Chapter 3 Yan Jun's Visit
The night was deep, like a long-rotted body forced to keep its shape. The lights in the Wangchuan Tea Medicine Shop glowed a sickly yellow, almost gray, carrying a sticky, moldy scent.
A Meng had just pushed the powder-blue bottle back onto the shelf. The smoke inside still swirled slowly, like a lump of undigested rotten flesh—thick, heavy, occasionally twitching.
She sat in the rattan chair, her fingertips mechanically sliding along the inner wall of the black soup bowl. The motion was hollow and repetitive, as if checking whether any trace of a living person's warmth remained in her body—none did, of course.
She felt her body was heavy.
Heavy, as if stuffed with countless strangers' festering sores, tears, midnight dry heaves, and unspoken despair.
They piled up and fermented inside her, forming layer after layer of wet, cold rot that could never truly be emptied.
She merely sat there, like a skin bag repeatedly used by time and long stripped of meaning. Her surface still held the clear, elegant outline of a twenty-five- or twenty-six-year-old, yet inside she was already hollow, nothing left but a thin, icy membrane.
A Meng closed her eyes. Deep in her chest, that place began to ache again—not sharp pain, just a constant, dull, empty throb, like a hole left after something had been torn out by the roots, forever unable to close. She had long grown used to this pain, just as she had grown used to this shop, these bottles, and the desperate people who pushed open the door every night.
The bell rang.
This time the sound was low and lifeless, like a wet, heavy stone dropped into a bottomless well.
Every bottle in the shop lit up at once, yet the glow was utterly lifeless—blue light gray and decaying, pink light dim, golden light like dying embers.
Mist slowly spilled from the bottle mouths, thick and feeble, barely condensing into distorted human silhouettes in midair before collapsing soundlessly into clumps of gray-white fog, like a group of lonely souls long imprisoned and gradually necrotizing.
A Meng lifted her eyes. Her expression was flat, like a sheet of paper used too many times, its corners already curled.
Standing in the doorway was Yanluo.
Tall and silent, his black long coat open, dark red shirt clinging to his chest like dried, aged bloodstains. He walked in almost soundlessly. Rainwater clung to his shoulders but evaporated into cold white mist the instant it touched the fabric.
The deathly aura of the underworld instantly turned the shop's air thick and cold, like an indelible layer of mold slowly creeping across every corner.
“You’re here.”
A Meng spoke flatly, without lifting her eyelids. “Sit.”
Yanluo pulled over another rattan chair and sat across from her. Between them lay the old, blackened rosewood table covered in fine cracks.
He first silently scanned the shop, his gaze lingering long on the glowing yet lifeless bottles before he spoke, his tone like that of an old friend who hadn’t visited in ages:
“Haven’t been here in a while. This shop of yours is getting more and more… atmospheric.”
“Is that so.”
A Meng took a celadon cup from behind the counter, poured a glass of plain water, and pushed it toward him. “Drink this. There’s nothing special here.”
Yanluo accepted the cup, took a sip, and nodded slightly. “The water of the mortal world… still tastes like this.”
A Meng leaned back in the rattan chair, hands folded on her lap, the hem of her qipao falling naturally. She didn’t reply, only waited quietly, as if expecting an old acquaintance to chat casually.
Yanluo took another sip before continuing in that same calm, concerned tone: “You’ve been up here for several years now. Down in the underworld… people still ask about you sometimes. Say the area around the Naihe Bridge feels like it’s missing something.”
“Why ask about me?”
A Meng’s voice was flat, almost bored. “Let them keep lining up for the soup. Forgetting everything clean is the easiest.”
The bottles in the shop emitted a faint, almost inaudible hum, like a group of things whose lungs had already rotted but were still struggling to breathe.
A few bottles near Yanluo had their glow tremble slightly. The smoke inside churned slowly, lacking the strength to burst out, only leaving faint gray traces on the glass walls.
Yanluo looked at her, a trace of concern in his voice: “Did a guest come today?”
“Mm.”
A Meng answered casually, brushing a strand of silver hair behind her ear. “A young man. Drank and left.”
“Did he… seem all right?”
“Empty.”
A Meng spoke softly. “But since he wanted to be empty, I let him be.”
Yanluo nodded and said no more, simply watching her quietly, as if observing how an old friend had been faring these years.
