His goal achieved, Xuanmin let the boy go and removed the talisman from his forehead, then folded the paper and put it away. Xue Xian stared at the marble in Xuanmin’s hand, waiting for him to pass it over.
Xue Xian hadn’t expected the bald donkey to help him. What tiny wisp of conscience he had flickered within him. Fine. Once I get the marble back, I’ll try behaving for a couple of days. Let him off the hook for a while. I’ll even give him another dragon scale if it comes to that. I still have a few.
However, after Xuanmin briefly inspected the marble, his brows knitted. There was an indescribable oddness to his expression in that instant, as if he were wavering between contemplation and confusion. He stared at the marble for a moment longer and rubbed it with his thumb, then leaned down to sniff at it, still frowning.
Xue Xian rolled his eyes back, feeling uneasy. Fortunately, his body had yet to recover, leaving him unable to establish a connection with the marble, otherwise he would have kicked Xuanmin in the face for all that rubbing and sniffing. A storm of curses welled up inside him, but with his hand stuck to his mouth, he couldn’t say a single thing. He was forced to swallow them all, almost choking himself in the process.
Luckily, Xuanmin’s strange behavior didn’t last long. After a brief sniff, he lifted his head and his expression returned to its usual indifference once more. He was silent for a second before he said to Xue Xian, “I’ll hold onto your marble for now. Have you any objections?”
I do! No way! In your dreams! Xue Xian screamed in his heart, but nothing came out of his mouth.
“Good.” Xuanmin took the paper doll’s silence for consent and placed the marble into his pouch, right against his hip. It rubbed uncomfortably against him with every moment, but that also made it difficult to lose.
Xue Xian wilted like a dead flower, no longer in the mood to do anything. He wasn’t afraid that Xuanmin would steal his marble, but his body had been missing for half a year, and he’d finally managed to find it. Being forced to relinquish it again was more than a little vexing.
After fumbling around, Xuanmin noticed how odd Xue Xian’s pose was, locked into the gesture of covering his mouth—he hadn’t even switched hands. He was momentarily taken aback before realizing the reason for Xue Xian’s docility, but he didn’t move to help.
“Have you a brazier?” Xuanmin asked the thief after a short silence.
Despite his audacity in stealing Xue Xian’s marble, the thief was still a young boy, and Xuanmin’s discipline had left him a little intimidated. He dared not ignore Xuanmin’s question. Reluctantly, after a sidelong glance at the monk, the boy ran into the kitchen. They could all hear the clattering of his rummaging. A moment later, he returned, dragging a dented copper brazier, which he carelessly dropped for Xuanmin with a clang.
“Thank you,” Xuanmin said.
Two bundles of firewood were piled in a relatively dry corner beneath the eaves. Unlike the firewood one would see in most households, the bundled sticks here were scraggly and crooked—clearly of poor quality. Xuanmin snapped off a couple dry twigs and lit them with a fire starter, then tossed them into the brazier. The branches took some time to catch fire, but they eventually flared in flame, bringing some warmth to the little courtyard.
For a while, the boy stubbornly ignored Xuanmin, until he eventually succumbed to the warmth of the fire. Without a word, he scooted closer to the brazier and discreetly rubbed his hands.
Xuanmin had draped Xue Xian and Jiang Shining on an overhanging branch of a magnolia tree, just far enough from the fire to avoid being singed, yet still close enough to capitalize on the warmth. The toasty heat of the fire was quite effective on wet paper. Xue Xian felt himself slowly drying.
Dangling from the branch, he watched as Xuanmin pulled out a sheet of folded paper from another hidden pouch in his clothes. From Xue Xian’s perspective, all he could see was that the paper was covered in writing: some characters in neat rows, some off by their lonesome. There were also…drawings?
Xuanmin looked at a certain part of the page, then neatly folded it back up and put it away.
“Your family name is Lu?” he asked the young thief.
Both Xue Xian and the thief startled.
Warily, the boy peered at Xuanmin. “What do you want?”
That expression told Xuanmin everything. “Looks like it. So, do you have a blind brother?”
The thief Lu’s eyes watered. “Who are you?! What do you want with Lu—I mean, what do you want with him?!”
Xue Xian looked at Xuanmin in confusion. So, he wasn’t just here to capture Xue Xian? Was he also seeking someone? Could it really be a coincidence?
As Xue Xian pondered this, the water soaking his mouth and hand was sufficiently wicked away by the heat, and his hand fell from his mouth with a plop. He could speak again.
“Where is Lu Shijiu?” Xue Xian cut in immediately. “I want him to track someone using an object.”
He had been to this place twice before and was roughly acquainted with the Lu brothers who lived here. Their parents and older relatives had all passed away under mysterious circumstances. He’d heard that one brother was blind from birth and possessed some knowledge of yin-yang arts, while the other had impaired hearing from an earlier injury. The boys only had each other to depend on through the years, but their relationship was strained. As they lacked older kin and were unable to establish families of their own, the two brothers didn’t even have proper names, just nicknames based on their birth dates. The older brother was called Lu Shijiu—nineteen. The younger one, around eight or nine, was called Lu Nianqi—twenty-seven.
Though young, Lu Nianqi had none of a child’s naive air. “I recognize you. At least your voice,” he said. “You were here for Shijiu.”
He was used to seeing all manner of strange and supernatural phenomena thanks to Lu Shijiu, so a talking paper doll didn’t leave him speechless with terror. Instead, he was rather composed.
“I’ve been here twice, but this is my first time receiving such a grand gift.” Xue Xian pictured the basin splashing over himself and snorted. “Enough, let’s stay on topic. Where’s Lu Shijiu? Where did he go? When will he return? And why are you stealing from others?”
He’d barely finished when Lu Nianqi started to cry without warning. Tears as large as beans rolled down his cheeks. “I’m looking for him too. I’ve been searching for over half a month. He… He’s in the river.”
Okay, what does that even mean, “in the river”? Xue Xian asked himself.
Lu Nianqi wiped away his tears and his previous mulish look returned. Tugging at his clothes, he avoided eye contact with Xuanmin and Xue Xian to stare at the dwindling flames of the brazier. “About half a month ago, Lu Shijiu told me that he was taking a trip to Fentou Island in the middle of the river…”