Chapter 196 — Merit

Zhou Yixuan snorted, swung the bamboo pole of "The Immortal Points the Way" in his hand, and gestured at the sparse passersby around them. "Look at these people, and at all those we have met along the road—are they not all refugees?"

Little Wan nodded. "True, everyone is, ourselves included."

Zhou Yixuan choked, his old face flushing slightly, and then pretended he had not heard. Little Wan went on, "Since they are all refugees, far from home, I doubt many of them are thinking about fortune-telling at all. I was even thinking we ought to lower our price—but you, grandpa, you go and raise it like mad."

Zhou Yixuan clasped his hands behind his back, pole behind him, and sneered. "By your reasoning, I am in the wrong. But look at these past few days—have the people coming to us for readings grown fewer, or more?"

Little Wan paused, frowning, but the Wild Wolf Daoist chimed in from the side, "Come to think of it, there do seem to have been more clients these past few days."

Zhou Yixuan snorted again, a smug look on his face, and said to Little Wan, "What could a child like you know? Let me tell you—ordinarily, in the midst of great disaster, when everyone is far from home, they may not have a mind for fortune-telling. But this time is very different. This calamity is vast, unmatched in ten thousand years; the living are plunged into misery, each man fearing for himself, and no one knows whether he will still be alive tomorrow. Amid such strange times, with an immortal like me to point the way for them—would not everyone rush to me?"

Little Wan lowered her head in thought, and after a long while slowly shook her head with a sigh, a trace of bewilderment on her face.

The Wild Wolf Daoist, still somewhat puzzled, could not help asking, "Then why do you keep raising the price?"

Zhou Yixuan rolled his strange eyes. "Such profound learning—how could I teach it to you!"

The Wild Wolf Daoist, rebuffed, shrank back muttering, but then heard Little Wan beside him sigh. "I think I understand a little of it now."

Both the Wild Wolf Daoist and Zhou Yixuan were startled. Zhou Yixuan said, "Oh? Then tell us."

Little Wan shrugged and said mildly, "It is simply that you expect everyone in the world to be in a panic, so anxious for their own lives that few have any thought to spare for worldly goods. On the contrary, the higher you set the price, the more ordinary folk take it as proof that this man's cultivation is deep and he is no common sort. I never believed in such things before—I thought any fool could see through such a petty trick. And yet—and yet there are still so many who cannot see it."

Zhou Yixuan shook his head. "You are wrong, Little Wan."

Little Wan was startled. "What?"

Zhou Yixuan said, "Everything you said before was right—only the last part. It is not that they cannot see it. It is that they cannot let go of it."

The Wild Wolf Daoist, listening from the side, was bewildered. "Cannot let go of what?"

Zhou Yixuan glanced at the people trudging along around them. "Do you think all the living in this world are fools? But at the gate of life and death, who can say how many refuse to believe in themselves, and would rather hear a word of comfort from another? When I point the way for them, most of what I say concerns the rest of their lives—that they will be far better off than they are now. With that to hold to, they pay their silver and are at peace."

Xiao Wan suddenly said, "Grandfather, did you really read that from physiognomy, or were you just making it up to fool them?"

Zhou Yixuan smiled faintly. "I made it up."

Xiao Wan and the Wild Wolf Daoist exchanged a glance, and for a moment neither could find a word to say.

Zhou Yixuan lifted his head and gazed at the sky, at that vast and drifting firmament, and after looking long he said leisurely, "A calamity such as this may come once, but never twice—otherwise even the Heavenly Dao would not permit it."

Having said this, he turned back and laughed. "That being so, the days to come will surely be far better than these present days, when we know not whether we live or die—so I can hardly be called a liar. On the contrary, all along the road I have comforted and counseled countless folk tossed about and driven from their homes; who knows how many were reborn to hope, how many dead ashes flared again, at a word from this old man. Can those monks and priests, cooped up in their temples all day chanting sutras and invoking the Buddha, ever match such merit as this?"

He reached out and patted Xiao Wan on the head, his face all immortal air and righteous dignity, bearing the full look of an old man's compassion for the world and his resolve to save it—the tragic grandeur of one who would descend alone into hell to deliver all living things. Even the fact that he had pocketed so much gleaming silver was a matter of great righteousness: not to take it would be to fail the saving of men, and to take it was the act of utmost mercy—such was the weathered, upright air about him as he sighed and said:

"Life, truly, is lonely."

For a time no one made a sound; all around fell into utter silence.

Zhou Yixuan frowned, drew his gaze back down from the high, distant firmament, and lowered his head to look about him.

"Hey, you two—what are you walking so fast for?"