Chapter 3: The Vultures and the Pyre
The wailing of a broken man in the Black Ash Market was as common as the smog that choked the sky. It was the background music of the slums—a symphony of crushed dreams, fatal injuries, and quiet starvations.
When Wei Chen threw himself into the freezing mud outside Old Man Fang's shack, screaming his throat raw and clawing at his own chest, doors did not fly open in sympathy. A few windows cracked. A few gaunt faces peered out from behind rotting shutters, eyes cold and calculating, assessing whether the commotion signaled danger or opportunity.
Wei Chen remained on his knees, his face buried in his muddy hands, perfectly modulating the pitch of his sobs to convey the absolute, pathetic devastation of a scavenger who had just lost his only meal ticket.
"Shut your damn mouth, Wei!" a voice yelled from a neighboring shack. "Some of us are trying to cycle our qi! I'll come out there and skin you if you don't quiet down!"
Wei Chen's wails dissolved into a series of jagged, hyperventilating hiccups. He curled his body inward, pressing his forehead against the slushy dirt, the picture of abject submission.
Inside, beneath the facade of the weeping fool, his Qi Refining Stage 9 cultivation base settled into a deep, oceanic calm. The sheer volume of spiritual energy now housed in his dantian was staggering. If his previous Stage 4 cultivation was a muddy puddle, his current state was a compressed, highly pressurized underground lake. He could feel the minute vibrations of the neighbor's footsteps; he could hear the scrape of a sword being drawn three shacks down.
He locked that power away. He envisioned a heavy iron vault slamming shut over his dantian, suppressing his aura so completely that even a Foundation Establishment expert casually sweeping their divine sense over the area would only register a weak, fluctuating Stage 4 signature, battered by grief and cold.
Heavy, purposeful footsteps splashed through the mud, approaching from the end of the alley.
Three men, Wei Chen calculated instantly, not needing to look up. One at Stage 6, two at Stage 5. Heavy armor. The Black Dog Gang.
"Move aside, trash," a gruff voice commanded. A heavy boot caught Wei Chen in the ribs—not hard enough to break bone, but hard enough to send him sprawling into a puddle of icy slurry.
Wei Chen scrambled backward like a startled crab, his eyes wide and leaking fake tears. "L-Lord Zhao! It's Senior Fang! He's... he's passed on to the void!"
Zhao, the bald enforcer with the iron-studded club, didn't even look at Wei Chen. He kicked Old Man Fang's door open, the hinges screaming in protest, and stepped into the small, foul-smelling room. His two subordinates followed, drawing short, serrated blades.
Wei Chen stayed on the ground, watching through the open doorway. This was the true test.
In the cultivation world, the death of a senior without a formal sect or family was a free-for-all. The Black Dog Gang functioned as the unofficial undertakers of the slums, which was a polite way of saying they stripped the corpses of anything valuable before tossing them to the beasts.
Zhao stood over Fang's bed, looking at the grey, lifeless face of the old talisman master. He didn't offer a bow. He simply began to tear the room apart.
They ripped the moldy mattress open, sending straw flying into the air. They smashed the few clay pots Fang used for boiling herbs. They pried up floorboards with the pommels of their swords.
Wei Chen watched, his breath hitching perfectly on cue, but inwardly, he was perfectly at peace. He had already taken the jade slip and the premium cinnabar. Before coming outside to scream, he had carefully planted a small, frayed pouch containing eight low-grade spirit stones beneath a different, obvious floorboard near the door—a decoy.
"Boss, over here," one of the subordinates grunted, pulling the decoy pouch from the dirt. He tossed it to Zhao.
Zhao caught it, opened the drawstring, and scoffed. "Eight stones? The old bastard spent sixty years drawing squiggles on paper, and this is all he had? Pathetic."
"He bought a lot of Snow-Root last month trying to suppress his lung rot," the other subordinate offered, kicking Fang's lifeless leg. "Probably drained his stash."
Zhao tied the pouch to his belt. He looked around the wrecked room, his eyes lingering on the cheap, half-used jars of mundane ink and the stacks of blank, low-quality yellow paper on the work table.
"Worthless junk," Zhao spat. He turned and walked back out the door, pausing to look down at Wei Chen, who was still shivering in the mud.
"Listen closely, scavenger," Zhao growled, pointing his club at Wei Chen's nose. "Fang's dead. That means his rent is unpaid for the next cycle. You've got until sundown to drag that rotting meat out of my territory and burn it. If I smell corpse-stink tomorrow morning, I'll break your legs and toss you into the Ash-Wood Forest to feed the mist-wolves. Understood?"
