Instead of explaining that, Xue Xian gritted his teeth and said, “You’ll see some curved patterns inside. Have you ever seen any other translucent golden marbles?”
Xuanmin brought the golden marble closer to the candle flame. Sure enough, though initially indistinguishable from ordinary gold, the marble became slightly translucent, revealing a coiled shape within.
“A snake,” said Xuanmin.
Xue Xian bit his tongue, but his expression was livid. Your mother’s a snake!
“Don’t you believe me now? Move your stupid paperweight away, okay? Give me back my marble!”
Xuanmin wasn’t an unreasonable person. Having heard Xue Xian’s proof and rationale, he reached over and removed the paperweight.
Xue Xian propped himself up, gripping the table to shake off the vertigo from being crushed under what amounted to a mountain of stone for him. He stretched his paper arms toward Xuanmin, his tone impatient. “Where’s my marble? Give it to me, quick!”
Xuanmin pointed at the center of the table. “First, go—”
“Enough with the bullshit. Just give it to me!” Xue Xian interrupted, irritated.
Xuanmin stared at him for a moment before placing the marble between Xue Xian’s paper paws.
Thump!
The golden marble wasn’t light. Paper had no way of supporting its weight. Xue Xian felt his hands slam downward. His vision went dark, and the accursed marble dragged him right off the table, sending him crashing to the floor.
He didn’t want to live anymore.
When Xuanmin plucked Xue Xian from the ground, his tiny hands were still tightly clutching at the golden marble, like a feeble miser guarding his treasure to the end.
“I was only asking you to move closer to the center of the table.” Xuanmin placed the paper doll in that spot and gazed down at him. “Still going to interrupt me next time?”
Mind your own business! Xue Xian hissed mentally.
However, he was reeling from the nasty fall and afraid that upsetting Xuanmin might lead to his precious marble being confiscated. “Fine,” Xue Xian said with a reluctant snort. “I’ll suffer the injustice of letting you finish speaking next time.”
Clutching the marble, he rolled around on the table until he bumped into something with a clang. Only then did he remember that two objects had fallen out of the millstone, not one.
Sprawled over the top of the golden marble, Xue Xian glanced at the obstacle and realized he’d collided with a silver disk the size of an apricot. There was a thin seam around its edge. When touched, it made a tinny noise.
“What’s this?” Xue Xian asked as he rolled a distance away to get a different view of it. But even from there, it wasn’t something he recognized.
Jiang Shining’s voice broke in. “It’s a medical bell.”
With his body plastered seamlessly to the golden marble, Xue Xian rolled right into the stone paperweight, where he finally came to a stop. “You’re awake?”
“I was awake the entire time, just unable to speak,” said Jiang Shining. “My ability to talk just returned, probably because it’s nighttime.”
His once dull voice was gentle, infused with an ineffable vitality that hadn’t been there before. It was as if some invisible burden had been lifted from him, leaving him much more relaxed. Right after speaking, he slipped from the table to the chair, then from the chair to the floor, where he reverted to his scholar’s appearance.
Picking up the medical bell, he rubbed it with his fingers. “It belongs to my family.”
Xue Xian was taken back. “Your family?”
“Mm.” Jiang Shining nodded. He showed Xue Xian one side of the bell, where a name was carved: Jiang Yong.
“That’s my great-grandfather’s name,” he explained. “He used to be a traveling doctor. He’d walk the streets every day, making calls to his patients. In those days, all traveling doctors would hang a silver medical bell on their medicine chests to notify their patients of their arrival as they walked around. When the sick heard it, they would come out to receive treatment. This was his bell. These days, traveling doctors are rare. Most of them are based in physical clinics and pharmacies. The Jiang family practiced medicine for generations, and this bell was passed down from my great-grandfather to my parents to keep our roots in mind.”
“Your parents?” Xuanmin frowned. He reached for the bell to examine it. After a moment, he asked, “Have you any blood relatives left?”
“I do,” said Jiang Shining. “My older sister was married off to Anqing, so she escaped the fire.”
“Your parents’ souls are trapped inside this bell. It’s different from Lady Xu’s situation with the millstone. I can’t free them for now. You’ll need three drops of laogong blood from one of your living relatives.”
“Laogong blood?” Having been born into a medical family, Jiang Shining knew exactly what he was talking about. “You mean fresh blood from the acupoint in the center of the palm?”
Xuanmin nodded. After returning the medical bell to Jiang Shining, Xuanmin glanced at the cloth bag nearby. Xue Xian followed his gaze and noticed there was another incense stick in the cloth bag.
