Chapter 16: Silver Doctor’s Bell (2)
Xue Xian, who was currently in a haze after being pissed off to the point of fainting, seemed to hear something reverberate from below the Baldy’s waist bone with a clang. It sounded both nearby and far-off, the jolt causing him to lose his breath. Thus, the vile spawn’s fainting spell continued for a long time…
By the time he woke up and opened his eyes, slowly curling up from within the hidden pouch to poke his head out, he realised that he was no longer in the courtyard of the Liu Mansion.
Xue Xian swept a glance over the area and realised that this was probably a bedroom. There was a neatly made bed with a lamp lit with a yellow glow next to it. A light, mellow woodsy scent with an almost imperceptible medicinal aroma wafted through the room. Xuan Min was standing in front of a flower carving wooden roundtable. On top of the table, was the unconscious paper-skinned Jiang Shining, the millstone swiped from Adviser Liu’s mansion, a thin, light-looking cloth pack, a copper basin filled with spring water and a set of celadon teaware with three words on the handle of the teapot: Guiyun Inn.
As he looked around, he realised that this was the upper floor of a certain someone’s guestroom.
Guiyun Inn…
When Xue Xian had muddled along for a short period at the marketplace, he had seen the Premier Scholar Building that scholars loved to visit, the Thriving Business Building that merchants loved to visit, along with the commonly seen “Arrival of Happiness” and “Smooth Wealth”, most of these buildings were all very auspiciously named. With a place having a name like “Guiyun Inn” that pretty much meant “rest in peace”, would it not be only the people with brains pecked rotten by chickens who came here?
It seemed like Baldy was exactly this sort of a brain-pecked-by-chickens person.
Xue Xian saw that Xuan Min was currently meticulously washing his hands in the copper basin. It had to be said—this Baldy’s fingers really were long and good-looking: skinny and pale with ramrod-straight tendons between each knuckle. It seemed like he had been born not knowing the concept of hurrying, doing everything in a slow, unworried manner. Even when it came to washing hands, he could emit an aura akin to the deep, solemn contemplation derived from reading the Buddha’s sutras.
At this, Xue Xian was beyond done with him. “The way you wash your hands, it’s like you’re about to send someone off to a funeral procession.”
Xuan Min lowered his eyes and glanced at him, replying, “I am.”
Xue Xian, “Who’re you sending off?”
Xuan Min said simply, “Madam Xu.”
Xue Xian, “Madam Xu?”
A quiet sigh emitted from the millstone. “Thank you for your trouble, Master.”
If not Granny Liu, who else would it be.
Xue Xian lifted his face expressionlessly. “I—cough, how long did I sleep for? You’ve already found out the old granny’s surname?”
He had wanted to ask, “How long was I unconscious?” But after a moment of anger he realised that the situation would not look very dignified. So for the sake of saving a dragon’s face, he changed the word to “sleep” on the spot.
Xuan Min shook the water off his hands and picked up the white towel nearby, carefully drying them as he replied, “Ten hours. It’s already late in the night.”
Xue Xian, “...” How has this kind of wooden person who deliberately pokes at people’s sore spots not already been tossed into a moat?
He was extremely irritated so he quickly closed his eyes, not wanting to speak with this Baldy any longer. What a boring, socially incompetent person!
Xuan Min did not mind him much, setting down the towel and unfolding the cloth pack with a few swift movements. From within it, he took out a small stack of yellow paper and a brush.
Beside the copper basin, there was a plate of ink, prepared for use. Xuan Min spread out a piece of yellow paper, dipped his brush in the ink and wrote a few words on the paper—
Madam Xu of the Liu Clan
23rd day of the seventh month of the Bingyin year
Xuan Min then took out an incense stick from the cloth pack and folded the piece of yellow paper with Granny Liu’s name and clan three times. He lit it aflame using the candle and placed it on top of the millstone. The thin piece of yellow paper burned at a curiously slow rate while the surface of the millstone quickly turned black as if it had been coated in a layer of ash.
He slowly twisted the incense stick within his hand, letting it catch fire from the yellow paper, burning completely.
