Song Ciwan left Min's Spiritual Material Shop before sunset.
Instead of heading straight home, she took a winding route, looping through the surrounding alleyways several times.
Only when darkness fell and she was certain no one was following did Song Ciwan find a secluded spot to change back into her original clothes and disguise.
With the effect of A Grain of Sand in the Sea still active, Song Ciwan was completely unnoticeable as she carried her bundle and quietly returned home.
After getting home and tidying up, she began to sell off her gains from the day.
[You have sold one catty, three taels, and two maces of Malice. You have received 130 years of Lifespan.]
[You have sold one pot of Chicken-Stuffed Pork Demon Belly. You have received two Strengthening Pills.]
Yes, that's right—two Strengthening Pills.
The offal Song Ciwan had gotten from the Washing Room today was a fat Pork Demon belly. When she got home, on a sudden whim, she decided not to stir-fry the innards as usual. Instead, she took a plucked chicken she'd bought the day before and made a proper chicken-stuffed belly dish.
This counted as a fairly substantial dish, and Song Ciwan wanted to see if this new preparation method would elicit a different response from the Heaven and Earth Scale.
The result was a pleasant surprise: one dish of chicken-stuffed belly had yielded two Strengthening Pills.
Strengthening Pills were a type of Qi Blood Elixir, and Song Ciwan had checked the prices of Elixirs at Min's Spiritual Material Shop earlier that day.
The lowest-level Qi Nourishing Pill sold for ten taels of silver a piece at Min's Spiritual Material Shop.
Strengthening Pills were a higher grade than Qi Nourishing Pills, and at Min's Spiritual Material Shop, they sold for fifty taels of silver each.
A chicken cost no more than fifty cents, yet that one extra Strengthening Pill was worth fifty taels of silver!
According to the clerk at Min's Spiritual Material Shop, "Don't complain about the price, customer. At least you can still buy it with silver. For the truly high-grade stuff, some Spiritual Objects can't be bought with gold or silver at all. You need Primordial Pearls for those!"
'What are Primordial Pearls?'
Song Ciwan asked the question casually, but unfortunately, the clerk himself didn't really know.
After boasting about his worldliness for a bit, he could only offer a vague explanation in the end. "Heh, they're, uh, they're the good stuff used exclusively by the big shots. Anyway, I heard... one Primordial Pearl can be exchanged for one thousand taels of silver!"
'Whoa. By that measure, they're really something incredible.'
A sudden sense of awe filled Song Ciwan—awe for the vastness of the world and its boundless riches.
She also made a mental note of the boastful young clerk's name; the Shopkeeper had called him San Zhuzi.
San Zhuzi and Shopkeeper Min were Song Ciwan's newest window into this vast world.
Song Ciwan continued to operate the Heaven and Earth Scale. [You have sold three taels and two maces of human desires—greed, anger, and fear. You have acquired the Low Level Illusion Technique: Touching Stone into Gold.]
Touching Stone into Gold: This is a Low Level Illusion Technique. It cannot truly turn stone into gold; it merely deceives the eyes.
'Oho, a Blinding Technique. The essential skill for some of those legendary swindlers, eh?'
After silently committing the method for using Touching Stone into Gold to memory, Song Ciwan let out a soft chuckle.
'This Minor Magic seems a bit crude, but that's fine. There's no such thing as a useless spell, only a person who doesn't know how to use it.'
As Song Ciwan memorized and contemplated, she made another sale: [You have sold seven taels and three maces of human desires—love, sorrow, and fear. You have acquired the Basic Taoist Skill: Dream-Entering Technique.]
Arcane incantations flooded Song Ciwan's mind. Shocked and delighted, she couldn't help but shift her feet slightly and clench her hands into fists.
'A Dream-Entering Skill!'
'What a miraculous ability,' Song Ciwan thought, mulling it over with a silent smile.
At midnight, Song Ciwan set down the roughly-carved Peach Wood Puppet she was working on. She changed into black clothes, donned the Human Skin Mask, and once again used Escape into the Night, vanishing from her home like a wisp of the night wind.
This time, she planned to pay Aunt Ge a visit and have a little chat.
