Chapter 1: A lone chick brings mourning alone

I was born on the first day of the eighth month in the year of Yiyou, at daybreak.

The midwife was busy cutting my umbilical cord while praising me as a reincarnation of the Officer of the Auspicious Star, saying I would surely achieve great things in the future.

Until she lifted her eyes and saw a tuft of white hair growing on my forehead, her face instantly changed colour.

She kept counting on her fingers, shaking her head as she counted, and finally shoved me into my mother's arms, turned pale, and walked away.

She didn't even want the congratulatory money.

My grandmother hurried after her, repeatedly asking what was happening.

"A lone chick brings mourning, elder sister, great disaster befalls your family!" the midwife said in a trembling voice, "No, not just your family—no one in Tafengcun can escape!"

My grandmother stared blankly: "What... what chick?"

"The chick is a large bird resembling a goose, but while geese are gregarious, chicks are the opposite."

The midwife patiently explained: "Every year on the first day of the eighth month, the flock of geese flies south, while the chick comes opposite to their direction, killing any goose it sees, and the chick with a tuft of white hair on its head is the fiercest."

Such a fate, when reborn into any household, is an ominous sign; elder sister, I'm not alarmist—if this child stays, your family will lose one person every three years.

If your family dies out, the misfortune will shift to other villagers of Tafengcun, and as long as she lives, your family—and even the whole village—will never have another child born.

My grandmother and father were stunned.

My grandfather stood in the courtyard, his big pipe puffing with a pat-pat sound.

For a moment, the room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Boom—

Just then, a bolt of lightning suddenly rang out, shaking the whole village.

Immediately, shouts rose from outside: "The Qilin Temple has been struck by lightning, a fire has broken out on the back mountain—everyone, hurry to put out the fire!"

Tafengcun's back mountain has a Qilin Temple.

The Qilin Temple houses a statue of a Qilin bearing a hundred children and stepping on a golden phoenix.

The Qilin brings children, arriving on Tafeng.

All the children in our village are prayed for at the Qilin Temple.

Just my luck—I was just born when the Qilin Temple was struck by lightning; truly, it seems destined to cut off the incense of Tafengcun...

The midwife, eyes full of fright, glanced at me once and then left.

Everyone was busy going to fight the mountain fire.

My mother struggled to her feet to dress me, but before she could finish, my father rushed in, grabbed both my ankles, and hauled me outside upside down.

My mother dragged her weak body behind, chasing after her, and when she finally caught up to the back mountain, she saw my father raise his hand and, without hesitation, throw me into fire In the Sea.

"An omen of death—better to die early and be reborn sooner!"

That great fire burned from dawn until dusk; my mother fainted several times from crying, the whole back mountain was scorched bare, and the Qilin divine statue was covered in cracks.

Yet only south of the Qilin Temple stood a tall tung tree, lush and green, not a single leaf scorched.

Under the tung tree lay me, constantly sucking my fingers.

Flecks of twilight light filtered through the tung tree's branches onto me, and my mother, in a daze, said, "Wantan, let's call the child Jiang Wantong."

My mother held me and returned home.

My grandfather, as if seeing a ghost, grabbed his big pipe and went out.

He did not return all night.

The next morning, the artisan hired to repair the Qilin divine statue found my grandfather beneath the tung tree south of the Qilin Temple.

He had hanged himself on that tung tree.

For a while, opinions ran rampant.

Some said I was an omen of death, a killer chick who had already doomed my father at birth.

Others said I was a child protected by the kirin deity, which is why I didn't die in the mountain fire.

Some claimed my grandfather despised me for being a girl and wanted to kill me, provoking the kirin deity to punish him thus.

No one knew what really happened.

Strangely, as my grandfather died, the tuft of white hair on my forehead disappeared.

Three years hurried by.

Just as everyone was almost forgetting these rumors, on the day before my third birthday, a tuft of white hair grew again on my forehead.

