The ghost messenger in white was also full of confusion. Finally, he said, “It’s very strange. We haven’t even come to collect the soul yet, so it’s impossible for the person to just disappear. How about this, let me check.”

After speaking, he started calculating with his fingers, then suddenly frowned. “This is really bizarre. That kid is actually dead!”

The ghost messenger in black exclaimed in shock, “What? Dead? How… how is that possible?”

The ghost messenger in white said, “Yes, truly dead. I found that the kid’s soul is already in the underworld, not in the world of the living at all.”

The ghost messenger in black nodded and said, “Hmm, although it’s strange, that must be the case. Otherwise, there’s no way we brothers wouldn’t be able to find a single person’s soul. Since the kid is already dead, let’s go back to the underworld and look for him!”

With that, the two of them muttered to each other as they walked out the courtyard gate...

Just like that, the first hurdle after my birth was resolved. According to my parents, after seeing the two ghost messengers leave, they were still in shock, thinking it was all a dream. But seeing the collapsed house before their eyes, they realized it was all real.

As for the midwife who witnessed all of this, she was also badly frightened. Whether it was because she got caught in the rain, was scared, or because she saw the ghost messengers, in any case, after returning home she fell ill and never recovered, dying in bed less than half a month later.

Of course, that’s all in the past. But it’s worth mentioning that when my father hurriedly pulled me out of the well, I was so cold that I was barely breathing. My parents were terrified, quickly gathered firewood to make a big fire, then ran into the only room that hadn’t collapsed to find a quilt, wrapped me up, and after a lot of effort, finally pulled me back from the brink of death.

In the end, although my life was saved, my parents were left with a question they couldn’t figure out: why was it that when they hid me in the well, the ghost messengers couldn’t find me? Logically, I was still crying loudly at the time—not to mention the ghost messengers, even my parents could hear it clearly. Yet the ghost messengers didn’t notice at all, and even said that I was already dead, that my soul was in the underworld. Isn’t that nonsense?

This question puzzled me for years, until later, after I joined the Daoist sect, I finally understood the reason: it turns out that the well connects to the realm of the dead.

A well, as everyone knows, is dug several or a dozen meters deep underground to draw water. In Maoshan arts, it’s believed that well water never sees sunlight, so it’s yin, and the well itself belongs to ghosts, able to connect to the Yellow Springs. You could say it’s a man-made passage to the underworld. That’s also why, after someone dies, there’s a “peering into the well” ritual during soul-calling ceremonies. As long as a person hides in a well, it’s as if they’ve left the world of the living, so the ghost messengers can’t find them. That’s why the Daoist priest told my parents to hide me in the well.

Speaking of this, I can’t help but recall something that happened after I became a Daoist priest. Although it was a small matter, it left a deep impression on me. Why? Because in all my decades of fortune-telling, I had never made a mistake—except that one time, when I almost ruined my reputation. Here’s what happened: I was at home, as usual, doing divinations to resolve disasters. One day, a distressed man came to my house, saying his son was missing and begging me to divine which direction his son had gone.

This kind of thing was trivial for me. Whether it was missing people or lost property, I had done countless such divinations, always accurate. That time, seeing the man wanted to find his missing son, I cast a divination. But as soon as I did, I was stunned, because according to the hexagram, this person had no hexagram at all!

No hexagram means the person’s fate has returned to the underworld, their soul has departed, and their spirit is already in the realm of the dead. Normally, when divining for a living person, good or bad, there will always be a hexagram. But for the dead, there is none. When I saw this, I didn’t know how to tell the man. Seeing my furrowed brow, he probably sensed something was wrong, so he asked me to tell him the truth, no matter what.

After thinking it over, I told him exactly what the divination showed. The man was so shocked he nearly fainted on the spot. In the end, he left my house with this tragic result. But less than three days later, he came back, this time bringing a young man with him. As soon as he entered, he pointed at my forehead and cursed me a fraud, saying I’d made wild guesses and almost drove his wife to suicide.

Hearing this, I was furious. Even though the result was despairing, how could he blame me for his wife’s suicide attempt just because I said his son was dead? Besides, he was the one who insisted I tell the truth. But when I tried to reason with him, he got even angrier, pointed at the young man he’d brought, and said, “This is my son. He just came back last night. You said he was dead—does he look dead to you? He’s perfectly fine! You fraud!”

I was dumbfounded. All my arguments were swallowed back down. How could this be? After questioning them, I finally understood: after his son left home, he ran out of money and ended up working for someone digging a well. The day I did the divination, he happened to be inside the well, which is why I divined that his soul was in the underworld—a death hexagram.