Chapter 2: The Incense Burner Ritual
Lingxiu Liaoyu Valley had once been an annex building of the Xiangci Shelter. By the time Lin Qishan arrived, the signboard on that annex had already been changed three times: from "Jingguan She" to "Jingmian Cang", and now to "Lingxin Hall."
He stood at the end of a hallway, peering through a half-open door. Inside, four or five young women sat on meditation cushions, facing a gleaming bronze incense burner. The burner's lid was dented, as if it had been pried open and shut countless times. The air was thick with a blend of Tibetan incense and iodine—an acrid, astringent smell that stung his nose.
This wasn't his first time seeing the Incense Burner Ritual.
Five years ago, he had trailed a lead on it once. Back then he was still at the newspaper as a features reporter, assigned to cover "urban mind-body healing trends." He went in undercover as a client, observed for half an hour, and wrote a dull piece that the editor cut down to three short paragraphs.
After that, Xiangci caught fire in more ways than one—becoming wildly popular, and then literally going up in flames.
This time he had gotten in under the guise of an "external curriculum consultant." Pang Sinan had written a recommendation letter for him, claiming they wanted to "co-develop a closed-loop healing content matrix for middle-class women." The jargon almost made Lin Qishan laugh—like putting a bow on a knife.
"Teacher, please sit over here." A woman in a white uniform led him inside. Her voice was gentle, but her gaze was unmoving. Her surname was Yan, and she was a mid-level staffer in the "Cultivation Department." Supposedly, she had spent a few years on the provincial Women's Federation payroll before transferring into the Xiangci system.
Lin Qishan sat down and flipped open the booklet that had been handed to him.
On the first page was written "Rules for Incense Donors":
Bathe daily; fast for four hours.
Burn incense twice daily, morning and evening, keeping heart and mind in sync.
Do not initiate physical contact with the opposite sex.
If awakened from a dream, you must write down the dream.
Every word and every action is an offering.
He had just reached the fifth rule when the loudspeaker came to life.
It was not an alarm, but a recording of a woman's voice—gentle in tone, extremely slow in pace:
"When you hear my voice, please close your eyes. Surrender your body, surrender your pain, surrender the things you refuse to acknowledge."
Lin Qishan recognized the voice at once: it was Bai Jingci.
She still did not show herself, but her voice seeped through the hall, the glass, and the walls, soaking into the skin like water. He watched the women all close their eyes in unison, heads bowed, hands resting on their knees, as if waiting for something to descend upon them.
Sister Yan said softly, "The Incense Burner Ritual begins now."
The first step was called "Trial Offering."
Someone brought out a few three-inch incense sticks, lit them, and placed them into the burner. The smoke that curled up from the incense tips was neither straight nor coiling, hanging in the air like a person's sigh. Lin Qishan noticed that in front of each woman was a thin cloth, upon which her left hand lay open, palm up.
A male practitioner wearing surgical gloves came over, holding a pen-like scanning device. He lightly passed the instrument over each woman's palm. The device emitted a faint buzz for each one, until it paused on one woman's outstretched palm.
She was very thin, eyes sunken, her skin tinged an unhealthy blue. There were scratch marks on the back of her hand—shallow but fresh.
Her number was 0091.
"Her palm lines are chaotic," the male practitioner murmured. "Emotions not cleansed."
"Give her a second round," Sister Yan ordered.
They added more incense to the burner. This time, the smoke billowed thicker. 0091 coughed once, but did not open her eyes.
Lin Qishan narrowed his eyes. On the second page of the booklet he saw the line: "If still impure after two attempts, self-offering is required."
Sure enough, the third stage was called the "self-offering segment."
0091 was called up. She staggered to her feet, her voice as thin as a mosquito's buzz: "I… I had a dream last night… in the dream she said we shouldn't… shouldn't tell…"
"Who?" Sister Yan pressed.
"She… her number is… I've forgotten," 0091 whispered.
Lin Qishan abruptly sat up straighter.
Another woman quietly whispered, "It was 0024. She spoke up too soon."
The air suddenly crackled as if struck by static; the incense smoke recoiled for an instant, as if the room itself had gasped.
Lin Qishan looked up, and happened to see an inscription carved into the base of the incense burner:
"Those who offer pure incense must not leave their names."
In that moment, he felt as if the entire room was conspiring to muffle one person's voice—yet the more it tried to smother it, the more unmistakable it became that she had once spoken here.
That night, back at his apartment, Lin Qishan opened his computer and entered the keywords "0024 incense donor." The system responded with a prompt: "The number you searched for has been archived; insufficient permissions."
He stared at the screen, and suddenly recalled the girl's hushed words: She spoke up too soon.
What did she say? Who was she?
He closed the browser window. Outside, the wind rattled the paper covering his window. He turned away, about to get himself some water — only to notice a slip of paper that had been shoved under his door.
"Her first words were: 'I still remember.'"
With the lights extinguished, only the glowing pinpoints of incense remained, flickering like eyes in the dark.
Number 0136 let out a piercing, uncontrolled scream: "She isn't dead! You all know she's not dead — she just wouldn't shut up!"
People rushed forward to restrain her, but she bit one of them. Raving, she clawed at her own clothes, tearing them open to reveal a scar on her ribcage. It was a string of numbers tattooed there, now blurred with time or injury; only the final "24" was still barely discernible.
Lin Qishan stared fixedly at that string of numbers.
That wasn't a follower's number at all — it was an internal code, one used only for the batch of "unsuccessful offerers" he had once purged. He remembered that her original case file had been labeled "Indeterminate-0024."
The frenzied woman was forced to the ground, and by the time they dragged her out, both of the male practitioners restraining her were smeared with blood. She had finally fallen unconscious, fingers still clenched tightly around a crumpled old sheet of paper.
Lin Qishan seized the moment to step forward, feigning indifference as he bent to pick it up.
It was a printed page of prayer, but on the back was a handwritten line: "Number 0024, offering unsuccessful — spoke three times before the Guanyin statue."
Lin Qishan remembered that in the final files of the Xiangci fire case, there had been mention of a "pre-offering dissent incident." The details hadn't been clear, only a single note: "Subject severed own speech system."
He quietly slipped the paper into his sleeve.
That night he did not return to the company. Instead, he went to the old quarter of the city, to a small teahouse beside an abandoned temple — a spot where, in the past, cult followers would privately trade "merit goods."
The teahouse had long since closed, its iron gate rusted over. Lin Qishan knocked three times on the door, but no one answered. He sat down on the steps across the way and flipped the recovered paper over in his hand.
On the other side of the paper was another message:
"She said it's not 'don't remember,' it's 'can't say.'"
He stared at this sentence for a long time, until the streetlamp behind him began to flicker—like a reminder of what should be illuminated, and what should be extinguished.
He stood up to leave. As he emerged from the alley, his phone screen lit up.
A text message from an unknown number:
"Her voice — you can't delete it."