Have you ever seen a Taoist nun rap the Golden Light Mantra?
If you haven't, now you have.
My name is Lin Xin. I'm thirty-six, formerly an internet operations specialist and currently an unofficial sweeper at the Three Purities Temple on Qingya Mountain. Before I came up here, my life was all finger pricks to check my blood sugar, sixty-second voice messages from my boss, and pain patches plastered over my neck. The doctor told me to write a will. I didn't. I wrote a resignation letter instead, threw an old backpack over my shoulder, and headed up the mountain.
There's an old Taoist priest and three senior disciples up here. Life consists of morning prayers, sweeping, drawing talismans, feeding cats, and playing five-on-five games. It was all pretty peaceful, until the old priest said I had a thunder mark on me and wasn't an ordinary person.
I asked him what kind of person I was.
He just smiled over his teacup and said nothing.
So I started waiting on the mountain for an answer. While I waited, trouble came knocking: a vengeful spirit trapped beneath a stone tablet for a hundred years; my cousin haunted by the obsession of an old man from Henan, yelling about the repayment date; and an old woman's back lump, grown over forty years of believing she didn't deserve to be loved. Strangely enough, whenever these things land in my hands, I somehow know what to do.
But I still don't know what kind of person I am.
So now I pass the time on the mountain, waiting for answers, and help people deal with the things they “can't afford to stop” whenever the mood strikes. Awakening to supernatural powers at thirty-six is late enough as it is, and I'm under quite a bit of pressure. Any immortal passing by, could you please hurry up and tell me the answer?
