This Poor Daoist Believes Only in the Three Pure Ones

I found myself in a sinister place.

You couldn't go out after dark. Things crawled out of the well, and the locust tree at the village entrance laughed in the middle of the night. The villagers said those were the rules, and they had to be obeyed.

I looked at the clay and wooden idols they worshipped, then glanced at the Orthodox Daoist Canon in my head, its pages nearly worn through.

“Rules?” I scratched my neck, took half a cinnabar brush from my tattered bundle, and drew a crooked talisman on the old locust tree at the village entrance.

That night, everyone in the village heard the locust tree weeping.

Later, I passed through a town where a family was plagued by a zombie. They couldn't even hold the coffin lid down. The family called in more than a dozen monks and Taoist priests. They chanted scriptures and sprinkled water, working through the night, but at midnight the zombie sat up and flipped over the altar.

I crouched on the wall and watched the whole spectacle. Once they'd all fled, I slowly jumped down, took a copper coin from my robe, and flicked it into the zombie's mouth.

The zombie went thump, fell straight back into the coffin, and didn't move again.

Trembling, the family asked what kind of master I was.

I brushed the dust off my Taoist robe. “Just a wandering old Taoist. You folks looked like you were having a rough time.”

Later, I came across a fox spirit that sucked the life force from people. She kept batting her eyes at me like they were twitching. I watched her for a while, took a peachwood sword from my bundle, and pressed its tip to her nose. “Turn back. Your fur's showing.”

The fox spirit was stunned. “You… aren't you afraid of me?”

“Of course I am.” I yawned. “I'm afraid of that smell on you. How many days has it been since you washed?”

This is the story of a Taoist in a world teeming with monsters and spirits, relying on the little bit of Taoist knowledge in his head that he can still remember