“Let me read your face.”

William Clark straightened up, looked at Old Preacher’s face, and said, “Master, your upper section (from the hairline on your forehead to your eyebrows) is tall, full, and broad. You must have been quite outstanding in your youth, right?”

“Heh, you really do know a thing or two, don’t you?”

When Old Preacher heard this, he laughed and said, “Your master here became a xiucai at sixteen. Who in the surrounding villages didn’t know? Huh, I never told you about this, did I? You really figured it out yourself?”

Although Old Preacher was a bit suspicious, he didn’t take it to heart. The physiognomy he practiced was the orthodox tradition of the Ma Yi school, so it wasn’t surprising that William Clark could glean some clues from his “upper section.”

“Damn, it’s actually true?”

Old Preacher didn’t care, but William Clark was utterly shocked inside. So this old guy really did become a xiucai. Then… does that mean all the information appearing in my mind is real too?

William Clark took a deep breath, put on the air of a little mystic, and said, “Of course I saw it myself. Master, your eyebrows are long and thin, light but unbroken—this is the sign of the ‘Oath of Brotherhood in the Peach Garden,’ so you must be one of three brothers. There are two small moles at the corner of your right eye, which is the sign of ‘paired phoenixes,’ meaning you have four sisters. So altogether, there are seven siblings, right?”

The earlier comments were more general, but now William Clark was being more precise, wanting to see how Old Preacher would react. If he got this right, it would prove he wasn’t just hallucinating.

“Oh, right, Master, I see your glabella is a bit dark. Maybe you’ll have a mishap involving blood today.”

This last sentence wasn’t from the information in William Clark’s mind, but because he really did see something off about Old Preacher’s glabella, so he mentioned it casually.

Who would have thought that before William Clark finished speaking, there was a loud “bang” by his ear. Old Preacher, who had been sitting comfortably on a chair, rocking back on its two rear legs, was startled by William Clark’s words and suddenly lost his balance, falling backward along with the chair.

The place where they were sitting was right at the front hall entrance. When Old Preacher toppled over, the back of his head hit the threshold of the main hall—a solid slab of bluestone.

When Old Preacher got up from the ground, his wooden hairpin had fallen out, his hair was loose, and his head was covered in blood. He looked no better than William Clark had the day before, perfectly fulfilling William Clark’s prediction of a mishap involving blood.

But Old Preacher clearly didn’t care about the injury. Instead, he grabbed the dumbfounded William Clark sitting beside him and said, “You little rascal, did you really figure that out yourself just now?”

It’s relatively easy to deduce someone’s fortune, status, or lifespan from their face, but to accurately determine the number of siblings—even Old Preacher himself couldn’t do that.

You see, although Old Preacher came from the Ma Yi lineage and did have some real skills, after centuries of war and chaos, only a fraction of the ancestral physiognomy had survived, though the health-preserving arts were still intact.

When Old Preacher traveled the world, he mostly relied on some streetwise tricks, namely the four secrets: “feel, listen, probe, and scare.”

“Feel” means to first get a sense of the area where you’re setting up your fortune-telling stall—understand the basic characteristics of people of different ages, whether the locals are mostly officials or commoners. This is crucial.

“Listen” means to find ways to get the client to speak first and talk more, so you can figure out their concerns and tailor your advice. “Probe” is to use ambiguous words to draw out the truth from the other person, and once you catch a clue, you follow up immediately.

As for “scare,” that’s making up some supernatural nonsense to frighten the client. When they’re rattled, they’ll naturally reveal what you want to know.

With these four secrets, combined with Old Preacher’s genuine skills, he earned the reputation of a living immortal in many places.

During the Japanese invasion forty or fifty years ago, Samuel Thompson fled to Maoshan to escape the chaos, but still couldn’t avoid it. Later, he returned to Shaanxi and settled down.

If he hadn’t been labeled a “monster and demon” at the start of the turmoil—one of those to be resolutely overthrown—the old man wouldn’t have had to hide out here. Who knows where he’d be enjoying life now.

But as the direct heir of the Ma Yi school, Old Preacher was confident that, when it came to physiognomy, no one in the country could surpass him. Having lived over a hundred years, he truly hadn’t met anyone more skilled.

As for deducing the number of siblings, Old Preacher could get pretty close from a face, but that was with a century of life experience and fortune-telling under his belt.

At William Clark’s age, the old man had still been reciting the Three Character Classic in a private school, so hearing William Clark’s words left him utterly shocked. Could this kid be possessed by the founder’s spirit?

“Master, I saw your mishap coming, but… as for the siblings part, ahem, I actually heard it from your sleep-talking.”