“Are you performing salvation for the soul?” Xue Xian tried to keep his mouth shut but ultimately failed.
In the past, he had only seen the most common type of salvation method, known as the Seven Buddhas. A bunch of baldies invited to perform the salvation would sit in a circle, their shiny heads reflecting all around brightening up the room considerably. They would split into two groups, taking turns facing the coffin, restlessly chanting lines from the Sutra of Life for seven days and seven nights straight. One time, Xue Xian tailed the wrong person and accidentally entered a random home that was conducting a funeral ritual. He had to helplessly listen to a group of baldies murmuring and chanting by his ear for a full seven days to the point that his head was about to burst open and he wanted to drop dead right on top of the coffin.
Ever since then, whenever he saw a monk, his head hurt.
Xue Xian was scared that Xuan Min was about to murmur like this for seven days and seven nights. He thought that if this was really going to happen, he might as well just jump out of the window and die to solve all his problems.
As Xuan Min twisted the incense stick in his hand, a thin wisp of smoke curled around the millstone, emitting a diluted scent of sandalwood. “Cleansing of the hands, folding of paper, lighting of fragrance, and chanting of sutras are to send the deceased towards life.”
As expected, he really was about to chant sutras!
Xue Xian wordlessly began to flip out of the hidden pouch.
Xuan Min glanced at him. “What are you doing now?”
Xue Xian, “No point in living anymore, gonna jump out the window.”
Xuan Min, “…”
Naturally, Xue Xian was not able to successfully jump out of the window. He was only able to flip down from Xuan Min’s waist, landing on top of the flower carving roundtable. He had only flipped around in a single circle on the table, then flipped right onto the floor, before getting caught by Xuan Min and being placed back onto the tabletop.
The only thing that this Baldy was capable of was being painfully particular with rules, not even close to halfway seeming like a legitimate monk. He gathered this fact from his observations of the Baldy’s usual mannerisms and this upscale guestroom.
At this point, Xue Xian did not know what was up with Xuan Min but he seemed to be bothered by the creases on Xue Xian’s body left by the many times he was bent and folded. He went ahead and used his fingers to smooth Xue Xian out, then placed a stone paperweight (that was by no means light) on top of him.
The paperweight was over half the size of a palm and a narrow, rectangular bar. Placed on top of Xue Xian, he could only peek out his head from the top, two skinny legs from the bottom, and his two claws from both sides.
Xue Xian struggled for a bit, but other than being able to slightly lift his two claws, he could not move at all.
Xue Xian, “…” Damn you!
Xuan Min did not pay any more attention to him, focusing on lighting the incense.
The moment the tip of the incense stick was lit, Xuan Min lowly murmured a mantra and went silent thereafter. This was pretty much the entirety of his “chanting of sutras”, completely different from what Xue Xian had initially imagined.
At the end, the yellow paper and incense stick burnt out at around the same time. When the last few scarlet sparks blew out, Xuan Min knocked a few times with his finger on the millstone that had bound Old Granny Liu for over three years.
With a couple of snap sounds of breaking, the millstone that had initially seemed to be heavy and unbreakably thick actually cracked into several pieces. At the same time, Old Granny Liu’s quiet voice rang out once more. “A heavy burden has been released from this old body. I will be on my way now. Many thanks.”
Just as these words carried through the air, Xue Xian saw with his own two eyes a faint shadow flash past him from the centre of the millstone. Even the ash from the incense stick and the paper that had fallen on the surface of the millstone had completely disappeared without a trace.
However, during the period of time in which the millstone had cracked open and Old Granny Liu had disappeared, an obscure sound lightly rang out from within the room with a ding ding dong dong. It was like a bell that had been hung on a horse or some other animal, reverberating from a long alleyway, a fine and far-off sound.
Just after, something rolled out of the crack in the millstone and landed onto the table.
Ding ling—dong long—another two sounds followed.
Xue Xian sensed something rolling along the surface of the table, going right past the back of his head before he could lift it. “What the heck is this thing?! Blind thing not even watching where it’s going—Smash it!”
Xuan Min reached out and the round roly-poly thing rolled right off the edge of the table into his palm.
