This story has essentially come to an end here. Afterwards, the Daoist priest performed a ritual to separate Shen Xuanrou's soul from her body, removed some gold and silver jewelry from the corpse, built a tomb for her, left behind a few volumes of scriptures for crossing over into salvation, and after imparting some teachings on the Daoist arts, departed with her remains.
The priest's meaning was quite clear: whether you seek early liberation or wish to cultivate the Dao to become an immortal depends entirely upon yourself.
She remained in that desolate grave, and this wait lasted for over three hundred years, until she finally encountered me.
I also discovered the reason why she feared no Daoist magical artifacts. First, my magical power is negligible—or rather, nonexistent—making me unable to activate these items, which naturally reduced them to mere dead objects.
Second, because Shen Xuanrou had stayed in the tomb for far too long, absorbing the spiritual essence of heaven, earth, sun, and moon, and cultivating for over three hundred years, she was no longer of the lowest order of ordinary ghosts. Even with only her soul remaining, these objects could no longer inflict any harm upon her.
For a ghost to cultivate, they must also pass through four stages of transforming essence into qi, transforming qi into spirit, transforming spirit to return to void, and returning void to the Dao. The specific phases they experience are Spirit-Awakening, Soul-Opening, Soul Pill, Heart Refining, Spirit Devouring, Body Condensation, Animus Condensation, Soul Refining, Body Tempering, Return to Void, Great Perfection, and Tribulation.
This is rather similar to the cultivation novels we usually read, with things like Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment, Golden Core and Nascent Soul—in short, each stage corresponds to a different level of power.
So I asked her what realm she was currently in, and she told me that roughly sixty years ago, she had completed Body Condensation, but for some reason thereafter, she had made no further progress whatsoever.
I calculated the time and smiled. Pushing back about sixty years brought us precisely to the founding of New China.
There are two rather fantastical explanations here: first, in the Ming dynasty, Liu Bowen heavily slashed the Dragon Veins of the entire realm, causing the spiritual energy to wither and the Age of Dharma Decline to arrive; second, after the founding of the nation, spirits are not permitted to become supernatural.
This is no mere joke. Suppressed by the fortune of an entire nation, no matter how heaven-defying your abilities might be, you could never stir up any waves—all the more so for Shen Xuanrou, who was merely an ordinary cultivating ghost.
Listening to the entire story took nearly a year. Considering my physical condition, she still only came twice a month, staying for just one shift—meaning two hours—each time to recount these tales to me.
Due to the intense academic pressure of the second year of high school, coupled with my prolonged contact with Shen Xuanrou, my physical condition grew worse by the day, and my studies fell behind.
In time, my father noticed the signs and took me to quite a few hospitals, yet my condition still did not improve.
Finally, having run out of alternatives, he asked for leave from school for me, saying he was going to take me to see a master.
I drove with my old man to another village. Nothing much happened along the way, so I won't go into detail here.
Yet the moment the car stopped, I was dumbfounded. Wasn't he supposed to be taking me to see a master? How had he brought me to the Underworld Garden instead?
With a single slap to my back, my old man sent me stumbling forward, saying that the master was right here, and that he had even cast a horoscope for me when I was a little boy—let's go.
Since my old man put it that way, I had no choice but to say nothing and follow him inside.
The Underworld Garden lay along a small path between two buildings. Past these buildings was a cement road flanked by dense trees and overgrown weeds.
At the end of the cement road, after rounding a corner, one first saw a five-meter-tall stone pagoda with a small doorway. Inside, it was piled high with the ashes of incense and paper offerings, and densely surrounded by one tomb after another. Behind the tombs stood a tall enclosing wall, pierced in the middle by a bronze-colored grand gate.
All of this made me somewhat uneasy, perhaps on account of my frail constitution, but I could only follow along inside.
Entering through the bronze gate, I found a row of low houses. Some doors were tightly shut while others stood open, revealing walls inside lined with niches, most of which held a columbarium box.
At that moment I muttered to myself that he had better not take me into one of those rooms, or I would dash my head against the stone pagoda outside the door and die.
Fortunately, after entering the gate, my father turned another corner and went straight into the back hall. The decoration there was rather simple, furnished only with some antique furniture and an elderly grandfather lying in a rocking chair.
Seeing my father walk in, the old man rose with a cheerful smile, welcomed my father to a seat, and then looked me up and down before asking, "Is this your son? He's grown up so much."
After a brief exchange of polite pleasantries, my father told the old man about my physical condition. The old man asked me, "Have you recently provoked anything unclean?"
Did Shen Xuanrou count?
I shook my head and simply said no.
The old man seemed to have known beforehand that I would say this, and turning to my father, he said, "Do you remember the horoscope I cast for your son when he was born?"
My father nodded to indicate that he remembered.
The old man uttered an "hmm," then turned to me and said, "Listen to me recount something you don't know. Once you've heard it, weigh the priorities for yourself and make your own judgment."
Seventeen years ago, auspicious clouds descended from the heavens and the winds and colors of the firmament shifted as a golden dragon treading upon seven-colored auspicious clouds fell into the clinic where my mother was being delivered, and then I was born.
That was all made up by me. Let's start over.
After I was born, my father brought me to this old man to have my horoscope cast. At the time, it was said that my birth characters were mediocre, my first half of life would be full of hardships, I would marry late, and wealth would arrive at thirty-five, after which my path through life would be smooth and plain sailing, getting whatever I wished for.
After casting the horoscope, he looked at my physiognomy. At this glance, the old man clicked his tongue and declared that I possessed the Gathering of Three Stars, capable of withstanding three major tribulations—what a fine fate this child has.
As soon as these words were spoken, my father hurried home in high spirits, and within a few days, the neighbors and everyone else knew, coming one after another to offer their congratulations.
Yet nobody knew that in my second year of life, the very first tribulation arrived.
That year, for reasons unknown, I wandered off and somehow ended up at Lotus Ditch all by myself, where a woman took me by the hand along the road. It was said that I didn't resist at all, but simply wept the whole way.
Having cried for the entire journey, perhaps tired from weeping, I told the woman that I was hungry and wanted something to eat.
The woman happened to be unusually kind-hearted. Seeing that I had stopped crying and making a fuss, she took me to find a small grocery store to buy me something to fill my stomach.
The woman picked out several food items, but I rejected them all. Finally, losing her patience, she asked me what I wanted to eat, and I replied that I wanted to eat longan.
Longan is actually a dried product processed from fresh longan fruit, and in those days, it was said to be quite expensive.
But I knew nothing of that. At home I was a little emperor, and believing longan tasted delicious, I would pester my father to buy it for me every day.
The woman probably thought it was too expensive and was unwilling to buy it. I clung to the counter, crying and shouting that I ate this every single day at home.
The store owner seemed to sense that something wasn't quite right and blurtingly remarked, "How is it that this child doesn't quite look like yours?"
I do not know whether that woman was specifically engaged in stealing children to raise or traffic them, but according to the old man, the moment she heard the owner say those words, she panicked, hurriedly abandoned me, and fled.