Chapter 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.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

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.