My name is Chen Gousheng. It's a lowly name, but easy to keep alive. My master gave it to me.
People in my line of work are called Yin-Yang masters. Put politely, we're masters; put plainly, we're tradesmen. We travel far and wide, eat at people's homes, handle funerals, read feng shui, drive out evil spirits, and explore ancient tombs. We'll do any job if it pays. My master said this line of work drains your good karma, so people like us have no descendants, no home, no roots. Wherever we go, that's where we die. Wrap us in a straw mat and bury us, and that's the end of it.
In the ninth year of the Republic, my master entered the Tomb of the Qin King with four others. Only two came back out. As he lay dying, he said just one thing: "I'm sorry, old friends."
I pondered those words for forty years. From a small town in the north to the Shanghai Bund, from the Yellow River ferry crossing to Savage Mountain, from the twenty-sixth year of the Republic all the way to the Reform and Opening-Up era, I've seen fox spirits asking for a title, ghosts carrying coffins, cats startling corpses, and living people sacrificed in Nuo masks. I've also met people more vicious than ghosts. Nine soul-calming jade pieces, half a volume of Miscellaneous Yin-Yang Records, and half a century of underworld grudges: in the end, it all lies buried in that tomb.
People ask me if ghosts really exist in this world. I say they do, not in graves, but in people's hearts.
This is my story. The things a wandering master saw over the course of his life.
