The sandalwood incense had burned to its end.
The last wisp of blue smoke spiraled in a shaft of afternoon light before dissipating into the stale air of the old house. Chen Yao stared at the trajectory of the falling ash, suddenly remembering his grandfather's words: "The direction the incense ash falls indicates where the weight of karma lies."
Of course, he didn't believe it.
Just as he didn't believe a compass could point to fortune or misfortune, that eight characters of birth could determine one's destiny, or that a person could "borrow" anything from fate itself. He was a data analyst. He believed in regression models, A/B testing, and the predictability of user behavior—because those were logic that could be verified, repeated, and broken down into zeros and ones.
But at this moment, sitting in his grandfather's study of Shou Yi Zhai, surrounded by walls of yellowed ancient texts, his fingertips dusted with incense ash, something within him was beginning to shift.
Three days ago, his father's voice on the phone was weary. "Your grandfather's things need dealing with. You're the eldest grandson; you do it." The tone brooked no discussion, only the relief of a burden shed. The Chen family seemed to collectively avoid this old house, the name "Shou Yi Zhai." At twenty-five, this was Chen Yao's third time back. The first was in childhood, the second for his grandfather's funeral, and now this third time.
He stood up and began clearing the desk, the worn wood smooth under his palms. The most prominent item was the brass geomantic compass. Eight inches in diameter, with its celestial pool, inner dial, and outer dial, each layer densely inscribed with intricate characters: the Twenty-Four Mountains, the Seventy-Two Dragons, the Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Fine Gold. Grandfather often called it the "Ruler of Heaven and Earth," capable of measuring the energy of mountains, rivers, and fortune. Chen Yao remembered trying to play with it as a child, drawn by its mysterious markings, and being sternly stopped—the only time he'd ever seen his grandfather truly angry.
He reached out now, his fingertips just touching the cool copper edge—
The compass needle moved.
Not a wobble from the touch. It was a slow, deliberate spin, as if turned by an invisible hand. The magnetic needle in the celestial pool swept past the Wu Shan Ding Xiang (午山丁向), grazed the Zi Shan Wu Xiang (子山午向), and finally came to a trembling, decisive stop.
The tip pointed unerringly, directly at him.
Chen Yao froze. There was no draft, no wind indoors; the paulownia leaves outside the window were utterly still. He waited ten seconds, twenty. The needle didn't budge, as if nailed fast in the direction of his chest, a silent accusation.
"Batteries?" he muttered to himself, a hollow attempt, then scoffed internally. This was a purely mechanical compass, a relic. Where would batteries be? Cautiously, he turned the compass ninety degrees, its weight solid in his hand.
The needle shifted, liquid-smooth, and locked onto him again.
A cold sensation, thin and sharp, crawled up from his tailbone. He took a deliberate, deep breath, set the compass back on the desk with exaggerated care, and turned to the bookshelves as if nothing had happened. His movements were hurried, less like organizing and more like fleeing something he couldn't name.
The shelves held mostly thread-bound books, their rice paper pages brittle and yellowed with age. Zhou Yi Ji Jie (周易集解), Jing Shi Yi Zhuan (京氏易传), San Ming Tong Hui (三命通会), Yuan Hai Zi Ping (渊海子平)... Many spines bore labels in his grandfather's tiny, meticulous calligraphy: "Circulation of Qi and Fortune, Observe with Caution," "The Subtleties of the Eight Characters, This Volume is Essential," "Methods for Yin Dwellings (Graves), Dangerous, Do Not Use." Between the lines was the user's deep prudence, even a thread of fear.
Chen Yao's gaze, scanning restlessly, fell on a blue cloth case holding Zhou Yi Can Tong Qi (周易参同契). He remembered this book vividly; his grandfather had practically kept it in hand in his later years, the page edges worn fuzzy and soft from constant handling. He pulled it out. It was unexpectedly heavy.
Besides the main text, the case contained a thin, hand-copied booklet of commentary, thread-bound with simple rice paper. He opened it.
The handwriting was his grandfather's, evolving from the vigorous strokes of youth to the drier, frailer lines of old age, the ink shifting from a glossy jet black to a pale, watery grey. The first few pages were mostly excerpts from the original text, with occasional annotations squeezed into margins: "This line speaks of the 'fire phase' (火候), but actually points to the intersection of timing and fate," "Lead and Mercury (铅汞) are not external substances, but represent the innate breath of fate and the fortune of the postnatal era." Further on, the annotations grew denser, the handwriting more rushed and scribbled, interspersed with hastily drawn hexagram symbols, Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches, and brief, cryptic records of events.