Aunt Ge's family also lived in Jishan Square, about a street and a half away from the Song residence. They had a small, five-room courtyard, making their property over fifty percent larger than the Song Family's home.
Aunt Ge had given birth to three sons and two daughters, ultimately raising two sons and one daughter to adulthood. Now, her eldest son was married and had given her two grandsons and a granddaughter. By all accounts, her family was large and thriving.
There was just one downside: with so many people, even a five-room courtyard felt crowded and was inevitably noisy.
Bickering was a daily occurrence, like teeth bumping against the tongue. There was no solution, short of striking it rich.
As the night deepened, a wisp of wind drifted to the window of Aunt Ge's home.
Aunt Ge was sleeping fitfully. Her husband was a loud snorer, and she had to share a bed with her eldest grandson, who was already ten. The three of them were crammed onto one narrow bed, making for a tight squeeze.
As Aunt Ge turned over, her husband, sleeping at the other end of the bed, cursed her in his sleep. "Damned hag, are you possessed or what? Can't you sleep still!"
Jolted half-awake by the cursing, Aunt Ge wasn't sure if she was dreaming. She mumbled back out of habit, "Sleep still? Sure, if you get me a bigger room and build me a bigger bed, I'll sleep clear on the other side of it for you..."
Huang Gui, Aunt Ge's husband, retorted, "I've given you a cut of the dead man's money three times, but you insist on hoarding every penny. When did I ever say you couldn't build a bigger bed?"
Aunt Ge complained, "Those three times combined barely amounted to a few taels of silver. You brought back three taels from the Song Family's affair, but every time after that it was only one tael. What good is that? Does our second son not need money to find a wife? Does our daughter not need a dowry to marry? Other people get five taels when the money is split, but you only get one. Have you no shame..."
Her complaints trailed off as her vision suddenly blurred. A strange yet familiar figure slowly materialized in the darkness and sat on the edge of her bed.
The figure's appearance wasn't frightening at all—in fact, it was rather delicate. Yet upon seeing this "visitor," Aunt Ge felt her heart start to pound, and a wave of pure terror shot up the back of her neck.
Furthermore, as the "visitor" settled onto the bed, a strange, intangible force seemed to press down on her.
Aunt Ge's limbs felt weak and she broke out in a cold sweat, feeling like a fish on a chopping block. She shrieked in terror, "You... you... You're Lady Liu! Are you human or a ghost?"
The woman sitting on Aunt Ge's bed was none other than the deceased wife of Song Youde—Lady Liu!
Lady Liu blinked, and two rivulets of blood-red tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. They fell, drop by drop, onto Aunt Ge, who felt a dull, crushing pain in her chest, as if she were being struck not by teardrops, but by heavy hammers.
Aunt Ge couldn't get up, couldn't breathe, couldn't even struggle. She could only cry out in desperation, "Lady Liu! Sister Liu, please don't blame me! I didn't want to take your family's money, I had to! Constable Yu was the one who started it, and all the masters in the census office demanded a cut. Who would dare refuse?"
As soon as she confessed, the crushing weight of the bloody tears intensified. Aunt Ge shrieked and sputtered, begging for mercy, and within moments had blurted out a whole string of names...
These were, for the most part, the junior officials who had been on the same assignment as Song Youde. The one leading them, Constable Yu, was actually Aunt Jin Hua's husband!
With each of Aunt Ge's cries, the wind rustled the trees outside the window, shaking loose a field of dark shadows.
On the other side of the same bed, Aunt Ge's husband, Huang Gui, was also trapped in a nightmare, but the panicked cries that burst from his lips told a different story.
"Brother Song, it wasn't me! I didn't want to harm you! It was that Demon-slaying Captain, Zhang Ping! His Blood-Breaking Saber has to drink the fresh blood of a living person to grow in power! He's the one who did this to you!"
"I didn't want to! I was scared too! I'm living with my head on the chopping block every day!"
"Who knows if it'll be my turn next? I'm scared, I'm so scared... *sob*... Brother Song, are you suffering? Just you wait down there for your old brother..."
His voice grew fainter, turning into a choked sob, as if he were weeping tears of blood.