A fine snow was drifting through the winter night in Cyan Ox Village, and the pine-oil lamp inside the Medicine Cottage flickered in the wind and snow. Zhang Xuanzhen sat cross-legged on the kang, gazing at his disciple's back as he packed his travel bag. Suddenly, he let out a cough, reached into the bottom of a camphor-wood chest, and pulled out a lacquered box. The brass latch gave a crisp "click," startling Zhang Yifan, who was in the middle of stuffing insect repellent into a bamboo tube, so that he turned his head sharply.
"It is time to give you what I've kept at the bottom of the box." The Old Daoist lifted the lid, and three items glimmered faintly in the lamplight: a sheepskin map traced with ink lines, a jujube-wood abacus carved with cyan ox patterns, and a brocade pouch holding seven seeds. Zhang Yifan had sharp eyes; he immediately noticed that the ink lines along the edge of the Chang'an Market Map actually formed the Big Dipper formation. As his fingertips grazed a certain section of the market wall, a hidden "Open Gate" rune suddenly materialized in the firelight.
"What marvelous Qimen Dunjia!" The young man could not help reaching out to touch it, only for the Old Daoist to slap his hand away. "Remember, buried beneath the 'Huyu Workshop' in the West Market on this map is a token of the Taiji Commercial Alliance. It reveals itself upon touching water." He shook the abacus, and three abacus beads suddenly snapped out, nailing themselves into a ceiling beam to form the "Three Talents Formation." "These beads have been soaked in aconite juice; striking an acupoint with one will numb it for half an hour—don't go using them to shoot birds like Huwa, or you'll knock out your front teeth."
Zhang Yifan stroked the warm, polished patina on the abacus, suddenly noticing that every bead was engraved with a tiny formula from the Jiuzhang Suanshu, while the very last bead bore the characters "Cyan Ox"—crafted precisely from the calf-horn scraps the master had used to save him years ago. When it came to the brocade pouch, the seven seeds rolled into the shape of the Big Dipper in his palm. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple, they were inscribed respectively with "Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, Earth, Sun, and Moon." "The 'Cyan Ox Seven' follow the four seasons; they sprout in spring, grow in summer, are harvested in autumn, and stored in winter, embodying the method of the Five Phases generating one another. If you see someone in Chang'an cultivating seven-colored crops, they are our people."
Outside the window came Huwa's silly laugh, followed by Xiaoxiu's angry scolding: "Stop stuffing snow into Brother Fan's straw sandals!" Zhang Xuanzhen suddenly turned solemn. "Tomorrow you must persuade the Three Elders to lend out the travel pass. Old Yang stubbornly insists that 'only hunting keeps us alive,' so use Guiguzi's art of swaying and uniting; the clan chief clings to 'ancestral mountain and forest property,' so use Mencius's benevolent governance; as for the old village chief..." He suddenly pointed to the starlit sky outside. "Tonight the Ziwei Star shifts eastward, its primary star entering the mortal world. That should make him believe in 'destiny.'"
At noon the next day, Zhang Yifan crouched inside Old Yang's hunter's shed, inhaling the pungent odor of animal pelts and watching the veins bulge on the man's hands as he whetted a hunting knife. "Does uncle know that you hunted twelve roe deer last year, yet half the fawns in the mountains starved to death?" He suddenly whipped out the abacus, and the abacus beads clacked briskly. "If you change from hunting to protecting, I will collect animal dung to make fertilizer, trading each load for three feet of cloth—the new cotton-padded jacket your missus has been longing for for three years will likely be a hundred times warmer than a fur coat."
Old Yang's knife froze in mid-motion. "You wet-behind-the-ears brat, what do you know of mountain and forest rules?" Zhang Yifan suddenly pointed to a Granary-Guard Beetle Shell hanging on the roof frame. "Rules are rigid, but people are adaptable. Look at this shell; when I dry and grind it into powder, it prevents pests, and mixed with animal dung, it makes fertile soil. Guiguzi said that 'the world has no constant nobility, and affairs have no constant master.' Do you want Huwa to be forced to forage for wild greens in rock crevices in the future?"
The hunter's knife dropped to the ground with a clatter. Striking while the iron was hot, Zhang Yifan fished out the heart-protecting sachet embroidered by Xiaoxiu and shoved it over. "This sachet contains your favorite loose tobacco leaves, and their scent keeps beasts from coming near—far more useful than your stinking fur pelts." Old Yang pinched the sachet and muttered curses, but a flicker of wavering showed in his eyes.
