Sighing with exasperation, Mr. Lee shook his head. He rose from his seat and turned to walk out. He walked for a few paces and turned back suddenly, “Wait! You may not be able to divine a person’s fate twice a day. But your apprentice can! Chongxi can do it for me again!” Yuan Chongxi burst out guffawing hard and remarked, “You are indeed a shrewd businessman, Mr. Lee. Your mind is truly quick to find loopholes to exploit!” Mr. Lee fished out a Suyan cigarette from its box and offered it to Yuan Chongxi, pleading, “Please, my boy. Just help me this time…” Yuan Chongxi took Mr. Lee’s hand in his, patted it and said, “Very well. I’ll have another go. Only for you. But please forgive my bluntness if I am too forthcoming about the outcome!”

Revitalized with fresh hope, Mr. Lee slapped his chest and said, “Who do you think I am? I have had my share of great things myself! I will never be angered nor frightened by anything you will say!” Yuan Chongxi giggled and replied, “All right then. Give me the birthdates and time of birth of your family; you, your wife and your son!”

After some calculations, Yuan Chongxi reported, “It is as what my teacher had said to you. There might be a few discrepancies, but there will hardly be any major deviations!”

Long ago in the North East, a young couple visited a store selling fur clothing. The husband wanted to buy his wife a sable fur coat, and as they were testing, his wife remarked, “This coat seems to fit well with my fox fur neck piece. Wait for me, husband. I’ll fetch my neck piece and have a look!” The proprietor of the store needed no further proof that this young couple was wealthy customers! He made some tea for the man who began sipping at his drink while he waited for his wife. But suddenly, he clutched at his stomach tightly and began to howl painfully. His screams of agony alarmed everyone at the store, but in their panic, everyone was stunned! He started sweating uncontrollably and crumbled to the ground, squirming and writhing with anguish. All of a sudden, blood began pouring from his nose, mouth and eyes, and he became still. He was dead!

His wife returned just in time to see her husband die. She threw herself at his dead body, screaming and crying hysterically! Not knowing what to do, the manager of the store and the rest of the workers immediately called for the proprietor and reported to him, but he too knew not what to do. One of the men suggested that they report the matter to the local magistrate. Instead, the proprietor stopped his man sharply. It was a time where corruption and greed ruled absolute. The local magistrate would only realize this as an opportunity to sack whichever household implicated in any crimes; whether the family was truly guilty or not be damned, and hoard the riches for his own. The proprietor was worried that not only his money and assets would be taken, but he and his staff would also eternally be in bondage to the fetters and manacles of the local magistrate’s unjust persecution. He quickly came up with a solution: he would empty all his coffers and offer the money as compensation to the now-widow of the dead man and try to convince her to a settlement without alerting the authorities. With that sum of money, the woman would still be able to enjoy a decent lifestyle for the rest of her life. The proprietor would also rent a cart to transport the dead man’s corpse back for burial arrangements.

Hence the proprietor gave all of his money to the woman and persuaded her not to bring this matter into the notice of the authorities. He rented a cart and charged his workers to see the corpse and the woman safely back. But when the cavalcade reached the outskirts of the town, they were joined by another group of people with two palanquins. The workers of the fur clothing store pulled the cart along the main highway while the group with the palanquins then veered off to take a shortcut away. The workers had barely traveled a few miles when they suddenly turned into a secluded path and reached a mass grave. They dumped the corpse there and ran off. The cart driver who came with them returned to the town, but he revealed to no one the truth of what happened.

The two palanquins, as it turned out, carried both the young woman and her husband, who was in fact well and alive! The staff members of the fur clothing stall were in league with him to switch out the dead body during the commotion in the shop and handle the disposal of the corpse. He was the second son of an owner of a gold mine, and it was he who had concocted the entire scheme. Due to being the second son of his father, the bulk of his father’s holdings were passed on to his eldest brother. But his father had given him some money to begin a small jewelry business. His father had believed that both sons would be able to support each other, both being in the same industry. But this young man did not use the money for the purpose of business. Instead, the money was used to rescue his heartthrob, the daughter of a merchant who was accused of breaking the law and the local authorities had plundered and ravaged the entire household for every piece of gold and silver. In the end, her parents died a wretched end in prison, and her servants all had fled. With the weight of the family’s debt suddenly fallen upon her shoulders, the creditors decided to sell her to a brothel and divide her salary among them. And so, the young man came to her rescue, delivering her from a fate possibly even more terrible than death by helping her with her debt with his money. But the young man lacked the nerve of relaying the news to his father. To quickly gather enough money to start his business, they came up with a plot to bamboozle the proprietor of the fur clothing store of his wealth.

