My name is Chen Wu. I’m an orphan who grew up eating at the villagers’ tables. Everyone in the village says I’m a jinx who brought about my parents’ deaths, and that anyone who gets close to me will have bad luck. Only the lame old Taoist at the end of the village was willing to take me in. He taught me to draw talismans and recite incantations, but never let me call him Master.
“Child, some things, once you get involved with them, you can never shake them off.” He always squinted his clouded eyes and smoked his pipe.
When I was sixteen, the old Taoist died. As he lay dying, he clutched my hand so tightly his nails dug into my flesh.
“The river… guard the river…”
He died before he could finish. The villagers buried him in a hurry. No one cared about the last words of a crazy old Taoist.
That is, until I heard someone crying by the river seven nights later.
