Chương 31: Red Thread Fate Divining

Rowan The cluster of stalls the woman had pointed to were draped in fine silk cloth. Small orange lanterns bobbed in the air, their glow casting dancing characters onto the tables. The first stall Rowan went up to was lined with jade statues carved with auspicious prayers for wealth and prosperity. A small cage holding bulbous purple toad sat on the corner of the table.

"This humble shopkeeper has been awaiting you, dear," croaked the woman manning the stall, a purple headdress hiding her forehead and hair. Her eyes were milky, almost blue.

"For days now, I have been sensing that a special customer will stumble upon my table. Someone in desperate need of good fortune." Rowan might have disregarded her in any other place, but he sensed the faintest bit of qi from her. Not healthy qi. He suspected she may have taken an elixir to forcefully form a Qi Sea, or some other thing. As if to demonstrate, the woman swirled her thin, veiny hand, and a line of talismans appeared. He picked one up. A real talisman, though the craftsmanship was shoddy.

"Your work?"

"I collect," she clarified.

"And impart wisdom, to those who seek it."

"I need a divination spell or artifact to track someone down. Have anything like that?" She gave him a slow, toothless grin.

"I have many things like that." The woman started piling items onto the table, faster than Rowan could comprehend. She held up a string of jade beads.

"These beads grow warm when you are near your soulmate." Then, a stack of paper talismans, her thumb riffling over them.

"Hive Talismans. Place one of these on your target. The rest will be drawn to them like bees trying to regroup." A lock of yellowing white hair.

"Hair from a hag. Think of your target while burning this hair, and you will see them in the fire." So far, Rowan was most interested in the Hive Talismans. But since he was dealing with cultivators he felt like they might be a little conspicuous.

"Show him the scripture that came in earlier," said a low, thready voice from behind him. Rowan's muscles went stiff as the man with the silver teeth sidled up next to him, leaning against the table. Unlike the woman, his qi was strong and clear, someone at layer six or seven of Qi Condensation.

"But sir, Lady Hema said to only show items from that shipment to VIPs—""It's fine." Rowan barely moved as the woman crouched down in the back of the stall, pulling out a heavy metal box. She unlocked it with a key around her neck. The sound of riffling echoed as she picked out a scroll, setting it on the table in front of Rowan. The squat purple toad in the cage gave a deep, ominous croak. The woman looked unsurely at the man before offering up a price.

"Rank-one spiritual art, Red Thread Fate Divining Technique. Two hundred taels."

"Fate?" Rowan asked with a small frown. Arts dealing with fate were notoriously tricky and unreliable. If the technique was too esoteric he would be foolish to purchase it.

"Every person, alive or dead, has their own mix of destinies. It's the best way to divine a person," the man explained. Rowan finally looked at the man, at his flat, dead eyes.

"I didn't catch your name, sir." Lips parted slightly as he smiled, revealing a hint of sharp silver.

"Gaetan."

"Surname?"

"This daoist wasn't lucky enough to be born with one."

"Then… thank you, Gaetan." He unrolled the scroll. Though this was his first time purchasing a scripture in a market, he knew the etiquette. Glance over the first few lines, don't try and greedily memorize every paragraph. Especially not with a much more powerful cultivator looming near your shoulder. The general technique seemed simple enough, actually. It activated the Divine Sense within you. Once you got the measure of a person, you could track them across short distances, almost like following a smell.

The more thoroughly you knew of them - their personality, their history, their goals for the future - the stronger the scent, so to speak. Unfortunately, it didn't exactly point you where they were. Just places they should be. As expected for a fate spell. But this outcome was within Rowan's expectations, so he didn't dare complain. No divination spell was perfect and they all had quirks. Even Blaise Bellacanicus, who surely had a top-tier divination spell, had been fooled by its readings.

Two hundred taels was quite a bit. Rowan reluctantly handed over the two spirit stones.

"And four more taels," said the woman.

"Today's conversion rate is 98 to 1." She pointed to a large sign on the wall for today's rates for spirit stones to taels as set by the exchequer. Rowan sighed. He was fishing out the taels from his sleeves when the sharp crack of someone's fist hitting a counter sounded. The angry customer was a lion of a man, his unkempt hair blending into his beard and mustache. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"You gave me the wrong dosage, old man," he growled.

"The wrong dosage? You asked me for enough to sedate a dog for a few hours."

"It was too much. It killed her." He gave a dry, choked sob.

"She d-died in my arms."

"My condolences," said the shopkeeper.

"And you're here to buy more?"

"Yes," said the man.

"A few more doses should do the trick." The shopkeeper stared at him.

"Didn't you say the dog died?"

"I purchased another." The man glared at the shopkeeper, but now the shopkeeper was glaring back.

"How big is this dog, again?" The man stammered for a moment and slammed his hand on the counter again.

"The same size as the last one!" There was a discolored mark on his hand that was roughly the size of a large coin. A birthmark? No, it was red and raw. A tattoo of some sort?

"Are you selling me the medicine or not?" The shopkeep nodded.

"It'll be fourteen taels, same as last time."

"Fourteen? For less?" whispered the man, dazed.

