Chương 6: Burgers & Alchemy

The wedding was identical to its predecessors. Lin Che had stopped eulogising the details. Green qipao, window, handshake curry. He moved his boxes in on autopilot and called in sick before he'd even had lunch. On day one, whilst Shen Yue was in her back room, he went to the pharmacy alone.

The bell rang. Hu Baolin was behind the counter as still as a statue, as though he were part of the building's furnishing itself. His ledger was open and a feather pen was in his hand.

"Can I help you?"

"I need inferior grade herbs." Lin Che approached the counter.

"Breath-opening blend. Standard base, but I want to increase the fourth component by fifteen percent and add stabilisers before it." Hu Baolin set his pen down. He looked at Lin Che, recalibrating his assessment of the man.

"You want inferior grade herbs," he said.

"Yes."

"Modified recipe."

"Yes."

"You know the components of the standard blend."

"I do," he lied. He only knew it as the blend. Hu Baolin's eyes narrowed slightly.

"And you know they have a sequential order."

"Fourth addition, not third, for the compound interaction." A silence settled over the counter. Hu Baolin's pen rolled between his fingers as he appeared to conduct some internal deliberation.

"Who sent you?"

"No one," said Lin Che, keeping his expression straightforward.

"I'd like to purchase herbs."

"You're a mortal."

"So I am."

"Mortals who walk into this shop don't usually know what inferior grade means, let alone the sequential interaction properties of a breath-opening blend." He tilted his head.

"Where did you learn this?"

"Do you have what I need?" Hu Baolin looked at him for a long moment, pushed himself off his stool, went around the counter, and started pulling jars out as though he were disagreeing with himself and losing.

"Stabilisers," he said.

"Before the fourth component. You know this from where?"

"It's a secret," winked Lin Che.

"Cast iron pot," he sighed.

"Not aluminium. Consistently simmer and don't adjust the temperature for any reason."

"Understood."

"The fourth component over baseline will smell worse than the standard blend." The pharmacist set everything on the counter and looked at it, then went behind the curtained shelf at the back and came out with a small additional bundle that he placed beside the rest.

"Plateau component — use a pinch, and if you can smell it over the fourth addition, you've used too much." Lin Che looked up from his notebook.

"I didn't ask for that."

"No," said Hu Baolin.

"But you were going to, and it saves time." Hu Baolin named a price without blinking. Lin Che paid before the man could reconsider.

Lin Che died on day four. He didn't die from the formula — no, that formula worked and his sensitivity sharpened. His mental image of the jellyfish was much sharper, too. No, he died from the thing between the office and the apartment, which he had not built enough sensitivity yet to detect at sufficient distance. It came seventeen days earlier. He suspected it could smell all the herbs he carried from the pharmacy back to his original home. He couldn't concoct at Shen Yue's, after all.

The bell rang. Hu Baolin looked up from his ledger at a stranger he had never seen before.

"Can I help you?"

"Inferior grade herbs," said Lin Che.

"Breath-opening blend. I've got some modifications written down here which I'd like you to follow." He opened his notebook to the current page and set it on the counter.

"I want to try adjusting the plateau component ratio. Not the pinch you'd normally recommend, but slightly more, with a longer stabiliser window before it." Hu Baolin's eyes dropped to the notebook, his fingers flicking through the pages of scribbled down formulae. He sat back on his stool and picked up his pen out of habit, spinning it between his fingers. He looked at Lin Che and decided the most useful thing he could do was observe the mortal in front of him.

"The plateau component at higher than pinch quantity," he muttered.

"Interacts terribly with temperature variation. If your simmer fluctuates at all—""I know. Fixed temperature cast iron on an induction stove solves most of that." Hu Baolin held his gaze for a moment, then turned to the curtained shelf. He came back with two jars and a paper bundle, setting them on the counter alongside the standard components.

"Secondary stabiliser," he said, tapping the bundle.

"Add it with the first stabiliser, not the second." Lin Che reached for his pen.

"You're writing that down?" asked Hu Baolin, with visible puzzlement.

"You came in here with a notebook full of formula modifications, but you're writing down secondary stabiliser placement?"

"I write everything down." Lin Che capped his pen.

"Most people who claim to know what they're doing don't," said Lin Che.

