Swindling

The Mountain God took human form and sat on the ground before the stone table, discussing the Dao with the Earth Deity, one in front of the other.

As the mood struck him, he began speaking of how the lords of mountains and rivers regulated the earth's veins. Behind the two gods, Snake Python, Fierce Tiger, Monkey Spirit, and several tree spirits could be seen among the lush bamboo, all listening intently.

The inconspicuous ginseng leaves lay not far away. The tiger was listening so intently that one massive paw pressed down on them. When he noticed, his whiskers trembled, and he gingerly crept away.

"Mountains are the bones of yang, and waters the blood of yin. Once the earth's veins fall out of balance, mountains collapse and rivers run dry, while epidemics spread..."

His lecture had reached this point.

Old Deer Mountain God furrowed his brows as a voice suddenly called out in his ear.

The other party spoke in a calm, unhurried tone.

"Mountain God of Lumen Mountain, please come see me."

The next moment,

the Mountain God of Lumen Mountain had appeared at the Lu Family home.

Before he could make a divination, he saw that it was the Lu Family courtyard and understood at once. Admiration welled up in him.

Old Deer Mountain God's white beard quivered.

He bowed.

"This humble deity pays his respects to the Master."

His hair and beard were entirely white, and his snowy brows hung past his earlobes. He was bent with age, his face scored with deep furrows, yet his bearing was upright and pure. He wore a loose crane-feather cloak and cloud-patterned shoes. Pines, cypresses, and wild deer were embroidered on his clothes, without a single visible stitch, as if they had been woven by the heavens.

He was just as the old immortals described in ancient books ought to look.

By comparison, the old man surrounded by two young attendants and Scholar Lu wore a dark blue robe, with a red cinnabar bead necklace at his throat and white jade at his waist. He seemed to carry the air of worldly splendor.

Old Deer Mountain God bowed his head and asked respectfully,

"Master, what did you summon this humble deity for?"

All the whispers in the courtyard fell silent in an instant. They had watched the mountain hermit who called himself Jiang She casually cup his hands and ask for the Mountain God of Lumen Mountain to come.

They had yet to react.

Then, in the next moment, the old mountain god suddenly appeared in the courtyard, white brows covering his eyes, dressed like an immortal and calling himself "this humble deity."

His words and actions were unfailingly respectful.

Everyone was stunned. The courtyard was so quiet they could hear a needle drop.

For a while, the only sound was the gurgling of water as medicine simmered in an old pot.

The two young attendants couldn't help staring at the old man.

What were they to do now?

Who could have guessed that this was no more than an ordinary household in a small county town, just a common wealthy family?

They had planned it all out long ago. This family had accumulated wealth over several generations and possessed quite a fortune. Both parents had already died, leaving only an old grandmother and a younger sister at home. Lu Pei was the only man of his generation, so even if Scholar Lu acted strangely, no one would investigate.

Who could have expected

to meet a true immortal here?

They dared to deceive ordinary people.

But they didn't dare to lie to an immortal.

This...

The colorful clouds dispersed, and the sunlight gradually dimmed. The sunset glow faded as households began lighting their lamps. Beneath Lumen Mountain, scattered lights appeared in the homes, while dinner steamed on every stove and smoke curled from every chimney.

The courtyard was pitch-black. No one moved or spoke.

The fragrance of medicine wafted from the stove. The medicine had finished simmering into a bowl, and the medicine boy curled up beside the pot, greedily watching the figures in the courtyard.

That evening,

the encounter with immortal arts and the sight of a mountain god from the local hills were so wondrous, so fantastical, and so unbelievable that the tale of the immortals was stamped into their hearts, making their own hearts pound. The people in the courtyard stared with nearly greedy intensity, unwilling to blink. They planned to return home and tell their wives and brothers, then invite their relatives and friends to hear the tale too.

From then on, the story of the immortals they had seen that day would be passed down for generations throughout Xiang Prefecture and the lands beneath Lumen Mountain.

"The Mountain God is too courteous."

Jiang She addressed the Mountain God.

"I've found some clues about what you asked me to investigate." He raised a hand and pointed at the old man. "Scholar Lu's sudden change in temperament and his selling off fields to get money were all because of these three."

At the direction of his finger,

one of the young attendants panicked and dropped to his knees with a thump.

The hope he'd just clung to turned into anxious dread.

You can't walk by the river forever without getting your shoes wet.

What would the immortal do to him?

"Qingyu, why are you kneeling?" Scholar Lu exclaimed in surprise.

The crowd was still holding its breath, watching the immortal affair, when they saw the young attendant drop to his knees. Everyone understood at once.

This "Immortal Master" and the two "attendants" he had brought with him

were all frauds who had made a name for themselves by deceiving the world.

They weren't just not Immortal Masters.

They weren't even practitioners of some fringe, unorthodox path within the immortal arts.

