Star Odyssey

Chapter 3835: Six Taels Of Gold

Nearby, a young woman carried a bucket to the riverbank and softly stated, “A celestial being wouldn’t trick mortals like us out of money. Mortal money is useless to them, and they wouldn’t profit even if they sold our whole city.”

Lu Yin nodded at the woman’s words and then sipped some of his drink. “That’s true... The gap between mortals and celestial beings is simply too wide.”

He sighed and looked at the young woman. “What do you say to me telling your fortune for free? You have nothing to lose.”

The young woman shot a suspicious glance at Lu Yin and then quickly ducked her head. She did not dare to actually respond to him.

Lu Yin did not press the woman. His raft continued to drift down the slow-moving river. There was dense vegetation on both sides that seemed to form a green bridge that connected the two riverbanks.

The plants caused the raft to slow down.

Lu Yin did not bother pushing the plants aside, and he simply allowed the raft to float where it pleased as he took a nap.

He did not know how much later it was when he heard a soft sound that caused him to open his eyes.

The young woman had returned, and she was tapping on the raft with a bamboo pole while staring at him.

“It’s already dark. Why haven’t you left yet? Our city has a curfew, so you’ll get in trouble if someone sees you.”

Lu Yin was surprised. “There are still cities that enforce a curfew?”

“You should go.”

“But I haven’t told any fortunes yet.”

The young woman let out a helpless sigh. “No one believes you. Just leave.”

Lu Yin smiled at the woman. “Girl, you have a kind heart.”

The young woman was taken aback, and she gave him an odd look. “I’m probably older than you.”

“Don’t you know that celestial beings can stay young forever?” Lu Yin answered with a laugh.

The young woman gave an envious sight. “It must be nice being a celestial...”

“Do you want to be one?”

“No.”

“Why not? You could stay young forever, leave this city, and be free of curfews, able to soar through the sky or dive beneath the earth. You could do whatever you want.”

The young woman glanced at a nearby gray stone house. “My child and husband are here, and I want to be with them.”

Lu Yin gave her a gentle smile. “You’re very fortunate.”

“Thank you, but you should still leave now. No one believes you,” she repeated. She then picked up her bucket and walked away.

Lu Yin watched the woman as she left. “Could you do me a favor?”

She glanced back with a puzzled look. “Do you want me to pull your raft to shore?”

“Write a word. Anywhere is fine. You can even write it on the ground.”

The young woman shook her head. “I don’t know how to write.”

“Then just scribble something. It doesn’t matter what it is.”

She thought for a moment, picked up a stick, and scratched two lines in the dirt: ten (十).

“I think that I saw my son write this once,” she said before walking away. It was getting dark.

Lu Yin stared at the word on the ground. So that’s how it is. Writing a word doesn’t always require one to know the meaning of the word. It might be for a person or a thing, but the meaning itself might not matter.

She could have just written one (一), which would have been even simpler, but she decided to add a second stroke. That extra stroke is an expression of her love for her son, a gesture of warmth for her family.

Lu Yin looked over at the gray stone house, and his consciousness swept over it. He took away all physical defects and sicknesses from the young woman, her husband, and their child. “May you all live long and good lives.”

The plants in the water parted, and the bamboo raft continued to drift downstream. Lu Yin had no idea where he would end up. To any cultivator, the city that he had just visited was tiny, something that could be crossed in a single step. However, it was a vast metropolis to mortals. It would take someone a full day to walk from one end to the other, or at least a day and a half to walk along the winding river that ran through the city.

This river did not flow through just one city, as it was connected to several others. Dozens of cities were scattered across the region, but each one might as well be a grain of sand to a cultivator. Even if they descended upon the land randomly, they might never enter any of the cities. Such cities were simply insignificant in the scope of the vast cosmos.

“Hey! Hey!” After Lu Yin had resumed drifting for a short while, a voice called out to him from the darkness.

