Fighting to keep her temper in check, Zhe Huo replied, “Well, of course!”
The young man examined Luo Qinghan further, and gasped in awe. “I’ve never seen such beautiful blue eyes…”
“Nor have they escaped my notice.” Zhe Huo was grinding her teeth, now. “But I need you to find out which poison he’s been inflicted with!”
With a sigh, the shopkeeper put away his magnifying glass, went behind the counter, and began scanning through the items arranged upon a wooden shelf. Without apparent hurry, he said, “It is poison—but it’s nothing to fret over. Just look at how lively he is right now.”
Zhe Huo decided she couldn’t reveal that Qinghan had been drinking her blood the whole way here.
The shopkeeper opened a tiny blue bottle, and shook out a small white pill. He placed this upon a clean, white, silk kerchief, and clapped his hands together. “Here you go. Five thousand gems.”
“Five thousand?” Zhe Huo echoed in alarm.
The shopkeeper leaned against the counter and grinned. “That’s right. It’s normally six thousand—but the little fox is such a cutie, so I’ll give you a discount.”
Zhe Huo smacked one hand onto the countertop. “Why don’t you just ask for ten thousand, huh?”
“Hey, if that’s what it’s worth to you, I won’t refuse.”
Qinghan sniffed. “Zhe Huo, there are some fake medicines being sold here. If we walk outside and take a right turn, we can report him to the authorities.”
After a moment’s thought, Zhe Huo came to a decision. Nodding, she picked the boy up and headed for the door. Panicking, the shopkeeper chased after them. “Hey, hey, hey! Hold on! Kid, you can’t just go around saying whatever you like! How would you know anything about the medicines in my shop, huh?”
Zhe Huo harrumphed. “My Qinghan has an extraordinary sense of smell. How do you like that?”
Now it was the shopkeeper’s turn to be stunned.
Sensing weakness, Zhe Huo seized the initiative. “Five hundred gems. Take it or leave it. If not, we’ll go make a report after all!”
In the end, rather than getting a big score off of the foreigners, the shopkeeper ended up getting scalped himself. Holding back tears, he was forced to sell them the cure at a loss.
After they’d left, Zhe Huo gave this matter some thought. Perhaps she ought to report the rascal, after all. “Won’t someone end up coming to harm, if they buy defective medicines from him?” she asked Qinghan.
Qinghan was quiet for a moment, before saying, “Zhe Huo, his poisons are duds—but the antidotes are real.”
“Oh. In that case, let’s just leave him be.”
It had been an entire night’s worth of excitement without any sleep. Hoping to find comfortable accommodations for Qinghan’s sake, she reluctantly sought out an upper-class inn again.
Now that he’d received the antidote and had fallen sound asleep, feeling much better, Zhe Huo allowed herself to succumb to exhaustion at last. She’d been at it the whole day. She still needed to visit the demon hunter conclave here, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.
Stripping off her clothes with a quick flourish, she turned and spied something in the nearby mirror, and hurried over for a closer look. There, clear as day, were the bite marks upon her neck, still throbbing red. She relived the previous night in the carriage, with Qinghan’s arms wrapped around her neck as he drained the blood from her.
It should have been considered a horrific experience, but for some reason Zhe Huo was blushing at the memory instead. She couldn’t understand why the thought of his little teeth pressed against her neck was causing her heart to race out of control.
She shook her head hurriedly, clapped her hands against her cheeks to bring herself back to reality, and then turned to go to bed. At the last moment, as she was reaching out to snuff the lamp, she suddenly recalled what Qinghan had said, and paused. Withdrawing her hand, she lay down to sleep.