Old Taoist

Biodata

Appearance

• Build: Thin and elderly 4.
• Clothing: A blue robe 4.
• Facial detail: A clean-shaven chin, which he strokes while speaking 1.
• Expressions: Frequently adopts smug smiles, teasing looks, or an inscrutable expression during his lessons 4 6 7.

History

First Meeting with Sanhe

The Old Taoist approaches Sanhe while the young teacher is walking home, correctly identifying his C9 university education, occupation, and recent employee award. He predicts that Sanhe will leave his job and offers a cryptic route toward success involving south and north, then disappears before Sanhe can obtain an explanation 1.

Sanhe asks He Xiang to explain the directional language. After resigning from teaching and arranging to study in Singapore, he notices that his destination lies south of China and wonders whether the prediction has come true 2 3.

Airport Discipleship

They meet again in a bookstore at Shanghai Airport while Sanhe is awaiting a connecting flight. Sanhe spontaneously addresses him as “Master,” and the Old Taoist immediately answers, “Yes, my disciple.” He begins teaching divination after warning that Sanhe’s wealth lies to the south, but his marriage prospects contain a hurdle 4.

Their conversation expands into lessons on independent judgment, differing viewpoints, virtue, and the responsibilities of transmitting Taoist methods. The Old Taoist gives Sanhe three books and explains that he accepted him because of his earnestness, unusual destiny, devotion to the Way, and deep virtue 5 6 7 8 10.

Opening the Heavenly Eye and Departure

After Sanhe enters a profound state of stillness, the Old Taoist opens his Heavenly Eye. He tells Sanhe that his unusual fate prevents him from returning to the sect for quiet cultivation: instead, he must experience future heaven-sent encounters and guide them toward resolution while remembering morality and virtue 11.

The Old Taoist leaves before revealing his name. Sanhe calls after him to ask whose disciple he is and to request instruction in catching ghosts, but receives only dismissive waves before his master disappears from sight 11.

His teachings continue to influence Sanhe in Singapore. Sanhe studies the supplied books, recalls the instruction to uphold the Dao and virtue, and notices that he has adopted his master’s habit of invoking Karl Marx 13 17.

Personality

The Old Taoist is playful and provocative, moving abruptly between solemn instruction, teasing remarks, and irreverent humor. He challenges Sanhe’s confidence in science, jokes about having his university “written on his face,” and proposes that Bian Que may have angered Duke Huan of Cai to death as a way of opening a deeper lesson 1 6 10.

He is patient with sincere curiosity. He readily teaches Sanhe another technique when asked and answers Little Bun’s questions without accepting her as a disciple. Although he declines a formal discipleship ceremony, he treats the transmission of Taoist arts with great seriousness 5 8.

His stated lifelong ambition is to preserve secret methods and pass them to worthy people with a destined connection. He becomes visibly emotional when explaining that spreading genuine knowledge among kindhearted people can leave fraudulent occult practitioners with nowhere to hide 10.

Abilities & Skills

Divination

The Old Taoist teaches prediction as reasoning from correctly identified conditions. In his explanation, missing or changing conditions account for inaccurate forecasts, while deliberate intervention can avert an otherwise predicted outcome 4.

• Marriage-partner direction: Teaches Sanhe to calculate the direction of a prospective partner as an initial safeguard against unsuitable relationships 4 5.
• Minor Six Ren: Teaches a finger-counting divination method suitable for Sanhe’s limited foundation 5.
• Timing of a reading: Treats Sanhe’s decision to ask about Singapore at that particular moment as Heaven’s will. He warns that deliberately repeating the question later to obtain a favorable result would make the reading unreliable 5.
• Testing: Insists on objective evaluation, noting that apparent prosperity and personal standards of a “good life” can differ sharply 5.

Physiognomy and Observation

He explains that identifying Sanhe’s university did not require divination. Instead, he combined face reading with observations about Sanhe’s age, bearing, location, and likely background 6.

• Infers a good education from Sanhe’s face and a recent graduation or internship from his youthful appearance and presence near an ordinary school 6.
• Uses Sanhe’s quiet, dutiful demeanor to narrow the likely geographical range of his university 6.
• Distinguishes the bearing associated with an engineering education from that of a nearby humanities-oriented university 6.
• Says he could have cast a hexagram to confirm the inference, but considered it unnecessary 6.

Heavenly Eye Opening

The Old Taoist opens Sanhe’s Heavenly Eye by holding a hand above the Baihui acupoint at the crown of his head, then lightly tapping between his eyebrows 11.

• Sanhe first feels a soft, warm sensation entering his body 11.
• The resulting perception resembles a luminous, three-dimensional virtual screen with no edges and limitless extension 11.
• Sanhe later recognizes the same kind of warmth during Master Wu’s qi-projection demonstration and wonders whether the methods share a common root; no direct connection between the two teachers is established 33.

Teachings

• Use the art; do not become its servant. Divination should aid thought rather than dictate choices. Someone unable to resist blind belief is better off not believing at all 6.
• Cultivation builds inner stability. He uses entropy increase as an analogy for life’s tendency toward disorder. Repeated fortune-telling does not literally diminish fate; dependence on it can increase inner uncertainty 6.
• Cultivate independent judgment. He urges Sanhe to develop his own views before learning the arts, using the original description of Old Man Sai as someone “skilled in the arts” to challenge familiar assumptions 6 7.
• Accept differing viewpoints. He attributes many arguments to people mistaking their own perspective for the only valid one. His recommended response is self-cultivation rather than blame 7 8.
• The Dao and virtue are inseparable. He describes the Dao as giving birth and virtue as nurturing, making this Sanhe’s central instruction 8.
• Do not intervene uninvited. His lesson from Bian Que’s story is that teaching or helping without a request can have the opposite of the intended effect 10.
• Sincerity matters more than payment. Money is only an outward expression of commitment; its significance depends on what the giver genuinely sacrifices 10.
• Do not casually tell others’ fortunes. He warns that even accurate predictions can provoke hostility and that genuinely capable fortune-tellers may suffer the “five disadvantages and three deficiencies” 8 9.
• Feng shui concerns life-supporting conditions. Sanhe recalls his explanation of feng shui as temperature and humidity, the essential conditions for life 13.

Items Passed to Sanhe

• Precious Mirror of the Vast and Subtle — One of three books entrusted to Sanhe 8.
• Essence of Dripping Heaven — Another volume in the same transmission 8.
• Tianyi Notes — The volume Sanhe studies during his flight to Singapore 8 13.

Together, the books cover the Eight Characters, Six Lines divination, Plum Blossom Numerology, feng shui, physiognomy, qi principles, Taoist medicine, and other cultivation arts 8.

Relationships

• Wang Sanhe — Disciple. The Old Taoist accepts him without a formal ceremony, supplies his foundational instruction and books, and opens his Heavenly Eye 4 8 10 11.
• Little Bun — Listener during the airport lessons. She calls him “Master,” but he does not acknowledge her as his disciple; he nevertheless answers her questions patiently 7 8 10.

Notable Quotes

“To find your broad road to success, you must first go up, then down. South is up; north is down.” 1

“Are you the master of your fate, or are you being mastered by it?” 6