By the eleventh hour, hunger gnawed at my bones like a starving hound—punishment for skipping supper.
Though Ling Xi's care parcel yielded almond biscuits- ", their sweetness turned to ash when a spectral chill seized me in the bathing chamber. Not winter's bite, but the bone-deep cold of forgotten graves. My limbs turned to lead, consciousness fraying as the entity stirred.
Three days had passed since its last visitation. Like clockwork at the witching hour, the curse awakened. Without Ling Xi's talismanic suppression, three more seizures would unravel my spirit like moth-eaten silk—leaving me as hollow-eyed as Grandfather chanting to ancestral tablets.
The staircase I'd once bounded down became a precipice.Crawling and stumbling like a broken marionette.Until I lay sprawled on the living room sofa."Master…" escaped, my lips—a threadbare prayer swallowed by shadows.
No answering footsteps. Only the water clock's liquid heartbeat mocking my shivers.
"Now you remember your Master?" A voice like frozen jade1. pierced the haze. Ling Xi materialized in cartoon-print fleece pajamas, her porcelain fingers gripping a surgical steel case.
"Endure the pain. Rise."Moonlight glinted on three hundred silver needles as she unlatched the box.
"Master," I rasped through clenched teeth, heaving myself upright. Her murmurs wove through the night air—Yunmen, Zhongfu, Jade Pillow, Celestial Pillar—each acupuncture point named like forgotten constellations.
"Yin energy thickens like swamp mist." Her needles fell like winter rain, embedding in my flesh with surgical precision. "Starting tomorrow, bake in sunlight.
Ling Xi's fingers danced like cranes in flight, silver needles falling like steel feathers. Each piercing brought fresh agony that contorted my face.
"Saving Meng Fan earned your first karmic merit," she intoned, rotating a needle between jade-like fingertips. "The malevolent spirit weakens compared to our peach blossom village days."
"Recite the Earth Store Sutra daily," she commanded, driving another needle into my Jade Pillow acupoint. "Neglect this, and even Guanyin's mercy won't save you."
When the last needle withdrew thirty torturous minutes later, the spectral cold receded like mercury pooling in moonlight. "Soak in hot springs until your bones glow," Ling Xi ordered, vanishing upstairs with her steel case.
I lay gasping on celadon silk cushions, a soul freshly dragged back from the underworld's threshold. Only when the grandfather clock chimed the Hour of the Ox did warmth creep through my veins.
The grandfather clock struck two when I emerged from the bathhouse, steam still clinging to my fresh cotton robes. My eyelids weighed like bronze temple bells, yet I forced trembling fingers to search Earth Store Sutra on my phone—the Bodhisattva's vow to empty hell realms. Arcane characters danced like demonic sigils across the screen, their pronunciations mocking my mortal tongue.
Collapsing onto celadon cushions, I plummeted into dreamless oblivion with the phone clutched to my chest—a digital talisman against the dark.
High noon sunlight stabbed through lattice windows when I descended. Ling Xi sat coiled on her mahogany daybed, jade hairpin glinting as she turned a page in Compendium of Spectral Phenomena.
"Feed yourself first," she commanded without glancing up, tea steam curling around her face like incense.
"Where are we going?" I asked through a mouthful of congee.
Ling Xi set down her teacup with a porcelain clink. "The parasitic entity in your meridians demands tri-nightly suppression—exhausting for us both." Her lips curved like a Song dynasty brushstroke. "Last night I consulted the Celestial Compass and Eight Trigrams. We'll anchor it with celestial alignment for a year."
"Thank you, Master." My voice trembled with breathless gratitude.
The agony of this malevolent entity entrenched in my meridians—I've tasted its venom through the night, when death seemed preferable." My fingers whitened around the chopsticks.
Every three days, ten times a month, over a hundred times a year. How could mortal flesh endure? I'll be devoured long before accumulating ten karmic merits.
Yet Ling Xi's promise of one year's reprieve ignited desperate hope. I slurped my steaming cup of instant noodles, broth splattering the bamboo placemat.
