Chapter 19 How did I end up here?
After noon, Achan locked the door and went to the West Market.
The goods in the West Market come from all over the world and are very complete, but it is difficult for her to buy everything she needs here.
She found a shop with a sign that read "Hunter". The shop was small and empty, with only an old man in a gray robe sitting lazily behind the counter.
Seeing a young and pretty girl walk into the shop, the old man raised his eyelids and asked, "Young lady, have you come to the wrong place?"
"I'm looking for something," Achan said directly.
Hearing her words, the old man straightened up: "What are you looking for, young lady?"
"Black water lichen over thirty years old, white soil from a century-old grave, fresh soil, and a hollow locust tree trunk at least fifty years old."
The old man quickly took notes with his pen. After Achan finished speaking, he had written on two sheets of paper.
"These three items aren't very valuable, but they're a bit troublesome to find. The asking price is fifty taels of silver, with a fifteen-tael deposit. Would you be willing to accept that, young lady?"
"Okay." Achan took out two silver ingots and pushed them to the old man.
The old man weighed the silver, then took out a square seal and stamped it on two pieces of paper. After that, he took out a wooden plaque about the length of a thumb from under the counter, on which the character "hunter" was engraved.
He pushed a stamped piece of paper and a wooden plaque toward Achan and said to her, "This is a token of our hunting lodge. Three days later, young lady, come here with the remaining silver and this token to collect your belongings."
Achan put away the papers and wooden plaques, nodded slightly to the old man, and turned to leave the shop.
Hunter's Shop is a relatively formal organization that is officially regulated; otherwise, it wouldn't be able to open a shop in the West Market openly.
They will search for special items according to the customers' needs. Although the prices are high, the items are genuine.
If there's a problem with the items, or if the people in the shop run away, Achan can take the hunting shop's token to the government office to file a complaint, and they will accept it.
After Achan left, the old man shook the paper listing three types of goods and shouted to the back, "Dog, here's some work."
A moment later, the curtain hanging on the back door was lifted, and a burly man about two meters tall bent over and walked in.
"Dad, what's the job this time?"
The old man handed the paper to the burly man: "Small job, the lichen shop just happens to have some left over, and you can find grave soil in Yixian County. There are many century-old graves there, and a day is enough for a round trip."
Gouzi nodded: "Let Er Gou go later. What about the hollow locust tree?"
“The locust tree, you have to go to Black Mountain. There’s a locust grove there, but it’s not a clean place. You have to go during the day. You have to go there yourself.”
"Got it." Gouzi readily agreed, then asked curiously, "Dad, what are these three things for?"
The old man shook his head: "These are all things with strong yin energy. I've never seen this combination before."
Being able to manage a hunting lodge, he naturally possessed considerable knowledge and experience; he could deduce what customers wanted to do from their requests.
Of the three types that the customer just ordered, only lichen is commonly available; the other two have never been requested before.
After leaving the shop, Achan did not return home.
She then went to the ironware stall and bought a hammer and a chisel, and then went to the spice stall and bought a mortar and pestle.
Finally, she went to the jade stall that had been investigated by the Mingjing Division before.
The unforgettable, portly shopkeeper was recommending a jade tea set to a customer at his stall. The customer seemed quite satisfied, readily paid the bill, and the portly shopkeeper deftly packed the tea set into a brocade box and presented it to the customer.
After seeing the guests off with a big smile, the chubby boss turned around and saw Ah Chan standing there watching for a while.
"Young lady, are you looking to buy jade?"
After thinking for a moment about how to say it without seeming abrupt, Ah Chan finally decided to speak directly.
“I happened to be there when the owner’s stall had the accident that day.”
The chubby boss was taken aback for a moment, but his expression didn't change, and he listened to her continue.
"I'd like to ask the owner, are those problematic jade pieces still on your stall?"
"It's still there, but it turns to powder with the slightest pressure, so it's probably unusable." The fat boss was honest; it wasn't that he didn't want to throw it away, but he felt it would be a waste to throw it all away.
The discarded jade artifacts could fill almost half a pocket, and the thought of it pained him.
"To be honest, I need jade powder to make incense balls recently, so I thought I'd come and buy some."
"I see..." The fat shopkeeper pondered for a moment, "If the young lady can take it all, just give me ten taels of silver."
He doesn't lack ten taels of silver, but the fact that a bunch of useless things can be sold for that price is enough to buy him some peace of mind.
“Okay, I’ll take it,” Achan replied.
The boss made Ah Chan wait a while and then sent his assistant to fetch the bag containing the scrap jade.
