The Divine Face Reader in Plain Clothes

When reading a person, the head counts for seven parts and the face for three.

When reading a corpse, the head counts for three parts and the face for seven.

I was born with a fatal star in my Palace of Destiny, bringing misfortune to my living family. My father died, my mother went mad, my grandfather became lame, and my grandmother went blind.

My fate was short and wretched, and I was frail and sickly, always on the verge of death. The villagers all called me a little death-seeker.

When I was three, a deranged old beggar knocked on my family’s door. He claimed to be a successor of Lai Buyi. He took a drop of blood from between my eyebrows and dripped it onto a lantern made of human skin, borrowing a life for me so I could grow up safely.

When I was seventeen, the old beggar came back and demanded that I repay the debt to the human-skin lantern.

From then on, I became a fortune-teller in plain clothes, seeking dragon veins, reading the land, and divining the living and the dead…