For reasons unknown, I was able to neglect his abrupt laughter. In a strange moment of clarity despite his bellowing chortles, it dawned upon me that this old man hardly looked like the gnarly, frail old man that we would have imagined a person of a hundred years old would look like. Instead, he looked as if he was only in his seventies. Shallow creases lined across his weather-worn face although they were hardly the deep wrinkles most old men had. Through his jovial grin, I could see his neat, white teeth which I suspected were dentures. As he and Third Uncle continued their talk, his movements and gestures were agile and rapid; hardly fitting the image of a feeble and sickly old man with long, flowing mane and beard. Like Third Uncle himself, the old man was also a garrulous and effusive person whose loquaciousness would never cease unless bidden to.
His caretaker appeared with more teacups minutes later and poured us tea. We sat down too, realizing that there were a number of stools beside the stone table, a sign that the old man had visitors regularly. The caretaker appeared once more, this time coming with some fruits in a tray. Setting them on the table, he said before he left dutifully, "Have some fruits. These are all home-grown here ourselves..." Suddenly a voice called out from the gardens before we managed to state the reason for our visit. "Young Heng!" There were a few men who had come. From their manner, they seemed to be Third Uncle's former colleagues, for one of them even hugged him like how an uncle would dote on his favorite nephew. Over the fruits and tea, they began talking about their families and their past exploits, stopping halfway only to laugh or refresh themselves with the tea. One of the men, the one who looked like the leader of the band of brothers, extracted his phone and spoke into the mouthpiece. When he returned his phone to his pocket, he made an announcement: no one was to leave until after a meal together. He had called to his factory and made arrangements. The long-separated band of brothers would eat together and enjoy a long chat over some alcohol... He looked at us three and said, "The factory is not far. It's just outside this compound," before he turned to the old man and said, "Let's have a visit to this factory that you once built, Master Xuan!"
The man was the director of one of the factories that Master Xuan had established decades ago. We rose to our feet and Lin Feng and I were about to help Master Xuan get up when he waved us off. He held on to his dragon-head staff for support and slowly ambled away along with us. With the director showing us around, we were given a tour of the factory as the old man stared and gazed at the innards of the manufacturing plant of his own contrivance, reminiscing a glimpse of his past. We came to the mess hall of the factory and were led into a room where a signboard hung above its door, saying, "Reception Room". This must be where the factory management receives its guests, I wondered. And I would just breeze past the details of our meal.
At the end of our meal, two female attendants appeared and ushered the old man back to his home. Third Uncle and his friends remained, downing glass after glass as their conversations sauntered down the trail of memory lane, bringing both tears and laughter to them as they reminisced of their past. By the time they called it quits, it was already 10 in the night. Hence we spent the night there, at the invitation of Third Uncle's friends who prepared some rooms in the factory for us. The next morning, after washing up and having breakfast at the factory mess hall, we returned to the residence of the old man Chen Yixuan, the Chen Residence. The old man, having expected us to return, had long been waiting at the gazebo in his garden. A wooden box sat on the stone table, waiting for us. It was time to get to business, I guessed. "Master Xuan," Third Uncle first began, "This three young men here..." The old man cut him off gently, without allowing him to finish, saying, "I know the purpose of their visit. I knew it the moment you told me this boy's name," his bony finger was trained on me. "This is nothing but Destiny! For many a year, I have been waiting for this day!" We were all stunned to silence. The old man smiled. "Sit!" He beckoned us to the stools around the table, "Sit and listen to my story!"
When we were all seated, the old man drank from his cup and asked, "Have you heard of the 'Battle of Beijing' that took place in the year 1644?" Third Uncle was looking bewildered, his mouth stuttering incomprehensibly. Softly I asked, "Was that the year Li Zicheng entered Beijing?" The old man giggled and replied, "Good, good! This child has potential!" And so his tale began...
When the last Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen Emperor rose to the throne, he had sought advice from a seer. The seer gave him two instructions. The first of it, was to erect a stable at the rear of his palace. He was instructed to keep a good horse and employ a caretaker to see to the horse's daily needs. In the seer's instructions, the emperor was explicitly advised to get another horse should the first horse dies of old age. In the early years of his reign, the emperor heeded the instructions of the seer and kept a horse. But as time passed, he failed to see the merits in keeping the horse, and the stable was demolished after the death of the first horse years later. From then since, he kept no horse in his palace! But when Li Zicheng attacked Beijing in 1644, Chongzhen Emperor hung himself to death. Even to the moment of his death, he might not have realized that the seer's true purpose of bidding him to keep a horse was for his escape during the time of danger! The seer's second instruction was kept in a silken pouch, which he had charged the emperor to open only in times of grave peril. When Li Zicheng's invading rebel forces were inching closer and closer to the capital, defeating every military force that the imperial government had hurled forth to thwart him, Chongzhen Emperor, seeing no other options, opened the pouch and found a strip of paper. On it, the seer had scrawled a message, saying, "Decimate the renegade's lineage and right to rule". With as much haste as he could muster, the Emperor ordered a secret directive to be dispatched as swiftly as a horse could ride to the Governor of Shaanxi, a man named Wang Qiaonian...
