In the unluckiest year of my life, a wandering Daoist priest came to town.
He gave my father an idea: have me worship a Household Guardian Immortal to suppress my bad luck, and maybe I would live past the age of ten.
My father was a rough man who had made his fortune in troubled times by the barrel of a gun.
He called his adjutant over and did the math for him. “One Household Guardian Immortal keeps her alive to ten, two keep her alive to twenty, and twenty keep her alive to two hundred. Right?”
The adjutant counted on his fingers. “Marshal, your math is absolutely correct.”
My father hardened his heart and rounded up all the pigs, cattle, and sheep from miles around as offerings.
“My damn girl is going to live ten thousand years!”
That year, my father rode into the old mountain forest on a pig with me and took eleven Household Guardian Immortal into our household.
He flew into a rage. “Damn it, that’s still one short of the twelve zodiac animals!”
Later, who knew where he bought a Daoist boy from, but that made the twelfth.
