Legend Management Bureau Chapter 203

[ … words ]

Time: Late Yuan to early Ming dynasty.

Location: The old City God Temple in Putian County.

Beggars: Ah Can, Ah Kui, and Ah Yu arrived.

As soon as the three landed, before they could even make out their surroundings, Ah Can and Ah Kui dropped to their knees. The intense space-time teleportation caused multiple wounds on their bodies to tear open.

Seeing this, Du Yu rushed forward to support them.

“Are you guys okay?”

“We’re… we’re fine…” Ah Can waved his hand. “Brother Yu, are we here?”

“We’re here,” Du Yu nodded. “This is inside the legend.”

The two looked up. The entire street was in ruins, the houses were dilapidated, the market was filthy, and even the City God Temple, a symbol of faith, had been abandoned.

“That… I don’t know either.” Du Yu called out in his mind, ‘Sister Qianqiu, can you see me now?’

“I can,” Dong Qianqiu replied. “You haven’t entered the fog yet, so I can see everything going on with you.”

“That’s good. Why is it so rundown here?” Du Yu looked around. “This has to be the most dilapidated legend I’ve ever seen…”

“That has to do with the dynasty you are currently in. It is the transition period between the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties. There is war and chaos everywhere, and the common people are displaced. But this doesn’t have much to do with the legend itself.”

Du Yu nodded and asked, “Where are the Seventh and Eighth Lords?”

“Right in front of you, inside the City God Temple.”

Du Yu helped the Can-Kui brothers into the temple. The place looked even more ruined inside than it did outside. What puzzled him was that the paint on the City God Temple still looked new, yet the interior was a complete mess, as if it had been abandoned right after being built.

Just as the three entered the temple, a figure in white darted out.

Because this young man was truly too ugly, all three of them jumped in fright.

“Who dares to trespass on our turf?!”

The three stared blankly at the youth in white before them. Du Yu was the first to speak. “Uh… brother, my two friends are injured. Could we borrow your treasured land to rest for a bit?”

“Rest?” The youth in white looked at Du Yu, then at the Can-Kui brothers behind him. The two were indeed wrapped in bandages, their wounds seeping blood. Before he could make up his mind, two more people walked out from behind him.

One was a young man in black, looking extremely weak and coughing incessantly.

The other was a beautiful teenage girl, her face smeared with dirt and her clothes in rags. Looking at her, Du Yu could not help but think of the first time he met little Zhongli.

“Bi’an, what’s wrong? Who’s here?” the girl asked.

“Some refugees want to rest and heal up here,” the youth named Bi’an replied over his shoulder.

Hearing the girl call this person “Bi’an”, Du Yu was very reluctantly forced to believe that this guy was actually Xie Bi’an.

Fan Wujiu coughed a few times at that moment and said, “Since we are all fellow sufferers, there is no harm in taking them in.”

The girl, however, kept staring at Du Yu, making him feel quite awkward.

“What is it?” Du Yu asked. “Is there something on my face?”

The girl shook her head. “No… it’s not that. It’s just that your faces are too clean… Are you really refugees?”

Only then did Du Yu realize that compared to the three people in front of him, the three of them were excessively clean.

“Uh…” Du Yu thought for a moment and said, “We just became refugees. We haven’t had time to get dirty yet. Give it a few days and we’ll be just like you…”

The others nodded, half-understanding, and let the three of them inside.

“This is our turf,” Xie Bi’an declared. “Since you’re here, from now on you have to call me Seventh Brother. This guy next to me is Eighth Brother, and she is Sister Nian.”

Du Yu helped the Can-Kui brothers sit down on a pile of dry grass, then turned back with some confusion. “Seventh Brother? Eighth Brother? What’s going on? You guys ranked your seniority this early?”

Xie Bi’an smugly pointed at the six statues inside the City God Temple and said, “Don’t mind that the old beggars of the City God Temple have all died, there are still six people standing guard here. So, ranking by seniority, we are the seventh and the eighth.”

Du Yu looked up. Inside the City God Temple stood six ferocious-looking statues. These were the “six people” Xie Bi’an mentioned. If it weren’t for the words written beneath them, Du Yu really wouldn’t have been able to recognize who they were.

“Civil Magistrate Cui Jue, Martial Magistrate Zhong Kui, Ox-Head Abang, Horse-Face Rakshasa, Golden General Master Cangue, and Silver General Master Lock.” Du Yu muttered the names row by row. “So these are the deities enshrined in the City God Temple? But why are they made to look so ferocious, each one like a Yaksha…”

Xie Bi’an glared at Du Yu in annoyance and said, “You say that as if you’ve seen them before. If they weren’t fierce and malicious, how could they manage the ghosts in the Underworld?”

Du Yu turned to look at Xie Bi’an. “You do make a fair point.”

“Alright, from now on, you guys are number nine, number ten, and number eleven!”

Du Yu sighed softly. “Seventh Lord, this overly enthusiastic habit of yours really is innate.”

Xie Bi’an paused. “What did you call me? Seventh Lord?”

“Yeah… aren’t you the seventh?”

Xie Bi’an chuckled. “That name is good, much grander than ‘Seventh Brother’! But… why did you say it’s innate? Did you know me before?”

Du Yu smiled and nudged him, saying, “Listen to you. Doesn’t this mean we know each other now?”

“Oh? Heh heh!” Xie Bi’an looked at Du Yu with a mischievous grin. “You’re a pretty easygoing guy!”

Seeing Xie Bi’an’s demeanor, Du Yu felt a bit more relieved. As long as his personality hadn’t changed, this legend run would be a bit easier.

