Indeed, the whispers from the little urn were pleasant, but even more pleasant than that was the golden light suffusing from it. To Yun Jieshi, it might have been the sweetest thing he'd seen in a long time.
He had finally found the source of the closest golden light he had been chasing!
But as it turned out, the beam of radiance didn't have anything to do with the natural color of the urn. Instead, it was some special effect that layered over the ornament. The urn, after all, was metallic and had the color of rusting iron. The spherical shape of its mouth was a little crooked, suggesting that it was ancient.
But none of this mattered to Yun Jieshi.
He didn't hesitate to pop out from the limited space he had created from the doorway and hunch next to the urn. With a finger, the little monkey stroked the urn, and the old, sagely voice spoke:
"The Complete Dear Treasure, Qui Tian's Reminder."
'Another Dear Treasure?' Yun Jieshi thought, but then he stopped. He was even closer to the whispers now, and…
He narrowed his eyes.
'Doesn't this sound like—'
The thought died in his head almost immediately, however.
Something had shuffled some distance away – something that wasn't the falling snow. For the first time, and with bulging eyes, Yun Jieshi scanned the surroundings of the cabin. He had to strain them because of the obstacles, but he still managed to get a good view of things around him.
Great tree stumps surrounded the shabby wooden enclosure, and about a dozen meters away, erect, thin trees glazed with ice and snow could be seen.
From the emerging frozen woodland, something was moving relatively quickly towards the cabin, pushing against the mounds of collecting snow on the ground.
'Oh, no!'
The instant Yun Jieshi spotted hints of yellow on the figure, he scrambled back into the house. After closing the door behind him, he slumped to the floor and took a deep breath.
Shaking his head, he let loose a hoarse laugh.
The old woman was coming back.
Hints of shame fondled the little monkey. Was he a little child? Why did the prospect of being caught outside by the hag when she had told him not to leave make him run?
In his defense, though, the hag had only said, "Stay." She hadn't specified where. He could argue that he did technically stay and didn't wander about.
Not long after, the hag reached the cabin and pushed open the door.
Yun Jieshi held his breath, expecting some kind of scolding. He wasn't sure if the hag had sight as good as his, but his anxiety didn't go easy on him.
The little monkey's concerns turned out to be needless. In fact, when he saw the hag stagger in, he reeled, thoughts about his possible discipline all but forgotten. She wasn't alone.
Mounted on her hunched back was the large carcass of what looked like a wild boar. Yun Jieshi assumed it was a carcass, but in all truth, there was little indication that it had been harmed at all. The creature's wild, white hairs only confused him further. Surely, if it was dead, the blow that took its life would have reflected on its pristine coat, right?
The little monkey shook his head. He couldn't continue subscribing to the norms of Earth. Some kind of magic existed in this world. The boar could have been suffocated with a wave of the hag's hand for all he knew.
The creature looked as though it was asleep, but Yun Jieshi who strained his ears detected no signs of breathing or a pulse, which further enabled his imagination. He wondered if the creature didn't own a pulse to begin with perhaps.
A moment later, Yun Jieshi hurried to help the hag with the boar. It was heavier than he had thought, but he still lifted it with ease and set it down in the right corner of the cabin. The old woman had also brought a rope of scallions, a hand of ginger-like roots, and collections of other vegetables and herbs Ginger couldn't identify with a glance.
She swiftly grabbed for a crude knife in the corner, startling Yun Jieshi. Pulling a large bowl close to her, she pushed up the boar's neck and placed it under. With the knife, she slit the boar's throat and scarlet blood stained its pristine coat as it spurted into the bowl. The vessel was filled in a few breaths.
Before blood could spill on the floor, the hag pulled another bowl to replace the full one and then gave Yun Jieshi a sharp look.
"Fire…" she said and pointed at the full bowl as soon as her other hand was free. "To… fire."
Yun Jieshi frowned. He held the bowl, looked at the hag, and then the coals.
"You want me to… empty the blood into the—"
The hag nodded before he could finish his sentence. She pointed at the full bowl more meaningfully.
Yun Jieshi did as he was bid. He took the bowl and then with only a second's worth of hesitation, poured the boar's blood over the grate and onto the coals.
To his shock, the blood caught fire and vanished as soon as it met the gleaming coals. No thickets of smoke or choking smell rose from them at all.
'What in the world is this?' he thought, but the hag was beckoning to him again. The other bowl was filled. Yun Jieshi took it to the coals and poured the blood over. It burned in a reddish-orange flame and vanished, as though used up.
As he emptied the fourth bowl, a thought crossed his mind.
Hadn't the old, sagely voice said that the coals were extracted from a Complete Dear Treasure called Da Ya's Bleeding Hearth?
Perhaps it was Yun Jieshi's folklore-saturated mind that conjured the idea he had next.
'Do these coals need blood to keep burning? I haven't seen anything she can use to keep them going.'
But there was no answer. Yun Jieshi could only agonize over these Dear Treasures – the two he was now aware of – and their purpose until the boar was finally sapped of all the blood. In the end, he and the hag had tied it up on a beam overhead with older strips of hemp taken from the corner. The two hung the creature upside it and let the remains of its blood trickle into two more bowls.
Oddly though, when Yun Jieshi made to empty them both onto the coals, the hag stopped him. She silently took one from him and placed it beside her; she wasn't interested in the other.
After Yun Jieshi poured the blood from that bowl away, he turned to find the hag dipping a withered finger into the boar's blood. Another slip from her hemp cloak was before her, and she used the blood to write characters on it.
'She's doing it again,' the discount Sage thought and watched closely.
The old woman's finger was a blur on the strip of cloth. She wrote rather immaculately something he couldn't read, but only because she immediately squeezed the slip of hemp in her hand.
Just like before, Yun Jieshi saw the hag hold her hand over a clean bowl, and the hemp, suddenly aglow in a blue hue, turned wet and water poured from it, filling the bowl.
There was a lot more water this time, Yun Jieshi noted. It took three smaller bowls to collect all the water that spilled from the hemp. When it finally exhausted whatever magic compelled it to become a well, the old woman pushed one of the bowls toward the little monkey.
"You want me to drink again?" he asked but was already drawing the bowl to his lips.
The water tasted like any other, but it was… richer? The little monkey didn't know how to properly explain it.
'Is this really water? Is it different because she used blood on that cloth today instead of a root – like yesterday?' the discount Sage wondered. 'There was more of this water too.'
After he had drunk his fill, the hag pointed to the bedroll. The little monkey imagined she wanted him to rest, but he wasn't tired. He acquiesced still.
As soon as he left her in the right corner of the cabin, she turned and began chopping up the ingredients she had brought from who-knew-where. Yun Jieshi didn't get a good look. The old woman must have not wanted him to see, for whatever reason.
About a quarter of an hour later, she was done with that, and had filled her little teapot with the broken nozzle with water, and set it over the grate. Oddly, Yun Jieshi didn't detect the fragrant smell of the ingredients she used for her herbal tea before, even when the water started boiling.
The hag beckoned him like she did yesterday, and he sat opposite her next to the grate. She took the teapot off the heat and placed it on the tuanyuan table. Only when that was done did she reveal three stone cups instead of two – hers and Yun Jieshi's.
There were sets of different, chopped ingredients in each of them, and before Yun Jieshi could even try to discern which combinations there were, the old woman poured the hot water into all three cups.
"Little Sage… Pick," she said to him after setting her teapot down.
"What?" Yun Jieshi recoiled.
Had this turned into a game now?