He held it between his fingertips and said blandly, “A golden orb about the size of a sheep’s eye.”
Xue Xian was dumbstruck. “About the size of a sheep’s eye? A golden orb?”
As expected! So you see, when it came to the body of a real dragon that had been smelted into a golden orb, how could any old cultivator properly accomplish the job! This cultivator had only just carelessly inserted the golden orb into the millstone.
He immediately became incredibly excited as he suddenly heard Xuan Min reply, “Mn. Since this thing didn’t watch where it was going, I’ll smash it.”
“No! Wait!” If not for the paperweight pressing him down, Xue Xian would probably have flown up into the sky. “If you dare to smash it, I’ll smash you!”
Xuan Min said blandly, “So it’s got eyes now?”
Xue Xian replied in a muffled voice. “Yeah.”
Xuan Min, “Not to be smashed anymore?”
Xue Xian, “Not anymore. It’s mine; who would dare to smash it!”
“It’s yours?” Xuan Min replied calmly. “How can you prove it?”
Xue Xian took the opportunity to try to turn the situation to his advantage. “All right, if you move the paperweight off of me, I’ll prove it to you.”
Xuan Min shot a glance at him and spit out four words. “You can just speak.”
“…”
Xue Xian wanted to spit his guts out onto his face.
Nevertheless, his golden orb was extremely important. With such an item in the hands of this Baldy, he felt completely restrained. He had no choice but to put up with being a bit more agreeable.
He numbly responded, his tone completely void of any fluctuations, “If you place the golden orb in front of the candle flame and let it shine, you’ll be able to see—”
See the faint shape of a dragon coiled up inside. However, the dragon’s head and claws were curled within its body and not completely visible.
However, Xue Xian did not mention this. He bit the tip of his tongue and said, “You’ll be able to see a curvy pattern on the inside. Have you ever seen a golden orb that lets light shine through?”
Xuan Min listened to his words and held the golden orb close to the candle flame.
Sure enough, the round orb that had originally appeared to be made of ordinary gold turned slightly transparent and there was a faint coil that could be seen inside.
Xuan Min spoke, “Snake.”
Xue Xian, “…” Snake, your ass!
He endured this with difficulty, hardening his face with a huff. “Do you believe me now? Can’t you remove this stupid paperweight already? Give me back my orb!”
Xuan Min was not an unreasonable person. He saw that this vile spawn had a point and moved the paperweight away.
Xue Xian sat up, sticking to the surface of the table while shaking his head, trying to recover from the dizziness of being “trapped under a stone mountain”. He swayed his paper head to and fro and stretched his hands out toward Xuan Min, speaking with a slightly impolite tone. “What about my orb? Hurry up and give it to me!”
Xuan Min pointed at the centre of the table with his finger, responding, “First—”
“Cut the crap! Give it to me already,” Xue Xian cut him off impatiently.
Xuan Min closed his mouth and regarded him silently. He placed the golden orb the size of a sheep’s eye onto the two outstretched paper claws.
Clatter!
The golden orb wasn’t light, how could paper skin hold it properly?
Xue Xian only felt his two claws suddenly drop as his vision went black. He had been dragged off the table by that darn orb, directly falling onto the ground.
“…”
Life was so hard.
When Xuan Min picked up the vile spawn from the ground, his two claws were still gripping tightly onto the golden orb, unwilling to let go, like a stingy miser.
“I was suggesting that you move towards the centre of the table a little.” Xuan Min placed him back in the middle of the table, regarding him with half-lidded eyes. “Still going to interrupt me?”
Xue Xian thought to himself, “Psh! What do you care?!” Nonetheless, the fall left him dizzy and out of sorts. He was afraid that the Baldy was unhappy and about to take away his treasured orb again so he reluctantly held back and huffed, “Fine. I don’t really want to but next time I’ll let you finish.”
Hugging the golden orb, he rolled around on the table a couple times until he knocked against a certain thing with a ding. Only then did he remember that a while ago there was more than one object that had fallen out of the millstone.
Xue Xian splayed out on top of the golden orb, staring with concentration and realised that the object he had bumped into was a round, silver-coloured disc the size of an apricot. There was a seam in the middle part of the disc that would let out a fine, crisp sound whenever touched.
