The morning bell of Chang'an West Market had just finished ringing when the Wooden Ox at Qingniu Pavilion stirred with a new trick—Huwa had installed a mechanism in each wooden ox's mouth to automatically spit out candied hawthorn residue. The gears whirred with a crisp clicking sound, moving noble young ladies shopping for sachets to cover their mouths and giggle. "Why does this divine ox love sweets even more than we do?"
"You little rascal!" Zhang Yifan chased after him, wielding half a sticky skewer of candied hawthorn. "If you lure ants into the sachet pile again, watch out for Sister Xiaoxiu coming at you with her embroidery needles!" Huwa hid behind the wooden ox, half a hawthorn pit still stuck in the ox's mouth. "Brother Fan doesn't understand. This is called 'sweet insect-proofing'—once the ants eat the candied hawthorns, they won't have time to gnaw on the sachets!"
A Persian lady's glazed carriage stopped in front of the stall. The curtain lifted to reveal a gemstone-inlaid glass bottle. "I hear your establishment can cure insect damage. The perfume bottle I brought from Persia keeps having its cork chewed through by a kind of glowing little bug." Xiaoxiu leaned in closer and saw, sure enough, grain-sized blue bugs crawling through the cracks of the cork, shimmering faintly in the morning light.
Chapter 32