In the real world, inside the funeral wreath and burial-clothes shop next door to Su Xiao's Accessory Shop.
The shop's owner was Fatty Ma, a feng shui master who was "proficient" in fortune-telling, divination, astrology—in short, anything even remotely related to the occult was supposedly his specialty.
Of course, that wasn't true. Fatty Ma's real specialty was bluffing. He could guess what his customers were thinking from their words and subtle expressions, which made "fortune-telling" easy.
Although Fatty Ma was a swindler, he was a swindler with a conscience. Of course, he had never considered his work honorable. He was only doing it to make a living.
As a feng shui master, Fatty Ma was very good at observing what others were thinking. Today, however, he had suffered the Waterloo of his life.
The funeral wreath and burial-clothes shop's outer door was tightly locked. Several sheets of yellow paper and a large amount of cinnabar were scattered across the floor. Fatty Ma wasn't setting up some kind of Ritual. He had simply been unable to suppress his anger a few minutes earlier.
"What did you do with my little brother?"
Fatty Ma clenched his fist, roared, and punched a skinny man bound tightly with rope in the abdomen.
Bang.
The punch landed. Fatty Ma's flesh trembled, and a fine layer of cold sweat had already appeared on his forehead.
The skinny man grunted. He was tied to a wooden chair, and that punch nearly knocked the chair over backward.
"Hehehehe."
The skinny man let out a dry laugh.
"You're an interesting fatty. Blackskin accepted something he shouldn't have. We tied him up to keep things from getting out of hand. The fact that we didn't kill him was already merciful. Oh, right, I'm hungry. Go get me something to eat."