Scholar Lu stood there in a daze, unable to speak. He wasn't entirely stupid; the attendant's kneeling struck him like a bucket of cold water, jolting him awake.

He had been deceived...

Old Deer Mountain God felt a gentle, unseen force lift him up as Jiang She helped him to his feet.

Then he looked at the blue-robed old man and the three people beside him.

"Are you three the ones?"

Old Deer Mountain God now spoke with great dignity. He looked at them with cold authority, commanding respect without even showing anger. He was entirely different from the way he had been when paying his respects to Master Jiang.

Under that gaze,

the old man felt as if thorns were pricking his back, and his heart pounded with unease. His body swayed, and he sank to the ground, all his confidence draining away.

Mountain gods and earth deities were figures from legends.

How could they be connected to that man called Jiang She?

And why were they so deferential to him?

Had he known, he would have admitted his wrongdoing earlier—or given up on the Lu Family's hundred and fifty strings of cash and tried his luck elsewhere. How had things come to this, with an immortal and a mountain god catching him? Who knew what punishment awaited him now...

The old man's face turned ashen, sweat soaking his back.

"...Yes, it was me. I was blinded by greed for a moment. Please forgive me, Mountain God."

Jiang She began calculating on his fingers.

He said, "You're forty-seven years old by your lifespan, yet you're only thirty. Why dress yourself up to look old?"

The fake Immortal Master hadn't expected the immortal to see through his lifespan at a glance. Hearing that he had forty-seven years to live startled him; then, when his age was exposed with a single sentence, fear gripped him even more.

He stammered for a while, but didn't dare refuse to answer, afraid the immortal and mountain god would lose patience.

He trembled as he said, "I... I'm thirty. It's just that I get more customers when I dress to look old, and people trust me more. So I boiled glutinous rice into a paste and used it to fake wrinkles... I know I was wrong. I know."

"I'd planned to teach Lu the Eldest a few tricks and some sleight of hand once he began cultivating with us, so I could say I'd given him something in return... I know I was wrong to swindle him out of his money, but this time, I wasn't deceiving him entirely..."

Though badly frightened, he still remembered to plead his case.

Old Deer Mountain God looked at Jiang She.

Jiang She asked, "What are your names, and how many families have you swindled?"

The "old man" lay prostrate on the ground, speaking haltingly. "I'm Zhang Quan. My courtesy name is Zhenmei. I really am thirty years old this year. So far, I've swindled... swindled five families."

The other two attendants were deathly pale. They tried to suppress their fear before the immortals and earth deity, then stammered out their confessions:

"This humble one is Wang Shan. I'm fourteen."

"I... I'm Song Baike. I'm fifteen by nominal age."

Jiang She looked at the three of them, then at Scholar Lu's dumbstruck expression, and asked, "You've swindled only five families, yet your clothes and accessories are so extravagant? How much money did you take from each family?"

The "old man," Zhang Zhenmei, lay on the ground and said,

"These clothes didn't cost much. I had a shop make them for just five strings of cash. I bought the white jade at a pawnshop, and the beads were... were from a basket of hibiscus stones. That's a material commonly used for seal stones. I only spent one string of cash on the stones, then added fifty coins so the seller would pick them carefully."

He did his best to plead his case, insisting that his outfit was all for show and hadn't cost nearly as much money as it appeared to.

"Stringing the beads cost nothing either. We ground the beads ourselves..."

Yuan Danqiu listened to the confession, and his suspicions immediately cleared.

He'd thought the man's clothes looked strange, nothing like the usual garb of Daoists or the outfits of the "Immortal Masters" described in books.

So he'd put the whole getup together himself.

For a swindler, he'd certainly gone to unusual lengths and taken great pains.

The fake Immortal Master, Zhang Zhenmei, kept his head lowered and listed the amounts he'd taken from each family. The guests in the courtyard listened in shock, glaring at him in anger.

They had spent most of their lives building their fortunes, yet none of them had as much money as this fake Immortal Master had swindled.

The Lu Family alone had been cheated out of nearly seven hundred strings of cash.

If this man had been allowed to keep swindling people, it wouldn't have been long before he was rolling in riches.

The only thing they could be grateful for was that the gang had cheated Lu the Eldest, not any of them. But if they put themselves in his shoes, they might have been coaxed out of their fortunes too, then gone off to learn immortal arts from a swindler.

Once they had confessed everything, the whole matter became clear.

Jiang She looked at Old Deer Mountain God.

"That's what happened."

"What to do with him is for you to decide, Mountain God."

Master Jiang had discovered the fraud and exposed it. Old Deer Mountain God knew his place.

He said, "You were the one who discovered it, Master. Without you, this humble deity would have thought some unclean thing had entered the house. My attempts to cast it out were useless—it's truly embarrassing."

"Please decide what to do with them, Master."

Jiang She fell into thought.