Chapter 46: Wrapping Money in Talisman Paper

The moonlight was bright, and the ground was blanketed in pristine snow.

Master Ma led me through the starry night as we walked back home.

Master Ma panted heavily and said, "Why did you drag me back? It would've been so nice to just sleep there for the night."

"Auntie Hua's daughter is at home."

"The two of us would just sleep in the same room, what's there to be afraid of?"

I muttered to myself: If you, an old bachelor, sleep there for the night, and Auntie Hua later sleeps under the same quilt you used, it'd be way too easy for Sister Qiuyue to end up with a baby brother named Ma.

"Next time I get drunk, don't send me back here."

"Oh."

"The two of us aren't like what you're thinking."

"What am I thinking?"

Master Ma turned around and gave me a solid smack on the forehead.

I rubbed my head and said, "I'm just looking out for you."

"Looking out for me? For what?"

"You're a fifty-year-old bachelor, do you even have a sex life anymore? At best you're just doing platonic romance. Auntie Hua is still young—thirty like a wolf, forty like a tiger. At the prime of her tiger-and-wolf years, and you're drunk on top of that? That'd practically cost you your life in one night. What if..."

If Master Ma hadn't chased after me to hit me, I could have given him another earful: illegal radio broadcasts aren't listened to for nothing, I know all kinds of tricks.

Returning home, the room was bone-chillingly cold. Since he was the master, it fell upon me to haul firewood and heat up the brick kang bed.

Just as I had the fire going halfway, Old Fourth Sun rushed over in a panic. When I opened the door, I realized it had started snowing again.

"Lad, still not sleeping? Where's your master?"

"Fourth Uncle is here? He's inside."

Old Fourth Sun strode into the room in two steps, lifted the door curtain, and said, "Old Ma, Hua called. She said her daughter is running a fever, and wants you to come take a look."

Master Ma immediately got down from the kang, put on his shoes, threw on his tattered overcoat, and headed straight out the door.

After taking a few steps, he looked back at me and said, "Let's go. What are you hesitating for?"

"I'm not going."

"Can you really not go?"

"It's not convenient for me to go."

"Hurry up, let's move."

The snow outside was falling like coarse salt, stinging sharply against the face.

Master Ma's physical constitution was truly remarkable; before one step was firmly planted, the next was already striding forward. If Master Ma ended up with Auntie Hua, he would make a fine stepfather.

At the same time, a doubt arose in my mind. We had been eating dinner together just an hour ago, so how did she suddenly come down with a fever?

Was it Qiuyue who had a fever, or was Auntie Hua acting feverish?

This being the case, wouldn't it be terribly awkward if I tagged along?

When we arrived at the place, I realized things weren't right. Qiuyue's entire body was flushed red, and when I touched her forehead, it felt a bit slippery—pah, I mean, extremely hot.

Master Ma asked, "Did she take any fever-reducing medicine?"

"She did, but it didn't work. Do you think we need to take her to the hospital?"

"When did it start?"

"After you guys left, the child put down her bowl and went straight back to her room. Her eyes were staring blankly, and then she started crying. When I asked her, she wouldn't speak, and then her face turned red. When I touched her, I found she had a fever."

"It's a spiritual ailment, no need for the hospital. Let me handle it. Here, first use some white liquor to wipe down the child's body—wipe her chest, back, forehead, armpits, and groin. I'll go to the other room and divine the cause."

Master Ma led me into Auntie Hua's room, and I immediately asked, "It wasn't that chicken meat we fed her, was it?"

"No, it has nothing to do with that."

With that, Master Ma sat cross-legged. Before he even reached out his hands, seized by some sudden whim, he stood right back up and asked through the door curtain, "Hua, do you have any ritual joss paper at home?"

"Yes, it's on top of the kitchen cabinet."

Master Ma clamped a bundle of yellow joss paper under his armpit and went right out without even putting on his coat.

I grabbed his overcoat and chased after him, only to find that Master Ma had already started burning the paper.

There was no wind with the snow, and the white smoke rose straight up. The Taoist priest kept sniffing with his nose, and his expression changed constantly—come to think of it, he looked rather like the Celestial Hound from the later television series Lotus Lantern.

Sniffing away, Master Ma suddenly turned his head to glare at me and viciously demanded, "Did you give money to Qiuyue?"

"I did."

*Crack.* Master Ma slapped me right across the face—a genuine, direct smack.

