Chapter Thirty-One: In Times of Peace, One Must Think of Danger

Early in the morning, Auntie Jiu finished her morning devotions before the ancestral tablet and replenished the incense for the local spirits. Only then did she lazily settle into her chair, reaching for a boiled egg beside her kettle to have for breakfast.

*Crack.*

The egg tapped against the table, and a network of fissures spiderwebbed across its surface. Just as she reached out, a sudden, inexplicable intuition struck her. She immediately formed a seal with one hand, chanting under her breath while her gaze grew unfocused.

Without warning, she sat perfectly still, her eyes fixed back on the cracks in the egg, and she couldn't help but frown.

"Strange. Where did this karmic debt come from for no reason?"

As a practitioner of the mystical arts, Auntie Jiu knew better than to dismiss such an intuition as mere coincidence. The cracks on the egg were telling a story. Although divination was not her primary specialty, a shamaness worth her salt had to know the basics. And through her cryptic senses and interpretation, the cracks on that egg clearly meant...

"Good morning, Auntie Jiu!"

Auntie Jiu looked at Feng Xue, whom she had met only yesterday, and her expression soured slightly. He was the young man she had interacted with most over the past few days, and seeing his weary face...

"I told you to show some restraint! You're just in the business of selling information; if you run yourself into the ground, why are you dragging me into it? Even if you’re looking for a good time, you should at least stick to a madam... Could that profiteer have set me up? That doesn't make sense!"

Auntie Jiu grumbled frantically in her mind, but she couldn't voice it aloud. Instead, she adopted a tone of feigned concern. "You look like you haven't slept all night. Wait here, I'll brew some spirit tea for you. You're still young, you need to exercise some restraint, otherwise even a cultivator will..."

"That's not what you think. I rushed back from Port City overnight," Feng Xue interrupted, knowing full well that Auntie Jiu had jumped to the wrong conclusion. Auntie Jiu felt a flicker of suspicion but didn't press the matter, simply asking, "Then why rush back to see me? Let me be clear: I don't take jobs helping to train ghosts!"

Feng Xue was far too lazy to correct her single-minded misunderstanding, so he went straight to the point: "I want to buy two 'Pot-Heaven' spell bags. What’s the price?"

"Oh? I thought you were planning to make them yourself!" Auntie Jiu perked up. In truth, advertising the sale of the Pot-Heaven spell was her way of signaling that she offered such services; after all, this wasn't the kind of technique one could just pick up from a manual.

Feng Xue simply shook his head. "I’ll learn it eventually, but does a carpenter have to wait until he's a master before he can buy furniture? Do you have any? If not, I'll go ask that foreign monk."

"No, no, no! What would that foreign devil know about Sumeru-sized rings or worlds within pots?" Hearing him mention the foreign monk made Auntie Jiu anxious. She immediately replied, "I have two ways to handle Pot-Heaven bags. One is to sell you a pair—an 'Yin' bag and a 'Yang' bag together. The spiritual power inside only lasts for three months; you'll have to figure out how to replenish it yourself later, or come to me and pay 100 coins for a refill. The other option is to leave the Yin bag with me while you carry the Yang bag. I’ll replenish the spiritual and wish-power for the Yin bag every month, and you just use it as you please. Each bag costs one string of coins, but there’s a 300-coin storage fee per month. The Yin bags are all a square zhang in size—enough for you to stuff a small room inside."

Having bought the Pot-Heaven spell before, Feng Xue immediately understood the implications. He pulled out ten banknotes and said, "I'll take the second option, plus three years of storage fees."

"Refreshing!" Auntie Jiu’s eyes lit up at the sight of the ten large banknotes. She beckoned, and the black, ghostly shadow he had seen earlier brought out the goods. She hadn't forgotten her earlier intuition, however, and asked, "Young man, you’re paying for three years upfront—are you in some kind of trouble?"

"It's nothing serious. You know I'm just traveling. I've stayed in Ping'an County for a few days, and it's time to move on and see other places," Feng Xue replied dismissively. He didn't know what Auntie Jiu was thinking, but he had no intention of mentioning the Wharf Gang.

Seeing that Feng Xue wouldn't talk, Auntie Jiu couldn't do much. But an unsettled karmic debt would only lead to more trouble. After a moment of thought, she took a piece of yellow paper, scooped a pinch of incense ash from the burner before the ancestral tablet, wrapped it into a triangular charm, and handed it to him. "You’re a big customer. Consider this peace charm a gift. I wish you a smooth journey."

Feng Xue hesitated, then took the charm and tucked it into his pocket along with the Pot-Heaven bags before saying goodbye.

"Now the debt is cleared." Watching Feng Xue leave the hall, Auntie Jiu felt a sudden sense of relief, and her whole body felt lighter. Yet, this only made her feel even more baffled: "I've been in this business for years, and this is the first time a voluntary, mutual transaction has incurred a debt. No, I must go find that profiteer and ask him about this; I can't take this loss for nothing!"

...

Ignoring Auntie Jiu's inner conflict, Feng Xue had already returned to the house where he had paid several months' rent for only a few days' stay. He stuffed all the rice, flour, grain, and oil from the house into his palm-sized Pot-Heaven bag.

Although the opening was only the size of a fist, anything he held up to it would shrink as if distorted by a funhouse mirror.

Unfortunately, the Pot-Heaven bag could only hold inanimate objects (or things without consciousness), otherwise, it would have been a perfect tool to deal with enemies.

"Still, based on the principles of the Pot-Heaven bag, if one were to filter the 'wish-power' carefully, it doesn't seem impossible to create a magic treasure like the Purple-Gold Gourd that can store living beings, right?"

Feng Xue had not been cultivating for long and wasn't sure if the masters of this world had mastered such techniques. He simply shoved all his belongings into the bag and left Ping'an County feeling light and unencumbered.

...

As his white mountain bike rolled along the rugged dirt road, Feng Xue replayed the "mishap" in his mind.

At first glance, the biggest issue was his clothing. Because he had received so much preferential treatment in Ping'an County due to his windbreaker, he subconsciously assumed it would be the same everywhere, so he hadn't changed into local attire—which was exactly why he was easily targeted in Port City.

But if he thought deeper, there were many other details. For instance, he had walked straight into an antique shop in front of a rickshaw puller, which meant that regardless of what he wore, he would inevitably be seen as someone carrying money or valuables.

From that perspective, his real mistake was revealing his destination to a stranger while being unfamiliar with the local environment.

Of course, this didn't mean one shouldn't use rickshaws, but one shouldn't use the ones waiting near brothels. As part of the low-income population, those waiting on the roadside for customers were different from those prowling for fares—especially those stationed at brothels. Even a transmigrator like Feng Xue, if he bothered to think about it, wouldn't find it hard to draw parallels to the "professional beggars" and "beggar gangs" that monopolized spots in the modern world.

"So, in the end, I was just too careless!"