“What is this thing?” asked Xue Xian and rolled over to the side with a small rumble.
Looking at it from far away, it truly was something he had never seen before.
“It’s a doctor’s bell.” Jiang Shining’s cold voice rang out abruptly.
Like a Daruma doll, Xue Xian, who had become one with the golden orb while sticking to its surface, rolled over to the stone paperweight, stopping only when he bumped into it. “You’re awake?”
“I was awake the whole time. I just wasn’t able to speak anything in the beginning,” Jiang Shining replied. “Probably since it’s night-time now, I can speak.” His voice was very warm, with an unexplainable liveliness compared to before—not as dead and heavy-sounding, exactly as if…some internal burden had suddenly been lifted and he was now much more relaxed.
Just as he finished speaking, he proceeded to fall from the table onto the chair, then from the chair onto the ground, and returned to his appearance of a scholar.
He reached out and picked up the doctor’s bell, stroking it between his fingers as he said, “This is my family’s doctor’s bell.”
Xue Xian was startled. “Your family’s?”
“Mn,” Jiang Shining nodded, showing Xue Xian the side of the doctor’s bell on which a name had been carved—Jiang Yong.
“This was my great-grandfather’s”, he explained. “He was a bell doctor and would go down the street doing appointments for others everyday. At the time, in order to catch people’s attention, bell doctors would hang a silver doctor’s bell on their medical supplies box. Wherever he went, there would be the sound of the bell. By hearing the bell’s sound, anyone with an illness or ailment would know when he came by and could go ask him for medicine or a checkup. This doctor’s bell was what my great-grandfather used. Nowadays, bell doctors who go around in the streets like this are rare. Most of them have dignified offices and medicine halls. During our Jiang clan’s generation, we practiced medicine; in order to remember our origins, this doctor’s bell was passed down from my great-grandfather all the way to my parents.”
“Your parents?” Xuan Min furrowed his brow, reaching out to take the doctor’s bell from Jiang Shining and looking it over. He used a finger to touch the bell, quietly listening to its ring. “Do you still have living blood relatives?”
“Yes, my older sister married off and moved to Anqing. She managed to avoid the disaster,” Jiang Shining answered.
“Your parents’ souls are trapped within this doctor’s bell. It’s a different situation from Madam Xu who was under the influence of the millstone. For the time being, there is no way to perform salvation besides dripping three drops of a living blood relative’s laogong blood onto it,” Xuan Min explained.
“Laogong blood?” Jiang Shining had been born into a family of doctors and immediately understood Xuan Min’s words. “Are you referring to blood from the laogong acupuncture point?”
Xuan Min nodded.
He handed the doctor’s bell back to Jiang Shining and swept a glance over the cloth pack.
Xue Xian followed the direction of his gaze and happened to see that there was still another stick of incense left.
He pointed at it and asked, “Baldy, performing salvation for that Old Granny Liu only used up one incense stick. There’s still one more left, what do you plan to do with it?”
Xuan Min spoke directly and to the point. “Perform salvation for this scholar.”
Jiang Shining hadn’t even fully reacted before Xue Xian lifted his head up first. “What?! You—”
Before he could finish, Xuan Min abruptly placed his hand on the table to steady himself, his brows deeply furrowed and his eyes shut tight as if he suddenly felt slightly nauseous.
Xue Xian was at a loss, swallowing his words. “Baldy?”
He tried calling out a couple times, only to see Xuan Min making no move to answer, simply sitting in the chair with his eyes closed as if he was meditating. Thin red marks suddenly started wriggling from the small mole on his neck, their movements like tiny spiders.
But Xue Xian didn’t pay attention to these small details. He stared at Xuan Min for a bit and after determining that he was not dying but was also not about to wake up, cautiously waved his hand at Jiang Shining.
After about ten minutes, a thin, sickly looking scholar was hurrying down the path from Guiyun Inn towards the Ningyang District suburbs. On top of his shoulder sat a paper-skinned man who held a golden orb tightly within its arms. It was Jiang Shining and Xue Xian.
