Then he slowly slid down the wall behind him. His vision went black, and he knew nothing more. 

In his haze, Su Qing felt that he seemed to be floating, swaying in the wind. A great wind blew him away somewhere. After a while, he faintly felt that the scenery before his eyes was a little familiar. Looking closely, he found that he had returned home. 

His consciousness wasn’t especially clear. When he came here, he tensed, thinking that there were still people waiting around to take their chance if he walked into their trap. Why had he run here? 

Just then, someone came towards him. Su Qing stared blankly. He was standing in the street. There was no time to dodge—it was the Su family’s housekeeper, Xiao Wu. 

Su Qing’s heart beat faster and faster. He suddenly didn’t know what to do. But Xiao Wu only came right towards him and passed him by as though nothing were the matter, just as if she hadn’t seen him. Su Qing stared. He stood in the street for a while, then couldn’t resist chasing after and tapping Xiao Wu on the shoulder. But his hand went right through her shoulder. 

He suddenly had a strange thought—was he dead? 

Su Qing ignorantly walked towards his house. He went up the familiar stairs and wanted to push open the door, but his arm went through it. Su Qing realized that he had acquired the skill of passing through walls. He laughed bitterly and went right in. 

Su Chengde had always been busy at work, and meals in the Su home were late. Now it was already dark, and Su Chengde was only just sitting down to dinner. 

Xiao Wu didn’t eat at the same table as him. She laid out the food and went to the kitchen to eat. The dining table was so big that Su Chengde sitting there on his own seemed a little lonely. 

Su Qing walked over quietly, slowly approaching Su Chengde, hugging him from behind, the way he had hung off his dad when he had been little. When he had been little, he had thought that Su Chengde was truly massive. He could lift him onto his back with just a slight effort. But now he found that Su Chengde seemed to have shrunk. He appeared to have turned frail. 

Then, Su Qing’s eyes went around Su Chengde’s shoulder towards the table. 

After all these years, the old man hadn’t improved his lifestyle. If he wasn’t going out for social engagements but staying home to eat, he always ate plain and simple fare. He wasn’t picky, either. He could happily eat last night’s rice casually fried up with some scallion oil. 

Su Qing sighed inwardly. Suddenly, he trembled—on the table, apart from Su Chengde’s tableware, there were two other sets arranged. 

One was for Su Qing’s mother; this had been a tacit understanding between father and son. The other…

His eyes burned. He blurted out, “Dad…” 

Su Chengde, who was gobbling up his food, paused, looking around suspiciously. He raised his voice and called to the housekeeper: “Xiao Wu, Xiao Wu?” 

The housekeeper answered, “Yes, uncle, what is it?” 

Su Chengde asked, “I think I heard someone speaking just now. Was it you?” 

Xiao Wu paused. “Me? I didn’t say anything.” 

Su Chengde responded in a careworn way, nodded, and didn’t pursue it any further. Su Qing sighed and went around the dining table. He wanted to sit down across from Su Chengde. 

But just then, it was as if there was a black hole outside the window, dragging him out. Su Qing reached out to grab hold of Su Chengde, who was so close by, but he couldn’t resist the enormous attractive force. 

“Dad! Dad! Pull me back…” He yelled loudly, but Su Chengde couldn’t hear it. Su Chengde only raised his head a little doubtfully. His eyes turned in Su Qing’s direction, as though he could faintly sense that something was off. After a while, he thought he was only being oversensitive, shook his head, and continued eating. 

Su Qing felt as though he had been swept away by a hurricane. He was in total chaos. Then his body suddenly dropped. He twitched and opened his eyes. 

He found himself lying on a hard plank bed. A shriveled little old man was craning his neck to look at him. The old man saw him open his eyes and grinned. His teeth were as crooked as a piece of abstract art, and his face was wrinkled. He looked like a big chrysanthemum. “Hey, lad, you woke up pretty fast.” 

Su Qing’s pupils contracted. He turned over and sat up. A strong pain from his leg restrained his movements. He turned his head a little warily to look at the old man with his very alternative get-up, not quite monk and not quite priest. 

“Tsk, young people these days, you have less and less idea how to respect the elderly. Look here, I hauled you back here with my poor old bones. I saved you, and here you are blaming me.” 

Su Qing followed his gaze and found that his injured leg had been cleaned and bandaged. Before he could relax, he heard the old man continue: “Would you have preferred to lie in that poky corner with that corpse waiting for the police to invite you in for tea?” 

Su Qing shivered and stared straight at the old man. “You saw the dead man and still dared to bring me back here? Who are you?” 

“Hey, hey.” The old man didn’t answer him. Shaking his head, he calmly got an old-style cigar pipe from the head of the bed—Su Qing had always thought that his dad smoking tobacco from a long-stemmed pipe was enough of a return to ancient ways; he hadn’t expected to meet a cave man smoking a cigar pipe. 

The old man puffed away to his own delight, seeming to have no intention of answering him. Su Qing, enduring the pain, grimaced and moved his legs off the bed. He began to examine this room. 

At a single look, he discovered the room’s peculiarity—the place wasn’t large, the floor was cement; a peach wood sword hung at the door, and scattered all around were some yellow talismans, the kind drawn with cinnabar. The corner of Su Qing’s eye twitched. He couldn’t help asking, “Listen, what do you do?” 