"Y-yes, Lord Zhao! I understand! I will take care of it immediately!" Wei Chen practically pressed his face into the mud in obedience.
"And clean out the shack," Zhao added over his shoulder as he walked away. "I'm renting it to a new arrival tomorrow. Three stones a month. If you want his trash paper, take it. Otherwise, burn it with him."
The thugs vanished into the sleet.
Wei Chen slowly pushed himself up from the mud. The neighbors who had been watching from the cracks in their walls immediately looked away, disappointed that blood hadn't been spilled. The show was over.
Wei Chen walked into Fang's destroyed shack. The cold wind blew through the open door, rustling the blank yellow papers scattered across the floor. He looked at the old man's body, now covered in straw and dirt from the gang's search.
"Well, Senior," Wei Chen murmured softly, his tone dropping the panicked stutter and returning to its smooth, calm cadence. "It seems we successfully navigated the vultures. Your legacy is safe."
He spent the next hour meticulously gathering the cheap ink, the frayed brushes, and the stacks of low-grade paper. To the Black Dog Gang, it was worthless trash. To Wei Chen, it was the perfect prop for the next stage of his life.
Once he had bundled the supplies into a large sack, he approached the bed. He wrapped Old Man Fang in his own tattered grey blanket, tying it securely with a length of hemp rope.
The body was terrifyingly light. Sixty years of necrotic qi had hollowed the old man out from the inside, leaving little more than dried skin and brittle bone.
Wei Chen hoisted the shrouded corpse onto his shoulder. Even with his suppressed Stage 9 strength, he had to pretend to struggle, letting his knees buckle slightly and his breath come in ragged gasps as he carried his predecessor through the winding, muddy streets of the Black Ash Market.
He walked past the meat stalls, past the pill merchants selling colored mud to desperate fools, past the staring eyes of cultivators who saw nothing but a broken scavenger carrying a dead weight.
He did not go to a burial ground. There were no graveyards for loose cultivators. A buried body in the outer rim was just a free meal for a burrowing demonic beast, or raw material for a wandering corpse-refiner.
He walked to the very edge of the Ash-Wood Forest, where the dead, grey trees gave way to a rocky, barren ravine. The air here was toxic, thick with the heavy grey smog rolling off the distant sect furnaces.
Wei Chen set the body down on a flat slab of blackened stone. He gathered dry, dead branches from the perimeter of the forest, piling them over the shrouded figure until Fang was completely obscured by the wood.
He stood before the pyre, the freezing sleet stinging his cheeks. He reached into his robes and pulled out a single, cheap Fire-Spark talisman—one of Fang's creations that Wei Chen had bought weeks ago.
He pinched the yellow paper between his index and middle fingers. He didn't use his Stage 9 qi; he used a tiny, microscopic sliver of energy, just enough to activate the lowest function of the rune.
The talisman flared to life, burning to ash in an instant and spitting out a small, hot sphere of red flame. Wei Chen tossed the flame into the dry brush.
The wood caught immediately, the fire feeding off the residual spiritual energy in the air. Thick, black smoke billowed upward, joining the smog of the sky.
Wei Chen stood silently, watching the flames consume the wood, the blanket, and finally, the man.
He felt the heavy, undeniable truth of the world pressing down on him. Old Man Fang had dreamed of immortality. He had dreamed of flying on a sword, of breaking through to Foundation Establishment, of reaching the Nascent Soul stage and commanding the respect of thousands. He had tried to seize his destiny, and his reward was sixty years of agonizing pain and an unmarked pyre in a toxic ravine.
The heavens do not reward bravery, Wei Chen thought, the heat of the fire warming his face. The heavens punish those who reach too high without a solid foundation. The Dao is not a race. It is a siege.
He watched until the fire burned down to glowing embers, and the embers faded into grey ash, indistinguishable from the sleet and the mud.
"Rest well, Senior Fang," Wei Chen whispered to the wind. "Your cultivation will not be wasted. I will carry it to the very end of time."
He turned his back on the ashes and walked back toward the market. The scavenger was dead. The apprentice was born.
The Art of Failing
The next morning, the sleet stopped, replaced by a biting, dry cold that cracked the lips and froze the mud into jagged ridges.