Chapter 16: Silver Doctor’s Bell (2)
Xue Xian, who was currently in a haze after being pissed off to the point of fainting, seemed to hear something reverberate from below the Baldy’s waist bone with a clang. It sounded both nearby and far-off, the jolt causing him to lose his breath. Thus, the vile spawn’s fainting spell continued for a long time…
By the time he woke up and opened his eyes, slowly curling up from within the hidden pouch to poke his head out, he realised that he was no longer in the courtyard of the Liu Mansion.
Xue Xian swept a glance over the area and realised that this was probably a bedroom. There was a neatly made bed with a lamp lit with a yellow glow next to it. A light, mellow woodsy scent with an almost imperceptible medicinal aroma wafted through the room. Xuan Min was standing in front of a flower carving wooden roundtable. On top of the table, was the unconscious paper-skinned Jiang Shining, the millstone swiped from Adviser Liu’s mansion, a thin, light-looking cloth pack, a copper basin filled with spring water and a set of celadon teaware with three words on the handle of the teapot: Guiyun Inn.
As he looked around, he realised that this was the upper floor of a certain someone’s guestroom.
Guiyun Inn…
When Xue Xian had muddled along for a short period at the marketplace, he had seen the Premier Scholar Building that scholars loved to visit, the Thriving Business Building that merchants loved to visit, along with the commonly seen “Arrival of Happiness” and “Smooth Wealth”, most of these buildings were all very auspiciously named. With a place having a name like “Guiyun Inn” that pretty much meant “rest in peace”, would it not be only the people with brains pecked rotten by chickens who came here?
It seemed like Baldy was exactly this sort of a brain-pecked-by-chickens person.
Xue Xian saw that Xuan Min was currently meticulously washing his hands in the copper basin. It had to be said—this Baldy’s fingers really were long and good-looking: skinny and pale with ramrod-straight tendons between each knuckle. It seemed like he had been born not knowing the concept of hurrying, doing everything in a slow, unworried manner. Even when it came to washing hands, he could emit an aura akin to the deep, solemn contemplation derived from reading the Buddha’s sutras.
At this, Xue Xian was beyond done with him. “The way you wash your hands, it’s like you’re about to send someone off to a funeral procession.”
Xuan Min lowered his eyes and glanced at him, replying, “I am.”
Xue Xian, “Who’re you sending off?”
Xuan Min said simply, “Madam Xu.”
Xue Xian, “Madam Xu?”
A quiet sigh emitted from the millstone. “Thank you for your trouble, Master.”
If not Granny Liu, who else would it be.
Xue Xian lifted his face expressionlessly. “I—cough, how long did I sleep for? You’ve already found out the old granny’s surname?”
He had wanted to ask, “How long was I unconscious?” But after a moment of anger he realised that the situation would not look very dignified. So for the sake of saving a dragon’s face, he changed the word to “sleep” on the spot.
Xuan Min shook the water off his hands and picked up the white towel nearby, carefully drying them as he replied, “Ten hours. It’s already late in the night.”
Xue Xian, “...” How has this kind of wooden person who deliberately pokes at people’s sore spots not already been tossed into a moat?
He was extremely irritated so he quickly closed his eyes, not wanting to speak with this Baldy any longer. What a boring, socially incompetent person!
Xuan Min did not mind him much, setting down the towel and unfolding the cloth pack with a few swift movements. From within it, he took out a small stack of yellow paper and a brush.
Beside the copper basin, there was a plate of ink, prepared for use. Xuan Min spread out a piece of yellow paper, dipped his brush in the ink and wrote a few words on the paper—
Madam Xu of the Liu Clan
23rd day of the seventh month of the Bingyin year
Xuan Min then took out an incense stick from the cloth pack and folded the piece of yellow paper with Granny Liu’s name and clan three times. He lit it aflame using the candle and placed it on top of the millstone. The thin piece of yellow paper burned at a curiously slow rate while the surface of the millstone quickly turned black as if it had been coated in a layer of ash.
He slowly twisted the incense stick within his hand, letting it catch fire from the yellow paper, burning completely.
