“Oh, very sweet, and has an iing aftertaste, what is it made of?” Marcus chewed and swallowed the pickled jujube hao him by Wuzui in a small bowl, then asked Master Liaoran.

  “It’s all different kinds of very … iing material.” Wuzui hesitated to answer, while spping the young boy’s hand away.

  “It’s a mixture of ginseng wihe venom of cobra, toad and gecko, plus some rabbit feces, lotus blossoms and Lingen roots, with a bit of honey for taste. ” Master Liaoran smiled at Marcus and the young boy, who immediately retracted his hand: “Go meditate now Marcus, or yonna risk hurting yourself.”

  Marcus was about to frown ach, but he quickly felt a rush of warm energy exploding from the lower ter of his abdomen - his Dantian, the in and of all the Qi in one’s body. This burst hit him while he was almost pletely unprepared, and he had to immediately sit down and start meditating and direg the Qi like the master instructed or the sudden burst of Qi would damage his Dantian and meridians.

  The jujube fruit ickled with poisons and other kinds of unusual ingredients, yet there was nuing that it absolutely worked. Marcus’ Qi was almost pletely exhausted before he came, yet right now he felt the energy inating from his Dantian was almost as much as almost 60 to 70 pert of his total amount on his best day, so all he could do at this moment was to focus entirely on himself, on his own Qi circution.

  The Qi arose in Marcus’ Dantian ure, raw but also gentle and banced. It appeared fierce at first but was still just right for him to manage. As it coursed through Marcus’ meridians, it also seeped into his muscles, his bones and even his internal ans, fortifying and tempering them to help make him slightly stronger every sed and every minute.

  “What - what’s he doing?” The young boy asked.

  “He’s meditating.” Wuzui expined: “Detective Cai is a mystig Fu practitioner, which means he has Qi in his body. And the fruit we just gave him, while poisonous to us normal people, warm up his body and help replenish his Qi. This, of course, should be kept secret.”

  “But, doesn’t the city ban mystig Fu?” The young boy asked.

  “The city restricts it, but it’s a little different for - well, for different people.” Wuzui shrugged and sighed: “Promise me you’ll keep it a secret, okay? I’m sure you will learn about it and uand it some day. But the detective is a good person, and he sometimes… a good persoo go unnoticed so that he could help the most people.”

  “I don’t uand.” The boy nodded: “But I will not tell anyone. I promise.”

  The sudden burst of Qi finally calmed down after a while. When Marcus opened his eyes again, he found that his clothes were soaked i, there was steam ing out of his exposed skin, and his body felt quite a bit lighter.

  “Here, detective. Have some food.” Wuzui handed Marcus two steamed buns: “You were out for quite a while. We let the kid go home just now. And if you’re still feeling okay, the master is ready to teach you what you want to learn.”

  “I’m good. Thanks.” Marcus’ words were muffled by the buns he shoved in his mouth: “Let’s go.”

  The method to ask the spirits questions was surprisingly simple, he did not even need any tools like Ouija boards or ented pens or special s. All he needed was an inse burner, some inse sticks, a bowl of boiled sticky rid something he could use to link to the spirits. Marcus had no such thing with him, until Master Liaoran told him to cut a small opening on one of the bruises on his body a out a little bit of blood. “There should be some Yin energy left in your body. And with your Qi repleo some extent but not fully burning it away, it could serve as an okay medium between you and the spirits, not just to the ohat fought you but others in general. Of course, if you could find a better, more relevant medium it’d be much more beneficial.” This was what Master Liaoran told him.

  It was already te at night, there was no bus at this time, nor would there be buses. So the only thing Marcus could do to head over to the Mud River Docks was to borrow an old bicycle and ride it there.

  The bicycle was rickety a like it was about to colpse at any moment, not to mention the almost pletely defted tire making riding it a much tiresome process than it would normally be. Yet Marcus had to keep on going.

  His actual destination was not the docks itself, but some pce close enough to it, with a certain amount of traffic going through, preferably a crossroads, but also with as few people around as possible. Luckily, he knew just the pce - it was a small interse between two small roads, her one was wide enough for cars but both could allow the passage of small groups of people or oorcycle.

