By day, the Eastern and Western Markets of Chang’an teemed with people. By night, they became the playground of spirits and demons. Even in such a lively place that never slept, there were still a few secluded corners untouched by the bustle.
Wu Zhen, leaping from roof to roof, traversed half of the Eastern Night Market before arriving at a high wall. Here, a narrow alley flanked by piles of miscellaneous objects created a quiet, deserted corner. Curled up in this nook was the person Wu Zhen sought.
The figure appeared to be a disheveled, down-and-out middle-aged man. He slept soundly against the wall, his face covered by a tattered cloth that rose and fell with his breath. Upon closer inspection, one would notice four characters written on the cloth: “Seek Fortune, One Coin.” A bowl sat by his feet, completing the image of a street beggar.
Wu Zhen jumped down from the wall, landing silently before him. She crouched to peer into the broken bowl and was surprised to find seven copper coins inside. She clicked her tongue in wonder, marveling at how such a desolate spot, devoid even of ghosts, could yield seven coins. She gathered the coins and tucked them into her purse, then nudged the sleeping man with her foot.
“Wake up, wake up,” she urged.
The man curled further into the corner, seemingly reluctant to be roused from his slumber. But Wu Zhen was persistent. She pulled the ragged cloth from his face, tossed it aside, and kicked him again. “Get up quickly, Swindler. There’s work to do.”
Finally, the man awoke. He sat up, yawning, and looked up at Wu Zhen. His face was utterly ordinary, with small eyes and a flat nose, one cheek swollen from sleep. Wu Zhen pinched his face, turning it from side to side, and sighed, “Your face is too ugly today. Do your boss a favor and switch to a more attractive one when facing me.”
The man drawled slowly, “Sure, I’ll put on a handsome young face tomorrow. If you like it, Cat Master, maybe you’ll spare me some money for food. I earned only seven coins all day, and you didn’t leave me a single one. I might starve to death.”
Wu Zhen leaned against the wall, showing no guilt at having her thievery exposed. “You’re a member of the Yan Tower, one of my two deputies. Where’s your ambition? Begging every night like this—what if someone recognizes you? Where would that leave Yan Tower’s reputation? If you don’t want to stay at Yan Tower, why not find work like Huozhu?”
The man replied in his unhurried manner, “If work wasn’t so tiring, I wouldn’t resort to begging.”
Wu Zhen retorted, “If you must beg, at least choose a place with more spirits around. What’s the point of huddling here where no spirits pass by?”
The man responded, “Places with many spirits are noisy. I can’t sleep well there. At my age, sleep becomes especially important.”
Wu Zhen finally laughed, cursing, “Nonsense! You’re not even human!”
This man was one of Wu Zhen’s two deputies, known as the Wordless Book. He was a spirit of unknown age, whom everyone called Swindler. At night, he loved to find a corner in the spirit market to sleep and beg, while during the day, he set up a fortune-telling stall under a large locust tree in the Eastern Market, reading fortunes for ordinary people.
“Alright, no time for idle chat. Get up, I need you to divine for me,” Wu Zhen said.
Swindler shook his head drowsily, “No can do. I only tell fortunes during the day. I don’t work at night, even if you are the Cat… Ouch!”
Before he could finish, Wu Zhen had shoved him against the wall, forcing him to yelp and curl into a ball, protecting his head. Wu Zhen lowered her foot and draped an arm over his shoulder, smiling sweetly, “What was that you were saying about ‘no can do’?”
“No, no, no! I mean yes, yes, yes! I said yes!” Swindler, utterly without principles, immediately surrendered upon seeing Wu Zhen’s mischievous grin, raising his hands in defeat.
Satisfied, Wu Zhen dusted off the footprints she’d left on him. “Next time, agree right away. Otherwise, you’ll keep damaging our relationship like this.”
Swindler wore a pained expression, thinking to himself that the Cat Master was becoming more shameless with age. He tried to recall what she was like as a child… but then decided it wasn’t worth remembering. Whether young or old, she was always a little beast, bullying humans and spirits alike.
Sitting in place, Swindler pulled out a wooden box from behind him. This unremarkable, battered box was his livelihood. When opened, it transformed into a small table, complete with a container of fortune sticks, a tortoiseshell, and various small objects. After setting up the table, he took out a pole and shook out the tattered cloth that had covered his face earlier. Using the pole to prop it up, he revealed that the reverse side of the cloth, which had read “Seek Fortune, One Coin,” now displayed four different characters: “Immortal Fortune Teller.”
With his setup complete, Swindler’s demeanor changed dramatically. Though his face remained ugly, he suddenly exuded an aura of otherworldliness that made people overlook his appearance entirely.
Wu Zhen sat down in front of his small table, rummaged through the fortune stick container, casually drew one out, and tossed it in front of him, saying nonchalantly, “Tell my marriage fortune.”
“Marriage, eh…” Swindler picked up the stick, looked at it, and then put it back. “Draw again.”
Wu Zhen said nothing and drew another stick, tossing it before him.
