“Because there was still part of your Karma not yet resolved!” Master Six bellowed, shaking his head since she was unwilling to give in.

Apparently, the dark man was working as a convoy bodyguard of a convoy escort agency. Every time before embarking on a trip, especially convoys with people, he would first visit a temple and offer some prayers, hoping for some blessing. But on this trip, the Lord Buddha had intentionally tried to delay him by means of some entanglements with the local magistrate because an area he would be passing was part of a battlefield. If not for any external interference, he would have first been arrested for investigation but would be released later. The truth would be revealed not long afterwards: the fabric store owner would have been sentenced to payment of hefty sum as punishment, and he would also have to re-compensate the girl while the girl would be safely sent home. The sales agent, the true instigator of the whole matter, would be severely beaten for his unscrupulous business ethics. The dark man would have emerged as an innocent suspect, unscathed and safe. By then, the convoy would have left without him and embark on their one-way journey to ruin. The Lord Buddha, fully aware of his piousness, had tried to save him, knowing that his was a job that entailed great personal risk. But due to the tampering, everything had changed. The man was able to leave the city with his convoy on time, and he was unable to evade death when the convoy passed through the battlefield. Each of his comrades including him lost their lives that fateful day due to the onslaught of the rebel forces. Being so far from home, it took him several months before he reached the Underworld and the evil spirit was now reincarnated as a cat. The spirits of the dead made another cry for justice at the Underworld, and the Lord of the Underworld, Lord Yama himself had to try inflicting instant death to the cat spirit, but she was able to escape by using her powers that she had amassed during her seven lifetimes, and had returned to wreck havoc to humanity!

Master Six stared at her, his eyes flaring with rage and anger. “Everything began because of your apathy and your insincerity to the ways of the Buddha! You would never have glimpsed upon the shoulder pouch if your mind had not strayed during your studies of Buddhism! Never would I have thought you capable of such sacrilege and transgression after seven lifetimes of pursuing the teaching of the Buddha! To think that not only you failed to overcome temptation, you are more and more astray off the path of righteousness! Are you wishing an ignoble end to your seven lifetimes of work and toil?”

The spirit fell sullen and morose with guilt and disappointment in herself. “Your words struck true, Master Immortal! I now see how badly I have erred and I will now head to the Underworld immediately to accept my judgment before I once again restart my pursuit of Buddhist enlightenment anew.”

“I have met with Lord Kṣitigarbha, the Bodhisattva of the Earth. You will now be sent to him.” Master Six smiled approvingly. Suddenly, his demeanor became stern. “Hearken me, Keepers of the Underworld! See that she is now sent down without delay!” He roared suddenly and a disembodied voice rapped from nowhere. “Immediately, by your command!” Two lumbering silhouettes, clad in yellow, appeared from thin air and disappeared with the spirit. Master Six turned and faced the patient, who was now looking sickly and weak. He removed the necklace and shook it before her eyes. The patient’s eyes sparkled with a hint of recognition as she murmured softly, “That belongs to me…” “And so it does!” Master Six cried. “Here, wear it!” The patient took the necklace from him and wore it over her neck, and a flash of light filled the chamber suddenly and the patient had turned into a young woman looking seventeen or eighteen of age, renewed with youth and exuberance as the creases and wrinkles of her face vanished. She fell to her knees at Master Six’s feet. “My apologies, my Lord!” Master Six waved her off, smiling. “Come now, let us go!” he said gently to her. They got up the car, while I, realizing my opportunity, clambered up his car too!

After a lengthy conversation with Master Six in the car, I disembarked and he drove off. Yuan Chongxi came over. “What have you been talking to the immortal about, Shiyan?” I giggled and said only a word, “Secret!” He shrugged helplessly and I imitated him, mimicking his demeanor without saying anything else.

With Lin Feng at the helm, we returned to the Center. We had barely stepped into the threshold of the door when my father called. “Was the matter resolved?” he asked. “It was. Perfectly,” I said into the mouthpiece and I heard his giggle before the line went dead. But to be truthful, I was unsatisfied. The matter was not resolved by our own abilities; hence there would hardly be any hope for payment from the Taoist priest who had come asking for help. Nevertheless, the experience had been an eye-opener for us three. Lin Feng realized the uncertainty in my quivering eyes, and asked me if anything was wrong. “You might not have noticed, Brother. Even though the matter has come to a resolution. We have, nonetheless, embarrassed ourselves most terribly before a colleague…” I said. “Huh?” Lin Feng asked with a puzzled look on his face. “You’ve forgotten about that Taoist priest who had come to us for help, did you?” I remarked with a weak smile. Lin Feng was startled and he too, disintegrated into a weak smile. “Ah, that priest…” he said meekly, “I’ve forgotten about him… We’d even left him there when we were escaping. We’d be lucky if he does not begrudge us on leaving him behind, let alone paying us…”

A series of knocking on the door cut us short. There was someone at the door, banging anxiously. “What’s this,” I thought. “Another person in trouble?” I went over and swung opened the door, only to find the Taoist priest standing at the door, fidgeting restlessly with a bag in his hand. He was so close to the door that we were standing eye to eye when the door was opened. A brief moment of silence and embarrassment ticked by as I was too flustered to say anything. But the Taoist priest bowed deeply. “My thanks, my young friend…” “Wh-what the…” I wondered. “Was he senile? What we did was tantamount to cheating him, yet still, he thanked us?” Still, I invited him in for a talk. We drifted to the sitting area where we sat and I poured him some tea. The priest placed the bag on the table, saying, “This is the consultation fee for your help.” He flipped open the bag and revealed its contents: thirty thousand yuan, in cash! “Oh my!” I thought, “Was he really mad?”

