Chapter 22

Ning Shu went home, and her grandmother had her burn incense to the Heavenly Master and kowtow again. This time the incense did not break.

Her grandmother let her breath out at last and turned to her. "He's taken you."

Ning Shu looked up at the terrible face on the Heavenly Master's seat. The weight of it that first time, that feeling of being held down, was gone. It did not frighten her now.

She knocked her head on the floor three times, and then a deep voice came into her ears and went round and round inside her head.

"I would not take your incense before, because your nature was not finished and I feared you would go the wrong road. But the demon-subduing staff, which carries the four faces of joy, anger, grief and delight, has owned you for its master. That says there is feeling in you and loyalty too. This is the chance heaven is giving you, and I, Huang Xianci, will not go against heaven. So I take you under my seat as a direct disciple of the four hundred and fifty-third generation, and I give you my seal. When you go about the world, if ever a thing is past your solving, hold the seal and every disciple of my gate will come at once to help you."

Her grandmother brought the seal, and Ning Shu raised both hands above her head and received it.

"Thank you, Heavenly Master. No. Thank you, Master."

The seal was about the size of an apple, and the age of it had given the gold a plain old look.

Four characters were cut into the face of it, in the old forms. The Seal of Huang Xianci.

Ning Shu knew that it was only with the Heavenly Master's seal in hand that you were truly through the gate.

Counting her, the gate had four hundred and fifty-three direct disciples. Those four hundred-odd had done remarkable things in every age. Ning Shu had heard a good many of the school's stories from her grandmother as a child, from the revolution at the end of the Qing through the Northern Expedition, and some lines of disciples had even fought the Japanese. By her grandmother's account, they had all taken their places among the immortals after they died.

With the seal in hand, if she ever met anything she could not manage, she could call on those brothers and sisters of the school who had already reached the Way, and they would come down like soldiers out of the sky.

Ning Shu had never thought being the Heavenly Master's disciple was anything much before. Looking at it now, it was something else entirely. Four hundred-odd immortals, and one word from her would bring any of them who were near. That was no small thing.

Through the back half of August her grandmother taught her a great deal, and the house-reading in particular. The twenty-four mountains and how a road settles where a family should live, turning the trigrams to fix a reading. She had it at her fingertips.

Ning Shu worked hard and took it seriously. Most children her age cannot hold their attention on anything, and Gouwa was the proof. He was learning from their grandmother as well, and he was at it three days and idle for two, and nothing she said stayed in his head.

School started a few days later, and Ning Shu and Gouwa both went into the first year of middle school.

The school was in the town of Pingshui, not far from Pingshui Village where Ning Shu lived, half an hour's walk home.

Whether it was the heavenly eye or not she could not say, but Ning Shu's memory was now frightening. She very nearly did not forget anything she had read once. So the schoolbooks, and the books her grandmother gave her, The Classic of Contending Spirits, The Hearth Trigrams, The True Key to Houses of the Living, all of it went in fast and she could use it.

And along with that she found her body was getting stronger.

In the last life there had been nobody to look after her when she was born and she had taken a chill, so her health had been poor from the start, and once winter came she caught cold at the least thing. Later, after she went to Lu Zheng, the heating in the big house he bought her ran all winter without a break.

Lu Zheng liked the cold and disliked the heat, and he had never used the heating before. The house had been cool all year round.

But once he had Ning Shu living in it, everything about how he lived changed. The Ning Shu of the last life was spoiled and awkward, odd-tempered and selfish, and Lu Zheng took all of it and put up with all of it. He changed a great deal to fit around her.

The Ning Shu of the last life had eyes and a heart for herself and nobody else, and she started from herself in everything she did, so she could hardly see any of the good he did her. She saw only his faults. Since coming back she had begun to step outside that circle and look at the first half of her life again, and she had slowly found a great many things she had passed over. Sometimes she needed to take a hard look at herself instead of putting every fault on Lu Zheng.

Ning Shu sometimes wondered why opening the heavenly eye mattered so much to a yin-yang master. Part of it might be that once it was open, body and mind both got better, and that alone set you apart from ordinary people. And the angle you came at a problem from changed as well.

What she had in her had gone steadier, and harder to move.

---

Her aunt had told Ning Shu to walk to school and back with her cousin and keep an eye on him. But Ning Shu found that Gouwa wanted less and less to do with walking home with her. Every day after school he went off with a few of the rich men's sons in his class.

What her aunt was most afraid of was Gouwa falling in with the wrong sort once he started middle school.

Those boys in Gouwa's class were all town children, and at school they messed about all day and learned nothing, and after school it was either the internet café for games or the snooker hall.

Gouwa was at exactly the age where he understood nothing and copied whatever he saw, and he was easy to pull off course. That day after school her deskmate Lin Qiaoqiao came back into the classroom and said to Ning Shu, "I just saw your cousin going off to the internet café with Wang Yucheng and Wei Xiaotian again."