“Are you performing salvation for the soul?” Xue Xian tried to keep his mouth shut but ultimately failed.
In the past, he had only seen the most common type of salvation method, known as the Seven Buddhas. A bunch of baldies invited to perform the salvation would sit in a circle, their shiny heads reflecting all around brightening up the room considerably. They would split into two groups, taking turns facing the coffin, restlessly chanting lines from the Sutra of Life for seven days and seven nights straight. One time, Xue Xian tailed the wrong person and accidentally entered a random home that was conducting a funeral ritual. He had to helplessly listen to a group of baldies murmuring and chanting by his ear for a full seven days to the point that his head was about to burst open and he wanted to drop dead right on top of the coffin.
Ever since then, whenever he saw a monk, his head hurt.
Xue Xian was scared that Xuan Min was about to murmur like this for seven days and seven nights. He thought that if this was really going to happen, he might as well just jump out of the window and die to solve all his problems.
As Xuan Min twisted the incense stick in his hand, a thin wisp of smoke curled around the millstone, emitting a diluted scent of sandalwood. “Cleansing of the hands, folding of paper, lighting of fragrance, and chanting of sutras are to send the deceased towards life.”
As expected, he really was about to chant sutras!
Xue Xian wordlessly began to flip out of the hidden pouch.
Xuan Min glanced at him. “What are you doing now?”
Xue Xian, “No point in living anymore, gonna jump out the window.”
Xuan Min, “…”
Naturally, Xue Xian was not able to successfully jump out of the window. He was only able to flip down from Xuan Min’s waist, landing on top of the flower carving roundtable. He had only flipped around in a single circle on the table, then flipped right onto the floor, before getting caught by Xuan Min and being placed back onto the tabletop.
The only thing that this Baldy was capable of was being painfully particular with rules, not even close to halfway seeming like a legitimate monk. He gathered this fact from his observations of the Baldy’s usual mannerisms and this upscale guestroom.
At this point, Xue Xian did not know what was up with Xuan Min but he seemed to be bothered by the creases on Xue Xian’s body left by the many times he was bent and folded. He went ahead and used his fingers to smooth Xue Xian out, then placed a stone paperweight (that was by no means light) on top of him.
The paperweight was over half the size of a palm and a narrow, rectangular bar. Placed on top of Xue Xian, he could only peek out his head from the top, two skinny legs from the bottom, and his two claws from both sides.
Xue Xian struggled for a bit, but other than being able to slightly lift his two claws, he could not move at all.
Xue Xian, “…” Damn you!
Xuan Min did not pay any more attention to him, focusing on lighting the incense.
The moment the tip of the incense stick was lit, Xuan Min lowly murmured a mantra and went silent thereafter. This was pretty much the entirety of his “chanting of sutras”, completely different from what Xue Xian had initially imagined.
At the end, the yellow paper and incense stick burnt out at around the same time. When the last few scarlet sparks blew out, Xuan Min knocked a few times with his finger on the millstone that had bound Old Granny Liu for over three years.
With a couple of snap sounds of breaking, the millstone that had initially seemed to be heavy and unbreakably thick actually cracked into several pieces. At the same time, Old Granny Liu’s quiet voice rang out once more. “A heavy burden has been released from this old body. I will be on my way now. Many thanks.”
Just as these words carried through the air, Xue Xian saw with his own two eyes a faint shadow flash past him from the centre of the millstone. Even the ash from the incense stick and the paper that had fallen on the surface of the millstone had completely disappeared without a trace.
However, during the period of time in which the millstone had cracked open and Old Granny Liu had disappeared, an obscure sound lightly rang out from within the room with a ding ding dong dong. It was like a bell that had been hung on a horse or some other animal, reverberating from a long alleyway, a fine and far-off sound.
Just after, something rolled out of the crack in the millstone and landed onto the table.
Ding ling—dong long—another two sounds followed.
Xue Xian sensed something rolling along the surface of the table, going right past the back of his head before he could lift it. “What the heck is this thing?! Blind thing not even watching where it’s going—Smash it!”
Xuan Min reached out and the round roly-poly thing rolled right off the edge of the table into his palm.
