Amidst the babble of talking parrots in the South Market of Chang'an, Moli flicked her wolf-hair brush across the abacus-bead blackboard, sketching a massive character for "Monopoly," which the abacus beads instantly rearranged into "Extortion"—she had converted the three pharmacies' cartel prices into a hideous grinning ghost face. "Pay attention, you rascals!" she tapped her abacus-bead pointer, the beads dancing across her Daoist robes to spell "Fraud." "How much is one string of coins in monopoly prices? It's the price of selling ten chickens!"
Zhang Yifan swaggered onto the stage twirling an abacus-bead abacus, the beads springing into the word "Break" between his sleeves: "Today at the Abacus-Bead Accounting Assembly, we'll teach you how to use abacus beads to shatter the 'Monopoly Ghost'—" He pulled out three abacus-bead puppets wearing crowns labeled "Wang," "Li," and "Zhao" respectively, the beads jumping atop the puppets' heads to form "Collusion." "When the three of them conspire to suppress prices, the beads bounce like this—" The beads shrank into a tight knot, spelling "Squeeze." "And when our Qingniu Medical Hall is here, the beads bounce like this—" The beads burst apart into a starlit pattern, forming "Scatter."
Xiaotao ran over hugging an abacus-bead money pouch, the Huwa wood carving on her double buns holding a tiny abacus while the beads on her apron spelled "Try": "Brother Fan! The common folk want to calculate their own accounts!" The beads instantly …
Chapter 188