Twice as much white hair as at birth!

That evening, my grandmother vanished.

My father searched the whole village and finally found my grandmother beneath the tung tree south of the Qilin Temple.

At that moment, my grandmother was tying a rope to the tung tree to hang herself, but my father forcibly bound her and carried her back.

Just as everyone breathed a sigh of relief that my grandmother had escaped disaster, the next morning my father fell at the construction site, broke a leg, and fell unconscious.

The doctor directly issued a critical condition notice, saying that even if saved he would be a vegetative state.

My grandmother wailed and railed, cursing me as an omen of death, saying if she couldn't kill me she'd kill my father, and lunged to strangle me.

My mother clutched me tightly in her arms, just crying incessantly, yet unable to refute anything.

After all, the midwife had said back then that as long as I was kept, my family would lose one person every three years.

Those words became prophecy.

My grandmother went to find the midwife, begging her to point out a way for our family to survive.

The midwife, worn down by my grandmother's pleading, finally gave an idea: "Elder sister, Tafengcun is protected by the kirin deity; if you are willing to forge a golden body for him, he may help your family survive this calamity."

Forging a golden body for the Qilin divine statue would be a huge expense, but my son still lay in the hospital, his life hanging by a thread.

My grandmother gritted her teeth and sold the family's only ox used for plowing.

On the day the Qilin divine statue was given a golden body, my father miraculously woke up—he did not become a vegetative state, was not foolish or stupid, merely lame in one leg.

And the white hair on my head turned black again.

After my dad was discharged safely, my grandmother tried every means to send me away.

But my bad reputation spread, and no family would take me.

So my grandmother carried me far away.

She threw me over a graveyard.

She dumped me into a drainage ditch.

"Accidentally" she left me at the train station...

But no matter how far she sent me, the next morning I would surely appear under the parasol tree south of Qilin Temple.

She kept doing this for nearly three years, yet still couldn't get rid of me.

On the day before my sixth birthday, white hair grew again on my forehead.

Those white hairs doubled in number.

The whole family looked at the white hair on my head, both shocked and fearful.

My grandmother went again to find the midwife.

The midwife shook her head straight away; this time there really was nothing she could do.

My grandmother returned home worried, carried me to the back mountain, tied me to the parasol tree, and lit a pile of firewood beneath my feet.

She screamed at me like a madwoman: "Tongtong, go die! Only if you die can we live!"

"Be obedient, go die! Go die!"

She shouted while adding firewood to the pile.

Suddenly a whirlwind rose on the flat ground, swirling the flames in a wild dance.

The flames did not surge upward; instead they instantly ignited the surrounding dry leaves, and in the blink of an eye everything was burning.

The villagers rushed to put out the fire, but no matter how they tried, they could not extinguish it.

The mountain fire from six years ago seemed to be making a comeback.

Amidst this blaze, an old woman in black cloth walked forward with big steps, casually tossing a yellow talisman into the fire, and the raging flames instantly went out.

Everyone was stunned.

The old woman turned to face my grandmother, speaking with vigor: "Your child, I will take."

My grandmother quickly got me down from the tree, shoved me onto the old woman's lap, and urged impatiently: "Take him! No money needed! Hurry up and take him away!"

The old woman was not in a hurry; she took out an aged, yellowed Pawn Ticket from her black cloth bundle and said to my grandmother: "The Jiang family now pawns Jiang Wan Tong to my Dang Pu as a dead pledge, using this Pawn Ticket as proof, in two copies, signed and sealed; once pawned, familial ties are severed, with no further contact—can you agree to that?"

My grandmother nodded, took my hand and wrote the three characters "Jiang Wan Tong" on the Pawn Ticket's signature line, then immediately cut my finger and pressed a bloody handprint on the name.

The old woman produced a private seal and stamped it firmly on my name.

The private seal was not the Dang Pu's seal.

Nor was it the characters "dead pledge".

It was a man's name—Liu Junyan.