He held it between his fingertips and said blandly, “A golden orb about the size of a sheep’s eye.”
Xue Xian was dumbstruck. “About the size of a sheep’s eye? A golden orb?”
As expected! So you see, when it came to the body of a real dragon that had been smelted into a golden orb, how could any old cultivator properly accomplish the job! This cultivator had only just carelessly inserted the golden orb into the millstone.
He immediately became incredibly excited as he suddenly heard Xuan Min reply, “Mn. Since this thing didn’t watch where it was going, I’ll smash it.”
“No! Wait!” If not for the paperweight pressing him down, Xue Xian would probably have flown up into the sky. “If you dare to smash it, I’ll smash you!”
Xuan Min said blandly, “So it’s got eyes now?”
Xue Xian replied in a muffled voice. “Yeah.”
Xuan Min, “Not to be smashed anymore?”
Xue Xian, “Not anymore. It’s mine; who would dare to smash it!”
“It’s yours?” Xuan Min replied calmly. “How can you prove it?”
Xue Xian took the opportunity to try to turn the situation to his advantage. “All right, if you move the paperweight off of me, I’ll prove it to you.”
Xuan Min shot a glance at him and spit out four words. “You can just speak.”
“…”
Xue Xian wanted to spit his guts out onto his face.
Nevertheless, his golden orb was extremely important. With such an item in the hands of this Baldy, he felt completely restrained. He had no choice but to put up with being a bit more agreeable.
He numbly responded, his tone completely void of any fluctuations, “If you place the golden orb in front of the candle flame and let it shine, you’ll be able to see—”
See the faint shape of a dragon coiled up inside. However, the dragon’s head and claws were curled within its body and not completely visible.
However, Xue Xian did not mention this. He bit the tip of his tongue and said, “You’ll be able to see a curvy pattern on the inside. Have you ever seen a golden orb that lets light shine through?”
Xuan Min listened to his words and held the golden orb close to the candle flame.
Sure enough, the round orb that had originally appeared to be made of ordinary gold turned slightly transparent and there was a faint coil that could be seen inside.
Xuan Min spoke, “Snake.”
Xue Xian, “…” Snake, your ass!
He endured this with difficulty, hardening his face with a huff. “Do you believe me now? Can’t you remove this stupid paperweight already? Give me back my orb!”
Xuan Min was not an unreasonable person. He saw that this vile spawn had a point and moved the paperweight away.
Xue Xian sat up, sticking to the surface of the table while shaking his head, trying to recover from the dizziness of being “trapped under a stone mountain”. He swayed his paper head to and fro and stretched his hands out toward Xuan Min, speaking with a slightly impolite tone. “What about my orb? Hurry up and give it to me!”
Xuan Min pointed at the centre of the table with his finger, responding, “First—”
“Cut the crap! Give it to me already,” Xue Xian cut him off impatiently.
Xuan Min closed his mouth and regarded him silently. He placed the golden orb the size of a sheep’s eye onto the two outstretched paper claws.
Clatter!
The golden orb wasn’t light, how could paper skin hold it properly?
Xue Xian only felt his two claws suddenly drop as his vision went black. He had been dragged off the table by that darn orb, directly falling onto the ground.
“…”
Life was so hard.
When Xuan Min picked up the vile spawn from the ground, his two claws were still gripping tightly onto the golden orb, unwilling to let go, like a stingy miser.
“I was suggesting that you move towards the centre of the table a little.” Xuan Min placed him back in the middle of the table, regarding him with half-lidded eyes. “Still going to interrupt me?”
Xue Xian thought to himself, “Psh! What do you care?!” Nonetheless, the fall left him dizzy and out of sorts. He was afraid that the Baldy was unhappy and about to take away his treasured orb again so he reluctantly held back and huffed, “Fine. I don’t really want to but next time I’ll let you finish.”
Hugging the golden orb, he rolled around on the table a couple times until he knocked against a certain thing with a ding. Only then did he remember that a while ago there was more than one object that had fallen out of the millstone.
Xue Xian splayed out on top of the golden orb, staring with concentration and realised that the object he had bumped into was a round, silver-coloured disc the size of an apricot. There was a seam in the middle part of the disc that would let out a fine, crisp sound whenever touched.