In the fifteenth regnal year of Chongzhen Emperor's rule, the magistrate of Mizhi County in the province of Shaanxi where Li Zicheng hailed from, a man named Bian Dashou received a case. A farmer had come to plea for justice, complaining that some staff members of the magistrate had forcibly robbed him of his garlic crops. Under usual circumstances, the case would seem like a very simple matter. But the farmer never stopped bowing his head as he knelt on the ground, and even crawled to Bian Dashou's side and hugged his feet.
Realizing that there was more than meets the eye with this farmer, he commanded the court to be adjourned and instructed the farmer to meet him in the rear chambers. Bian Dashou ordered away his men and demanded to be left alone, where he met the farmer by himself. Confident that they were not being scrutinied by prying eyes, the farmer removed his hat and extracted a secret missive from the Emperor himself from within. "I am a secret messenger of the Emperor himself. Due to the gravity of these orders, I have had to maintain utmost secrecy while ensuring that these orders reach your hands!" The courier revealed. Bian Dashou unsealed the missive and pore through the message. The message contained orders for him to demolish the renegade Li Zicheng's ancestral tomb and destroy his dragon leys to decimate his destiny to be king. Bian Dashou nodded. He returned to the front hall and re-continued the court proceedings by ordering his men to pay the "farmer" his due compensation and sent him off.
However, Bian Dashou was at a loss of what to do after the courier had left. From where would he find the renegade's ancestral tomb? How would he locate the ley lines (in the case of a potential ruler, dragon leys) which represented Li Zicheng's destiny to be king? He was worried and frightened. His worrisome demeanor was noticed by one of his closest subordinate and confidant, Jia Huan. "Why are you so worried, Sir?" Bian Dashou confided in him the matter of the secret imperial missive and the orders it contained. "This is a secret directive from the Emperor. But how am I to locate these things without attracting attention and causing alarm?" Bian Dashou complained in dismay. "Moreover, it is a hateful act to demolish one's ancestral tomb. There's just too much risk! With the Ming Empire on the verge of crumbling, Li Zicheng would surely hunt for my entire family if word of this reaches his ears!"
"Well, you've found the right man, Sir," quipped Jia Huan confidently, "I know where they are!" Bian Dashou could hardly believe his ears! How did he know about this, he asked his man. "One of our constables here is called Zhang Zixiang. But many do not know, his true family name is not Zhang, but Li. His true name is Li Zixiang; and he is the trueborn older sibling of the renegade, Li Zicheng. In truth, he has enlisted more than twenty of the men to aid the rebel forces when they come. In fact, I am one of them! But if you wish to know the location of his ancestral tomb, we can first get close to him to find out before we decide what to do."
Bian Dashou sent for Li Zixiang and demanded, "Why do you pretend to be Zhang when your true family name is Li?" Li Zixiang fumbled with fear as he tried to explain himself, but Jia Huan appeared suddenly from behind, saying, "There's no longer need for falsehoods, Brother Li. I have confessed everything to the Magistrate!" Li Zixiang crumbled to his knees, begging for mercy. Bian Dashou went to him and helped him to his feet, consoling him, "Have no fear, my friend. I am also worried that the Empire would last no longer. I am interested to be sworn brothers with you. Perhaps I might still be able to salvage a future for myself." Li Zicheng was overjoyed to hear this and they swore to be brothers. From that moment on, Bian Dashou remained as Li Zicheng's superior in public, but in private, they behaved like brothers.
Little did Zhang Zixiang know that Bian Dashou's true purpose of getting close to him was to find out the actual location of Li Zicheng's ancestral tomb. The latter had also conducted secret investigations of his own, and found that Li Zicheng's grandfather's name was Li Hai and his father's name was Li Shouzhong. Li Shouzhong was buried in the presence of another fellow villager called Li Cheng after his death.
Careful to maintain his facade, Bian Dashou spent time daily with Zhang Zixiang, calling him for drinks every night together. They would talk about fengshui and how the Li Family's ancestral tomb must have been built over an auspicious land site. As his focus began to cloud by influences of the wine, what doubts or defense that Zhang Zixiang maintained crumbled like a battered wall, as Bian Dashou prodded him about the location of his family's tomb. Not long after that night, Bian Dashou invited Zhang Zixiang to a hunting trip where they also visited Mount San Feng Zi (literally, Mount of the Three Lesser Peaks) and Bian Dashou used the opportunity to ascertain the location of Li Zicheng's ancestral tomb.
