A familiar scent of medicinal herbs suddenly drifted through the air. Wang Jianguo felt a jolt in his chest and hurried in pursuit, only to find an old man carrying a shoulder pole with baskets filled with nothing but common mugwort and mint.
Twilight seeped through the holes in the Black Market canopy, staining the damp ground a bruised purple. Wang Jianguo leaned against a pillar with peeling plaster; the old injury in his lower back began to ache dully. He fished a crumpled slip of paper from his pocket, upon which he had penciled the address of the place where Yang Huaixi was staying—a detail he had overheard from a street vendor by chance, and which was now his only hope.
A wooden clapper sounded at the end of the alley. The night watchman approached from a distance, beating out the third watch. Wang Jianguo took a deep breath, turned up his collar, and headed deeper into the city’s shanty town. The streetlamps cast broken light into the puddles, revealing the coal dust and medicinal dregs clinging to his cloth shoes—the marks of a journey across half the city.
Chapter 717