Dark Earth

We arrived at the farmers' market and happened to catch market day. It was packed with people. After finally finding a parking spot and parking the car, we entered the market.

I rarely visited places like markets when I went into the city before, so I had no idea there was actually such a large shopping mall here. Yu Xiaoxue led me around as if she were taking Granny Liu into the Grand View Garden.

She seemed to be enjoying herself immensely, dragging me around by the nose like this. Normally, I was the one who bullied her.

Yu Xiaoxue had no eye for clothes or anything of the sort. She took me to the mall's second floor, and the clothes she asked about were indeed cheap and decent, mostly around thirty or forty yuan apiece.

I was afraid that if she bought them, Han Shanshan and Zhao Qian would laugh at me instead, so I pulled her away.

On the mall's first floor, I bought some cooked dishes, then took Yu Xiaoxue to a sportswear shop and bought two tracksuits, one pink and one blue.

Yu Xiaoxue stared at the bill, which was over five hundred yuan, her eyes going round and round as she struggled to get the words out. Still, she was extremely pleased with the new clothes. Sportswear was practical, letting her run and jump, and suited her perfectly.

After satisfying her wish, she took me to the antique street in the market. There were actually only a few shops there, but on market days, some villagers would come to sell unusual things.

Someone had even brought a bronze drum to sell before. I heard someone later bought it for over ten thousand yuan and took it to an auction, making several hundred thousand.

Of course, even if something like that really appeared, I couldn't afford it. At most, I could pay a few hundred yuan. By my reckoning, Yu Xiaoxue still had a thousand yuan left—she was richer than me.

Besides, I had to start worrying about her tuition. Her father was gone, and I was, in a sense, half her older brother. Apart from solving her livelihood problems, I also had to take responsibility for her education.

"You're a senior in high school now, right?" I asked Yu Xiaoxue.

"Brother Tian, I've already finished my second year. How about I stop studying? We don't have any money, and we can't go back to Little Yi Village. I could work in the county, serving dishes and washing bowls. I can do that." Yu Xiaoxue looked troubled. She had asked me about working long ago, but I hadn't agreed.

"No. The walls of your house are covered with commendations. You're good at studying. It'd be a waste not to continue." I immediately rejected the idea. Her grades were surely excellent; it was just that her family was too poor to keep supporting her. Now that she was following me, I had to put her through school no matter how hard things got.

"My grades aren't good. I actually ranked somewhere in the forties. The teachers only gave me those commendations to make the family look good. How about I stop studying?" Yu Xiaoxue shook her head.

A family so poor that it had nothing but sweet potatoes and commendations could never expect a sensible child to finish school. Yu Xiaoxue's attitude was perfectly normal, so I said, "What's the difference between ranking in the forties and ranking first? Keep studying. Your brother has money. I've made tens of thousands over the past few years away from home, enough to put you through university."

I gave her a smug grin. After hearing me, Yu Xiaoxue stared at me, still afraid I was lying. "Brother Tian, you're lying to me... You don't have any money."

"I do. If you don't believe me, should I call your aunt?" As I spoke, I took out my phone and handed it to her. I found my mom's number and was about to dial it. I knew she wouldn't dare answer even if I called.

"You really have money? You're not lying to me, are you?" Yu Xiaoxue looked at me pitifully.

"I'm not lying. Why would I lie to you? If it's not enough, your aunt can front you the money. You can repay her slowly after graduating from university. By then, you'd be making several thousand a month. Now, washing bowls and serving dishes in the county only pays a little over eight hundred. How long would you have to work before getting anywhere?" I tried to persuade her.

"Brother Tian... I actually lied to you. Those commendations are real. I ranked second in my grade last semester. Let me tell you—I could have ranked first, but Xiaobei told me that if I left the last question unanswered and let her take first place, she'd give me fifty yuan. I wanted to buy Dad two jin of rice wine and a plate of roast duck, so I didn't answer that question..."

With a bitter expression, Yu Xiaoxue pulled a fifty-yuan note, crumpled into a twist, from the hem of her clothes and handed it to me. "Xiaobei gave me the money, but I thought about it for a long time and never dared to spend it..."

"Would you dare do it again?" I immediately glowered at her and confiscated the fifty yuan, but my heart ached despite myself. Ah, Uncle Yu Gen... On this trip back to Little Yi Village, I brought you nothing. I'll owe you two jin of rice wine and a plate of roast duck for now. Once I'm capable of returning, I'll definitely bring them to you.

"I won't." Yu Xiaoxue's eyes reddened. Sometimes she did foolish things, like digging up other people's sweet potatoes, but that had only been because she was young, ignorant, and hungry.

"Good. Listen to your Brother Tian. Finish your studies. If you can get into Tsinghua or Peking University, we'll go there too. We aren't short of that little bit of money." I spoke with brazen confidence.

"Okay! Brother Tian is the best to me!" Yu Xiaoxue cheered up. Seeing the young couple beside us practically glued together, she ran over and wrapped both arms around mine.

I shook her off several times without success, then stopped bothering. Almost no one in the county knew either of us, so I didn't care about appearances.

But just as I thought that, a familiar figure suddenly appeared at the farthest edge of my vision!

