The Mìdì Market

"That's too expensive, Brother," Meiduo said.

"To celebrate your big brother becoming a monk, of course we have to buy something tasty," Qu Zan said.

He still had a one-eyed dzi bead on hand, so he could afford to splurge a little Secret Silver.

From the day she was born until now, Meiduo had never eaten beef or mutton.

Once Meiduo finished her roasted egg, they headed out.

Their village was called Sakang Village, and all its land belonged to the Corpse Camel Temple.

Since the village was very close to the Corpse Camel Temple, many pilgrims passed through. A sizable market had formed.

The market bustled with people coming and going, with the clang of blacksmiths hammering iron, the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep, the bubbling of boiling butter tea kettles...

The road here was paved with gravel, making it much easier to walk on than the dirt path in front of their wooden house.

On either side stood flat-roofed buildings with thick white earthen walls, their ground floors serving as shops.

There were also stalls, with whole sides of yak meat and mutton hanging from wooden racks and dried meat stacked on cowhides. Along the street, cow-dung stoves supported large pots of meat broth, cooked fresh for sale.

Furs, fine cloth, tea bricks, copper kettles... all lay in heaps. Farmers carrying highland barley and turnips set up stalls right where they stood. It was quite a lively scene.

Here, people could pay with Secret Silver or barter with dried milk curds, wool, and rock salt...

Qu Zan had seen the world in his previous life, including streets a thousand times more prosperous than this.

For Meiduo, it truly opened her eyes. There was more to see along the way than she could take in, and the little girl practically wished she could turn her head a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Like other children her age, she had her curiosity; it had simply always been suppressed.

Seeing the sparkling light in his little sister's eyes, Qu Zan was very happy too.

As they walked, Qu Zan caught the festive mood and bought two pieces of milk candy.

They were hard candies made with honey, almonds, and milk, sweet without being cloying.

When Meiduo popped a candy into her mouth, an incredulous starlight burst into her eyes, as though to say that she could not believe anything so delicious existed in the world.

As the brother and sister wandered about, they suddenly heard a commotion up ahead.

A man knelt upright on the ground with his hands bound, guarded by several monk soldiers.

"This man was arrested and investigated for worshipping the Outer Dao. He is to be punished with flogging, here before the public!" a tall, burly monk soldier declared angrily.

When monk soldiers were on duty or guarding religious assemblies, they painted black eye makeup on their faces.

They smeared the area around their eyes with a black paste made from soot scraped from the bottoms of pots and mixed with butter, blackening their brows and eyes to give them a fierce, imposing look that struck fear into petty villains.

A monk soldier unfastened the long yak-hair whip at his waist, shook it out, and lashed the man straight across the back. Each stroke tore open a strip of pale flesh seeping blood.

On hearing that the man worshipped the Outer Dao, some of the onlookers angrily picked up stones from the ground and hurled them at his head.

"Stop! This was only his first time worshipping it. His crime does not warrant death!"

Religious beliefs in Mìdì were a chaotic mix. Apart from the shramana faith, some people were devout followers of the non-shramana Outer Dao.

Some even secretly arranged rituals and recruited believers. This was competing with the temples for business, so they were naturally suppressed with force.

"Still, this fellow looks like someone of some standing. If an ordinary serf were found to be a devout follower of the Outer Dao, he would face mutilation, such as having his tongue cut out or his fingers severed."

Qu Zan and his sister continued wandering the street. Suddenly, he spotted a stall covered in all kinds of jewelry, and his eyes lit up.

The dzi bead Huo De Lama bestowed on me contained an auspicious mystic resonance. I wonder whether any of this jewelry has it.

Mìdì was a place full of mystery and eerie strangeness, and even jewelry stalls like this could be found here.

Qu Zan went up to the stall and reached out to touch the pieces one by one, checking whether he could trigger a panel notification.

The stallholder was a middle-aged woman with a fleshy, fierce-looking face. Had an ordinary customer handled her wares so indiscriminately, she would already have flown into a rage.