Wei Chen arrived at Crafter's Alley precisely at dawn. He brought with him the wooden plank, the two barrels, and the sack of cheap supplies he had salvaged from Fang's shack. He set up the stall in the exact same spot Fang had occupied for decades.
The surrounding crafters—an elderly pill-maker with a missing eye, and a cynical array-master who sold defective warning wards—watched him with a mixture of amusement and disdain.
"You're in the wrong alley, scavenger," the one-eyed pill-maker called out, stirring a cauldron of foul-smelling green sludge. "The beggar's corner is three streets down. Fang is dead. Sitting in his spot won't magically make spirit stones fall from the sky."
Wei Chen arranged his blank yellow papers with trembling, reverent hands. He looked up, his expression a perfect portrait of stubborn, foolish grief.
"Senior Fang was a master," Wei Chen said, his voice cracking slightly. "I watched him for two years. I served him tea. He... he told me I had no talent, but I know the strokes. I remember them here." He tapped his temple. "I will honor his memory. I will become a talisman master."
The array-master burst into harsh, barking laughter. "A Stage 4 trash-picker becoming a crafter because he watched an old man draw squiggles? Boy, the delusion in your head is thicker than the smog. Go ahead. Let's see you draw a Fire-Spark."
Wei Chen nodded fiercely, playing the indignant fool. He picked up one of the frayed brushes. He dipped it into the cheap, poorly mixed cinnabar ink.
Deep within his mind, the Ledger's harvested knowledge bloomed. He saw the exact, flawless geometric structure of a basic Fire-Spark rune. He knew precisely how much qi to push through the tip of the brush, how to modulate the flow to bind the elemental fire to the paper without tearing the material fibers. It was as easy to him as breathing.
But drawing a perfect talisman would be a death sentence. He needed to fail, and he needed to fail spectacularly, but realistically.
Failing is an art, Wei Chen thought. If I just draw random lines, they'll know I'm an idiot. But if I draw the correct lines and intentionally disrupt the qi flow at the primary nexus point...
Wei Chen took a deep breath, his hand shaking dramatically. He pressed the brush to the paper. He drew the first stroke. It was jagged, heavy-handed, and bleeding ink. He drew the second stroke, mimicking the desperate, unrefined qi injection of a Stage 4 novice.
He reached the center of the rune—the nexus where the spiritual energy was supposed to loop and stabilize. Instead of smoothing the flow, Wei Chen violently spiked a microscopic pulse of his Stage 9 qi directly into the cheapest grade of cinnabar.
Pop.
The talisman paper flared blindingly bright for a fraction of a second before detonating in a small, localized explosion of soot and red sparks.
Wei Chen threw himself backward with a yelp, landing hard in the dirt. His face was covered in black soot, his eyebrows singed.
The alley erupted in roaring laughter. The pill-maker nearly dropped his stirring spoon, cackling so hard he doubled over.
"A master! He's a master, alright!" the array-master howled, wiping a tear from his eye. "A master of burning his own face off! Go back to the mud, Wei! You'll kill yourself before noon!"
Wei Chen sat in the dirt, wiping the soot from his eyes, his expression crestfallen and utterly humiliated. He looked at the scorched black mark on his wooden plank.
"I... I pushed the qi too hard," he muttered loudly, ensuring they heard him analyzing his 'mistake.' "Senior Fang said to let it flow like water. I forced it."
He scrambled back to his seat, picking up another blank paper with stubborn, tear-filled eyes. "I will try again. I have to try again."
And so began the long, agonizing public performance of "Useless Wei."
For the next three months, Wei Chen sat in that freezing alley from dawn until dusk. He burned through his supply of cheap paper with alarming speed. He blew himself up. He created talismans that merely smoked and smelled like rotten eggs. He created talismans that caught fire the moment he lifted the brush.
He became the laughingstock of the Black Ash Market. Cultivators walking through the alley would stop just to watch him fail, placing bets on how many papers he would ruin before he gave up and went back to scavenging.
It was utterly humiliating. It was pathetic.
And it was the most brilliant camouflage he could have ever engineered.
Because while they were laughing at him, they were ignoring him. The local enforcers of the Black Dog Gang completely dismissed him as a non-threat—a broken man driven insane by the loss of his patron. No one questioned where he was getting his cultivation resources, because it was obvious he was pouring every single spirit stone he had into his delusional crafting attempts.
Behind closed doors, however, the reality was entirely different.