"Yidan!" I practically shouted. I tore free of Yu Xiaoxue's hand and chased after him like a bolt of lightning!

Yu Xiaoxue froze. When she saw me run, she chased after me too.

The crowd was simply too dense. Afraid something might happen to Yu Xiaoxue, I stopped and watched from a distance as Zhang Yidan's figure disappeared at the edge of the market.

"Brother Dan? How could that be?" Yu Xiaoxue asked in astonishment. She seemed not to have seen him.

"I must have been mistaken. It's impossible, impossible." I explained it to myself, then gave Yu Xiaoxue a bitter smile. Zhang Yidan was clearly dead, killed by his own ghost infant. How could he appear in broad daylight? A vengeful ghost borrowing a body might be plausible in a gloomy forest, but amid this sea of people? Absolutely impossible.

With a county population of eight hundred thousand, it was normal for someone to look similar. I sighed. Perhaps the memories Yu Xiaoxue had stirred up had made me think of this childhood companion.

"Brother, you're going to the antique street, right? It's over there. See it?" Yu Xiaoxue pointed at the entrance where the person who looked like Zhang Yidan had disappeared.

"Yeah, I see it. Let's go." I spoke, but my already-settled heart began to ripple again. "Zhang Yidan" had gone to the antique street?

I shook my head and turned into the antique street with Yu Xiaoxue. The little street was really just an alley, and there were even shops selling chickens, ducks, and geese.

I found a shop whose owner looked amiable and asked whether he had old yellow paper, top-grade cinnabar, and brushes.

An old county town like this would never be short of such things, and the owner quickly brought out several varieties.

I wasn't buying these things because Zhao Qian didn't have them. I simply couldn't use things other people had used, as that would affect the accuracy of spellcasting.

I picked the oldest varieties and the most expensive aged cinnabar. The cinnabar cost dozens of yuan per gram. I spent over four hundred yuan on a little of it. The old yellow paper was expensive by the bundle because of how long it had been stored, and with the specially made brush, six hundred yuan vanished just like that.

Thinking it over, I realized that the saying "wealth, techniques, companions, and terrain" was no lie. Without money, there was no way to dabble in these things. Playing with this was playing with one's life. How could anything tied to one's life not be expensive?

So money came first. Only then could one consider how powerful one's Daoist arts were, followed by fellow Daoists, companions, and a cultivation site. After all these things endured the test of time, one could finally become a great master of Daoist arts.

"Boss, did a young man in his twenties wearing factory clothes pass through here just now, or buy anything here?" On a whim, I asked the owner about Zhang Yidan's clothes.

"Oh, you mean him? Heh, I was wondering why all you young people have started playing with this stuff lately. That guy came to ask me for cinnabar and a brush, just like you. He bought the brush, but when I brought out the cinnabar, he said it wasn't suitable and went to buy some from the stall across the way. Heh, that stall owner makes everything himself. Can it even be used?" The owner didn't hide anything. He pointed toward the street stall opposite, clearly implying that its wares were no good.

I immediately ran over to the old woman at the stall and asked whether she'd done business with a young man. The old woman didn't say a word. She looked toward the direction in which Zhang Yidan had disappeared, pointed at the cinnabar, and held up one finger.

I thought about it. If I didn't buy her goods, I probably wouldn't be able to get anything out of her, so I took out a fifty-yuan note. "Come on, give me five grams."

The old woman smiled and held up one finger, but her smile was terrifying. Her teeth were severely missing, though that was perfectly normal. What wasn't normal was that most of her tongue had been severed! She was mute. Yu Xiaoxue and I were so frightened that we took two steps back!

Her tongue had definitely been cut out by someone!

"Young man, it's a hundred yuan per gram!" The shop owner across the way kindly reminded me when he saw that I was scared.

I figured I wouldn't be able to get anything out of her anyway. The cinnabar had already turned brownish purple, and I didn't even know how to use it, so I pulled Yu Xiaoxue away.

With only two or three hundred yuan left, I realized I still hadn't bought a Soul Urn, so I prepared to visit some antique shops.

A Soul Urn was an ash box, specially used to hold the ashes and bones of the dead. Modern ash boxes were beautifully carved, but they were all useless to me. Even if they were made of gold or white jade, they were of no use. I had to find a pottery urn to replace one. Unfortunately, after visiting many antique shops, I was told by the owners that they were all handicrafts—Han Dynasty this, Qing Dynasty that—and even the cheap counterfeits cost several hundred yuan at the very least.

My heart sank. It seemed Xijun's home was probably out of the question. I carefully recalled the process my grandmother had used to make Soul Urns. Before making one, she would always go out once, and when she came back, she would already have all kinds of materials prepared.

The materials themselves weren't special, just ordinary earth. But she had apparently never intended to let me play with it, saying it was bad for me.

Besides, she had always fired them herself, but I didn't have the conditions to do that now.

My grandmother was of course an expert. She could find clay herself, make it into a Soul Urn, carve seal script into it, and then fire it into shape. The ghosts raised in such Soul Urns were terrifyingly powerful. Could I do it?

"Dark earth!" Just as I hesitated, those words sprang into my mind, making me give up on lingering in the antique street. I decided to make the pottery myself.