The Mystic Nine

(Extra: Chen Pi Ah Si's Story) Chapter 2: The Six Words of Life

There was a Mahuo Temple by the sandy lakeshore on the outskirts of the city, which seemed to belong to a "grassroots religion" that followed the Taoist teachings. The past few years had been rife with chaos and war, so these kinds of religions had sprung up everywhere. Candles and incense burned all night inside the temple, and beggars would gather outside in hopes of receiving the discarded tributes that had been tossed out. When Chen Pi arrived and found a place in the corner, the other beggars quickly got out of the way.

In regions that had docks, beggars would usually be able to acquire a big pot that they could cook some water and spices in for a few meals. Chen Pi found an earthen stove, took out a broken bowl, and boiled the crabs using the lake water. He then pulled a wooden board out from underneath the straw he was squatting on, as if it was his precious possession.

This was the window board he had stolen from the tailor shop on Dashengfu Street in Hankou. The back of the board had been painted red, and a few words had been written on it: one hundred coins, kill one person.

(In 1932 [1], Changsha suffered a fly disaster so terrible that they offered twenty coins for every twenty flies that were killed. In six days, six hundred thousand flies had been killed. He could also get a hundred coins if he killed a hundred flies, but Chen Pi found that killing a hundred flies was much more difficult than killing one person.)

He wiped the board as he chewed on the crab legs. When he was done eating, he took the board to the streets, avoiding Dashengfu Street as he looked for an alley to post up at. When he found one, he leaned the board against the wall and then squatted beside it.

He had been doing this for three days. There were many legends as to how this came about, and the most famous one in the future was related to Xi Xiucai, a man from a Japanese foreign firm.

It was said that Xi Xiucai was a very interesting man, who had seven fingers on his left hand. He was nicknamed Xi Qi [2], because the foreign firm had the character "Xi" in its name. But now that the firm was gone, Xi Xiucai—who had worked for the Japanese—didn't have any new job prospects. Even his house had been taken over by the government. He set up a street stall some time ago, saying that he would write things for others in exchange for some coins. He also stayed close to the Mahuo Temple's walls, but the beggars knew he had worked for the Japanese, so they beat him and broke his pens every day. He would always yell, which annoyed Chen Pi to no end. But the Mahuo Temple's miaozhou [3] soon gave him a job of copying the names of those who lit incense at the temple.

Xi Xiucai had to hold his pen in a strange posture because of his seven fingers, which made his calligraphy very powerful. The miaozhou liked how the thin gold lines he wrote were very strange, and said that people with five fingers couldn't do it.

"This can only be done by someone who has either seven fingers, or very long fingers; otherwise, even the great Zhang Yuzhao [4] wouldn't be able to write it." Xi Qi was often heard saying.

He would copy the names of those who lit incense every day and get ten coins for it. The temple was very popular, so his hands would swell up, but he finally had a bite to eat. Moreover, the beggars wouldn't dare fight him, but they would still spit on him and curse him out whenever he passed by.

For some unknown reason, he suddenly started to take notice of Chen Pi. He would send him some leftovers, and even seemed to regard Chen Pi as his friend, coming over and trying to make small-talk with him.

Chen Pi obviously knew that Xi Qi was pretending to be familiar with him, since he had killed no less than four or five beggars after coming here. The beggars were split into two groups known as the "Sha Hulu" and the "Caisheng Zhege" [5], and they constantly fought over the Hanchang territory. They were far more vicious and cruel than ordinary people, and would be buried on the spot whenever they died. They were beggars, after all, so no one cared about them.