“What is this thing?” asked Xue Xian and rolled over to the side with a small rumble.
Looking at it from far away, it truly was something he had never seen before.
“It’s a doctor’s bell.” Jiang Shining’s cold voice rang out abruptly.
Like a Daruma doll, Xue Xian, who had become one with the golden orb while sticking to its surface, rolled over to the stone paperweight, stopping only when he bumped into it. “You’re awake?”
“I was awake the whole time. I just wasn’t able to speak anything in the beginning,” Jiang Shining replied. “Probably since it’s night-time now, I can speak.” His voice was very warm, with an unexplainable liveliness compared to before—not as dead and heavy-sounding, exactly as if…some internal burden had suddenly been lifted and he was now much more relaxed.
Just as he finished speaking, he proceeded to fall from the table onto the chair, then from the chair onto the ground, and returned to his appearance of a scholar.
He reached out and picked up the doctor’s bell, stroking it between his fingers as he said, “This is my family’s doctor’s bell.”
Xue Xian was startled. “Your family’s?”
“Mn,” Jiang Shining nodded, showing Xue Xian the side of the doctor’s bell on which a name had been carved—Jiang Yong.
“This was my great-grandfather’s”, he explained. “He was a bell doctor and would go down the street doing appointments for others everyday. At the time, in order to catch people’s attention, bell doctors would hang a silver doctor’s bell on their medical supplies box. Wherever he went, there would be the sound of the bell. By hearing the bell’s sound, anyone with an illness or ailment would know when he came by and could go ask him for medicine or a checkup. This doctor’s bell was what my great-grandfather used. Nowadays, bell doctors who go around in the streets like this are rare. Most of them have dignified offices and medicine halls. During our Jiang clan’s generation, we practiced medicine; in order to remember our origins, this doctor’s bell was passed down from my great-grandfather all the way to my parents.”
“Your parents?” Xuan Min furrowed his brow, reaching out to take the doctor’s bell from Jiang Shining and looking it over. He used a finger to touch the bell, quietly listening to its ring. “Do you still have living blood relatives?”
“Yes, my older sister married off and moved to Anqing. She managed to avoid the disaster,” Jiang Shining answered.
“Your parents’ souls are trapped within this doctor’s bell. It’s a different situation from Madam Xu who was under the influence of the millstone. For the time being, there is no way to perform salvation besides dripping three drops of a living blood relative’s laogong blood onto it,” Xuan Min explained.
“Laogong blood?” Jiang Shining had been born into a family of doctors and immediately understood Xuan Min’s words. “Are you referring to blood from the laogong acupuncture point?”
Xuan Min nodded.
He handed the doctor’s bell back to Jiang Shining and swept a glance over the cloth pack.
Xue Xian followed the direction of his gaze and happened to see that there was still another stick of incense left.
He pointed at it and asked, “Baldy, performing salvation for that Old Granny Liu only used up one incense stick. There’s still one more left, what do you plan to do with it?”
Xuan Min spoke directly and to the point. “Perform salvation for this scholar.”
Jiang Shining hadn’t even fully reacted before Xue Xian lifted his head up first. “What?! You—”
Before he could finish, Xuan Min abruptly placed his hand on the table to steady himself, his brows deeply furrowed and his eyes shut tight as if he suddenly felt slightly nauseous.
Xue Xian was at a loss, swallowing his words. “Baldy?”
He tried calling out a couple times, only to see Xuan Min making no move to answer, simply sitting in the chair with his eyes closed as if he was meditating. Thin red marks suddenly started wriggling from the small mole on his neck, their movements like tiny spiders.
But Xue Xian didn’t pay attention to these small details. He stared at Xuan Min for a bit and after determining that he was not dying but was also not about to wake up, cautiously waved his hand at Jiang Shining.
After about ten minutes, a thin, sickly looking scholar was hurrying down the path from Guiyun Inn towards the Ningyang District suburbs. On top of his shoulder sat a paper-skinned man who held a golden orb tightly within its arms. It was Jiang Shining and Xue Xian.