I burst into tears instantly and bellowed, "Why did you hit me?"

Master Ma then slapped himself across the face, his voice calm as he asked, "Why'd you give her money?"

Weeping, I yelled, "She was still wearing her school uniform during the holidays, so she definitely didn't have any nice clothes. You told me to slip it to her secretly so she could buy some new clothes."

Master Ma sighed and said, "You gave her a hundred and twenty-seven. Where'd you get the money?"

"You gave me the hundred, and the twenty-seven was my own."

"Where'd you get the twenty-seven?"

Feeling even more wronged, I roared, "I picked it up!"

"Was that money wrapped in a talisman paper?"

"Yeah."

Master Ma pointed a finger at me, his face full of helpless exasperation.

I angrily retorted, "I've been picking up and spending that kind of money since I was a kid, and nothing ever happened."

Master Ma let out a helpless sigh, then forced a smile back onto his face. He said, "Xu, my dear boy, you really are my own father."

"I don't have a son like you." I had picked up that line from a TV drama.

Master Ma didn't get angry. He gave me another tap on the forehead and said, "Child, your life-plate is soft, half-dead and half-alive, and your Yin energy is heavy. You can use that kind of money, but ordinary people certainly can't. Once you take that money, you've essentially taken on whatever matter was written on the talisman paper. It's fine for you to spend it yourself, but the danger is when you give it to someone else—you're transferring the trouble from the talisman onto them."

I nodded.

"If you see that kind of money again, keep picking it up. Once you pick it up, the two of us will use it to buy wine."

"Mm."

Once he figured out the root of the illness, Master Ma stopped panicking. He went into the house and asked Auntie Hua through the curtain to take the money out, then announced he was stepping out for a moment and would be right back.

Master Ma truly had eccentric habits. There was a sundry shop right in the village, but he refused to go there, insisting on walking all the way back to our own village's sundry shop.

In Master Ma's own words, a widow's doorway invited too much gossip, and if he went to the local sundry shop in the middle of the night, tomorrow the whole village would be buzzing with rumors.

Sometimes I found it hard to understand Master Ma's train of thought. He was a Taoist priest by training, full of sentiment and deeply concerned with saving face; he would rather ask ghosts questions than turn to fox immortals, yet he kept guiding me toward the path of a spirit medium.

It was the same in his daily life. He and Auntie Hua clearly had feelings for each other, but they simply refused to get together.

When reading fortunes for people—a trade that could rake in money by the handful—he refused to charge fees, only earning a meager living from funeral rites.

Sigh, hard to figure out.

When we arrived at Old Fourth Sun's place, Master Ma was merciless, tapping sharply on the windowpane until the lights came on.

Old Fourth Sun opened the door wearing his long thermal underwear and draped in a wool coat.

Master Ma asked, "Picked-up money, wrapped in talisman paper. Do you take this kind?"

"Damn it, I'm already halfway into the grave, what kind of money don't I take? Where did you pick it up? Take me along to pick some up too."

Gimme twenty-seven yuan worth of ritual paper."

"Look for yourself and take whatever you want."

"You pick some out for me, just twenty-seven yuan's worth will do."

Old Fourth Sun was genuinely generous; he handed over fifteen bundles of yellow paper. Each bundle weighed well over two catties, totaling more than thirty catties—even selling it as waste paper could fetch twenty yuan.

Master Ma and I immediately turned back. When we reached Auntie Hua's house, Master Ma lit three incense sticks, pointed the embers downward, and circled them three times over Qiuyue's head while chanting under his breath: "Come with me, come with me, I'll take you to get your money."

Master Ma didn't look back the entire way. He held the incense while I carried the bundle of yellow paper on my back, and the two of us walked all the way to the entrance of the village.

He kicked away a patch of accumulated snow with his foot, laid out the yellow joss paper, and started burning it right then and there.

Truly, I must have broken heaven's laws, burning paper twice in a single night.

Master Ma looked as if he were conversing with someone. He stared into the distant darkness with vacant eyes and muttered under his breath:

"Take your time loading it... it's all yours... hurry up and drive the ox cart over... no rush, I'll burn it slowly, you take your time loading..."

To be honest, it was deeply chilling. Ahead lay the mountains, behind us only Auntie Hua's house had its lights on in the village, and the surrounding silence made the hair on one's arms stand on end.