"Tonight's Lunar New Year's Eve." Her jade bangle clinked against the celadon teapot. "I've invited Su Tongyuan for the reunion feast."
I nearly choked on a noodle strand.
Ling Xi feigned solemnity, her jade bangle clinking against the celadon teacup. "Two souls make for dreary festivities. More guests mean livelier yang energy."
"You're the Master," I replied with resigned obedience, chopsticks clattering against my blue-and-white bowl. "Your house, your rules."
"Decided then." She decreed with the finality of a Daoist oracle, medicinal sachets swaying at her waist. "You'll prepare tonight's feast."
I devoured the last of my instant noodles, broth splattering the bamboo placemat. Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I nodded toward the door—our silent pact to depart.
Truth be told, Su Tongyuan's presence curdled my stomach. Yet as Ling Xi's client-patient and surface-level disciple, I held no rights to refuse.
Ling Xi slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes-Benz.Thirty minutes later, the vehicle purred to a halt before Jingdu's "Ghost Market"—a crumbling thoroughfare where Edo-period architecture sagged under neon corruption.
Storefronts crowded the street like crooked teeth, their paper lanterns bleeding crimson light onto deserted flagstones. "Every transaction here violates daylight morality," Ling Xi murmured, adjusting her jade bangle. "This is where Jingdu's surgeons sell black-market organs and monks auction cursed sutras."
"Master, don't the authorities regulate organizations like this?"I whispered. Every nation has its laws, every home its rules—I couldn't fathom how the Ghost Market thrived unchecked in the Jingdu.
Ling Xi locked the car doors, eyeing me as though I were a fool. "Where light cannot reach, darkness thrives. And sometimes," she said, her voice edged with irony, "the light itself becomes tainted by that darkness. They grow... complicit. Over time, the shadows form their own order—flourishing boldly beneath the sun's very gaze."
"Oh." A slow understanding washed over me.
Ling Xi meant that the Ghost Market existed in the capital with the authorities' tacit approval,I realized. As long as major incidents were avoided and both sides profited, why disrupt the arrangement?
" Remember—stay behind me and keep silent. Trouble finds those who ask too many questions." She spoke with a warning tone. "The Ghost Market players aren't to be trifled with, and I've no desire for complications.""Understood." I trailed her, miming zipping my lips.
Two minutes later, Ling Xi led me into a traditional Chinese herbal medicine shop. The proprietor was a gaunt man in his sixties wearing a black skullcap, his spine curved like a question mark.
Cigarette smoke curled around his yellowed fingers as he flicked the ash, adjusting round-framed glasses that slid down his bony nose. "What brings you here?" he rasped.
Without responding, Ling Xi approached the carved sandalwood counter. Under the old man's watchful gaze, she reached out and deliberately shifted an abacus bead.
The old man bared his tobacco-stained teeth in a grin, stubbing out his cigarette against a bronze ashtray shaped like a lotus. Emerging from behind the counter with movements like rustling bamboo parchment, he gestured toward an arched moon gate. "After you."
Ling Xi nodded almost imperceptibly and swept past the swaying beaded curtain.
I stood utterly bewildered, a dozen questions burning my tongue. Then I remembered her warning in the car - Trouble finds those who ask too many questions - and swallowed my inquiries like bitter medicine, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper.
Behind the apothecary lay a serene courtyard where meticulously arranged flora thrived in harmonious disorder. An elderly man in an embroidered Tang-style jacket squatted among the plants, pruning shears in one hand and a carved rosewood pipe in the other. Wisps of smoke curled around his weathered face as he tended the foliage with monastic focus.
"Two medicinal ingredients," Ling Xi announced, her voice cutting through the botanical haze. "Bodhi Heart and Seedless Sunflowers."
The gardener's shears hesitated mid-snip. He drew deeply from his pipe, the embers flaring like miniature lanterns. "Regrettable timing," he rasped, smoke threading through his words. "Those particular remedies… currently beyond our reach."
