The sun over the Chang'an West Market had just gilded the Sogdian merchants' glazed lanterns with a rim of gold when a crowd gathered around Zhang Yifan's Cyan Ox wood-carving stall to watch the commotion. Though he claimed to be selling medicinal herbs, a three-foot-tall wooden ox stood right in the middle of the stall, its mouth gripping a string of rattling abacus beads while its hooves trampled a pile of dried medicinal dregs. The most marvelous part was that its eyes were inlaid with glass panes, which caught the sunlight to reflect three crooked, golden characters: "Cyan Ox Seven."
"Step right up and take a look!" the youth crouched on an elm stool, clacking his abacus until the beads rattled like popping beans. "Cyan Ox Seven at three cash an ounce—better than a living immortal for curing wind-cold and dampness, and the dregs can even be used as fertilizer to feed the old ox!" Before his voice had even faded, a crisp crack of a horsewhip rang out from the medicine shop diagonally across.
"Two hundred cash a pound for Notopterygium Root? Why don't you just go rob someone!" The woman in a moon-white ru skirt held an ebony horsewhip, a withered Honeysuckle flower pinned behind her temple. She was none other than Su Wanyue, the young proprietor of the Vermilion Bird Street medical clinic. "Transporting goods from Bashu to Chang'an only costs twenty cash, yet you dare hike the price tenfold? Do you take the common folk's knees for the beads on your abacus?"
Chapter 48