Lu Yin looked over. To his eyes, there was no difference between day and night. “I knew that you’d come find me.”

An old woman had called out to him from the shore. Her complexion was sallow, and her eyes were murky, yet they also held a sharp glint that contrasted drastically with the rest of her appearance.

When she heard Lu Yin’s comment, the old woman’s eyes flickered. “Did you divine that?”

“I saw it.”

“I don’t believe you. Can you really tell fortunes?”

Lu Yin casually replied, “Believe it or not.”

The old woman’s eyes were drawn to the words written on the cloth banner hanging from the bamboo pole: “Believe it or not” was on one side, and “Don’t believe it? Believe it anyway” was on the other.

She hesitated. Lu Yin did not rush her.

Finally, the old woman gritted her teeth. “How much is it?”

Lu Yin chuckled. “So, you believe?”

“No.”

“Then why ask for your fortune?”

“I’ve already lived my whole life. I just want to understand things before the end. I don’t need you to tell me my future. Just help me make sense of the past.”

Lu Yin nodded in understanding. “So, not fortune-telling, but rather heart-reading.”

“Fine. How much?”

“Six taels of gold.”

A tremor struck the old woman, and she stared at Lu Yin in shock. “You- how?”

Lu Yin simply closed his eyes and leisurely sipped on his drink.

“How did you know? Tell me! How do you know?”

The old woman was panicking. Over the course of her entire life, she had managed to save up six taels of gold. Given her age, it was enough for her to retire on, which was why she had kept it well hidden. She only checked on her stash once a year, and the last time had been half a year ago. How could this man possibly have learned about her savings? Even if he had been watching her, he could have never watched her for half a year for just six taels of gold!

The old woman’s expression changed entirely as she stared at Lu Yin. Her face looked like she was staring at a ghost or a god.

“Do you believe now?” Lu Yin calmly asked. Naturally, he had used karma to learn about the gold.

The old woman swallowed hard as she dropped to her knees. She kowtowed repeatedly. “Please, celestial being, help me! Please, celestial being, help me! Please...”

Lu Yin waved his hand, and a gentle breeze lifted the old woman to her feet.

Her body moved outside of her control, causing her to view Lu Yin with even greater reverence than before.

“My price is six taels of gold. I’ve already told you. Are you willing to pay?”

The old woman stared at Lu Yin in a daze. Those six taels of gold were her entire life’s savings. How could she willingly part with it? If she paid Lu Yin, how would she survive? What of all the work and suffering that she had endured earlier in her life?

She shook her head instinctively. She could not part with her savings.

Lu Yin showed a hint of a smile as he looked at the old woman. “See? Don’t you already have your answer?”

The old woman was initially confused, but then her eyes went wide, and she stared at Lu Yin. Yes, the answer was indeed clear. Six taels of gold was the culmination of her life’s work. It was everything to her. Her entire life had revolved around her savings.

At that moment, the woman saw scenes from her past flash before her, and every memory was tied to money. She had worked for it, worried about it, and lived for it. Nothing else had had anything to do with her.

The disputes among her neighbors, war, suffering; none of it had ever concerned her.

She had refused to marry because she had not wanted to share the fruits of her labor with another person.

As she looked back, she could see that there had been absolutely no one in her life.

She collapsed, crumpling to the ground. At this moment, the woman awoke to the fact that she was already very old.

For the sake of saving those six taels of gold, she had forgotten about everything else. That was also why she felt lost and was seeking answers from a fortune teller. However, the answer brought her nothing but despair.

Lu Yin gave the woman a sympathetic look. “A mortal’s life only lasts for a hundred years, but it should consist of countless precious memories. But for you, there are only those six taels of gold. How pitiful, and how sad.”

The old woman gave a bitter smile, even as she lay sprawled across the ground. “Pitiful... sad... ridiculous...”

“Give me your six taels of gold, and I can let you live to be a hundred. You will still have thirty years before you.”