When the items arrived, Achan opened the bag and casually rummaged through it. The discarded jade inside was indeed all that the Snow Needle Serpent had inhabited.
She patted the jade powder off her hands, tied the pocket, and took out a ten-tael silver ingot from her sleeve and handed it to the shopkeeper.
The things Ah Chan bought this time were really heavy for her, but unfortunately no one helped her carry them, so she had to walk a while and then rest, and it took her more than an hour to finally get home.
When she got home, she casually placed the bag containing the jade behind the door. She wasn't actually lying to the shopkeeper; the jade powder really had no other use besides making incense.
These jade pieces are imbued with the scent of the Snow Needle Serpent, making them highly effective at repelling common snakes, insects, and rodents. If it weren't for the sudden accident involving Kobayashi, Achan would have already gone to buy them back.
Of course, the jade powder was just something I bought on a whim. Today, besides having someone search for those three materials, the other reason I went to the West Market was to buy tools.
She took out a hammer and chisel, and then brought out the willow stump she had bought earlier in the West Market.
Ah Chan had only ever seen people make handicrafts before, but doing it herself was a completely different experience.
She wanted to carve the willow into a bowl shape, but she underestimated the hardness of the wood. She worked from dawn until sunset, and finally finished.
When she put down the chisel, her hands were covered in blisters.
Achan ignored her hands, glanced at the sky, and moved the piece of willow wood with a groove carved out to the backyard.
The next day, the willow wood was only slightly damp, but three days later, the grooves carved into the willow wood were filled with water.
Three days had passed exactly. Ah Chan retrieved the things she had bought from the West Market and carried the willow wood back into the house.
When the sun set, she closed the doors and windows, and only lit an oil lamp inside.
She took out the three materials that she had acquired at a cost of fifty taels of silver.
The hollow locust tree was cut from the hollow part; the inside of the wood was black, and there were black burls. Achan knocked those burls off one by one, ground them into powder with a mortar and pestle, and set them aside.
Then, the black water lichen was ground up and poured into the willow trough along with the tree burl powder.
Achan took the initiative, mixed the two powders with the water in the groove, kneaded them into a ball like dough, and finally sprinkled sifted white soil from the grave mound on top to bind them together.
She divided the kneaded dough into eight pieces, put each piece into a syringe, and squeezed out sticks of incense.
At first, Achan's hands trembled, and the incense sticks she squeezed out were all wavy, but she gradually got the hang of it later.
The materials she had were only enough to make less than a hundred incense sticks, which needed to be air-dried for three days to be ready.
Three days later, Achan obtained ninety-two finished incense sticks; the rest had broken.
She divided the incense into two portions and stored them in a wooden box.
One of the portions contained forty-nine incense sticks; the other portion was put away.
At midnight, Ah Chan, who usually went to bed early, came downstairs dressed neatly. She went to the wooden table, where there was only a wooden box containing incense sticks and a bowl full of rice. Under the bowl was a piece of yellow paper with Xiao Lin's name and birth date written on it.
That was what Ah Chan asked for from Grandma Sun before she left.
She sat on the wooden stool, took out an incense stick from the box, lit it with a tinderbox, and then stuck it into the bowl.
That night, she sat at the table and lit seven incense sticks. The last incense stick was not burned out until dawn.
The room was quiet; nothing had happened.
Achan didn't mind, closed the box, and went upstairs to catch up on her sleep.
The same thing happened on the second day, the third day... and the sixth day.
These past few days, Ah Chan has been going downstairs to light incense every night at midnight. She has been doing this for seven consecutive nights, and today, there are only seven sticks of incense left in the wooden box.
She lit an incense stick, sat on the wooden stool, propped her chin up with one hand, and stared at the red glow on the incense stick.
Suddenly, the room, which had been pitch black, came to light.
The room hadn't changed, and the incense in the bowl was still burning, but the person sitting on the stool wasn't a person, but a pure white fox.
That was how Achan looked before she possessed someone's body.
The fox was bound by six black chains that stretched into the void, with no end in sight.
As Chan tried to make a move, the fox moved its front paws, and she vaguely realized that she might be introspecting.
It is said that there is an inner world within the human body, which is not easily seen. Today, she somehow managed to enter it?
Before Achan could figure out what was going on, a black shadow shrouded in smoke appeared out of nowhere.
"How...did...I...get...here?"
The voice was intermittent, but it was familiar—it was Kobayashi's voice.
After burning incense to guide the soul for seven consecutive days, she finally managed to forcibly draw over the sealed soul of Madam Kobayashi.
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