When it came time to persuade the clan chief, Zhang Yifan was squatting beneath the old locust tree in front of the ancestral hall, watching ants carry the crushed rice grains he had scattered and line them up into the character for "shared." "Grandpa Clan Chief, look, these ants even know how to forage collectively. Why can't the mountains and forests of our Cyan Ox Village be managed and nurtured collectively?" He unfurled a bamboo slip of Mencius. "'Axes enter the mountains and forests only in their proper seasons.' I will teach everyone to harvest by the seasons—picking bracken in the spring, chanterelles in the summer, and leaving seeds behind for autumn and winter. Look at this 'merit ledger'; the iron tools exchanged for collectively harvested mountain goods can be distributed to every single household."
The clan chief stroked his goatee and sneered, "It sounds wonderful, but what if someone harvests in secret?" Zhang Yifan suddenly produced a bamboo tube and poured out five Spring-Guiding Insects with golden spots on their backs. "Each insect claims a section of the mountain and forest. Whichever field it crawls to reveals whether that area has been over-harvested—ten times more efficient than having you send hunters to keep watch." He lowered his voice. "Besides, Old Yang just agreed to protect the beasts this morning. If you don't give your consent, he might just use your tobacco pouch as a dung bucket."
That night, the candle light in the ancestral hall cast dancing shadows of the old village chief's wrinkles. Zhang Yifan gazed at the cobwebs on the beam and suddenly pointed at the starry sky with a gasp of astonishment: "Quickly look, Grandpa! The Ziwei Star is moving, and its primary star is falling right toward the direction of our Cyan Ox Village!" The old village chief squinted into the distance, and sure enough, the star at the tip of the Big Dipper ladle was glowing faintly, as if it might plummet at any moment.
"Twenty years ago, when Master picked me up in the snow, the astrological signs in the sky were exactly like this." The young man drew out the Taiji Jade Pendant and clicked it against the "Taisu" fragment on the old village chief's desk. "Now that the twin pendants are joined as one, it is precisely the time for Cyan Ox Village to enter the Mortal World. Look at the cinnabar seal on this travel pass—it was bestowed by the very magistrate Master saved back then. Could this not be heaven's will?"
The old village chief stared at the united jade pendants, then suddenly heard Huwa's startled cry from outside the window: "Brother Fan's Wooden Ox Pestle is moving by itself!" Seizing the moment, Zhang Yifan blinked. "You see, even the mechanism is urging us to open up the mountains and forests and clear the trade routes." The old village chief finally sighed, retrieving the yellowed travel pass from the bottom of the camphor-wood chest. The two characters for "Cyan Ox" on the cover fit the intricate patterns of the jade pendants with absolute perfection.
At the third watch of the evening (9:30 PM), Zhang Yifan sat on the broken threshold of the Mountain God Temple, listening to the wind and snow battering the temple doors, when he suddenly heard the sound of approaching horse hooves. Five horse bandits rushed in brandishing torches, only to see "smoke cakes" rolling all over the floor suddenly billow with purple smoke—the pungent scent of mugwort mixed with sulfur made it impossible for anyone to keep their eyes open. Then came three whistling sounds in rapid succession as three abacus beads pinned themselves precisely into the acupoints of the lead horse bandit's numbness-inducing nerves.
"You little brat dare to plot against your grandfather!" The bandit leader reached for his saber, but found the young man squatting behind the divine statue with a mischievous grin. "Mozi said to 'prepare for tunnels and smoke them out.' Taste these smoke cakes; they are even more pungent than Huwa's snot." Old Man Wang, the wagon driver, crawled out from beneath a grain cart and suddenly caught sight of the jade pendant at the boy's waist, his voice trembling. "Twenty years ago, the Grand Leader said that if the Taiji twin pendants were ever seen united as one..."
Before he could finish, the Old Daoist's cough echoed from outside the temple. Helping Old Man Wang to his feet and gazing at the unconscious bandits sprawled in the snow, Zhang Yifan suddenly recalled the "Three Principles of Entering the World" his master had mentioned during the day: "To see that mountains are not mountains, to see that people are not people, and to see that the Dao remains the Dao." Ice pellets pattered down onto the abacus, and the beads reflected the moonlight, looking precisely like every divination diagram he had ever drawn in Cyan Ox Village.
The candle in the Mountain God Temple flickered erratically, casting its faint glow upon the jade pendant at the young man's waist. That night, a fresh layer of snow fell once more upon the old locust tree in Cyan Ox Village, while a story concerning trade routes and the Mortal World quietly unfolded a new chapter, carried forth by a young boy clutching an abacus and a pouch of seeds.