He took out a nearly transparent small bottle from his sleeve. The glass was so thin it was almost nonexistent. Inside floated a dim golden wisp of smoke, faintly showing two overlapping blurred shadows already pressed into deformed shapes.
He gently placed the bottle on the table and pushed it toward A Meng.
“Mine.”
His tone was ordinary. “A piece I dug out from my heart recently. Nothing important—just thought I’d show you.”
A Meng glanced down but didn’t reach for it. Not even her eyebrows moved.
“Lock it away if you want,” she said. “I still have plenty of empty spots.”
“No need.”
Yanluo shook his head and smiled faintly. “I just brought it along. Wanted to see how you’ve been lately.”
A Meng gave a noncommittal “Oh,” her voice carrying no curiosity or fluctuation. “Finished looking? Then take it back.”
The mist in the shop grew thicker, like a heavy, cold layer of gray mold slowly covering everything.
The bottles trembled harder, emitting faint, powerless sounds—like countless lonely souls being smothered alive yet still struggling.
A faint, decaying sweetness drifted in the air, like osmanthus mixed with old blood, or the salt left after tears had dried.
A Meng reached out and pushed the transparent bottle back to him.
The motion was clean, without hesitation.
“I don’t take your things,” she said flatly. “Keep it.
As King Yanluo, you should have something of your own.”
Yanluo retrieved the bottle. His eyes held only a trace of concern, like an old friend’s casual inquiry: “Are you… still used to things here?”
A Meng smiled. The smile was extremely faint and cold, like a layer of ice that had frozen for a long time
, its original color no longer visible.
“I’m used to it.”
She spoke softly. “Running the shop, collecting memories, bottling them, waiting for the next person to push open the door.
That’s how the days go—one after another, slowly.”
She stood up, movements slow and mechanical, like a puppet long accustomed to repetition.
She walked to the shelf and casually adjusted the positions of two bottles.
The moment her fingertips touched the glass, the smoke inside merely shrank slightly before falling completely silent, as if long used to being ignored and forgotten.
Yanluo also stood. The hem of his black coat swept across the floor, stirring up a swirl of black mist carrying a rotten scent.
The mist circled the shop twice before reluctantly sinking into the floor and vanishing.
“Then I’ll be going.”
He said, “I’ll drop by again when I have time.”
“Mm.” A Meng didn’t
turn around. “Whatever.”
Yanluo reached the doorway and paused one last time.
With his back to her, his voice remained calm: “If you need anything, just tell me.”
A Meng stood before the shelf, her back thin and stiff.
“No need.”
She spoke flatly. “This place lacks nothing.
”
The bell chimed softly. He disappeared into the rainy alley.
The shop fell completely silent.
All the bottles’ glow dimmed at once, like a group of utterly forgotten things whose last bit of light was nearly spent.
The mist slowly sank, finally clinging to the floor like a thin, cold shroud.
A Meng sat back down in the rattan chair alone.
She placed both hands over her lower abdomen. It felt cold and painful, empty—as if hollowed out and wrapped only in a thin layer of skin.
She neither frowned nor sighed, merely sat quietly, her gaze empty, staring at some point ahead.
Time seemed to have stopped flowing around her. She remained seated like a stone statue that had seen through everything yet continued its mechanical operation.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She uttered three words, her voice so low it was almost inaudible, yet they echoed for a long time in the empty shop.
On the highest shelf, her own pale golden bottle glowed with unusual loneliness tonight, like an ember abandoned in the depths of darkness that no one would ever come to claim.
It glowed for a long, long time, until the lights gradually dimmed, before reluctantly fading.
A Meng closed her eyes.
She suddenly recalled many, many years ago, standing by the Naihe Bridge, watching countless souls line up to drink the soup—that same exhaustion.
Back then she thought coming to the mortal world would let her escape it.
Now she understood—exhaustion had never left. It had only changed into a quieter, stickier, more inescapable form and seeped into her body, this shop, and every bottle she had personally emptied.
She neither cried nor laughed.
She simply continued sitting there, waiting for the next desperate person to push open the door.
The rain outside fell dense and heavy, as if it would slowly drown, rot, and reduce the entire city—along with every hollow body and every forgotten memory—to nothingness.
(End of Chapter 3)