Su Lin sighed. He had little interest in dealing with that pig demon, though he had seen it using the Nine-Tooth Rake to comb its hair.
He was thinking about other things now, like which female guests to invite to the dating show he had arranged for Klein tomorrow night.
"One token in exchange. Evernight should agree, right?"
"Vice Admiral Iceberg seems pretty fond of Gehrman."
"Fors... She's too much of a slacker. Waste of money."
As he muttered, Su Lin conjured himself a parasol and a beach chair, then lay down. Heaven knew why the Golden Crow on the neighboring tower kept shining and radiating heat twenty-four hours a day. Didn't it ever clock off?
Putting on sunglasses, Su Lin began surveying this part of All-Heavens City.
There wasn't much to see. Just a Taoist priest with a unibrow performing a ritual, except the subjects of his ritual were an old television and a distinctly Japanese-style videotape.
"How scary."
The Taoist priest's apprentice went inside carrying a heap of inflatable dolls covered in talismans, apparently meant as sealing implements. He shut the door behind him, too, leaving roadside vendors like Su Lin unable to see what was happening inside.
What a shame.
Su Lin turned toward a young man selling sweet soup across the way at Wintergreen Dessert Shop. He wore a modern shirt and had short hair. He had the innocent look of someone unspoiled by knowledge, with simple sincerity in his eyes.
"A bowl of mung bean soup," Su Lin called, beckoning.
"Coming!" The young man hurried over and handed him a bowl of chilled mung bean paste.
The bowl was small and made of fired clay, but the mung bean paste was a much deeper green than the kind normally seen on the street. It looked