They were meant to bear another person’s karmic debts.

The owner, Boss Min, must have committed many evil deeds and feared retribution. Whenever someone came to work for him, he had them write down their birth information, then fashioned a straw figure in their likeness and arranged the figures into a ritual formation. In this way, he distributed his own karmic sins among them.

The projection ended.

Before Teacher Yang had recovered her wits, she heard three deep beats of a drum announcing the close of court.

Black mist spread across the darkness and swallowed the judicial desk. Just as it was about to engulf her, an irresistible force hurled her out of that place.

Teacher Yang opened her eyes and found herself still sitting safely on her bed.

She told Teacher Xing what Lord Bao had uncovered. He immediately dispatched numerous celestial soldiers, who destroyed Boss Min’s formation and redirected all its backlash onto him.

Two years later, Teacher Yang unexpectedly ran into a friend she had not seen in many years. It was this friend who had originally introduced her to the bathhouse.

After an enthusiastic exchange of greetings, the friend happened to mention the owner during their conversation.

“I heard that someone later got that owner addicted to gambling. He became a compulsive high-stakes gambler and often went to Macau to gamble. He lost the entire fortune he had worked so hard to build. Then he incurred a massive debt to loan sharks at the casinos. The lenders cut out one of his kidneys before considering the debt settled.

“Those criminal operations aren’t sanitary or safe. Not long after he returned home, he developed an infection, and his remaining kidney failed as well. He died in the hospital.

“I heard his wife had already been driven to divorce him while he was gambling, taking their child with her. When he died, there wasn’t even anyone to collect his body.

“Tsk. Gambling really is a thing that destroys lives without paying any price itself.”