"I'm trying to figure out what I'm actually doing." Something in Hu Baolin's expression shifted, his assessment of Lin Che updating. He named a price and Lin Che paid it.

"Come back," said Hu Baolin as he left.

"I will," said Lin Che.

"Probably sooner than you'd expect!"

He died on day six. The secondary stabiliser had unpredictably underperformed, reducing both potency and success rate. In a moment of creative problem-solving he was not proud of, he blended both stabilisers together with the intention of using the powder to introduce both stabilisers at once at the same rate. He breathed in the fumes from the blender and choked to death. Embarrassing.

The bell rang. Hu Baolin looked up at a stranger, pen in hand.

"How can I help?"

"Inferior grade herbs, breath-opening blend." Lin Che set his notebook on the counter open to the current iteration.

"Just one small question before I buy anything." This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. Hu Baolin looked at the notebook and gathered Qi towards his eyes. He detected nothing from Lin Che.

"You're a mortal," said Hu Baolin.

"Yes." Lin Che kept his place in the notebook with one finger.

"I need to ask about secondary stabiliser placement. The instructions say to add it with the first stabiliser. I want to confirm that that means simultaneously and not sequentially." Hu Baolin stared at him.

"Simultaenously," he eventually said, shocked at the gall of this mortal.

"They go in together. If you add them sequentially, the buffering window is wrong and the plateau component will interact with the tempera—""That's what I thought," interrupted Lin Che, writing it down.

"That's very helpful, thank you." Hu Baolin watched him write.

"Who are you?"

"Shen Yue's husband," he replied this time. Hu Baolin was quiet for a beat.

"I see." He reached beneath the counter and produced a small wrapped parcel, setting it to one side.

"Whilst you're here, her prescription is ready. You may as well take it."

"Don't you need proof of who I am?" Hu Baolin looked at him steadily.

"The only mortals I've seen with this level of formula awareness are ones who married into a cultivation family and had a very good reason to learn fast." He picked up his pen.

"I would wager a considerable amount that you are exactly who you say you are." Lin Che pocketed the prescription without argument and paid for his herbs.

He died that same evening. The prescription sat on the kitchen counter and he looked at it for longer than was wise, thinking about whether the herbs in that parcel might interact with his sensitivity training in some useful way. He brewed a small test quantity. It smelt faintly of plums, which he took as a good sign. It was not a good sign. The first sip hit the back of his throat like lava searing through his mouth, tongue, and oesophagus. His insides melted before he could react. The tie was giving him trouble.

By the twenty-third loop, Lin Che's sensitivity was sharp enough to sense the creature from just under half a street away: still, by his estimates, not as sharp as Shen Yue's. That night, when she fought off and killed the creature, she very suddenly stopped in the middle of the street, around half a street away from the creature, and immediately shifted into combat mode. That is to say, she detected the creature from half a street away whilst being distracted by a conversation and having her own thoughts.

Meanwhile, Lin Che could sense it from approximately the same distance, only after completely focusing his will, and, even then, mostly because he knew the rough boundaries of its "territory". He still died. After all, there's not much use in sensing something if you can't do anything about it. He could navigate around it, but that would just make him homeless. So the strategy still remained to go on a date with his wife so that she could protect him on day twenty-one.

He would have to relive all the events leading up to the date some half a year ago in his mind.

On day twenty, Lin Che mustered up the courage to ask his wife out on a date.

"Have you been to an aquarium recently?" he asked her as she sipped a cup of tea in the kitchen. She was sitting where she always sat — by the radiator wearing something warm and fluffy.

"Not since I was small," she replied, looking at her phone briefly, checking something.

"Why, have you?"

"No, but I've been meaning to for a while…" he hinted. There was a brief moment of silence between them, before Lin Che awkwardly coughed up: "Would you like to go to one tomorrow evening?"

"Not on a Wednesday evening." Shen Yue shot him a judgemental look.

"But if you want to go out, we can eat at a restaurant or whatever it is that couples do." Lin Che looked back at her.

"Alright," he said.

"Tomorrow evening."

"Fine." She returned to her phone.

"Nothing too formal. I don't want to change." He nodded and went to his room and spent twenty minutes on his phone looking for somewhere to eat. He found a place three streets past the night market: an American diner opened six years ago with a 4. 6 star rating that was open late on weekdays. He booked a table for two.

