Chapter Two: The Chief Commander of the Four-Leaf Army

After I got home, I sorted through the recordings from the ritual hall and began outlining my novel.

Once the outline was finished, I took a shower and went to bed. I made a point of sleeping early that night, because Yang Yue had told me that many people who had been to Master Xing’s ritual hall experienced strange sensations in their sleep.

I fell asleep with equal parts unease and excitement.

A flash of white light fell into the room, and four men and two women in ancient battle robes suddenly appeared in my bedroom. I was so startled I shot upright from under the blankets.

The four men and two women cupped their fists and bowed in perfect unison toward me, sitting there on the bed and trembling under the covers. In a chorus they cried, “The Clover Army pays respects to our commanding general!”

I blinked a few times before finally managing to say, “H-hello…”

Among the six of them, the other five kept their eyes lowered, too afraid to meet mine. Only the woman standing in front dared look straight at me. Smiling warmly, she said, “The Clover Army has descended to help purge the demons and evil spirits near the general’s home, so as to relieve the general’s burden.”

With that, the six divine warriors each drew their weapons and began battling the monsters hidden in the night. They worked with perfect coordination, sometimes fighting side by side, sometimes alone, and crushed those creatures so thoroughly they were left with nothing but defeat.

Seeing how hard they fought, I felt a little embarrassed. I got out of bed barefoot, ran to the living room, rummaged through the cabinets, and at last found six disposable paper cups. I made tea for each of them.

When they had finally swept away all the nearby demons and stopped to catch their breath, I eagerly carried a cup over and first handed it to the woman who had spoken to me at the beginning. “You’ve all worked hard. I made tea for you. Have some tea before you go!”

The other five divine warriors, who had never dared look at me, all raised their heads in disbelief. Even the woman who had first spoken to me looked surprised. She smiled and said, “After descending, our commander has become much kinder than before.”

As soon as she finished speaking, a flash of white light swept through, and all six divine warriors vanished.

Lying in bed, I jolted violently awake, opening my eyes in confusion.

Had I dreamed it? It had all felt so real.

Then I felt the pressure of a full bladder in my lower abdomen. I climbed out of bed, slipped on my slippers, and headed for the bathroom. Since the living room faced my bedroom door, the moment I stepped out I saw six disposable cups filled to the brim with tea, lined up neatly in a row on the dining table.

In the dead of night, when the world was at its darkest and people were usually at their sleepiest, I was suddenly awakened by violent banging on my bedroom door.

“Xiaoqian, have you contacted the boy the matchmaker introduced to you yet? Are you trying to drive me to my grave? Do you plan to stay home as an old maid and make me support you? Open this door, now—open the door!”

The thing I feared most had been discovered. I was startled awake at once. My brain had not yet caught up, but my body, in panic, reacted on instinct. Stumbling toward the door to open it for my mother, I suddenly felt something was wrong.

It was pitch-dark outside. Even if my mother were furious enough to yell at me about marriage, why would she do it at this hour? She picked the middle of the night to come scolding me, when it was so dark I could not even see my hand in front of my face.

I slowly withdrew the hand I had raised to open the door and sat back down on the bed. I ignored the “person” outside. The voice sounded extremely like my mother’s, but if I listened closely, there was still a faint, sharp, bestial edge beneath it.

After cursing for quite some time, the “person” at the door seemed to realize I had seen through its true nature. Its voice gradually turned more and more twisted and distorted, like the tearing sound of a strip of heavy tape being ripped away, or the shrill, piercing screech of a broken machine.

“Xu Xiaoqian—open the door! Open it—”

It no longer pounded. Instead, it began slamming violently against the door panel. The bedroom door boomed and rattled so hard the whole building above and below us could have heard it, yet my parents sleeping in the next room did not react at all, as if they could not hear a thing.

Maybe only I could hear it.

“Xu Xiaoqian, you ruined my home. You had your underlings kill my family. I want revenge!”

Outside, the voice grew harsher and more venomous with hatred.

It seemed that when the six divine warriors had been clearing out the demons earlier, one had slipped through somehow, and now its enemy had come knocking at my door.

And luckily, after I had come back from the bathroom, I had locked the door behind me out of habit. Habits really could save your life at the crucial moment.

Once I realized the thing outside could not get into the room, I paid it no further attention. I pulled the blanket over my ears and tried to sleep again, but the cursing and the pounding went on without end, loud enough to keep me from sleeping at all.

My anger flared up.

So you’re going to keep cursing forever, huh? If you’re so capable, then come in here and curse me to my face. It’s not as if I killed your whole family, so why are you ranting at me?

It dragged on for a very long time. Only when the sky had begun to pale did the cursing and banging finally fade away.

I let my head fall to the pillow and soon fell asleep.

When I woke up, I told Master Xing about what had happened. He said it was probably a fox spirit. Foxes were adept at probing the human heart; it knew the person I feared most was my mother, so it took my mother’s voice to lure me into opening the door.

Two days later, I went back to the ritual hall again, hoping Master Xing could help me recover my true body and restore it to me.

Many people think that when a deity descends into the world and is reborn through the cycle of reincarnation, it is simply a matter of coming down. But it is not that simple. The difference between gods and mortals is that gods have not only a soul, but also a true body, a primal spirit, divine consciousness, and a divided spirit.

Usually, what descends into the mortal world for reincarnation is the heavenly soul of the god, and the divided spirit and divine consciousness often descend as well to undergo training and cultivation. The primal spirit and true body remain in the divine realm, carrying on as usual. Only when the reincarnated self in the mortal world calls upon the primal spirit and true body in the divine realm will they descend and merge with the incarnation in the human world.