Ning Shu did not go straight home. She went to the internet café on the back street behind the school.

A small-town internet café is nothing like a city one. The moment you walk in you get that smell they all have, instant noodles and cigarettes together.

All five of Ning Shu's senses were wide open now, so a strong smell came at her several times over. She put a hand over her nose and went round the place once, and found Gouwa in a corner.

"Hit him! Hit the bastard!"

"Ye Yingjun, there's one northeast of you, one-oh-five!"

"What are you shooting with a submachine gun for? Switch to the rifle. Have you got a scope?"

Ning Shu walked over and hauled him out of the chair without any mercy.

Gouwa looked round and nearly died. "Sis."

Wang Yucheng slammed the keyboard down and turned round, vicious about it. "Ye Yingjun, what are you playing at? I'm dead now."

"My sister's here," Gouwa said quietly. "I have to go home."

Wei Xiaotian said, "You're ruining it. We said three of us."

"Sorry. I'm sorry."

Ning Shu knew about these two. Wang Yucheng and Wei Xiaotian lived in the town, their families had a bit of money, and they never did a stroke of work at school and nothing there held them.

And this great fool had got himself in with them.

Ning Shu said coldly, "Oi. Don't come looking for my cousin again. He isn't coming to the internet café with you any more."

"Sis." Gouwa panicked and pulled at her. "Don't say things like that."

"You little wretch. I'll deal with you at home." Ning Shu took hold of Gouwa and turned to go, and Wang Yucheng said, with no manners at all, "Who do you think you are, telling us what to do?"

Ning Shu looked back at him and ran her tongue over her lower lip. "I can't tell you what to do. But anything to do with Ye Yingjun is to do with me. I'm his sister."

"And I'm his big brother." Wang Yucheng threw the mouse down on the desk. "Ye Yingjun took us for his big brothers. Think how many games we've paid for him, how many frames of snooker, how many meals. You want him to break it off with us, fine. Pay the money back."

Ning Shu let go of Gouwa's collar. "What a fine thing. Taking somebody for a big brother."

Gouwa went red and could not look at her. "We only play together."

Ning Shu turned to the two of them. "How much did you spend on him? I'll pay you back."

Wang Yucheng put his chin up and took his time. "Seven or eight thousand, at the least."

Ning Shu stopped at that. She put her bag down and looked up at the two of them. "What game costs that much to play?"

Wang Yucheng said, "It isn't only games. He lost us a fair bit at cards."

Ning Shu swung her bag at Gouwa's head. "So you've learned to gamble as well."

If her aunt found out she would be half dead with it. Her aunt had great hopes of Gouwa and wanted him to come to something, a lawyer or a civil servant or the like.

Gouwa's face crumpled. "We were only playing. They said if I'd be their little brother I wouldn't have to pay it back."

Ning Shu knew exactly what being somebody's little brother meant. At school you were their ox and their horse and did whatever they said. Running errands, fetching snacks, writing their homework, taking the blame and the shouting. That was the job.

Ning Shu wanted to kick Gouwa through the wall. Her grandmother was a feng shui master known for miles around and everybody who met her called her Aunt Hu Ying with respect. And here was her precious grandson bowing and scraping at school and working like an animal for a pair of boys. There was no backbone in him at all.

"Sis, don't be angry. I won't go near them again." The look on Ning Shu's face had begun to frighten Gouwa. "Only please don't tell my mum. She'll beat me to death."

Ning Shu could not be bothered with him. She said to Wang Yucheng, "I'll give you five hundred. That's more than enough for a hundred hours of games. You're not getting any more than that."

Ning Shu pulled out five hundred, put it down on the desk with a slap, and turned to go, but Wang Yucheng said, "That won't do. Eight thousand, and not a cent less. Or he can be my little brother for three years."

Ning Shu turned round and looked at him coldly. "I don't suppose you know what my family does."

"What does your family do?"

Wei Xiaotian leaned in then and said, "They read feng shui. They're supposed to be very accurate. My dad had Ye Yingjun's grandmother out once."

Wang Yucheng said, "What century is this? People still going in for that superstitious rubbish."

Ning Shu said coldly, "Say that again."

Wang Yucheng started to, and Wei Xiaotian pulled him back quickly and said under his breath, seriously, "I mean it, they really are accurate. Leave her alone. She's not worth crossing."

Wang Yucheng looked at Ning Shu's eyes, and at the way she stood there carrying something that did not need to raise its voice, and he lost a little of his nerve.

Then something came to him, and he said to her, "Your family catch ghosts, don't they? There's a house in town I know about that's been haunted for years. Every family that moves in disappears. Saturday night. Have you got the nerve to come and have a look with me? You come, and Ye Yingjun's debt is wiped out."