Yuan Chongxi stopped his tale and glanced at Mr. Lee. “The proprietor of the fur clothing stall is none other than the second brother of the family from my teacher’s story. With the money from the sale of his own nephew, he fled and started a business dealing with fur minks and coats. This incident, which spelled the failure of his business venture, forced him to return home later poor and penniless.” Fully understanding the entire story now, Mr. Lee himself hazarded a guess. “So my wife and I were the second son of the gold mine owner and his sweetheart. The second son is now reincarnated as my son due to our plot against him?!” Yuan Chongxi giggled and winked. “Spot on!” Mr. Lee scrambled to his feet and began pacing around gingerly with shock and amazement, murmuring under his breath, “Everyone here at this Institute is extraordinary! You put on a benign and innocent facade on the outside, but in truth, each and every one of you here possess powerful abilities beyond imagination! Brother Hai and his son, Brother Quan (Lin Fengquan) and his son, you and your teacher, and there’s also Fen…”

At this point, the Blind Master, or sometimes colloquially addressed as Old Man Chen, exhaled slowly, saying, “Some stones are better off left unflipped. Ignorance is always blissful, especially for common folk like you. Look at us! Look at me! Do you know how did I become blind?” Mr. Lee had intentionally refrained from bringing up this very subject. But now that Old Man Chen had touched this matter on his own, Mr. Lee could hardly contain himself any longer, not with his inquisitiveness aroused as he asked, “I, I really… I really don’t know… Could there be also another tale behind your condition?”

The old man sniggered twice and removed his sunglasses, revealing a pair of eyes that contained no pupils! There was not a single one present who did not find the sight of his eyes disturbing and alarming. Even the two female instructors who were eating yelped with fear and shock. Indeed, Old Man Chen’s pupilless eyes were scary to behold! No wonder he wore his sunglasses no matter where he went!

The old man put his sunglasses back on and muttered, “As you sow, so shall you reap; As you reap, so shall you weep! Since the days of my youth, I have mastered the arcane skills of unraveling the mysteries of Fate. I had barely waded past teenage when I had fully grasped three of the five elements of Taoist Divination! My skills were one of the best in the business, if not the best! Yet alas! For all my power and prestige, my eyesight was robbed from me as penance for divulging the secrets of Destiny!” His voice faltered, and he turned, now looking like a frail old man, beaten and defeated, as he retreated out of the reception room.

Yuan Chongxi could not help feeling morose and sad watching his teacher reliving the horrors of his past. His voice came suddenly through the melancholic atmosphere, “He had been brash during his youth, my teacher once told me. It was only in his older years when he realized his audacity and impudence. But everything was too late. The die has been cast. I once heard that his eyes bled one night, gushing and pouring profusely. From then on, he became blind. There are certain skills of augury and divination that require the ability to read signs, as you well know. Without his eyesight, he’s lost some of his skills. Since then, he rarely uses his abilities no more.” Lin Feng asked Yuan Chongxi, “Is this what people in your line of business call the ‘Five Detriments and Three Dearths’?” Mr. Lee descended back into his seat with his beer, now refreshed with the desire to know more.

Yuan Chongxi nodded to Lin Feng and said, “Yes and no. ‘The Five Detriments and Three Dearths’ are the penances of being widowed, abandoned, alone, forsaken, maimed, penniless, lifeless, and powerless. Contrary to common beliefs—no thanks to fiction stories and novel—that those who offend the will of Heaven will only be dealt one such reprisal, it is written in the scriptures that ‘Vengeance is mine and I will repay’. Heaven will neither show mercy, yet Heaven can also be compassionate; the number of penances inflicted upon one depends on the gravity of one’s transgressions.” “Oh?” It was Mr. Lee who had spoken now, as he asked, “So your teacher…” Yuan Chongxi lighted a cigarette and took a swig. He murmured, “My teacher has been visited by six of the eight penances. This alone allows us to appreciate the severity of his sins…” But Lin Feng, still swelling with the eagerness to know more, asked suddenly, “Which of the six he had suffered?” But Yuan Chongxi, who sometimes could be a person slow to the take, had barely realized the bluntness of Lin Feng’s question. Instead, he revealed solemnly. “Widowed, abandoned, alone, maimed, penniless, and powerless.”

Come to think of it, Old Man Chen neither had any children and nor was he ever married. In the end, he had even lost his eyesight. His expertise in the Yi Jing and the art of divination hardly earned him any students, and hence he earned only the basic stipend for a modest life. He was never once an official of the government too. Like what Yuan Chongxi had said, it was true that all six of the eight penances had been exacted upon him. I would later find out one day that the reason he refused to break the tenet of performing his skills twice a day was that he had only two more punishments yet to be levied upon him: the penances of being forsaken and death. He was afraid of losing Yuan Chongxi, the sole heir of his expertise and his much-loved apprentice in addition to losing his own life. With the will of Heaven being predictably unpredictable, the penance of death might instead fall upon his most-prized student instead of him!

Sometime after this, my father told me that there was actually quite a tale behind the incident that had caused the Blind Master to lose his eyesight…