"Guiyou Year (癸酉), 3rd month, 7th day: Adjusted the southeast position for a client named Li. His son fell and injured his left leg three days later. Note: Wood overly strong subdues Earth (木旺克土), manifestation in the limbs."
"Bingzi Year (丙子), 12th month: Wang family relocated graves. Chose the Chou hour (丑时) to break ground. Added a male child that same year. However, head of household contracted lung disease the following year. Note: Earth energy stimulated too fiercely, conversely injures the Dui Metal (兑金)."
Chen Yao turned page after page, the paper whispering under his thumb. These cold, clinical records formed a kind of secret ledger. Every recorded "adjustment" had a corresponding "price." Some prices seemed minor, others severe. In the later handwriting, words like "Be Cautious (慎之)," "Regret (悔)," and "Must Not Do Again (不可再为)" appeared with increasing frequency.
Near the middle, his finger stopped.
At the top of that page was written a set of four pillars:
Xin Si, Ren Chen, Wu Xu, Bing Chen (辛巳 壬辰 戊戌 丙辰)
Chen Yao was intensely sensitive to numbers. These were his own birth characters. May 12, 2001, 8 a.m. Below the characters, standing alone, were four stark, forceful words. The ink was deep, the pressure so strong it had nearly torn through the paper:
Jie Ming Er Sheng (借命而生)
Living on Borrowed Time
There was no explanation after, no annotation, no connecting thread to other notes. Just these four words hanging there in isolated judgment, a verdict without a trial.
Chen Yao's mouth went dry. He instinctively looked at the compass on the desk—the needle remained, stubbornly fixed on him.
"Living on borrowed time..." He chewed on the words, their taste metallic and strange. Borrowed from whom? How was it borrowed? And why—for what purpose—was he living?
He continued flipping, his movements now more urgent. Near the end of the booklet, he found a longer passage, the handwriting shaky and frail, unmistakably from his grandfather's final years:
"Winter of the Renyin Year (壬寅). Reviewing old volumes, only now realizing the depth of accumulated debt. The auspiciousness that was adjusted had to come from somewhere; the misfortune that was avoided had to go somewhere. What we call Feng Shui and fate theory is nothing but tearing down the east wall to repair the west, shifting disaster onto others. But the bricks of the east wall will eventually run out; how can the disaster shifted away not turn back?"
"The lineage of Shou Yi Zhai has passed down seven generations. Each spoke of 'inheriting the vocation,' but it was truly 'inheriting the debt.' The first generation, Lord Chen Yi (陈一公), created the method of 'lending and borrowing time and fate' (时命相贷) in the late Ming Dynasty, originally to preserve life in chaotic times and continue our learning amidst severance. But once this method was opened, it was like drinking poison to quench thirst. Later descendants all fell into it, treating borrowing as normal, shifting as vocation, forgetting that cause and effect are one entity, that both misfortune and fortune must ultimately be repaid by oneself."
"In my lifetime, I adjusted seven hundred and thirty-one cases, large and small. Over four hundred were auspicious, but the innocent secretly harmed, shifted, burdened—how could they be less than double that? Every time I think of this, I cannot sleep at night. But the debt is incurred, the karma created—what can be done?"
"My only hope is that later descendants, those with the wisdom, can comprehend the two words: 'Ren Zhang' (认账 - Acknowledge the Account). This is not repaying debt (debt cannot be repaid), not redeeming sin (sin cannot be redeemed), but..."
The writing stopped abruptly there, mid-thought, leaving a jarring blank space on the page. The paper bore a few faint, yellowish stains, like the ghosts of teardrops.
Chen Yao closed the commentary booklet, a cold sweat beading on his palms. The silence in the study now had weight, a physical pressure against his eardrums. All the mystical talk he had resisted since childhood, dismissed as superstition and primitive thinking, now lay before him in this systematic, cold, meticulously documented form.
It wasn't that he didn't believe in the mysterious; he simply didn't believe in things without logic. And what his grandfather left behind had logic—it had data, case studies, causal correlations, even "unfalsifiable" technical details. This was precisely the kind of "reality" he feared most—one that operated on a logic just beyond the edge of his own.
The light outside the window had dimmed perceptibly. He checked his phone: 4:07 p.m. Time to leave.
He placed the commentary back in its cloth case, hesitated, then slipped the entire case into his backpack. As he turned to go, his peripheral vision caught a corner of yellowed paper protruding from beneath the desk blotter.
He pulled it out. It was a sheet of old-fashioned vertical red-gridded letter paper. The handwriting was his grandfather's, from his final years, written with slow, deliberate strokes that were nonetheless clear and firm:
"To my grandson Yao:"
"When you see these words, I am already gone. The various objects of Shou Yi Zhai await those with the affinity. Only the commentary booklet and the compass must be dealt with by you personally."