The following evening, Shen Yue came out of the back room wearing her usual home attire with the addition of a coat, which certainly conformed with the I don't want to change statement from the night prior. She looked at him in his jacket and then at herself.

"You said nothing formal," she said.

"I said nothing formal," he agreed.

"You're fine." She scrutinised him for sarcasm, but found none. Shen Yue picked up her bag.

"Where are we going?"

"About twenty minutes away," he said.

"You'll see." He held the door open.

The diner occupied the ground floor of a building which, according to Lin Che's childhood memories, used to be a book shop of sorts. In front of it, there was a bright pink neon sign that said OPEN, and slightly below it was a menu listed in English and Chinese. Even from a distance, one could faintly make out classic rock music. Shen Yue looked at Lin Che.

"A burger restaurant."

"American diner," he corrected.

"The reviews are good."

"You brought me to a burger restaurant."

"The reviews are very good," he defended, holding up both hands.

"Alright," she said, and pushed the door open. The host sat them at a booth near the window, where the seating was a thick red fake-leather which certainly did not promise comfort. The laminated menus on the table were slightly sticky to the touch. Shen Yue sat across from him and opened the menu for a brief moment. Lin Che looked at his own and said nothing. A young waitress eventually arrived and spoke cheerfully, with the energy of someone who had been forced to feign enthusiasm for extra tips.

"Can I start you off with some drinks?"

"Tea," said Shen Yue, without looking up.

"We have cola, lemonade, milkshakes—""Do you have tea?"

"We have iced tea." Shen Yue tilted her head towards Lin Che, who shot back with an accommodating expression of someone who understood he was delivering bad news.

"Fine," she capitulated.

"Iced tea." Lin Che ordered a cola and the waitress left.

"You could have warned me," said Shen Yue.

"It's an American diner." She looked at him over the laminated page.

"Order something with cheese," she said.

"The cheese here will be good or this whole company will have been a mistake." He looked at his menu.

"What are you getting?"

"The one with the bacon." She set the menu down as she had made up her mind.

"And the fries." Lin Che ordered the burger with extra cheese.

The food arrived faster than expected, and was immediately excellent. This was established by Lin Che midway through the first bite, when an explosion of meaty juices coated his tongue and partially melted cheese stuck it all together. He looked across the table at his wife, who had picked up her burger with both hands and taken a bite with complete absence of ceremony. She looked up and found him staring, and said, with her mouth not entirely empty: "What."

"Nothing." She set the burger down and picked up a napkin.

"Say it."

"I wasn't going to say anything." She wiped down her lips and fingertips.

"Lin Che."

"I suppose I didn't expect—" He stopped.

"Didn't expect what."

"You eat very neatly," he said, carefully. She mentally replayed her eating habits from the past three weeks and compared it with the present.

"You thought I was refined."

"I didn't say that."

"You thought I was refined," she said again, with certainty.

"You've been living with me for weeks and you thought I was an uptight person."

"You are, generally speaking—""I grew up eating street food," she said.

"I have eaten this exact kind of burger maybe once a month for the past few years." She picked up her burger again.

"You have seen me sprawled across the sofa in an electric blanket. If you had seen me the night before our wedding—" She took another bite.

"The point is, that whatever version of me you had in your head, you should probably update it." He thought about the many loops of careful observation and notebook entries about his wife, and realised he really didn't have much on her personality. Just that she was fond of jellyfish. Lin Che thought about how certain he had been that he knew what she was like.

"Noted," he said.

"Good." She picked up a fry.

"Eat your food." He ate his food. She picked up her iced tea, put it to her lips, and made a face of disgust.

"This is terrible. Why's it so sweet?"

"I think that's the point."

"The point of a drink shouldn't be to replace a dessert." She pushed it towards him.

"Next time, I'll have water."

They walked home through the night market, though most of the stalls were rather empty. It was a Wednesday after all. The night was quiet save for the newlyweds making quiet conversation and the occasional meow of cats. Then, Shen Yue paused in her tracks in the middle of the street and shifted her stance ever so slightly. Lin Che felt a familiar Qi signature slightly ahead of them.

"Stay back," she commanded.