The old man slowly breathed out a mouthful of smoke and calmly said, “Great fortune and minor influences, the five elements of the universe, heaven and earth are all at last collected in my heart. I’ll reckon you a rough doom, I’ll reckon you a romance soon to come, heh-heh, I’m the one who…” 

Su Qing gave a disdainful “bleh,” put one foot on the ground, and propped himself up. “So you’re a fortune-telling old swindler.” 

The old man fumed with anger and tried to hit Su Qing with the pipe. Su Qing grabbed it and returned it to him with an unfriendly expression. Several ideas spun through his mind. He remembered an issue, then dragged his injured leg over to lean against a big nightstand. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and interrogated: “Hey, old man, let me ask you, were you the one who tricked that idiot Liu Daqing into standing up for you and got him beaten up?” 

The old man wagged his head and said, “That charitable person… Ah, I don’t mind telling you, I predicted an upcoming calamity for him, and hey, that could be anything—a bit of fisticuffs if his luck was good. Otherwise, it could have been a bloody fate. He and I were brought together by fate. I used the opportunity to change his…” 

Su Qing said, “Speak Chinese, don’t talk nonsense.” 

The old man pursed his already very pursed lips. “It was me.” 

Su Qing gave a cold laugh. “Then you ran for it. Did you come back later to see whether Liu Daqing was dead?” 

The old man hunched his shoulders. “That’s rubbish, I was seeing whether his inexorable doom had changed…” 

Su Qing frowned. “That man…was he really dead?” 

The old man kept silent. An unfathomable expression appeared on his withered face. He returned the pipe to his mouth, inhaled deeply, then blew out. Then, after sending a cloud of mist spiraling upward, he finally said quietly, “Completely dead. That man’s death is no simple matter. From what I saw, he had simply been scared to death.” 

Su Qing stared, not really understanding. Then he looked at the fortune-telling old swindler again and calmed down. He thought, There’s no difference between this guy talking and farting, what am I doing listening to him? 

So he began to shuffle laboriously on his way out. Behind him, the old man slowly continued: “If you go out that door, you will certainly meet a bloody fate. Young man, think thrice before you act.” 

Su Qing stopped in his tracks and looked back. From this point of view, the old man wreathed in clouds of smoke really did have something of the look of a transcendent being. He couldn’t resist asking, “What exactly…do you mean? Why did you save me?” 

The old man laughed silently. He was elderly, but his eyes weren’t clouded like an ordinary old person’s. A faint light still gleamed from his dark eyes. “I know that you have an extraordinary gift, that you possess unique skills. You are unlike other people. And I know that your days have not been easy of late, and there is a calamity in your future, although…it can still be avoided.” 

At this point he stopped. Seeing Su Qing looking directly at him, he extended a hand and grinned. “Old rules, three hundred to pass through a minor calamity, five hundred for a major. Yours… It’s extremely dangerous. Add another two hundred. I only accept cash, no cards, and I don’t take checks…” 

Su Qing smiled insincerely. “Old immortal, you’re so magical—do you know what my surname is? My full name? Where I live? How my mom’s health is doing?” 

The old man waved a hand and twisted his fingers as though he was the real thing. Shaking his head and wagging his tail, he said, “You’re a young man with considerable filial piety. Set your mind at ease. As I see it, your esteemed mother is in the prime of life, blessed with riches and the prospect of living to a ripe old age. This year she ought to get out of doors more, stay in a room with south-facing windows, and she will certainly have good luck and great prosperity, live smoothly and well.” 

Su Qing said, “Go fuck yourself. My mom is dead.” 

The old swindler choked, waved a hand, and said, “Right, your esteemed mother has already crossed the Wangchuan and been reborn. The dust of her last life has settled—naturally I can’t reckon it. I told her fortune in this life.” 

Su Qing ignored his nonsense. Something really did occur to him. He took three hundred yuan out of his pocket, considered, then put two hundred back. Under the old swindler’s yearning gaze, he gave him the cash. “Go to Liu Daqing’s house and bring back a child named Tu Tutu for me. When you come back, I’ll give you another hundred.” 

The old swindler said, “Two!” 

Su Qing agreed cheerfully. “Fine, go on.” 

He thought, The strange thing would be if I gave it to you. 

The old swindler worked himself over and even put on a pair of dark glasses, pretending to be blind. He even got a stick from somewhere and went out the door tapping all over the place. Only then did Su Qing, grimacing, kneel on the ground to undo the bandage on his leg—he wasn’t sure yet whether the bullet that had hit his leg was still there, and he really didn’t trust the old swindler’s bandaging technique. 

Just then, Hu Bugui’s voice suddenly sounded in his ear: “Su Qing, are you in C City?” 

Su Qing’s hand shook. Hu Bugui didn’t hear an answer from him and became urgent: “Did you run into ‘them?’ Are you injured? What is your situation now?” 

There was unmixed urgency in his voice, Su Qing could feel it. He subconsciously raised a hand, but when his fingers lightly touched the false earring, he drew it back again. 

Su Qing lowered his eyes and slowly unwrapped the bandage, thinking, Forget it. This time I can provide for myself. 

When Su Qing had been dying, Hu Bugui had thought that he had been choked by dust. Now, when Hu Bugui was about to lose his mind from worry, Su Qing thought that he only felt overly responsible and was a little apologetic. 

So it would seem that in fact the words “I thought” are the greatest source of trouble in the world.