“I certainly have not harmed or killed Ji Gong. He has harmed me! He has eaten me down to my last pair of pants!” the old Daoist protested. “What are the names of you two honorable gentlemen?”
The cultured and elegant younger man was Li Guoyuan. His home was in the fourth hutung, a narrow alley, of the Green Bamboo Forest that was in the southern part of Linan. The family was at one time wealthy, and he himself was a literary graduate. He had taken a wife from the Lin family, a virtuous young woman, very dear to him. For no apparent reason she was stricken with a mental illness. A great many gentlemen had been invited to examine her, but with no helpful results. Li Guoyuan was very depressed by this.
He had a friend named Li Chunshan who acted as a private tutor in the home of a high official named Du. One day early in the morning Li Guoyuan went to see Chunshan. While the two were discussing their personal affairs, Li Guoyuan mentioned that his wife had become mentally ill and that, although they had invited several doctors to examine her, she was no better.
Li Chunshan said, “In the household shrine of High Official Du, there is a prince’s tally. It is a scroll that was once sent by an emperor to one of his sons as a symbol that his father had chosen him to be the next emperor. This tally has been a treasured possession of the Du family for several generations. On this tally are the eight trigrams, symbols used to repel evil, and the characters ‘five thunders’ are shown. Perhaps it is an invocation to the Thunder God, a protector of mankind against the demons that cause illness. I will ask if I can lend it to you. If he won’t lend it, I will simply take it and give it to you to use. If you hang it in your home for two hours, it will drive out all evil spirits.”
Li Guoyuan said, “Just as soon as this tally cures my wife’s illness, I will return it.”
Li Chunshan went to the Du family shrine, and, opening a chest, secretly removed the prince’s tally and brought it outside. It was in a small case of precious cedar.
Li Chunshan said, “This is a treasured heirloom of the Du family. I secretly borrowed it to let you take it, but a thousand times ten thousand be careful! Hang it for two mornings and it will drive out the evil spirit. Then get it back to me.”
Li Guoyuan said, “I will bring it back tomorrow.” Taking the tally, he said goodbye.
But as he walked away by himself, he thought, “Oh! We didn’t have breakfast!” Originally they had intended to eat together, but as soon as they started talking about the scroll, they forgot all about it. “It’s not convenient for me to go home and eat now. Just ahead there is a restaurant on the north side of the road. I will go in and look.”
Inside the place was full of wealthy friends of his. Everyone stood up and called, “Graduate Li, come and drink with us.”
Li Guoyuan said, “Do not shout, gentlemen. I have to talk to someone.” He went to the back room and found a table. After he had called for wine and drunk two cups, he thought to himself, “Everyone called to me in greeting, and I didn’t greet anyone. That was wrong of me.” He quickly got up and went to say a word to his friends.
When he had finished speaking to them, he turned and went back to his table. Suddenly his eyes widened in fright, and his mouth dropped open in an idiotic expression. The demon-chasing, five-thunders, eight-trigram prince’s tally was gone!
CHAPTER 5
Zhao Wenhui goes to the West Lake to visit Ji Gong; the drunken Chan master explains celestial bargaining
AFTER Li Guoyuan had greeted his various friends and returned to find that the borrowed scroll was not to be seen, he could no longer drink any of his wine, nor eat the food. He thought to himself, “If I had lost anything but the scroll, I could make some sort of repayment, but there is nowhere that this kind of thing can be purchased. This is a treasured family heirloom of the Du family. If news of this gets out, how could my friend, my elder brother, not lose his position?”
He then quickly called the manager to reckon the amount of the bill, telling him to put it on his account. The manager asked why he had not eaten. Li Guoyuan said, “I have some important business to do.”
Without any further talk, he hastened home and calling several trusted people of his household together, he told them: “While I was eating in such and such a wine shop just now, I lost a prince’s tally consisting of a scroll with the eight trigrams and the characters ‘five thunders’ as a prayer to ask the help of the Thunder God. Go around and see whether you can find out which gang the thief belonged to, and whether you can get someone to buy the scroll back for a reasonable price. This is something belonging to a person other than myself.”
The household people assented and left. Not long afterward one of them, named Li Sheng, returned and said, “I have just found out exactly what happened. While you were drinking with your friends, this thing was stolen by a member of the White Coin gang and afterward sold to manager Liu of the Old Studio Antique Shop. He bought it for thirty ounces of silver. He had been befriended by people at the estate of Prime Minister Chin, to whom the scroll has been sold for five hundred ounces of silver. It has been hung in an upper story of the five-story Great Pavilion in the flower garden to protect the estate from demons and calamities.”
When Li Guoyuan heard this, he realized how bad the situation was. “If it were only still in the antique shop, I could still have spent a little more money and bought it back, but I have neither the power nor the connections with powerful friends necessary to deal with these people.”
Just as he was hesitating about what to do next, someone knocked at the gate outside. When he sent a man to see who was there, it turned out to be none other then Li Chunshan’s young son, Little Crab Apple. He said, “Just now after you left, we heard that tomorrow a ceremony will be conducted at the shrine in the home of official Du’s family. My father asked me to bring back the prince’s tally with the five thunders and the eight trigrams to have it ready to be used in the ceremony tomorrow.”
Li Guoyuan said, “You may go back now and tell your father that, when I started to hang the scroll, I found a small tear in it. I sent it to the shop of a scroll mounter to have it repaired. In a little while it will be returned. You need not come for it.”
After Little Crab Apple had gone, just when Li Guoyuan was driven to the point of absolute despair by his anxiety, one of the household people announced that a Zhao Yuanwai had come. Li Guoyuan went out and saw that it was Zhao Wenhui. The two men were intimate friends, and Li Guoyuan immediately raised his clasped hands in greeting, saying, “I have been looking forward to seeing you, Elder Brother.”
Zhao Wenhui said, “I came today to invite you, dear brother, to visit the City God Hill and afterward to have a drink and something to eat at the Riverview Restaurant on Heavenly Pearl Street. We can see the sights together and have a view of the river from the restaurant.”
But Li Guoyuan interrupted him, saying, “Elder Brother, today I cannot go with you. I have the most distressing business. Please come in and sit down.”
When they went into the library, Li Guoyuan related all the details concerning the loss of the prince’s tally scroll.
Zhao Yuanwai immediately said, “Do not worry! I can help you with this affair. There is a senior monk named Ji Gong at the Monastery of the Soul’s Retreat in the West Lake area. He is a Buddha living in this world. You and I will go to him and beg the venerable monk to help. He can get back the prince’s tally, and he can cure the illness of your wife, whom I consider my sister. He truly communicates with the divine. He knows by intuition, and his power through his mastery of Buddha’s law is unlimited.”
Li Guoyuan thought to himself, “I have heard his name, but up to now I have not seen the man. If he should come back with us, I must invite him to eat, so I will have to take some silver along.” Going out with Zhao Wenhui, Li Guoyuan bought forty cash worth of tea leaves, so that including the change from the tea leaves he had exactly ten ounces of silver and three hundred and sixty cash with him.
As they walked on, they found themselves on the three-mile-long