Chapter 9 Indirection

My neighbor was a female boss who delivered goods to supermarkets. As soon as she walked in, she said, "Master, I lost my necklace. Do you think there's any hope of finding it?"

This time the Taoist priest didn't dare let me practice, so he went on stage himself. He didn't say anything about fortune-telling, but asked her to sit down first, and then asked me to make some high-quality Longjing tea.

The neighbor looked at me and said, "Xiao Wan, you still know how to make tea. You don't use a disposable cup to make tea for me. You use the Jingdezhen blue and white porcelain cup that your master is reluctant to part with. Isn't he afraid that I will break his beloved thing?"

I laughed and said, "The teacher likes you to break his cup. If the neighbor does a fortune telling and accidentally breaks a cup, wouldn't the teacher's skills be even more amazing?"

The eldest sister burst out laughing: "This apprentice is not bad, he has good eloquence."

The Taoist priest asked, "When did you lose it, and where did you lose it?"

The neighbor thought for a moment and said, "It must have been left at home. I searched everywhere but couldn't find it."

The Taoist priest asked, "Are you sure you lost it at home?"

The eldest sister said, “Absolutely.”

The Taoist pointed to the paper and pen and said, "Try to write something."

The eldest sister wrote the word "落".

The Taoist priest looked for a long time and said slowly: "I will definitely find it."

The eldest sister tilted her head and asked, "Why?"

The Taoist priest carefully analyzed it for her: "The left side of the character '落' (drop) forms half of the character '找' (search). There's a 50% chance of finding it. And the right side ends up in a '十' (cross). This means it must be hanging on something."

The eldest sister thought for a long time: "The necklace is either kept in a drawer or placed on the table, how could it be hanging?"

The Taoist priest comforted her: "Take your time, you will find it one day."

The eldest sister finished her tea and said, "Good tea. I'll go look for more."

After the eldest sister left, a woman in her thirties came. She wrote the character "繁" (traditional) and said, "Let's test whether the debt can be collected."

The Taoist priest said, "Shanhong, you speak first."

I wasn't sure. I thought, she must have asked for it countless times and didn't take it back. I'll take it slow and give her some lessons on character analysis first.

"Complex, every, anti-wen, system. Every time you ask for it, you have an urge to hit someone. Is that right?" I tested it using the method taught by the Taoist priest.

"That hits home with me. How did you know I wanted to hit someone?"

I thought to myself, you can't get it back, everyone is like that, unless you're a Ninja Turtle. So I said, "The reverse text on the right means attack."

She nodded and asked, "Can I get it back?"

How do I know if you can get it back? What if the person you’re dealing with is a deadbeat? So I changed the conditions and tested the waters: “If this debt is public business…

She rushed to answer: "Yes, it's public business."

When I heard that, I immediately started to ask, "What kind of public institution is it?"

"Government unit."

My mind brightened, and I said, "I can get it back, but you have to give me a discount."

She asked in return, “Why should I give a discount?”

"The last stroke of the character '繁' you wrote falls on the character '小', meaning it's shrunk. If you discount it, it will return."

She suddenly realized: "That's right."

While we were talking, the neighbor lady came running in and said, "I couldn't find it, I found it."

The Taoist priest asked, “Where did you find it?”

The eldest sister smiled and said, "Guess."

Everyone guessed several times, but no one got it right.

Only then did the eldest sister explain the reason. That day, when she was getting dressed, she'd taken off her necklace first, then her bra, and finally her underwear. She'd ended up putting the necklace, bra, and underwear all into the zippered gauze case in the washing machine and washed them all with her clothes. After the necklace had swum in the washing machine, she'd pulled it out and hung it on the clothesline.

"Amazing! If you hadn't told me what to hang it on, why would I have thought of hanging it on that bag?"

The woman on this side also heard roughly what was said and laughed beside her.

I told the woman collecting the debt, "Your money is about the same as her necklace. It needs a wash and will lose some of its value. But the result is the same: you will get your money back."

The woman smiled, paid the money and left.

The eldest sister said, "Xiao Wan, make another cup of Longjing tea. Your master makes so much money. If I don't help him drink more, his tea will get moldy."

As I brewed the tea, I thought: This is much better than being the first-class Buddhist tree executive for my sister. I felt a sense of accomplishment here, so I grabbed a handful of tea leaves, threw them into the cup, and let my elder sister drink it with peace of mind.

For neighbors who don’t want to count money when doing fortune telling, you must be willing to invest!

After the neighbor left, I asked the Taoist priest, "Teacher, she wrote the word '落' (drop), so why did you predict that she would be able to find it?"