"How dare-""The price is the price, take it or leave it." The man threw a handful of coins at the counter, a few bouncing up to hit the shopkeeper's face. He snatched the small pouch of pills and stormed for the exit. Rowan tried to follow him, sure that the man was up to no good, but a plump green figure intercepted him.

"Do my eyes spy Young Master Helsing?" Lady Hema, dressed in garish lime green robes, had appeared. Rowan kept his eyes on the man who'd purchased the sedative.

"Hello, Lady Hema," he said, attempting to go around her. Gaetan was watching their interaction. Rowan clicked his tongue, feeling stuck in place. He couldn't just disregard Lady Hema with Gaetan around, especially not after the man had done him a favor. He tried his best to commit the angry man's features to memory as he left the black market.

"How are you enjoying my little business venture?" she whispered with that ridiculously loud whisper that caught the attention of all the nearby stalls. Some of the vendors bowed towards her respectfully. Gaetan ambled over to his stool and perched himself back onto it, smiling wildly at Rowan. It was quite unsettling.

"Wonderful, Lady Hema," said Rowan.

"We have all sorts of wares that you might not even get to see at the auction house." Lady Hema gave him a conspiratorial wink.

"Have you taken a look at our talismans?" The woman who'd sold him the scripture looked at him hopefully. Rowan nodded.

"They were very extensive," he said.

"I'm quite impressed."

"Well, let me show you…" For the next fifteen minutes, Lady Hema gave Rowan a tour around the market, her painted claws clutching his bicep like a lifeline. Lady Hema insisted that he take one of her talismans for free.

"To assist you if you encounter any jealous disciples of lesser breeding." Finally, he found an opening and escaped.

"Thank you for the tour, Lady Hema, but I promised a friend I would be meeting up with them soon." He fled the market, with Lady Hema calling out behind him, asking him to promise to spread word of her wonderful market to other discreet persons of outstanding birth. By the time he had reached the upper floor, the man with the red mark was long gone. The woman who he'd bought sardines from flagged him down and he picked them up from her with a few rushed words.

Rowan made his way over to a ratty little teahouse on the corner of a street across from the wharf.

"The strongest tea you have please, iced if possible, very hot if not," he said to the waiter. Even cloaked, he attracted more attention than he wished. When the very hot tea arrived, he began reading through the scripture. He had a good idea of a first person to track. The qi flows were far simpler than the ones for Germination. He figured it out after only two or three tries. It mainly relied on the power of his Divine Sense, and his was above average.

Rowan blinked as he cycled his qi in the pattern described, feeling a pressure between his eyebrows. He thought of the lion-haired man. The way he put all his weight into his hands when he slammed them against the table, the unstable temper. The colors in the world seemed to dull and fade. Suddenly, in his vision, a red thread appeared. It was leading down the road. He downed the tea and left the shop, following it. The other stores and people passing by looked fuzzy in his vision, like imprints on glass.

He was looking at their qi, not their physical forms. The red thread continued to lead him finally to a quiet neighborhood. Most of the houses had boarded up windows and were populated with small gardens with livestock. This was one of the flood districts, where every few years, when the spring was particularly warm, the river would rise and spill out, destroying most of the structures that were built here. There were mosquitoes year round in Righteous Mountain City, and this was where they came from.

The thread entered what seemed to be a tavern. It was one story, with a straw roof, and half the door was missing. Surly laborers were standing around the yard, each of them nursing drinks in dirty mugs. The beer of Righteous Mountain was fairly renowned, but the dark sludge floating over the brown ale in the mugs had a sticky, oily consistency to it that told Rowan the men weren't just drinking beer. Marsh resin.

It was the psychoactive secretion of Hanging Red Marsh Snails that, in small quantities, was euphoric, and in larger quantities, caused hallucinations. He examined each of the men at the bar, who were crowded around a woman who was so thin her collarbones jutted at fearful angles. She was singing and twirling between them. Her arms and elbows found their shoulders and waists, but never lingered. When her eyes caught Rowan's, he found that they were glassy and unfocused. There was no sign of the lion-haired man.

Rowan did the divination again. His vision shifted back into tones of gray, a new red thread manifesting. He followed. It led down a small, winding dirt road, to the outskirts of the district. The houses here were even more run down. Some of them were just piles of straw and wooden planks. If Rowan drew glances at the fishing wharf, here, his well-made cloak made him stick out like a sore thumb.

Sallow faces watched him from windows as he walked through the streets, and when he turned to look, the denizens of those houses hid. Fourteen taels would be enough to buy this entire neighborhood. The lion-haired man was getting more and more suspicious. At least, if his divination wasn't steering him completely off-course. The red thread ended at a rundown barn. The right side had collapsed in on itself, the building material rotted from rain, insects, and age.

Several tarps had been strewn across it to keep too much water from getting inside. He saw no animals, no dogs, except for a jet black snake which slithered by his feet. Strange. Snakes didn't like getting too close to people. Especially cultivators. It didn't attack Rowan, but it also didn't seem to fear him. The longer Rowan examined the barn, the more a quiet dread built in his gut. There was slightly more qi in the air than usual, but something about it stank, like a stagnant pond.

Something about the barn, something about the quiet in the air, reminded him of when he walked up to that shed where Lieren Nostraga had been hiding. Like dead things.