A ripple of disappointment crossed Ling Xi's features. "Might we arrange prior reservation?"
As the man turned, moonlight revealed his face - a latticework of scars that twisted his visage into something between topographic map and warning hieroglyph. My breath caught, the courtyard's tranquility suddenly laced with iron.
The old man studied Ling Xi through milky eyes, his gaze lingering on me with a crooked smile. "Those two ingredients are rarer than phoenix feathers," he wheezed. "Not in a year, nor a decade would you find them."
Ling Xi offered a curt nod of thanks and strode out.
Beneath the apothecary's crimson lanterns, I finally burst out: "Master, what's Bodhi Heart? I've only heard of bodhi seeds. And seedless sunflowers—do such things even exist? Don't all sunflowers have seeds?"
Moonlight silvered the alley as she explained: "Bodhi Heart emerges from mutated bodhi seeds—nature's alchemy when plant genes transform unexpectedly."
"As for seedless sunflowers," Ling Xi sighed, "they bear shells filled with hollow voids instead of kernels." Moonlight glinted off her jade pendant as she continued: "The malevolent spirit within you thrives on yin energy. Only the Three Supreme Yang Substances can suppress it—Bodhi Heart and hollow sunflowers are naturally yang-saturated. Combined with a violet-gold rooster's comb, this triple yang convergence would create a cosmic clash against the yin essence, starving the spirit of its power."
"Violet-gold comb? That's medicine too?" I frowned.
"In a sense," she tapped the apothecary's wooden counter, "but not plant-based. We need a rooster whose comb shimmers with amethyst and gold—alive and crowing."
Her words struck me like temple bells. At eighteen (nineteen come New Year), I'd never encountered such arcane zoology. "Wait, that's a living creature? You expect me to believe—"
"Belief is irrelevant." Ling Xi's voice turned glacial. "When yang and yin duel, we don't question the weapons—we pray they strike true."
Had Ling Xi not maintained her monastic solemnity, I'd have accused her of pulling my leg.
She then led me into an antiquities shop no larger than twenty square meters. Two lacquered shelves flanked a central table carved with lotus motifs, every surface crammed with dust-laden relics—porcelain vases with cracked glaze, bronze mirrors mottled with patina, jade pendants strung on faded silk cords. Though I couldn't discern authenticity, the museum-worthy grandeur was undeniable. Or perhaps it was the patina of neglect: oxidized bronze ding vessels wore beards of cobwebs, while celadon plates slept beneath blankets of ash, their ox-blood glaze peeking through like shy maidens.
In the corner, a middle-aged man with grease-slicked hair sat hunched over a laptop at a rosewood table, cracking sunflower seeds between his teeth while muttering expletives at his screen.
Squinting closer, I realized he was playing "Fight the Landlord" - the online card game's digital battlefield reflected in his smudged glasses. "Browse around, ladies," he called without looking up, "I'll be with you after this hand."
Ling Xi drifted between shelves, examining cracked celadon vases and bronze mirrors clouded with artificial patina.
"Master," I whispered, moth-wing soft, "are we actually buying antiques?"
"Must one purchase antiques in an antique shop?" Her voice carried the crispness of temple wind chimes.
"But…" My confusion thickened. "Isn't that the point?"
She trailed fingers over a "Ming dynasty" urn's garish glaze. "Not a single artifact here predates last Christmas. Only fools part with silver for such pageantry."
"What?" I gaped, utterly bewildered.
The middle-aged man paused his "Fight the Landlord" game and barked a laugh that rattled the celadon teacups. "Exactly! This whole place is for parting fools from their money." He squinted at me through cigarette smoke. "First time at the shadowy night market, eh, boy?"
I hunched my shoulders like a tortoise retreating into its shell. As the man stretched after finishing his card game, his yawn dissolved into a teasing grin: "Haven't seen you in ages, Little Ling. Finally found yourself a sweetheart?"
"My apprentice," Ling Xi replied with the detachment of someone identifying a common weed.