But when she saw Qu Zan's red monk's robe, she suppressed her displeasure and forced a smile.

Qu Zan touched every piece, but not a single notification appeared.

It looks like everything those novels in my previous life said was false. Finding treasures at street stalls is nothing but a lie. Qu Zan was a little disappointed.

Qu Zan continued strolling onward. Besides buying beef and mutton on this trip to the market, he also wanted to buy some materials needed for a ritual.

He had mastered the Lion's Roar Heart Mantra. When going out to drive away evil entities, he needed to burn sang incense; chanting the mantra and reciting its sacred words would then produce remarkable effects.

He planned to try the mantra today, so naturally he needed to find the materials.

In the language of Mìdì, "sang" meant cleansing and removing defilement. Burning it meant letting it smolder over a low flame.

Qu Zan recalled the materials required for the Lion's Roar Heart Mantra: one alpine cypress branch, ten rhododendron leaves, one pine branch...

These materials could be considered easy to find. After all, they all came from common trees.

To avoid arousing suspicion, Qu Zan bought some cypress, rhododendron wood, pine wood, and the like as firewood... buying several dozen jin in one go.

Once he carried the firewood home, he would separate out the ritual materials.

"Brother, I'll help carry it," Meiduo volunteered, wanting to take the firewood on her back.

"Let me," Qu Zan said with a smile.

The little girl was barely taller than the bundle of firewood.

"You're an honored monk now, Brother. How could I still let you do heavy labor?" The little girl's face flushed bright red; she was still struggling somewhat.

"Meiduo, if you want to help your brother, you need to eat more and grow bigger and taller. Only then will you have the strength to work."

Qu Zan easily hoisted the firewood onto his back.

The brother and sister headed back. They still needed to buy some beef.

They chose a fresh beef stall and asked for five jin of beef and five jin of beef ribs...

Meiduo tugged at the hem of Qu Zan's robe. "Brother, look over there..."

Qu Zan looked where Meiduo indicated and saw a great mass of black enclosed within a wooden pen nearby.

That mass of black was a large herd of black goats. Strangely enough, every goat in the herd was pure black, without a trace of any other color.

Clad in their black pelts, the black goats stood motionless in the pen, like corpses.

Qu Zan examined the black goats closely. Their faces were very strange, and their eyes, with their distinct blacks and whites, actually looked human.

The longer he looked at those goats' faces, the more they resembled distorted human faces. The sight left Qu Zan somewhat alarmed.

A black goat's lips moved slightly. It was not eating grass. Qu Zan watched for a while; the black goat was clearly saying, "Save me, save me..."

The discovery made Qu Zan's hair stand on end and his scalp prickle.

What are these? Human goats?

An old man sat beside the goat pen. These eerie black goats belonged to him.

The old man wore a yellow robe. He was thin as a stick and covered in age spots, with sparse hair but a pair of thick, bushy eyebrows.

His eyes lay hidden in the shadows beneath those dense brows, like two black holes, terribly dark and frightening.

The sight of the old man frightened Meiduo into hastily hiding behind Qu Zan.

The old man turned his face toward them, seemingly wanting to meet Qu Zan's eyes.

Before he could, Qu Zan turned his gaze elsewhere.

Mìdì truly had an air of menace and eerie strangeness everywhere!

After picking up the beef they had bought, Qu Zan and Meiduo hurried away.

"We'll just have beef today. We can have mutton another time," Qu Zan said.

Meiduo nodded repeatedly. After the fright those eerie human goats had given her, she felt she would never dare eat mutton again.

After they carried the ten jin of beef home, Meiduo washed it.

The beef was very fresh.

Qu Zan blanched the beef and bones, which had already been cut into small pieces, then put them straight into the pot to boil. He added only coarse salt and let them simmer slowly for over two hours.

Good ingredients needed only simple cooking to bring out their freshest, most tender flavor.

There was still some time before dark.

Qu Zan had Meiduo watch the pot. After sorting out the ritual materials and dividing them into individual portions, he took one portion and left the house.

He was going to test the power of the Lion's Roar Heart Mantra.