I looked at Uncle Qiu in surprise. My training with Grandfather had toughened my muscles and bones until they were like steel.
Yet his grip sent a sharp pain right through me.
How much strength did he have in those hands?
Perhaps he noticed my expression change. Realizing how excited he had become, he steadied himself. 'You're Master Li's grandson? Then you must be Li An.'
I nodded.
'Is Master Li keeping well?'
'Grandfather has passed away,' I replied.
Saying it brought a grief I could barely contain.
His voice, his face, his smile: I would never see or hear them again. I still struggled to accept it.
I had thought that learning his arts, and witnessing so much birth, sickness, death, and separation, had taught me to live with these things.
But when the loss was my own, it was almost more than I could bear.
'What?' Uncle Qiu stared in disbelief. His chest rose and fell rapidly. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and his face flushed, then paled. Grandfather's death had clearly struck him hard.
I did not know how close they had been.
From the concern he showed, their relationship must have been a good one.
And Grandfather had entrusted me to him before dying. He must have been someone Grandfather trusted deeply. On that score, I had nothing to fear.
It took Uncle Qiu some time to regain his composure. The grief remained in his eyes.
He opened Grandfather's letter. When he had finished reading, he looked at me.
'An, did you know you have a bride waiting for you?'
My heart lurched, as though a hand had closed around it and stopped the blood. The news left me stunned.
'Uncle Qiu, perhaps I misunderstood. Are you asking whether I know I'm promised to someone? How is that possible? Look at my age. My family has never arranged a marriage for me.'
As far back as I could remember, no one had discussed a betrothal or brought in a matchmaker. Besides, I was hardly old enough to be thinking of marriage.
As if answering my unspoken doubts, he said, 'Your grandfather arranged a childhood betrothal shortly after you were born.'
'It's understandable that you didn't know. He must have kept it from you. It caused quite a stir at the time. Powerful officials and prominent people from across the country came to your village. Everyone there must have known. The promise was made in front of them all.'
The more Uncle Qiu told me, the more astonished I became.
Apparently, not only my parents and Grandfather, but the entire village knew about this betrothal.
Yet my parents had never mentioned it, as though it had not happened at all.
Even the village women who loved to gossip had said nothing. It was as if they were observing some rule.
If the country's most powerful and influential people had all come, what sort of man had Grandfather really been?
I had always thought him an ordinary feng shui master. Skilled, certainly, but not someone of such extraordinary standing.
Now I began to see that things were far less simple than I had imagined.
'Your grandfather always wore a plain robe. His divinations and feng shui judgments were so accurate that people called him the Plain-Robed Ghosthand. They said he would cast only eight hundred and eighty-eight divinations in his lifetime. The last would reveal the recipient's fortunes for life and transfer all of Ghosthand's own destined fortune to that person. That's why so many people came. They wanted more than his final divination reading. They wanted all the fortune he carried.'
As Uncle Qiu told the story, I finally began to understand what had happened all those years ago.
After training with Grandfather for so long, I knew how much depended on destined fortune, whether for a person or a nation.
When a person's destined fortune dispersed, their life would not last much longer. When a nation's ran out, its destruction was near.
Grandfather must have possessed an immense store of it, perhaps enough to grant an ordinary person wealth and honor through several lifetimes, without ever dwindling.
With so much to gain, those people had come one after another to his village.
Ordinarily, you would scarcely see a couple of cars there. That day, luxury cars filled the village.
Grandfather stood before the crowd with my parents. I was still an infant in their arms.
Strangely, he chose the least distinguished man present. His name was Lin Xianguo.
At the time, Lin Xianguo had neither status nor influence. He was certainly no powerful dignitary.
He was a small businessman just starting out, who had come simply to see the excitement. To his own bewilderment, Grandfather chose him for the final divination.
The powerful men around him could only envy him.
Many offered money to buy his place. But Lin Xianguo was shrewd: invoking Grandfather's name, he held them all at bay.
Grandfather then set a peculiar condition. If Lin Xianguo had a daughter, he must bring her to be betrothed to me.
Lin Xianguo was taken aback. His wife happened to be in hospital, about to give birth.
Not long after Grandfather spoke, he received a call. The child had been born. It was a girl.
He agreed at once and promised his daughter to me.
When Uncle Qiu finished, it took me a long while to collect myself.
Somehow, I had acquired a future wife whom I had never even met.
'After receiving your grandfather's final divination, Lin Xianguo prospered. His business grew larger and larger, until he was trading internationally. He happens to live here in Binzhou. Now that you've come, I must arrange for you to meet. Wait here. I'll see to it.'
Uncle Qiu turned and left before I could stop him.
Watching him go, I thought over everything he had said. I could not settle my thoughts, and my heart kept beating far too fast.
Strangely, I also found myself looking forward to discovering what this fiancée of mine looked like.
Too much had happened in one day. I could neither sit still in the shop nor find anything to do.
About an hour later, Uncle Qiu returned.
'Get yourself ready, lad. Lin Xianguo and his daughter, Lin Yueru, are coming.'
I grew even more nervous and managed to bump into the corner of a table.
Seeing me behave like a child, even the stern Uncle Qiu shook his head and smiled.
I hurriedly straightened my hair and clothes. A little later, two people walked in, a man and a young woman.