The gaze rose from the east and stretched to the end of the west.
Funeral Street had no street, only an alley.
On the New Year's Day holiday, the entrance to this filthy little alley was filled with fluttering paper scraps and hazy green smoke.
Within the piles of fire not yet extinguished were sheets of yellow paper edged in red, burned in the world of the living and sent to the underworld, from life to death.
Yet they did not die cleanly.
The moment Ji Li placed one foot from the car onto the ground, dark clouds churned across the sky, and the first raindrop struck the top of his shoe.
Then, the people burning paper at the alley entrance stuffed all the still-unopened yellow paper into the fires at once.
The incompletely burned yellow paper, along with the crackling explosions of plastic bags, sent thick smoke billowing into the air.
The yellow paper at the bottom suffered beneath the flames, the paper in the middle was caught in a pincer attack, and the paper on top swayed in the wind...
Circles appeared on the earthen-yellow floor tiles, one after another. Raindrops dampened the ground, densely packed, expanding from dots to cover the surface. It was the sky's invasion of the earth.
Huang Banxian put away the change he had retrieved. After getting out of the car with his hands tucked into his sleeves, he stood in this Funeral Alley, and for the first time, a serious expression appeared on his gaunt face.
Just moments ago, he had finally cast a divination for Ji Li.
Huang Banxian was not actually very good at divination. He had never possessed much skill to begin with; of every ten readings he made, eight were wrong.
Without using the Tortoise Shell Sin Item