Daomu Biji: Restart

Book 3: Chapter 1: Looking for Things

The art of divination not only has a long history, but is also mysterious and strange.

When it comes to divination, if we jump out of the realm of witchcraft and rituals and look at its essence, its really just one person asking questions while another person answers. Its a very simple encyclopedic system, it's just that this encyclopedia can answer almost all questions, and can even tell you the answers to things that haven't happened yet.

I came into contact with a branch of divination before thats called Qimen Dunjia. Its what I want to talk about here.

Qimen Dunjia uses a very small but very practical rotating board to find things. You take the board and meditate on what youve lost. Then, you can look at the board and figure out the location, distance, and whether the thing can be recovered or not.

Its impossible to give a full logical analysis of the Qimen Dunjia's board with a few words, but I can explain it symbolically. Qimen Dunjia's system gives you a feeling that not only one person is answering your question. After you ask the question, where is this thing, a department will answer on whether it can be retrieved, another department will answer on how far or near it is, and the third department will give the location. Then, the answers from all three departments will be put in a form and sent back to you.

This form is the rotating board, but its encrypted so that ordinary people can't understand it. Just like the 0 and 1 characters in computer coding, it needs to be translated by people skilled in divination. This is probably what Qimen Dunjia feels like.

I have tried to find things with Qimen Dunjia several times, and the atmosphere was very delicate each time. As a matter of fact, there are very few records on the actual effects of this branch of divination, so I dont know whether its real or not. But when things are really missing, we might as well use it so that we don't waste time worrying like headless flies. It can be said that Qimen Dunjia is actually a way to give you an explanation for something when you dont have one. Whether its mostly a psychological effect or whether theres really such a system in the world that can answer any questions you might ask, we just dont know.

There are many stories about divination, but what Im going to talk about here is only a short story about finding things with Qimen Dunjia. This story warns us not to look for things randomly.

Jin Wantang became obsessed with Qimen Dunjia the year before last. He had devoted his whole life to Taiji (1), which meant that he easily became addicted to metaphysics. He specialized in finding things using the rotating board, so his reputation in the business had also risen in recent years. He was said to be extremely accurate and could find anything that was missing. He enjoyed this kind of hollow fame again and no one had seen him for a whole year. He went everywhere in search of a rich lady willing to hire such a master.

So, when he suddenly came to my shop to find me, I had a bad feeling as soon as I saw his face.

His face didnt look flushed with success, but actually looked gloomy, as if he was worried about something.

When I asked him what was wrong, he finished off four or five snacks before saying in an embarrassed tone, "Little Master Three, Im too arrogant and curious. Something has finally happened."

I asked him what happened.

"My master told me that when using Qimen Dunjia to look for something, there are three things youre not supposed to look for, he said. You dont look for no-trace corpses, yinshen ghosts, or immeasurable calamities."

No-trace corpses referred to missing corpses, such as those who drowned in the Yellow River or those who were dumped in a murder case. It was obvious why you shouldnt look for these things for no reasonit was easy to bring about misfortune.

Yinshen ghosts referred to those who had died. Even if you managed to find them, they were no longer alive and had become ghosts. They were in the underworld, while those alive were in the living world. These worlds were separated, so it was best not to disturb the ghosts (2).

The most mysterious one in that group was immeasurable calamities, because it referred to looking for something that was particularly vague in concept. For example, I wanted to find someone who would affect my life in the future.

When you ask Qimen Dunjia these vague questions, the answers will usually lead you to finding things that are very strange. Since its connected with numerology, it will change a lot of things and even cause major disasters.

I looked at Jin Wantang and asked him, "What did you find?"

"No, I wasnt looking for these three things, Jin Wantang said. I was looking for something not of this world."

There was a special board for finding things that werent available in this world. In fact, it wasnt a particularly terrible thing, it just meant that the search engine was telling you that there werent any results. 

"I checked my past life," Jin Wantang said.

I looked up at him as our surroundings seemed to quiet down. It was just me and him in the room. One was a little creeped out, while the other was a little embarrassed.

If anyone else came in and said that, I would think it was all nonsense. But Jin Wantang had a certain degree of discretion whenever he did things. Since he came to talk to me about these things, he mustve had some real gains. So, I didn't laugh at him.

"Did you find it?"

"I found something amazing." Jin Wantang looked at me. "That's why I came to you for help."

****

TN Notes:

(1) The Absolute or Supreme Ultimate, the source of all things according to some interpretations of Chinese mythology. Yin and Yang originate from it. Info here.

(2) Per Tiffany: In Chinese, Yin is often thought of as something like darkness/cold, and Yang is something that is alive and bright. In Chinese culture, people who passed away are in the underworld, and its best not to bother them.