The things the Thin Man brought out this time were a little strange: two dried flower specimens sealed in plastic. Neither had any outer packaging. He held them in his hands, and they looked a little like vacuum-packed fish fillets just taken from a supermarket freezer. Except these two "vacuum packs" held dried red flowers, not fish.
The flowers still had their stems and leaves, and the whole plants had been dehydrated. They looked like plastic flowers. Only up close could you make out the veins in their petals, leaves, stems, and stamens.
The flowers had large petals and a single cluster of stamens. Their leaves looked like lily leaves, but their shape was also somewhat like a lotus.
The petals' red was a little glaring, as if they had been artificially dyed.
The Thin Man held the two things up slightly. Sunlight from outside the window passed through the petals, which were thin as cicada wings, making their veins even clearer.
For a fleeting moment, they seemed to form the shape of some kind of writing.
Then, in the blink of an eye, that impression vanished.
The Thin Man handed both things directly to Ye Zhengyi.
"What are these?" Ye Zhengyi asked, looking them over in confusion.
"They're supposed to be called Buddhaside Lotuses," the Thin Man said. "They only grow on the graves of enlightened monks. They're supposed to be very effective at warding off evil spirits."
Ye Zhengyi stared at the Thin Man.
I couldn't help looking at him, too. "When you say evil spirits... that usually includes ghosts, right?"
The Thin Man froze.
He clearly didn't believe that nonsense and had never given its logic any real thought. Ye Zhengyi was holding both flowers, yet nothing unusual had happened. That alone proved it.
The Thin Man