Chapter 6

After the task updated, Liu Zhiyi wiped her face, cleaned off the tear-tracks, and began to take in her surroundings.

She found herself behind a wall, three streetlamps hung sparsely along it, their light so dim it barely reached half the wall.

Liu Zhiyi looked ahead. The wall there had no lamps, and past the lit stretch it was as if a great black mouth had bitten it off — nothing but dark.

Where was this?

Working out of town all this time, away from home for a while, she wasn't sure what might have changed around the neighborhood.

The area near her complex had been putting in a subway station and throwing up buildings for years now; the layout could well have shifted.

Going by the new task's wording, she made a guess: was she at a market?

Her complex did have a market, true, but she remembered it was on the ground floor of Building 5, and there was no wall like this outside it.

Liu Zhiyi turned to the right. She'd been avoiding the far side of the wall — it was black over there, and foggy, and looked unsafe.

She thought it over. Besides the market in Building 5, there was actually another one just outside the complex.

But that outside market had a gas line running under it — some kind of safety hazard, apparently — so they'd walled it up and sealed it off.

Her mother had even grumbled to her about it, that the Building 5 market's prices were too high, not the bargain the outside one had been.

Liu Zhiyi looked toward the fog.

So the market was right here, then.

The moment the guess formed, points of light flickered on in the fog; the faint points thinned it a little, dimly lighting a long metal signboard.

Tuling Farmers' Market.

She took a few breaths, glanced at the kids' watch, and once she'd confirmed her heart rate was healthy for now, tucked the cat's head into her coat pocket and set off toward the market.

Cat: "You adapt pretty well."

Liu Zhiyi paused. "You get used to things."

She couldn't say when it had started.

Maybe the first time her boss pinned the blame on her, and she'd had to work late into the night, crying as she cleaned up his mess.

Maybe after her mother died, when she quarreled with her sick grandmother over the burial and ended up alone at the hospital keeping watch, wiping tears while she phoned her boss to beg for more leave.

She still remembered how those moments had been — angry and wretched, and then the frame of mind afterward, when she'd think about what to do next.

Liu Zhiyi touched the cat's head in her pocket.

"Nothing for it… however much it hurts, the problem still has to be solved."

As she spoke, she looked toward the farmers' market.

Heads bobbed thick in the fog, as if people were coming and going through it.

If it hadn't been the dead of night, it would have been a lively scene.

Liu Zhiyi drew a long breath and, once the cat had said she could, gently pinched its head in her pocket and walked toward the market.

The fog rushed at her face, mixed with the smell of vegetables and fruit and the raw reek that comes off meat.

Then, as if someone had punctured a mute-cover, all sorts of sounds came flooding in from every side.

"Boss, how much a catty for the meat?"

"Bag this up for me."

"Throw in a scallion, yeah?"

The fog cleared from before her eyes, and Liu Zhiyi saw the scene plainly.

In the empty market, voices seethed.

Unlike before, when she'd always been in the dim, unable to make anything out, the inside of the market was practically ablaze with light.

But it was exactly that — bright, empty of people, and yet bustling — that made Liu Zhiyi's scalp prickle.

She worked her mind hard, trying to string together the clues she had, to decide what to do next.

She lit the watch screen and checked the task once more.

Liu Zhiyi: "The dungeon's tied to my past, isn't it?"

Cat: "Mm."

Liu Zhiyi started remembering the dishes her mother used to make when she came home from out of town.

There'd be a lot of them, enough to fill a whole table each time.

But it was precisely because there were so many that she could never decide which to buy.

"Zhizhi, what do you want for dinner?"

The memory surfaced again all at once.

Right — when her mother asked her that, how had she answered?

Liu Zhiyi: "…Whatever."

she murmured to herself, her eyes turning to the empty market.

No one there, yet the stalls were heaped with fresh, dewy produce.

This stall's tomatoes were vivid and plump; that one's leaf lettuce hung with beads of water, looking very fresh.

Farther on was the butcher's; to the left, the seafood section; braised deli dishes by the entrance, and behind the glass case the Cantonese sausage and goose wings she liked.

Liu Zhiyi took it in at a glance, more than her eyes could hold.

For a moment she was lost, not knowing where to start.

Now, at last, she understood a little why, each time she said "whatever," her mother's face would fall, and now and then she'd scold her a line or two.

"Making things hard for me again! Don't even know what you want to eat?"

So — what to buy?

Liu Zhiyi turned her eyes first to the butcher's.

The dungeon was tied to her past, and starting from herself — she did still rather want some sweet-and-sour ribs right now.

She ought to have no appetite after all this, but between rushing back from out of town and handling her mother's affairs… she hadn't had a proper meal in nearly three days.

Her mother's sweet-and-sour ribs were something else.

At the thought, tears gathered in her eyes without her meaning them to.

Liu Zhiyi: "Shall I go buy some ribs?"

The cat thought a moment. "Just follow your heart."

Follow her heart?

Fixing the words in mind, Liu Zhiyi headed for the butcher's.

As she went deeper, all kinds of voices rose and fell around her.

Then it was as if she'd stepped into a packed crowd; nothing touched her, but from the currents of air she could faintly feel things passing by.

Just then.

All at once Liu Zhiyi felt her right hand bump into something, and her body tipped left despite her.

To her eyes, her right side was empty — but something was solidly standing there beside that hand.

Liu Zhiyi could feel it.

A current of air pressed against her forearm. She couldn't tell if it was her imagination, because there was wind in the market, wind coming from every direction.

But this market wasn't open-air; where the wind came from set her heart shaking.

Judging by her other senses alone, unable to see, was a terrible feeling — the mind couldn't help running with it.

The air puffing against her forearm was neither cold nor warm; if not for the wrong height, and how close it clung, she'd have taken it for a natural breeze.

Don't think, don't think.

She repeated it in her head and kept walking.

She moved carefully.

There were too many voices, and unseen things kept drawing near; she could only place them by sound.

Luckily the voices sounded fairly normal — mostly asking prices, now and then a bit of bickering.

"This meat of yours isn't fresh."

"Aiya… what can you do, no new stock's come in for ages…"

Liu Zhiyi stopped and slowly lowered her head.

She saw her hand hanging at her side, fingers slightly parted.

At a rough glance, nothing seemed wrong.

But from the feel against her palm — she tried to force her fingers shut, and something unseen between them blocked her.

Something was holding her hand.