“Hey, you used one incense stick to send off Lady Xu,” Xue Xian said, carelessly pointing at it, “so what’s the other one for?”
“To send off this scholar.” Xuanmin was blunt.
Before Jiang Shining could react, Xue Xian had already raised his head. “What?! You—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Xuanmin braced himself against the table, his brows firmly creased and eyes slightly closed, as if he was unwell.
Xue Xian stopped talking to study Xuanmin. “Bald donkey?”
He tentatively called out to him twice, but Xuanmin didn’t respond. Instead, he remained seated with his eyes closed, as though he were meditating. Fine red lines reminiscent of the legs of a spider suddenly crept from the small mole on his neck.
However, Xue Xian didn’t notice this detail, even as he stared at Xuanmin for a while. Once Xue Xian was sure Xuanmin wasn’t dying or regaining consciousness, he waved at Jiang Shining.
Around ten minutes later, a frail-looking scholar could be seen hurrying down the road on the outskirts of Ningyang County, away from Guiyun Hall. On his shoulder sat a paper doll, greedily clutching a golden marble in its arms.
Jiang Shining and Xue Xian.
As Xue Xian urged him to walk faster, Jiang Shining hesitantly said, “I-I still feel like this is wrong.”
“What’s wrong?” Xue Xian asked, stroking his golden marble.
“Rushing off and leaving the Master behind like that.”
Xue Xian glared at him. “Are you sleep talking, you damn bookworm? He’s a ghost catcher, and we’re the ones who got caught! Have you ever seen escaped criminals bringing the warden along for a prison break?”
“No,” Jiang Shining admitted. He understood what Xue Xian was saying, but after thinking a while longer, he continued, “Still—”
“Don’t say still.”
“But—”
“No buts, either!”
Jiang Shining looked at him, defeated.
Xue Xian sprawled over the golden marble as he drawled, “I know, I know. I’m always right.”
What could Jiang Shining say to that?
Ningyang County observed a nightly curfew. Barriers and guardhouses had been set up at the larger crossroads, while the watchmen stood by with bags of wine to keep themselves warm. All four of the city gates were now tightly shut. Normal townsfolk who wished to leave the city at this time would have to sprout wings.
However, the curfew wasn’t an issue for the two in this situation. The advantages of Jiang Shining’s paper figure became invaluable now. When necessary, he could compress himself into a thin sheet and slip through doors and gaps.
Xue Xian’s eyes were keener than a dog’s. Each time he spotted the watchmen’s shadowy forms in the distance and barked his orders to Jiang Shining, he was confident and decisive.
“Turn east.”
“At the next corner, hug the wall and head into the alley.”
“Continue straight, then turn west.”
Jiang Shining had a mild personality and was accustomed to obeying Xue Xian’s orders, so he complied without question for a while. But after putting his faith in Xue Xian and walking for a long time, Jiang Shining finally couldn’t take it anymore and stopped.
“Wise One, please shut up,” he said, distressed.
“What’s wrong? We were doing just fine. The watchmen haven’t noticed us.”
“I know!” snapped Jiang Shining. “They haven’t noticed us, but I’ve noticed this fabric shop three times over. If I keep following your instructions, we won’t be leaving the city until next year.”
Xue Xian hugged his golden marble. “Hmph… It’s getting dark. We should find a place to rest soon.”
This hoodlum and his fragile ego! Jiang Shining thought.
Without Xue Xian’s useless directions, Jiang Shining made quite a bit more progress. Soon, they’d left the place they’d circled thrice and were traveling the main road.
“This building looks familiar.” Xue Xian glanced around, sure that he’d seen this street before.
Jiang Shining grunted. “You really have no sense of direction. We passed through this area this morning. How could you forget so quickly?”
His reminder jogged Xue Xian’s memory: If they continued forward and headed east at the next corner, they’d see Scribe Liu’s residence.
In the stillness of the night, even the faintest of sounds were magnified, becoming many times clearer than the same during the day. As they rounded the street corner, they caught a glimpse of the familiar courtyard gates, and a faint smattering of voices drifted over to them. It sounded like an argument, or something similar. Nothing peaceful, at any rate.
Jiang Shining halted for a second.
Xue Xian turned to the Liu family’s compound. “What is it? You want to see him get his just deserts?”
Jiang Shining shook his head. “That’s Scribe Liu’s own business. It has nothing to do with me.”
He lingered no longer and headed toward the city gate. Perhaps it was a doctor’s nature, but he couldn’t stand to watch others suffer. This might have been the biggest difference between him and people like Scribe Liu.