19

After noon, A Chan locked the door and headed to the West Market.

Goods in the West Market came from every corner of the land, and the selection was wide, but it would be hard to find everything she needed there.

She found a shop with a signboard bearing the character for "hunt." It was small, and there were no goods inside, only an old man in a gray robe, lazily seated behind the counter.

Seeing a pretty young woman walk in, the old man lifted his eyelids. "Miss, you haven't come to the wrong place, have you?"

"I'm looking for a few things," A Chan said directly.

At her words, the old man sat up straight. "What are you looking for?"

"Black Water Earth Clothes at least thirty years old, fresh soil from a grave that's at least a hundred years old, and a section of Hollow Locust Tree trunk at least fifty years old."

The old man quickly jotted down her request. By the time A Chan finished speaking, he had written out two sheets of paper.

"These three items aren't worth much, but they're a little troublesome to find. The price is fifty taels of silver, with a fifteen-tael deposit. Can you accept that?"

"Yes." A Chan took out two ingots of silver and pushed them toward him.

The old man weighed the silver, then took out a square seal and stamped both sheets. He pulled a thumb-length wooden token from beneath the counter, with the character for "hunt" carved on it.

He pushed one stamped sheet and the token toward A Chan. "This is the token of our Hunt Shop. Come back here in three days with the remaining silver and this token to collect your items."

A Chan put away the paper and token, nodded slightly to the old man, and turned to leave the shop.

The Hunt Shop was a fairly reputable organization under official oversight. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been able to operate so openly in the West Market.

They searched for unusual items according to their customers' needs. Their prices were steep, but their goods weren't counterfeit.

If anything went wrong with the goods, or someone from the shop ran off, A Chan could take the Hunt Shop's token to the authorities to file a complaint, and they would take it seriously.

After A Chan left, the old man shook the paper listing the Three Materials and called toward the back, "Doggie, we've got a job."

Before long, the curtain hanging over the back door was lifted, and a burly man nearly two meters tall ducked inside.

"Dad, what's the job this time?"

The old man handed him the paper. "A small one. The Earth Clothes Shop has some left over, and you can get the grave soil in Yi County. There are plenty of hundred-year-old graves there. A round trip will take just one day."

Doggie nodded. "I'll send Er Gou in a bit. What about the Hollow Locust Tree?"

"The locust tree? We'll have to go into Black Mountain. There's a whole grove of locust trees there, but the place is haunted. We'll have to go during the day, so you'll need to make the trip yourself."

"Got it." Doggie agreed readily, then asked curiously, "Dad, what are these three things for?"

The old man shook his head. "They're all things rich in yin energy. I've never seen this combination before."

Anyone who ran a Hunt Shop had to be well-informed. From the items customers requested, he could usually guess what they wanted to do.

But of the three things the customer had just asked for, Earth Clothes were common enough. The other two, though, had never been requested before.

After leaving the shop, A Chan didn't head straight home.

She went around to a stall selling ironware and bought a hammer and chisel, then headed to a spice stall and bought a mortar and a syringe.

At last, she went to the jade stall that the Mingjing Division had investigated before.

The unforgettable, plump owner was recommending a set of jade tea ware to a customer. The customer seemed quite pleased and paid with Silver notes without a second thought. The plump owner efficiently packed the set into a brocade box and handed it over.

Smiling broadly as he saw the customer off, the plump owner turned around and spotted A Chan, who had been standing nearby watching for a while.

"Are you looking to buy jade?"

A Chan thought for a moment about how to put it without sounding abrupt, then decided to speak plainly.

"I happened to be there the day something went wrong at your stall."

The plump owner froze for a moment, but didn't change his expression. He listened as she continued.

"I wanted to ask whether you still have the jade from your stall that was damaged."

"I do, but it crumbles to powder with the slightest pressure. I'm afraid it's no use." The plump owner was honest. It wasn't that he didn't want to throw it out, but tossing the whole lot felt like a waste.

The ruined jade ware could fill nearly half a bag. Just thinking about it made his heart ache.

"To be honest, I've been making Scented Pills lately, and I happen to need Jade powder. That's why I came to buy some."

"I see..." The plump owner pondered for a moment. "If you can take the whole lot, just give me ten taels of silver."

He wasn't short of ten taels, but selling a pile of useless things for that much would at least make him feel better.

"All right, I'll take it," A Chan agreed.

The owner asked A Chan to wait a moment, then sent a young shop assistant to fetch the bag of discarded jade.

When it arrived, A Chan opened it and casually rummaged through the contents. The ruined jade really had all been inhabited by Snow Needle Snakes.