The true body is our original form, such as dragon, phoenix, or the shape of some other species, while the primal spirit is our appearance as a person in the divine realm. Usually, if something happens in the divine realm, the primal spirit will go back, handle official duties, and then return.

In general, we who have descended for reincarnation cannot summon our own primal spirits and true bodies in the divine realm. We must rely on someone like Master Xing, who possesses command banners and divine mandates, in order to retrieve them.

Master Xing had retrieved his own true body and primal spirit himself, which was a matter of differing rank, status, and cultivation.

Before the primal spirit and true body can be brought back, all the bad influences on the body must first be cleared away.

Master Xing lightly pinched the pad of my ring finger with two fingers, narrowing his eyes as if sensing something. “It’s throbbing quite strongly.”

“What is this for?” I asked curiously.

Master Xing’s voice was steady and carried an air of authority. “This is called taking the pulse. If a person has external evil attached to them, the pad of the ring finger will keep throbbing. The stronger the throbbing, the more external evil there is on the body.”

As he spoke, Master Xing suddenly used the nail of his thumb to press hard at the base of my ring finger. The pain was unbearable, and I could not help crying out.

Master Xing kept a calm face and held on without loosening his grip, pressing until my eyes brimmed with tears.

After quite a while, he finally let go and explained, “If there is too much external evil on the body, and it has been there for too long, some of it will actively possess you and speak when the base of the ring finger is pinched. What’s on you now is still considered little.”

“Then whose body has the most external evil?” I asked, shaking out my sore hand in curiosity.

“Yang Yue,” Master Xing said. “Yang Yue is the person I have seen with the most external evil attached.”

He told me that my human soul was not in my body; it had been imprisoned by those evil creatures.

He had me stand properly in the center of the ritual hall, then stretched out his large hand and said in a deep voice, “I respectfully invite the divine dragon sword.”

With a whoosh, a sword glowing with golden light descended from the sky and landed in Master Xing’s hand. Its blade was razor-sharp, its patterns like dragon scales, and its hilt took the shape of a dragon’s head. With a sweeping slash, clang-clang, the iron chains binding the human soul were severed, and the moment they hit the ground they turned to nothing. “Return.”

A human soul exactly like me drifted into the ritual hall. Master Xing shouted, “Human soul, go in!” and that wisp of soul flew into my body like a fledgling bird returning to its nest.

Once the lost soul had been recovered, the next step was to deal with the spirits and goblins on me, since they were also one of the beings of all creation.

The first step was to invite them: to ask those beings to come down from my body of their own accord. He would send them to the Kunlun Mountains, the ancestral peak of all mountains, to cultivate there. Some who were sensible and feared Master Xing, upon hearing they could go cultivate in Kunlun, would choose to come down on their own. He would then arrange for them to ride lotus platforms and fly off to Kunlun.

The second step was to kill. For those who remained stubborn and insisted on cultivating by absorbing human spiritual energy, he imposed the severest punishment. Master Xing pressed his palm down on the top of my head and shouted sternly, “All beings within Xu Xiaoqian’s body, undergo Five Thunder Shock immediately—strike—turn to ashes, soul shattered, dispersed without a trace...”

From his palm burst countless bolts of thunder and lightning, like a net of cold electric light that enveloped me from head to toe. Under the flashing lightning, all the spirits and creatures let out agonized, terrified shrieks, and in an instant they turned to fly ash.

I instantly felt light all over, as though the heavy burden I had carried for years had at last been lifted.

The third step was to help me recover my primal spirit and true body. Master Xing called out, “Xu Xiaoqian’s true body and primal spirit, come and take your seat.”

A pale golden azure dragon flew in through the door. “Go in,” Master Xing commanded sharply.

The dragon’s head plunged into my body, and the dragon’s form gradually vanished into me. The very moment the tail disappeared completely, I felt a profound ease, as if everything had finally settled into place.

After that came the tally and the repaying of karmic debts owed to the underworld. So-called underworld debt refers to the sum each person borrows from the Netherworld at birth, like a fee for being born, and it must be repaid.

Repaying underworld debt also includes paying back the debts owed to karmic creditors accumulated over countless lives. If one never repays it, family, career, fortune, and health will all be affected, and everything will begin to go awry.

To repay this debt, a memorial document had to be written. First, an ordinary yellow ritual paper was passed through the incense on the altar in the ritual hall three times, and then the brush used to write the memorial was also passed through the incense three times, so that it would be charged with energy.

On the yellow paper, one would write:

Repayment of underworld debt

Xu Xiaoqian, on this day, at this hour, submits this memorial to heaven and earth to report repayment of underworld debt to the Netherworld. May all debts from countless lives, all karmic creditors, aborted infant spirits, and ancestors of every generation soon be reborn, escape the sea of suffering, and joyfully receive new life. With gratitude to heaven and earth, to all the gods, and to all beings of heaven and earth.

Then it would be stamped with the imperial seal granted to him by the Jade Emperor. Finally, the contents of the memorial would be announced before the seven divine statues in the ritual hall, after which the yellow paper would be burned.

The gold ingots used for repaying the underworld debt were folded by Master Xing himself, one by one, filling a whole bag. Because the hotel was inconvenient for burning paper offerings, he drove me to a nearby temple to burn them there.

The tongues of flame lapped at the heap of golden ingots, consuming them little by little until they were reduced to ashes.

Master Xing told me I should come back to the ritual hall again in a week or so. He said that day he would let me meet someone. I asked, “Who?”

He looked at the pile of paper ingots, soon to be burned to ash, and said in an unruffled voice, “...The Dragon Mother of the East Sea.”