Swindler glanced at it and again returned it to the container. “One more time.”
Wu Zhen continued to draw.
After returning the third stick, Swindler sighed and set aside the container. He pulled out a thin, black-covered booklet from his breast pocket. “The ordinary sticks and hexagrams can’t divine this. Let me try with the Wordless Book.”
Wu Zhen leaned in to watch him flip through the book, which was completely blank inside, just like Swindler’s name “Wordless Book” suggested—it was a book without words from heaven. Wu Zhen had long suspected that Swindler was a book spirit, and this wordless book was his true form.
“I’ve been curious for a long time, what’s written in this book?” Wu Zhen peered closer, but like many times before, she couldn’t see anything.
Swindler shook his head, somewhat proudly, “In this world, I’m probably the only one who can see it. And it’s not ordinary writing, nor is the content fixed.”
Wu Zhen had become the “Cat Master” when she was very young, at an age when she was particularly mischievous. She had turned the entire Yan Tower upside down with her antics, secretly meddling with everything that piqued her curiosity, including Little White Snake’s white snake bracelet, Huozhu’s treasures, and of course, Swindler’s Wordless Book. Since then, Swindler never dared to leave his book lying around and always carried it with him.
Now, at her current age, Wu Zhen’s curiosity about the Wordless Book had waned considerably. She crossed her legs and urged, “Are you done yet? It’s just a marriage fortune, why is it taking so long? You never needed this much time when I asked you to divine other things before.”
Swindler himself seemed puzzled. He kept his head down, flipping through the pages, muttering, “Not simple, not simple at all.”
Wu Zhen waited for a while, and seeing Swindler still engrossed in the book, she began tossing the bamboo container in boredom. “Are you finished?”
“Almost, almost,” Swindler replied without looking up.
Wu Zhen’s patience was wearing thin. Just as she was about to stand up and leave, Swindler finally raised his head. He closed the book and looked at her solemnly for a moment before breaking into a wide smile, his face beaming with fatherly pride and benevolence. “Congratulations, your marriage fortune has arrived. You can get married now.”
However, Wu Zhen showed no signs of joy at this news. She simply responded with a flat “Oh,” devoid of any emotion, positive or negative.
Swindler couldn’t gauge what she was thinking. This child had always been like this—smiling didn’t necessarily mean she was happy, and a blank expression didn’t necessarily mean she was unhappy. She was always difficult to read.
“What happened? Why the sudden interest in your marriage fortune?” Swindler asked seriously.
Wu Zhen furrowed her brow slightly and said, “I should have died long ago. No, I did die back then. It was the previous Cat Master who saved me and turned me into this.”
“As I am now, I’m not suitable to be with ordinary people. I shouldn’t force a marriage.”
“Never mind, let’s not talk about this. It’s not interesting.”
Wu Zhen stood up, shook her legs, and leaped onto the high wall. She looked down once more and pulled something from her pocket, tossing it down. “Here, go buy yourself a new pair of shoes. Your toes are sticking out.”
Swindler caught the object—a lotus-shaped gold ingot, enough to buy two hundred pairs of new shoes. The Cat Master was well-off but loved to pocket his few begged coins, purely out of mischief and boredom.
Wu Zhen walked along the rooftops of houses. During her nighttime strolls, she never took the ordinary paths, preferring to traverse rooftops and eaves. Perhaps from spending so much time as a cat, she had become increasingly cat-like.
She walked steadily along the roof ridges, looking down at the brightly lit streets below, feeling somewhat bored. Every corner here was familiar to her; there was nothing new to explore.
After wandering for a while, Wu Zhen left the spirit market and decided to visit her other deputy, Huozhu, in Pingkang Ward. It was lively there, with many women singing and dancing. However, as she passed by a brothel in Pingkang Ward, she heard a familiar voice and stopped.
She treated the roof ridges as her walkway, able to hear everything happening inside the houses. At that moment, cat-like moans were coming from the room beneath her feet.
Wu Zhen, of course, knew what these sounds meant. She crouched down and lifted a few tiles to peek inside. In the room below, a man and a woman were engaged in intimate activities. The man was none other than Young Master Lü, with whom she had a contentious relationship—the same one who had almost been betrothed to her, then fought with her because of Huozhu, and continued to cause her trouble afterward.
This Young Master Lü was also someone who treated brothels as his second home. Wu Zhen watched him grunting and puffing away at his business. Instead of leaving, she sat down on the roof ridge, twirling a roof tile between her fingers, listening to the sounds below. When she felt the moment was right, she suddenly lowered her voice and shouted through the small hole: “Fire! Fire!”
A commotion of panicked cries erupted from below, along with the sound of something crashing. Wu Zhen tossed away the roof tile and ran off, ignoring the chaos in the room below, dusting off her bottom as she left.
So, while Young Master Lü was cursing in rage, having been startled limp by the thunderous shout and fallen off the bed, bruising his waist, Wu Zhen was already seated among a group of familiar beautiful women, playing drinking games with them.