She dusted the Jade powder off her hands, tied the bag shut, and took an ingot of ten taels of silver from her sleeve pouch to give the owner.

The things A Chan had bought this time were quite heavy. Unfortunately, there was no one to help carry them, so she had to walk a while, rest a while. It took her more than an hour to finally get home.

Once home, she casually set the bag of jade behind the door. She hadn't lied to the owner; aside from being used to make incense, the Jade powder really had no other use.

The jade was tainted with the Snow Needle Snake's aura, making it very effective at driving away ordinary snakes, insects, rats, and mice. If Lady Xiao Lin hadn't suddenly met with an accident, A Chan would have bought it long ago.

Of course, the Jade powder was just something she'd picked up along the way. Her reasons for going to the West Market today were to have someone search for the Three Materials and to buy tools.

She took out the hammer and chisel, then brought out the Yin Willow stump she had bought in the West Market earlier.

A Chan had only ever watched other people do crafts before; trying it herself was a different matter.

She wanted to chisel the Yin Willow into the shape of a bowl, but had underestimated how hard the wood was. From bright daylight until the moon sank beyond the western hills, she chiseled away, and finally finished.

When she set down the chisel, her hands were covered in blood blisters.

A Chan paid no attention to her hands. She checked the sky, then carried the Willow, now hollowed into a trough, to the backyard.

The next day, the Willow was only slightly damp. By the third day, however, the hollowed-out trough in the Willow was filled with water.

Three days had passed, so A Chan went to the West Market to collect her purchases, then carried the Willow back indoors.

After sunset, she closed the doors and windows. The only light in the room came from a single oil lamp.

She took out the Three Materials she had spent fifty taels of silver to obtain.

The section of Hollow Locust Tree she had cut off was the hollow part. The wood inside was blackened, and dotted with black knots. A Chan knocked the knots off one by one, ground them into powder in the mortar, and set them aside.

Then she ground up the Black Water Earth Clothes and poured them into the Yin Willow trough with the powdered knots.

A Chan put her hands in and mixed the two powders with the water in the hollow. She kneaded them into a lump like dough, then sprinkled on the sifted Grave White Soil to bind them together.

She divided the kneaded mixture into eight lumps, placed them in the syringe one by one, and squeezed out Incense Sticks.

At first, A Chan's hands trembled, and the Incense Sticks came out wavy. Only later did she gradually get the hang of it.

The materials she had only made fewer than a hundred Incense Sticks. They needed to dry in the shade for three days before they were ready.

Three days later, A Chan had ninety-two finished Incense Sticks. The rest had all broken.

She divided the incense into two portions and stored them in wooden boxes.

One portion, containing forty-nine Incense Sticks, she kept separate. She put the remaining portion away.

At midnight that night, A Chan, who usually went to bed early, came downstairs fully dressed. She went to the wooden table, where there was only a wooden box containing Incense Sticks and a bowl filled with rice. Beneath the bowl was a sheet of yellow paper inscribed with Lady Xiao Lin's name and birth details.

Mama Sun had given it to her before leaving, after A Chan asked for it.

She sat on a wooden stool, took an Incense Stick from the box, lit it with a fire striker, and stuck it into the bowl.

That night, she sat beside the table the whole time. She lit seven sticks of incense in all, and it wasn't until the fifth watch that the final stick burned out.

The room remained completely still. Nothing happened.

A Chan didn't mind. She closed the box and went upstairs to catch up on sleep.

The second day, the third day... on the sixth day, things were still the same.

For the past few days, A Chan had gone downstairs at midnight every night to light incense. She had stayed up for seven nights in a row, and today there were only seven sticks left in the wooden box.

She lit one stick, then sat on the wooden stool, propping her chin on one hand as she stared at the tiny red glow on the Incense Stick.

At some point, the pitch-black room suddenly brightened.

The room itself hadn't changed. The incense in the bowl was still burning, but the one sitting on the stool wasn't human. It was a snow-white fox.

That was what A Chan had looked like before Soul Possession.

Six black chains bound the fox. They stretched into the void, with no end in sight.

A Chan tried to move a hand, and the fox moved a forepaw. In a daze, she realized that she might be seeing her Inner landscape.

They said everyone had an Inner landscape within them, one that was usually impossible to glimpse. Why was she able to enter it today?

Before A Chan could figure out why, a black shadow shrouded in mist appeared out of thin air.

"Why... am... I... here?"

The voice came in broken fragments, but it was familiar. It was Lady Xiao Lin's voice.

By lighting Soul-Guiding Incense for seven days straight, she had finally forcefully drawn over Lady Xiao Lin's sealed soul.