Before long, word came to Bian Dashou that the rebel forces were heading straight for Tongguan County. Bian Dashou gave Zhang Zixiang seven thousand taels of silver and instructed him to join the renegade. The silver was to help himself curry favors with the renegade who could possibly be king one day. To make sure Zhang Zixiang indeed left the area, Bian Dashou sent the twenty constables which had pledged their loyalties to the rebels' cause and even instructed Jia Huan to follow and watch them. When he was sure that Zhang Zixiang had left, he organized a band of thirty bowmen and sixty villagers and enlisted Li Cheng as a guide to lead them on an overnight trip of a hundred and thirty miles to Mount San Feng Zi. It was snowing heavily then and the path to the mountain was covered under two-meters deep of compacted snow. There was no way to ride a horse through the blizzard due to the frigid conditions and the slippery path. For the final five to six miles, Bian Dashou led his men on a hike up the windy and treacherous paths into the deserted mountains. They jostled, clambered, and fought as their might allowed until they finally reached the ancestral tombs, where they beheld the tranquility of the mausoleum. Ringed by tall and handsome mountain ranges in breathtaking vista, the mausoleum had not the morbid ominosity of a charnel house; instead, the environment looked grim and solemn like a final resting place for heroes that was watched silently by the multitudes of tall trees that loomed over the twenty or more graves like wary sentinels. There were once three cavities dug here, said Li Cheng, and one was used to bury Li Zicheng's father, Li Shouzhong. It was dark when he was interred; hence the gravediggers had used a bowl filled with oil to light a lamp. The lamp was also buried with Li Shouzhong's body when the deed was done. Hence the grave with the bowl would be Li Shouzhong's grave.
After digging through five or six graves, still, the grave with the black-colored bowl was not yet found. Night was upon them and they stayed together by the grave for the night. The next morning, they found both Li Hai's and Li Shouzhong's grave. But the latter's grave had an elm tree growing atop that bore strange, eerie-looking leaves on its boughs. With an axe, they felled the tree to exhume Li Shouzhong's remains. But in the coffin, they found instead a long, white snake about 1.2 feet long. As the lid of the coffin opened, the snake leaped into the air, rising for meters before it returned back into the grave. Bian Dashou studied the serpent. Horns were beginning to form on its head that it was slowly resembling a dragon. One of its eyes had yet to change and most of its body was still that of a snake. Bian Dashou commanded that the snake and the black bowl from the graves be sealed in a red wooden chest. He would submit the chest and its contents as proof of his deed. As the white snake was removed from the grave, Li Shouzhong's remains began to sprout hairs! Bian Dashou immediately commanded that all remaining graves to be exhumed and all remains that began to sprout hairs were to be burned. But that was not all. In order to disrupt the fengshui of this site, he commanded that all one thousand three hundred and more trees in the vicinity to be felled. When he returned, he wrote a message: The ancestral tomb of the traitorous renegade has been destroyed and his destiny to be king quashed utterly; the rebel forces would surely be routed in no time! With the red wooden chest, the message was sent to his superior, the provincial governor Wang Qiaonian. On that same day, Li Zicheng suffered a defeat in one of his battles in Henan where he was shot in one of his eyes.
But both Bian Dashou and Wang Qiaonian did not know that their laying waste to Li Zicheng's ancestral tomb was hardly the correct way of severing his dragon ley! The dragon ley of one's mandate to be king was to be destroyed by using a special sword and also a certain powerful spell to kill that white snake! Still, since Bian Dashou was fated to disrupt Li Zicheng's destiny to be king, this could also mean another thing: an unusual destiny was in store for Bian Dashou himself as well! But Bian Dashou, not knowing that bring away the white snake could not fully deliver the empire from the threat of Li Zicheng. In the end, Chongzhen Emperor inevitably killed himself when Li Zicheng took the capital city! But Bian Dashou's actions had precipitated in the renegade leader's short-lived rule, effectively paving way for the Manchurians to usurp the entirety of China, fill the power vacuum and establish the Qing Dynasty in the future. The rulers of the Qing Empire worshipped shamanism, and the shamans and mediums of the Qing Empire all knew about this!
Despite one victory in Henan, the remnants of the imperial forces suffered great defeats as Li Zicheng, unbroken by his failure, continued plowing towards Beijing. Fearing that they might suffer Li Zicheng's wrath for what Bian Dashou had done, the people of Mizhi County began plotting to capture Bian Dashou and deliver him to Li Zicheng, hoping that this might spare their lives...