The main building of the workshop had been renovated, filled with shelves, and turned into a gift shop. Damn, Ah'Ming almost felt bad for the man who had once considered this his pride and not-joy.
Imagine being so dedicated to the craft that you spent your life not allowing your neighbors to make fake talismans, but then the moment you die, your workshop is turned into this.
Poor guy.
Ah'Ming turned around, and browsed around the shelves.
There was nothing useful, he thought, until he noticed a blocked off portion in the wall.
Hmm.
He kicked through it, and saw an entrance to somewhere. Jackpot!
humming, Ah'Ming walked into the entrance.
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It turned out, there were a lot of stairs.
They spiraled downward in an unbroken descent, one flight bleeding into the next, until Ah'Ming lost track of how deep he'd gone. With every step, the air grew warmer, heavier and stickier. A sweet scent clung to the walls, syrupy and cloying, like overcooked sugar left too long on a stove.
Ah'Ming had already been familiar with this scent, but it had been ever present in every single cranny and nook of the resort. Honestly, it was as if the instance didn't know how to clean itself!
Ah'Ming stepped in and... yeesh.
|Funeral Artisan's workshop
Wow, thanks system! Ah'Ming never would have realised.
The system pouted.
But...
The air down here was thick. Not dusty exactly, but really filled with sweat. Humans were really gross. Imagine just, secreting smelly liquid everywhere. No wonder they were at the bottom of the food chain.
Wow, there were paper talismans everywhere. They littered every table, every shelf and chair. The strange thing was, they were all... yellow. yellow like normal talismans were. They were in different colored writings. Ah'Ming knew that, usually, inscriptions were made using red cinnabar, black ink, or, in some traditions, the blood of a rooster.
These didn't smell like blood, so probably the cinnabar.
There were also paper puppets. They stood propped on wooden frames or slumped in corners, limbs tied together with red string that had long since dulled to brown.
The exact same model as the ones from the egg tart emporium, but these were once again varying shades of white to yellow. Strange. What could have happened to turn everything red? Ah'Ming rifled around, messing almost everything up, but he couldn't find any more clues. He did find a toolkit, which he pocketed.
Actually, most things that he thought were cool ended up 'borrowed' into his inventory.
|Broadcaster should leave setting designs and items in order to not disrupt the broadcasting process for other broadcasters---
Shush, you.
Ah'Ming was very happy with his haul.
He now had a massive supply of talisman making materials, real ones, unlike the ones from those scammy shops.
He hummed.
'Shopping' trips were so nice!
With one last reluctant look at the workshop, Ah'Ming made his way back to the gift store. The stairs were once again long and arduous, but he made it.
The moment he stepped out of the gift store, however, he was greeted by a bunch of muscled men. Most likely security guards.
Ah'Ming looked at them, looked at the ruined barricade that he had just stepped out from, and shot them another sheepish look.
Before they could start fighting, though, he felt a strange dizziness wash over him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the pavilion.
Uh oh.
The old man was gone, and the incense sticks had burnt out.
Oh! That explained it. Lighting the incense stick would bring you to the alternate world, but you could only wait for the stick to burn out before coming back. Based on the position of the sun... He'd been gone for around two hours? And judging from his internal clock, the other world had matched that pretty closely.
Hmm.
The others were probably looking for him by now.
He sent them a message.
|Don't wait for me I'm budy :D
And relit another incense. This time, he tried sticking them further near the back. If there was less draft, the sticks would last longer, yes?
Oh yeah, he chucked the rest of the sticks into his inventory. They smelt bad, but were quest items.
Waste not, want not!
He closed his eyes, and opened it once more in... somewhere else?
He was back in the pavilion, but it was a lot quieter. For some reason, this world was dark already.
Everything was covered in a blanket of faint blue, but still stained red underneath. There was a log fog, clinging to his skin. A novel sensation, but rather unwelcomed.
The air smelt like ash.
Ah'Ming walked over to the town, along the packed dirt path that was now filled with sharp rocks and shards, only to see most of it torn down. There was just a smattering of half-built buildings, construction sites and all. Even the shop that Ah'Ming had been in just moments before was gone. It was empty, with a broken chair next to the site.
Everywhere the eye could see, there was random items thatThere weren't any people though. The entire town was abandoned, with only scaffolds and dead leaves littering the floor.
The air was tinted with a slightly red mist, the color magnified by the lit lanterns hung on the eaves. There were a lot more lanterns now.
Matching the lanterns, hundreds of red banners and talismans were pasted everywhere, most concentrated along the paths that led to the workshop.
Ah'Ming followed the path, to see hundreds upon hundreds of these papers stuck along the walls and roof of the building.
It was a contrasting sight to see, since all of the other buildings had long since been torn down, replaced by bamboo and steel skeletal frames. They rose up from the ground like bony hands, cradling the little red house like a rib cage around a heart.
A wind rustled nearby, and Ah'Ming whirled around to come face to face with a pair of blood red eyes.
He jolted, and saw himself back in the pavilion. The one in the real world, not the other world.
By now, it was completely dark. The sun had long set.
The transportation from the incense ended far too soon. Maybe it was because of a sudden gust of wind?
There was nobody else nearby, so obviously he wasn't kicked out from somebody interfering. He sighed, and tried to relight the incense.
The issue was, there was obviously quite a large gap in time between the first time he went into the other world and the second. At least a few years, judging by how far the resort building was completed. If he returned now, what if he missed the crucial point in time?
However, no matter what Ah'Ming did, the incense sticks in his hands would not light. He wasn't sure if it was because he'd put them in his inventory, because it was now night, or because of some other reason, the man was still gone.
The eyes that he had seen though... Red and bloodshot, most likely not human. Yes, there could be other paranormal events, but the only event the proprietor had mentioned was the funeral shop owner's death. Since he was the only paranormal event—wait, why was the man's death not normal?
Didn't people die all the time?
Ah'Ming paused.
This was something he hadn't considered. A normal death wouldn't be supernatural, so the old man had likely died from something unnatural. The big question now was if it was manmade or ghostly.
A man made reason could be either the townspeople or the Xie family.
The townsperson he had talked to, the shop proprietor, had been happy the old man had died. Judging by the amount of shops, it was a shared sentiment.
It did seem rather unlikely that the people would murder someone over not being allowed to sell scam-quality talismans as tourist junk, though.
That left the Xie family. The Xie family had bought the town to turn it into a resort, likely persuaded by the amounts of visitors that came every year. Ah'Ming thought it was stupid, though. An old-style oriental town selling talismans and ghost lore would be a much more attractive destination. Living in old-style houses, near trees and nature, seemed like an amazing experience. A regular hotel in comparison? Kind of boring.
Stupid financial decisions aside, the Xie family probably wasn't too incompetent. Otherwise, how would they have gotten the money to both buy a town and build a resort?
They wouldn't have killed the prime cash cow of the town: the most supernatural. Imagine how much money could be made from selling funeral items made by a master to unsuspecting tourists!
The biggest reason as to why the Xie family would kill him, by accident or on purpose, was if the old man had refused the town being bought or something along similar lines.
He had been silenced, and had probably died an unjust death.
Ah'Ming frowned.
He'd need more input on what to do.
Time to find Huipao and the others, at least.