Chapter 48 — The Town

"Just so!" The old man clapped his hands. "If there were truly such a thing as dog-dung luck, would everyone shy away from it as they do? And besides, dog dung is the filthiest stuff there is, its stench piercing the heavens, hated by all. Once you tread on it, is that not misfortune — or would you have it be good?"

Hearing this, Zhang Qingyue felt there was great sense in the old man's words, and saw that in the past he had indeed been mistaken. Then, recalling what the old man had said a moment before, it truly was alarming, and he could not help breaking into a cold sweat. "Then, old sir, what you said of me..."

The old man knit his brows and looked Zhang Qingyue up and down, until Zhang Qingyue's heart was all at sixes and sevens. Then he said: "Hm, it seems you are indeed beset by a great calamity. Come, step aside, and let me read your fortune — how say you?"

"Read my fortune?" Zhang Qingyue was taken aback, and only then noticed that the old man held in his hand a bamboo pole with a white cloth hanging from it, bearing four characters: The Immortal Points the Way.

So he was a fortune-teller. Yet for all that, Zhang Qingyue felt no scorn. The reason was none other: Qingyun, the founding patriarch of the Canglan Sect, had himself been a wandering fortune-teller; and though none in the Canglan Sect today practiced that trade, the school of Qingyun had always been friendly to fortune-tellers — else would it not be to betray one's own founder?

Zhang Qingyue hesitated, but saw that while he and the old man were speaking, the townsfolk had already borne the giant Shitou far away. He steadied himself, thinking that there was no harm in letting the old man read his fortune first; after all, the headman had said the giant was to eat his fill before going to subdue the demon, so there was still time.

At this thought he turned to the old man and said: "Very well, then. I must trouble you, old sir, to read my fortune."

The old man chuckled and pointed with his hand to the foot of a great tree by the roadside. "Let us talk over there." With that he turned and walked off.

Zhang Qingyue was about to follow when he heard a clear voice at his side: "Big brother."

Zhang Qingyue paused, and saw it was the little girl who had stood by the old man eating candied haws, who for some reason had called out to him. Looking at her rosy, lovely face, he smiled and bent down. "What is it, little sister?"

The little girl chewed at the corner of her mouth and spat out a few seeds, then looked at Zhang Qingyue with a faint, ambiguous smile. "There's still dog dung on the bottom of your foot. It stinks!"

"Ah!" Zhang Qingyue's face went scarlet. He leapt up and shook his foot desperately, flinging the filth from his shoe.

The little girl smiled at his sorry state, then turned and went skipping over to the old man standing beneath the tree.