The old woman was seventy, and thus she thought that she only had a few years of her life left. Upon hearing that she could live for another thirty years, she was quite tempted, though the price was her six taels of gold. She felt like she was buying the second half of her life with everything that she had earned during the first half. Was it worth it? She felt confused.

Lu Yin was in no hurry, and he waited patiently.

He had not asked the old woman to write a word, but that was because it was unnecessary. She had already written a word in her heart: “money.”

A word did not always need to be written for it to exist.

A long while later, the old woman looked up at Lu Yin. “This old woman... is willing.”

Lu Yin smiled at the woman.

She shakily rose to her feet. “This old woman will pay six taels of gold to the celestial being. Please grant me your blessing.”

“You’re not afraid that I’m a fraud?”

Her back already facing Lu Yin, the old woman softly replied, “Whether it’s a few years or decades, I can’t buy back the first half of my life, so what does it matter?”

Lu Yin looked at her back. “No need for that anymore.”

The old woman turned around, confused. “What do you mean, celestial being?”

Lu Yin explained, “To me, six taels of gold are worth no more than grains of sand. They carry less value than the water I float on. You already have your answer, so I’ll grant you thirty years of life. Cherish them.”

With that, he waved a hand, and the resulting breeze picked the old woman up and instantly returned her to her home. The heavy burden that she had been carrying vanished, and she felt as though she was suddenly decades younger.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She knelt and bowed towards the river. “Thank you, celestial being... Thank you...”

Lu Yin retracted his gaze, picked up his cup, and proceeded to stare into it in a daze.

A few simple words had revealed a person’s past and future, transforming an old woman’s entire life, as well as how the people around her saw her.

She had seen herself clearly.

What of Lu Yin himself? As he looked back on his own life, his time had been spent cultivating, fighting, struggling, traveling—just thinking about his life was exhausting.

If you’re tired, then rest. Lu Yin allowed the bamboo raft to drift along. This mortal world... isn’t so bad.

He always felt as though he was trying to compensate for something, though he could not say what it was.

At the same moment that the old woman stated that she was willing to part with her six taels of gold, Greater Sancte Green Lotus was standing beside the lotus pool in the Sea of Karma, staring out into the distance. A faint smile played at his lips. “So soon? In that case, just how much will you ultimately manage to seize?”

...

The city then grew lively. Many people traveled from far and wide to have their fortunes told by Lu Yin. All of them were drawn by the old woman’s tale.

Lu Yin did not turn anyone away. Those who approached him shared fate with him. They had heard his story, believed it, and gone to find him. That created a sort of fate, a kind of karma, and karma could be read.

“Write a word.”

“You don’t read palms?”

“I only look at words.”

“What can you see in a word?” the man grumbled. Still, he wrote a single single character: Heart (心). It was a somewhat enigmatic word.

Lu Yin looked up at the man. “You wrote that to make things difficult for me.”

“I just felt like writing it.”

“You deliberately wrote ‘heart.’ There was nothing random about it. You chose it because of what it represents. No one is able to truly see into another’s heart... except for me. Go back and tell your master that she can have it in thirty years. I’ve given her that much life. If you try to take it earlier, then don’t blame me for being rude.”

With that, Lu Yin casually waved a hand, and the man instantly vanished.

The people nearby were all startled. “Where did he go?”

Lu Yin’s expression never changed. That man had been sent to stir up trouble for Lu Yin. There were people with their eyes on the old woman’s six taels of gold, and they expected to claim them after she died. They had become infuriated when Lu Yin had restored the woman’s health and body and had gone to make trouble for him, though they were too scared to openly offend him.

After all, the fortune teller was a celestial being.

That had led them to deliberately have the man write the Heart (心) character, hoping to embarrass Lu Yin and drive him from the city.

Some people wrote for the sake of others, while others wrote for the meaning of the word itself. Each person had their own motives.