The Taoist priest advised me, "She herself said it herself. She said she definitely left it at home. Such a valuable thing would not be left lying around. She just forgot where she put it."

"Why are you definitely hanging on to something?"

"If it had fallen on the ground, I would have found it long ago by sweeping it up with a broom. It's easy to explain if it's hanging on something: in a drawer, on a table, in a pocket... I call anything that's off the ground 'hanging'."

I got to the bottom of it and asked, "What if the measurement isn't accurate?"

The Taoist priest laughed heartily. "When it comes to fortune-telling, there are only two possible outcomes: right or wrong. Theoretically, there's a 50% chance of either outcome. It doesn't matter if it's wrong. As the saying goes, no one is a god."

I still feel like he didn't explain it clearly.

The Taoist priest seemed to see through my thoughts: "Some things, you have to slowly understand. It's too early to tell you now. A doctor can't cure all diseases. If he can cure a few difficult and complicated diseases, he will become a miracle doctor."

…

As expected, on Thursday a "difficult case" type of person came in. That afternoon, business was particularly good, so I had to come to Weijun first and wait for them to come one by one.

The first to come up was a woman in her thirties, dressed elegantly and wearing sunglasses, which she kept on even after entering the house. After sitting down, she wrote the word "test" on a piece of paper and asked if her lost dog could be found.

This is a difficult question. Can the dog be found? Even lost people can be hard to find, let alone dogs. Therefore, this type of fortune telling is one of the more difficult.

You may not be able to find the dog, but one day the dog will come back and you won’t have to look for it. It just saw a beautiful female dog outside - it just had an affair for a few days.

You may not be able to find it, but it may have already entered someone else's stomach by now.

Therefore, generally speaking, it is impossible to say for sure about this kind of living creatures.

Given the uncertainty of the question, I discovered that the teacher has a method, which is to calm the person down first! Now I want to see how the teacher calms this guy down.

The Taoist priest glanced at the word "test" and sneered: "Let's not talk about finding the dog for now."

The woman exclaimed "Ah" to express her incomprehension.

The Taoist priest sneered twice and said slowly: "People are more important than dogs."

The woman patted her chest exaggeratedly and asked delicately, "You said something's wrong with me?"

The Taoist priest smiled slightly and said softly, "Yes, young lady."

After the Taoist priest said this, everyone in the room came alive and moved their stools closer to the coffee table.

The Taoist priest said, "The dog is not important. I will tell you later whether I can find it or not, but you are not in good health."

Isn't this nonsense? Whose indicators are normal? Even if you go to the delivery room and pick up a "newly produced" product, you'll find some with congenital genetic diseases.

The woman panicked when she heard this and asked anxiously, "Can this word tell me I'm sick?"

"Don't underestimate the words you write. Each word carries a personal message. This message is: 'test', water, shell, knife. First, the IV drip, then the scalpel."

The woman was so frightened that her face turned pale and she screamed, "Ah——" "Am I really that serious?"

The Taoist priest smiled heartily: "It's just a metaphor."

The woman and everyone else breathed a sigh of relief.

The Taoist priest asked, "Have you had dry eyes lately, and do you cry when you are exposed to the wind?"

The woman nodded.

Then he asked, "Do you have a lot of dreams at night and sweat under your armpits?"

The woman nodded again.

Everyone was amazed. How could they actually tell all this from the words? He was truly an expert.

The Taoist priest was well versed in medicine. As soon as he entered the room, he saw that the woman had a high liver fire, and he used the word "test" to explain it. As for what the word was, it didn't matter; he could always justify it.

The Taoist priest said, "As for your dog, according to the Chinese character '测', it's also like boiling water in the front, a pot in the middle, and sharpening a knife in the back. Of course, no one wants to eat your pet dog. I'm just using an analogy, do you understand?"

The woman nodded: "I understand, but don't look for it."

The Taoist priest warned: "If it comes back after a while, you can't keep it. You have to give it to someone else."

"Why?" the woman expressed confusion.

The Taoist priest asked, "Is it a male or a female?"

The woman said, "Female."

The Taoist priest shook his head: "It's not clean anymore."

The woman seemed to be unable to react for a long time.

Everyone laughed and said, "Let's believe in Master Luo. He can't be wrong."

After the woman left, I felt the Taoist priest was truly brilliant. What had he said? It was practically nothing, completely ambiguous. However, he had, with his medical knowledge, discerned that the woman was ill, and that was enough to convince everyone present.

At this time, a couple came on stage. They wanted to predict the luck of the Chinese character "吉" (good luck), and asked if it was feasible to open a supermarket in Tibet.

The Taoist priest said to me, "Shanhong. Tell them about it."