  Just like Master Liaoran taught him, he pced the bowl of now cold boiled sticky rice at the southeastern er of the interse, pced a single inse sti it, a paper talisman with his blood from a bruise dripped on it tucked beh the bowl, and lit the inse stick up. Then he snipped another inse stick, leaving only a very short burnable bud, lit it as well and pced it in the inse bur the ter of the interse. would be the hard part - he had to maintain his body just over the burner with his hands supp his body, and the tip of the inse stick pointing right at his chest like he was doing a pnk of push up.

  When the short inse stick burned up, he had to get up and che the rice. If the rice appeared bed or moldy but not from the ashes of the burning inse, then he should suppress his Qi ahe bed rice. If not, he should put another shortened inse sti the burner and try again.

  Doing a pnk over an inse burner in itself was nothing hard for Marcus. But after the first round, he went over to check the bowl of sticky rice. There was ash on the rice, but none of the grains were bed.

  So the sed shortened inse sti the bur would need. Marcus went to che the rice again, there was more ash on the rice, but still the same - none of the grains were bed at all. There was about a third of the inse stick left on the rice, which would be just right, because, as Master Liaoran told him, three tries was the maximum. It seemed the Yin energy left in his blood robably all burned up, or it was just not strong or particur enough to attract the spirits arouher way was not good news for Marcus.

  With the final shortened inse stick, Marcus felt his heart was beating faster than usual when he went to che the rice. This time, there appeared to be something dark on it. When he came closer, he could see that there was a small bite of rice that was bed - not by ashes or ink, but seemed to be the result of something else, something ging it from the inside of every grain.

  Marcus let out a sigh of relief, then he removed the rest of the inse stick from the rice, picked up the darkened rice, and swallowed it.

  The night was chilly already, yet the rice was just extra cold, as if it was stored in a freezer. His Qi almost rushed into his stomach to protect him out of intuition, and he had to suppress it to prevent the chilliness from being burned away.

  The mome down the bowl, he saw two young boys sitting in this er. One of the boys was tall and missing an arm, his missing arm was nothing but a shadow, there were some egregious looking wounds and sores on his body, and he was eating something his only hand, while seemingly looking at Marcus with his eyes that were melted and partially covered by plumps of hair aed skin. The other boy was wearing a red hoodie and used it to cover his face. He was also eating something from his hands, but looking at the ground.

  “Well, two sticks of inse, as a gift and sign of apologies, for disturbing your peace.” Marcus frowned lightly, but still lit up two more inse sticks and stuck it onto the rice: “I’d like your help, if you’d be so kind as to aid me.”

  Both the boys took a look at the inse sticks and seemed to have taken a deep breath at the same time to su the smoke, then they Marcus.

  “Then please let me know: are there really people nning to set fire to the Mud River Docks during the food festival?”

  The two boys did not even take a mio “think” or “sider”. They just started nodding.

  “Okay, my gratitude. Here’s my question.” Marodded back with a sigh of relief: “Do you know where I find things to stop them? Whether it’s sabotaging or exposing their pns, or just finding some of the people carrying out the pns to ask them for information?”

  The two boys hesitated for a moment, then both poi the dire of the docks with their hands, then pointed both to the left. Maroticed that the boy in a red hoodie had a shorter left pinky, which looked like a broken stump.

  “So, to the docks and go left?” Marcus took a look at the dire and hen turo the boys: “Thank you very much. And you answer my final question? I’ll give you all of my inse sticks as thanks.”

  The two boys hesitated for a short while, then nodded.

  “These people pnning this crime, are they the ohat hurt you?”

  The two boys were stunned for a moment, then started nodding with almost lively passion. But before Marcus could sneak in a follow up, fear struck both of the boys at the same time, and they just disappeared into the thin air.

  Apologies to readers who have tried to buy the book on Amazon:

  The book seem to run into some trouble publishing to amazon stores. I've been tag Amazon KDP nonstop these days but no one was able to help. I'll try to update if there's anything.

  My apologies again.