Seeing that I was doubtful, the Taoist priest broke into a smile. “I have understood everything that has transpired, my friend. There is no need for apprehension.”

The Taoist had also slipped away when we were frantically fleeing for our lives then. The ones that he had summoned for help had instead been disgracefully routed like a bunch of chickens skedaddling for dear life. But hardly inexperienced in the trade, he could also see that we were unable to fend for ourselves, more so taking care of him; hence he harbored no ill will towards us for deserting him.

So after a miserable day, he had returned to the sanctuary of his order and helped look after his injured senior. But there was a sudden flash of gold in the courtyard outside his senior’s room. He went out and saw a little Taoist priest with red rosy cheeks standing in the middle of the patio. “Greetings, my friend…” The Taoist priest addressed his mysterious younger counterpart. But the young priest paid no heed to him. Instead, he flicked his horse-tail whip and walked into the room. “Where does this child come from? Such insolence!” the Taoist priest wondered. But still, as an elder, he had to maintain dignity and decorum. He followed the little priest indoors. He was about to ask if the little boy was here to offer prayers or ask for help, when the little boy walked further deeper into the inner cloisters. “Impudence! You behave as though you belong here,” the Taoist priest grumbled to himself.

Little did he know that the little priest was in fact the founder of this very Taoist order this elder priest belonged to, Celestial Master Zhang himself! After unlatching himself from Master Six’s consort, Celestial Master Zhang did not directly disappear to the Heavens. Rather, he came to the Taoist monastery to help cure his own disciple! He had witnessed with his own eyes his disciple’s—the senior of the Taoist priest who had enlisted our help to attempt to repel the spirit of the weasel from the woman’s body and how he was gravely injured. It was also by his intervention that the disciple had managed to survive, lest he would already long have perished. He had been waiting for Master Six’s appearance so that he could come and heal this scrap of a disciple of his.

But no one would have taken seriously the words of a boy who looked the age of barely ten. The Taoist priest and his sickly senior would have just dismissed him as a young potty psycho. Hence, Celestial Master Zhang had elected to bandy words, wishing only to perform his deed and leave. As he left when he was done with a blinding flash of golden light, both the Taoist priest and his newly-healed senior were astonished beyond words, unable to comprehend what had just happened. But as the figure of the child-like Celestial Master dissipated, the Taoist priest could hear the hollow voice of the founder of his order, instructing him to deliver payment to us. It was, after all, we who had found the help of a deity who solved the entire problem, lest his senior would have not been healed. Thus begged the true purpose of the Taoist priest’s visit; he was not only here to send us the payment, he was also here to ascertain if the little priest was in fact the fore-bearer of his Taoist Sect, Celestial Master Zhang.

At the end of the Taoist priest’s tale, I snickered. “This is a tale that you can proudly recount for the rest of your life,” I said with an amused look. “I’m sure that there are only but a handful of disciples who had truly witness the true advent of the founder of your order, Celestial Master Zhang himself, since the yesteryear of your sect’s inception. To think that you and your senior could now be counted as the select few.” With that, the Taoist priest repeated another word of thanks before he left with a satisfied smile on his face. “But you at least have met your founder,” I mused. “I for one, know not who the founder of my following is,” I thought quietly. It would be a question that I would surely pose for my father, I made up my mind. Spurred by this incident, the throbbing curiosity urging me to find out about the fore-bearer of my father’s sect had increased incrementally.

I went home that night and I asked Father, “Who is the founder of our sect, Father. The elder priest had met Celestial Master Zhang! But look at me! I might not even recognize our founder even if we were destined to meet!” Father was busy cooking at the stove. With an exasperated look, he glared at me. “No can do!” He bellowed at the top of his voice, in an ire by my interminable prodding and pestering. “Go to the bookshelf in my room. There a picture you can see for yourself if you are indeed so sanctimonious of worshiping him!” Hearing this, I scurried to his room. After some foraging and ransacking through the dusty books, I found a specially-framed calligraphy painting hidden in the most-bottom shelf of the cabinet. I unfurled the picture. Despite its antiquity, the ageless expression of a young man with streaming long hair down the back of his flowing robes exuded a charismatic and deific aura. The picture illustrated the man, with his hands held behind his back, gazing up at the sky with a whiff of melancholy in his eyes. With the picture in my hands, I went back to the kitchen. “Is this the one, Father?” I asked my father. Without so much as a look, he growled, “Yep!” “Who is this in the picture?” I asked again. “My teacher!” Father replied, his focus still on his cooking.