The group came to a sudden halt in front of a stall overflowing with herbs, oils, powders, and more mysterious jars than a suspicious alchemist's basement. Song Meiyu gasped so loudly that an old woman three stalls away dropped her candied plum.
"This herb!" she shrieked, dramatically clutching a dried plant that looked like a crumpled weed. "It only grows on the northern cliffs at the break of spring!" she added, eyes wide as moons, voice trembling.
The merchant, an unnervingly thin man with a curled mustache and the voice of a carnival announcer, sprang to life. "Welcome, honored guests! Such refined faces! Beautiful people only deserve beautiful things! Behold, these miracle roots! Cosmetics! Face creams! And this—a true treasure! Sample box! Free sample! Please try! Try before cry!"
While Song Meiyu and the merchant locked into a duel of herbal knowledge, Linyue wandered to the side where a small box of miscellaneous cosmetics sat, unloved and half-forgotten. Inside: powders in a dozen suspiciously enthusiastic shades of pink, creams that smelled like confusion and slightly expired jasmine, and a lone little glass vial standing like a mysterious orphan among them.
She picked it up.
A hand-written label clung to the side like it had been added by someone with no regrets and questionable handwriting: Potent Long-Lasting Spring Water.
She squinted at it.
Potent? In what way? Long-lasting? For how long? Spring water? From which spring? The season? The drink? A metaphor?
Was it meant to refresh the skin? Awaken the soul? Grant eternal youth? Summon an ancient frog god? There were no instructions. Just a smug little label.
She uncorked it. Clear liquid. No scent. No sparkle. No dramatic swirl of ancient power. Just… water. Suspiciously normal water.
Her brow furrowed. Was this a skincare thing? A health potion? A prank? Was she supposed to drink it? Pour it over her head? Use it to summon ancestors? Throw it into someone's face during a fight?
She glanced around.
Song Meiyu was still deep in a passionate lecture about herb-drying techniques. He Yuying had stationed himself a safe ten paces away, arms crossed, face blank, clearly disassociating. Shen Zhenyu was quietly watching her, eyes narrowed with the same look of a man observing a kitten juggling knives.
The merchant did say it's a free sample… must be safe, right?
Linyue, with the serene recklessness of a woman who once dueled a demon while wearing mismatched shoes, dabbed a drop onto her right hand and rubbed it with her fingers.
Nothing happened.
No glow. No tingle. No sudden urge to dance. Just… slightly damp skin.
Linyue frowned down at her hand, turning it this way and that. "Just water?" she muttered, clearly offended on a spiritual level. "Not even a sparkle?"
Behind her, Shen Zhenyu finally let out a quiet breath—his usual "thank the heavens nothing exploded this time" exhale. Somewhere nearby, a chicken clucked as if to say, same.
But it was at that exact moment, because the universe had a cruel sense of humor and perfect comedic timing, a drunken man stumbled into the middle of the street behind them. He wobbled like a scarecrow in a windstorm, arms flailing as he tried to wave down something only he could see. Possibly a cloud he thought was his uncle. Behind him, a cart loaded with plum wine barreled down the road. the driver blissfully unaware of the oncoming chaos, humming a merry tune and very much not looking at the road.
The drunk man took one heroic step forward. The cart driver looked up. Then he screamed. The cart veered violently straight toward Linyue and Song Meiyu.
What happened next unfolded in perfect slow motion.
Shen Zhenyu's eyes snapped to the oncoming disaster. His reflexes, trained by years of moral suffering and emotionally chaotic friends, kicked in. Like a noble protagonist in a third-rate romance novel (but with better hair and more emotional damage), he moved. With one swift motion, he wrapped an arm around Linyue's waist and spun dramatically to the left. Cape flaring (even though he wasn't wearing one). They twirled just as the cart screeched past, missing them by the width of a dumpling.
Song Meiyu, unlike everyone else who got heroically rescued or artfully dodged danger, was left to fend for herself. She took one frantic step backward to avoid the plum wine avalanche, tripped on absolutely nothing—perhaps the ghost of a cobblestone or an invisible spirit of misfortune—and crashed to the ground with a yelp. She landed squarely on her butt. The sound it made was somewhere between a thud and an offended squeak.
He Yuying, who had wisely kept a solid ten-foot distance remained completely untouched. As if this entire slapstick sequence was exactly what he had foreseen when he woke up this morning and decided to mentally disassociate for the next seven days.
The dust settled and the cart skidded to a halt with wine splashing dramatically over the road.
Silence.
Then came Linyue's voice—soft, calm, and deadly serious.
"… Where's the vial?" she asked, glancing down at her now very empty hand.
Because it wasn't there.
The little bottle of mystery water—clear, suspicious, and free—was gone.
It wasn't gone. That thing had ambitions.
Somewhere between Shen Zhenyu's dramatic spin and Song Meiyu's tragic fall, the little glass bottle had launched itself into the air like it had dreams of joining a circus. It soared above their heads, somersaulting elegantly few times—before its trajectory curved, dipped, and…
Slap.
Right onto He Yuying's face.
More specifically, his left cheek.
The contents smeared in a gloriously dramatic streak across his usually impassive face. The water trickled down like tears made of confusion and betrayal. He froze, stunned, as if struck by divine intervention or possibly just embarrassment.
The bottle, not yet finished with its performance. After baptizing He Yuying's left cheek with confusing moisture and existential dread, it bounced off his face. It twirled once more in the air, and landed with suspicious precision on Song Meiyu's left ankle, just as she was sitting up from the ground, still tenderly rubbing her very betrayed tailbone.
"… Ow?" she muttered, confused.
Song Meiyu picked up the glass vial with a slight wince. Squinting at the barely legible label, she read aloud in a voice heavy with suspicion: "Potent long-lasting spring water?"
Her tone somewhere between baffled and deeply offended. "What kind of name is that? Is it a prank? Is it cursed? Is it just… very enthusiastic hydration?"
She gave it a good sniff, because that was obviously the next logical step. Still just water.
Meanwhile, the rest of the group—Linyue stood serenely like chaos hadn't just occurred, Shen Zhenyu quietly alert, and He Yuying still processing the fact that fate had slapped him across the face, turned toward the stall owner in unison.
Unfortunately, the merchant was now locked in a full-blown shouting match with the cart driver. The two of them were standing nose-to-nose, flailing their arms like furious ducks.
Between the dramatic finger-jabbing and the unholy number of "Do you know who I am?!"s, it was clear they had entered Act II of a play no one wanted tickets to.
Song Meiyu slowly turned back to the others, raising an eyebrow. "Let's leave. Before we become part of… that."
The group exchanged one single, unified glance.
It said everything it needed to:
Agreed. Let's leave first, before another drama unfold.