At a fork in the road outside a small town.
Wearing a bamboo hat, Bai Yujun had set up a roadside stall. Sitting on a small stool, she diligently sold oil-paper umbrellas. Landscapes were painted across their canopies, while even more bore peculiar and eye-catching cartoon figures.
Whenever she had a spare moment at the stall, she continued making oil-paper umbrellas, as if she felt uncomfortable all over when she had nothing to do.
"Miss, how much is an umbrella?"
A middle-aged scholar had taken a fancy to one of the oil-paper umbrellas and asked its price. As he crouched down to inspect it, he accidentally caught sight of that peerless face. His expression turned dazed, as though he had beheld a Celestial Being.
"One tael of silver."
Passersby shook their heads. One tael of silver could buy many things; there was no need to spend it on an oil-paper umbrella that normally cost only a few dozen copper coins. Yet the scholar fumbled out a tael of silver and handed it over, still smiling like a fool possessed.
The onlookers understood at once. This scholar had had his soul hooked away by a Fox Spirit. Buying an umbrella for a tael of silver—when he returned home, his wife might beat him half to death.
She accepted the silver, folded up the oil-paper umbrella, tied it with a cloth strip, and handed it to the scholar.
Only after receiving the paper umbrella did the scholar realize that he had actually spent a whole tael of silver on it. He wanted to return it, but after looking at that exquisite face, he felt too embarrassed to speak. With a sigh, he admitted he had been muddleheaded. Bought was bought. Besides, the painting really was rather pretty.
Bai Yujun did not even