“We’ve finished introducing ourselves. What are your names?”

“Behind me are my two brothers, Ah Can and Ah Kui. I am… Ah Yu.”

Xie Bi’an nodded, then turned his head and asked,

“Old Eighth, do we still have any grain left?”

“Grain?” Fan Wujiu turned around and rummaged through a battered wooden bucket. “We still have a few ounces of millet.”

“Take it all out. We’ll boil it and eat it today to welcome Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh!”

Du Yu and the others were stunned and hurriedly waved their hands. “No, there’s no need… You don’t have much food either, better save it for yourselves. Besides, we aren’t even hungry…”

Fan Wujiu coughed a few times and said, “Brother, Seventh Brother is right. Don’t decline any further. We are all people reduced to the same dire straits, and meeting here is fate. Let’s have a full meal today.”

Little Nian, who was standing to the side, spoke up slowly. “Boiling these few ounces of millet will indeed solve our immediate hunger, but how are we going to survive in the days to come?”

“If that’s the case, you can rest easy,” Du Yu declared. “Now that I’m here, you won’t starve to death.”

“Oh?” Hearing this, both Xie Bi’an and Fan Wujiu turned to look at him. “Brother… are you really good at begging?”

“Uh?” Du Yu was taken aback. “What kind of logic is that? Is begging the only way to avoid starvation? Can’t we do a little business or go hunting?”

Xie Bi’an smiled bitterly and said, “Brother, you really love to joke. Old Eighth and I are both ‘abandoned infants’. We’ve been completely illiterate since childhood, let alone knowing how to do business. Besides, Old Eighth has been frail and sickly since he was a baby. He runs out of breath just walking a few extra steps. How could we possibly go hunting?”

Du Yu looked at the two of them in confusion, feeling that something wasn’t quite right. The backstory for the Black and White Impermanence was completely different from what he remembered.

‘I need to carefully ask and get this straight… otherwise this will end up as a huge misunderstanding, turning into another “Prequel to the Black and White Impermanence”…’

“What did you say, brother?” Xie Bi’an asked.

“Nothing…” Du Yu shook his head. “Seventh Lord, Eighth Lord, why did you become ‘abandoned infants’? If you were thrown away when you were babies, how would you even know?”

“To tell you the truth, both Old Eighth and I were abandoned by prominent families in the city. Our stories have been circulating among the neighbors since we were kids, so it’s hard not to know,” Xie Bi’an sighed slowly and said. “My mother found me so ugly when I was born that she didn’t even name me, and threw me straight into the City God Temple. Fortunately, an old beggar took me in back then. I figured I must settle down and establish myself here, so I named myself ‘Bi’an’.”

“What?!”

Du Yu was shocked. The Seventh Lord, famous for his handsome looks, was actually abandoned for being born ugly?

“You came up with the name Xie Bi’an yourself?”

The world always said that Xie Bi’an’s name meant “Those who thank the gods will surely be at peace.” But who could have imagined that its true meaning was “The youth named Xie must settle down and establish himself”?

Hearing this, Xie Bi’an visibly paused. He looked at Du Yu in confusion and asked, “Brother, did I ever say… that my surname is Xie?”

“Uh… yes, you did. Didn’t they just call you Xie Bi’an?”

“Did they?” Xie Bi’an pondered for a moment, then decided not to press the issue.

He slowly sat down and continued, “Old Eighth is different from me. He wasn’t abandoned until he was a year old. Because he contracted a severe illness and the doctors said he wouldn’t survive, his parents left him at the City God Temple along with a letter. But back then, none of the beggars in the temple could read, so no one understood what the letter said. A few years later, after the old beggars passed away one after another, Old Eighth took the letter to a fortune-teller on the street, wanting to know his name. The fortune-teller said there was a line in the letter that read, ‘Little son Fan Wujiu, respectfully offered to the City God,’ so his name was Fan Wujiu.”

“What the hell?” Du Yu frowned and said. “That makes him Fan Wujiu? Couldn’t you guys have found a more reliable fortune-teller?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Although I’m not exactly an educated scholar…” Du Yu shook his head and said, “I still know that ‘Little son Fan wu jiu, respectfully offered to the City God’ should actually mean, ‘The little son of our Fan family is beyond saving, so we offer him to the City God.’ How could it possibly mean, ‘My son’s name is Fan Wujiu, offered to the City God’? That fortune-teller you found totally scammed you! If it was a wealthy family, who would name their child ‘Wujiu’—literally meaning ‘Beyond Saving’…”

“We didn’t know any better at the time, so we just kept calling him ‘Fan Wujiu’. But the good news is, even though Wujiu’s health has always been poor, he managed to survive,” Xie Bi’an said. “A few years later, Old Eighth felt that the name was bad luck. After all, he was constantly frail, and being called ‘Beyond Saving’ all day long made him fear he really wouldn’t survive. So, in exchange for two flatbreads, he asked that same fortune-teller to change his name. The fortune-teller changed the ‘Wujiu’ meaning ‘Beyond Saving’ to a different ‘Wujiu’ meaning ‘Without Fault’. He said that once King Yama knows Old Eighth has committed no faults, he wouldn’t take him away.”

“Sigh… what kind of nonsense is this…”

Du Yu sighed helplessly. Although the fortune-teller didn’t get the meaning wrong this time, it still felt far too arbitrary.

Everyone said that the Black Impermanence’s name “Fan Wujiu” represented the idea that “Criminals are beyond saving.” Who could have imagined that it was just some nonsense casually spouted by a quack fortune-teller?