On the bluestone ground at Nuo City Market, Lu Wujiao sets up his three-legged wooden carving bench. The butcher, Old Shi, has been lame for three years. He walks as if his leg wants to kneel but refuses to, and he can only afford three coins. Lu Wujiao takes the three coins and carves three strokes into a piece of cypress wood blackened by rain. A Stove God with a thin beard emerges. On the back, he writes the Stove God's taboo name, then tells Old Shi to wear the mask and walk a couple of steps. His left leg, which hasn't straightened in three years, plants firmly on the ground at once. Old Shi pulls off the mask and kneels, confessing that three years earlier he made a wish at the Nuo King Shrine: his mother lived seven months longer, but he never offered a pig in return. He buried the pig himself after it died of swine fever. Lu Wujiao says the gods don't need pigs, they need people to honor their debts. Old Shi opens his money pouch, and the market's onlookers start chipping in. The three coins become more than a hundred and thirty. But he divides the copper coins into two piles. Who is the other pile for?