"Your eight characters are special, subtly aligning with those of the first generation, Chen Yi. This is an omen of 'inheriting the vocation' (承业之兆), but also an opportunity to 'resolve the vocation' (解业之机). However, the crucial mechanisms involved, I exhausted my mind and spirit and still could not fully penetrate. I dare not mislead you with presumptuous words."
"I have only one phrase to give you: Do not believe in the hexagrams' superficial fortune or misfortune, but observe the underlying structure of cause and effect. Fortune is not blessing, misfortune is not disaster; both are merely visible manifestations of vibrations within the network. If you truly wish to escape, you must see the source of the vibration, not merely avoid the manifesting waves."
"Also: A client merchant named Zhou will surely seek you within three years. His situation is very dangerous; be cautious in accepting. If you find you have no choice but to act, remember this: what is 'already received' (已收) cannot be received again; 'empty shells' (空壳) cannot be created anew."
"Grandfather, Chen Shouyi, final words."
At the end of the letter, there was no date.
Chen Yao folded the letter carefully and placed it in the inner pocket of his backpack. He took a last, long look around the study—his gaze sweeping over the shelves laden with classics, the silent compass, the empty high-backed armchair, the lingering scent of sandalwood that still haunted the air.
He closed the door and turned the heavy lock. The click echoed in the quiet hall.
The old house sank into the twilight.
As he reached the mouth of the alley, a strange feeling made him turn and look back. In the small window of the second-floor study, a weak glint seemed to flash—a momentary reflection, like copper catching the last of the dying light.
He shook his head, dismissing it as a trick of the eyes, and walked briskly toward the distant glow of the subway station.
In his backpack, the Zhou Yi Can Tong Qi commentary sat heavy against his spine, its weight unfamiliar and profound, like carrying a stone stele inscribed with secrets.
That night, back in his rented high-rise apartment, Chen Yao placed the commentary and the letter on his clean, modern desk. He made a cup of strong coffee, the familiar ritual meant to ground him, and tried to use his trained, rational mind to sort through the day's events.
"All explainable by cognitive bias," he said aloud to the glowing computer screen, as if convincing a skeptical colleague. "Confirmation bias—I'm only noticing the events in these records that happen to fit a 'fate theory' narrative. Survivorship bias—Grandfather only recorded the cases that 'worked,' not the countless times nothing happened. The compass pointing... could be an unusual magnetic anomaly in the old house, or maybe I'm carrying something metallic on me."
He almost convinced himself. The logic held until about 1 a.m.
Just before sleep, moved by an impulse he couldn't explain, he dug out three Qianlong Tongbao coins (乾隆通宝) from an old drawer—this was the simple divination method his grandfather had drilled into him as a child, saying coins that had passed through countless hands held "human energy" (人气) and were more responsive than yarrow stalks. He hadn't touched them in over a decade, but the muscle memory of the ritual returned seamlessly.
"Just testing Grandfather's theoretical framework," he thought with self-deprecating irony. "A simple experiment. Ask what? Ask... if there will be any significant trouble in the next three days."
He focused his mind on the question, held the three coins cupped in his palms, shook them gently, and cast them onto the wooden tabletop.
Two tails, one head. Lesser Yang.
Two tails, one head. Lesser Yang.
Two heads, one tail. Lesser Yin.
Two heads, one tail. Lesser Yin.
One tail, two heads. Lesser Yang.
Two tails, one head. Lesser Yang.
Chen Yao looked at the sequence, his fingers tracing the invisible lines in the air above the coins. The lower trigram: three yang lines, Qian (☰), Heaven. The upper trigram: two yin lines over one yang, Dui (☱), Lake. Lake over Heaven: the Guài (夬) Hexagram.
The Guài Hexagram. The judgment text (卦辞) read: "Display it in the king's courtyard. Sincerely proclaiming: there is danger." The image (象) said: "Lake above Heaven, Guài. The nobleman bestows blessings downward; residing in virtue is cautioned against."
Not a gentle hexagram. It spoke of rupture, confrontation, pressing danger, the need for decisive action to dispel a lingering negative influence.
He frowned, checking for "moving lines" which would indicate change. All six lines were static, stable. No change. The situation, according to this cast, was fixed and imminent.
"Coincidence," he stated firmly, sweeping the coins back into his hand. He turned off the light and lay down in the dark.
But in the darkness, behind his closed eyelids, he saw it again: the brass compass needle, slowly, inevitably, turning to find him.