My Fate Is Pure Yin, Even Ghosts Fear Me as I Cultivate the Dao

I was born on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when the gates of hell opened. All four pillars of my birth chart were yin, and my fate was full of holes. My grandmother called my soul back three times before I could be born without becoming a ghost.

My father kept a butcher's knife under my pillow. With its blade facing outward, it kept ghosts outside away; tucked beneath my pillow, it held my own soul in place.

At three, a drowned ghost knelt at the foot of my bed and begged to borrow my body. At seven, it dragged me into a ditch by the river. At twelve, the old coffin my great-grandfather had written my name on split open.

Later, an old Taoist priest came to our door and said,