The Midnight King
The shack Wei Chen now rented was marginally better than his old one, though it still lacked any real spiritual arrays. When the sun went down and the market grew quiet, the true Wei Chen emerged from his shell of incompetence.
He sat perfectly still in the center of his room, the darkness absolute. He did not need a candle. His Stage 9 vision pierced the gloom with perfect clarity.
He raised his right hand. He didn't use a brush. He didn't use paper. He simply extended his index finger and traced a complex, sweeping pattern in the empty air.
As his finger moved, pure, dense spiritual qi flowed from his fingertip, leaving a glowing, pale blue trail suspended in the darkness. He drew the strokes with blinding speed, a flawless manifestation of the Golden Bell Ward—a Grade-1 Peak defensive talisman that usually required premium spirit-beast blood and refined jade paper to hold the energy.
Wei Chen drew it in the air, using nothing but his own sheer, compressed cultivation base.
The rune flared to life, stabilizing perfectly into a complex geometric matrix that hummed with a resonant, metallic power. If a Foundation Establishment cultivator were to strike that glowing rune, it would hold for at least three breaths—an eternity in a life-or-death battle.
He studied the glowing construct, feeling the absolute control he possessed over the energy.
Stage 9, he mused, lowering his hand. With a thought, he severed the qi supply, and the glowing rune dissolved harmlessly back into the ambient atmosphere. The difference between Stage 4 and Stage 9 is the difference between a child holding a twig and a soldier holding a loaded crossbow.
Yet, he knew it wasn't enough.
In the grand hierarchy of the Azure Cloud Sect, which ruled this entire territory, a Qi Refining Stage 9 cultivator was nothing more than a glorified servant. They were outer disciples at best, cannon fodder meant to mine spirit stones or tend to the medicinal gardens of the inner sect elders. True power, true autonomy, began at Foundation Establishment.
To reach Foundation Establishment, a mortal cultivator needed to compress their gaseous qi into a liquid state, forming a stable foundation within their dantian. It was a perilous process. Ninety percent of cultivators failed, either shattering their dantian like Old Man Fang or dying from the backlash. The only safe way to break through was to consume a Foundation Building Pill—a priceless treasure monopolized entirely by the great sects.
"I don't need a pill," Wei Chen whispered to the silent room.
He opened his inner vision, summoning the colossal bronze ledger from his soul. The golden text floated before him.
[Host Cultivation: Qi Refining Stage 9]
[Time until next Binding: 7 Years, 5 Months]
He had the ultimate cheat. He didn't need to risk his life compressing his qi. He didn't need to beg a sect for a pill. All he needed was to wait seven and a half years, find a Foundation Establishment cultivator who was on the verge of death, and Bind them. When they died, their liquid foundation, their understanding of the Heavenly Dao, and their entire lifespan's worth of effort would seamlessly transfer to him, instantly elevating him to Foundation Establishment without a single risk.
But where in the world was he going to find a dying Foundation Establishment expert?
They didn't live in the slums. They lived on the floating peaks of the Azure Cloud Sect, surrounded by arrays, disciples, and longevity-extending treasures. A Stage 9 loose cultivator like him couldn't even walk past the sect's outer gates without being turned to ash by the guardian formations.
I need a way in, Wei Chen deduced, his mind calculating variables with the cold precision of an accountant balancing a hostile ledger. Not as a disciple. Disciples are tested for bone age and aptitude. My physical age is frozen, but my bone age will read as over thirty. They would reject me, or worse, investigate why a thirty-year-old Stage 9 loose cultivator is suddenly trying to join them.
He needed a backdoor. He needed to be invisible, yet present. He needed to be the spiritual equivalent of a janitor in the halls of power.
But for now, he was stuck in the Black Ash Market. Seven years was a long time to play the fool.
He reached under his floorboards, retrieving the premium supplies he had stolen from Fang's hidden stash. He took out a single sheet of high-grade spirit paper and the jade box of refined cinnabar.
Carefully, flawlessly, he painted a Shadow-Step Talisman. It was a movement rune that allowed the user to instantly traverse thirty paces by folding into the natural shadows of the environment. It was a life-saving escape tool.
He folded the talisman into a tiny square and sewed it securely into the inner lining of his collar. He did this every night, slowly building a hidden arsenal of Grade-1 Peak talismans—explosive tags, defensive wards, sensory-jamming runes.
He hid them in his boots, in his belt, in the lining of his sleeves. To the outside world, he was a walking joke. In reality, he was a walking armory, capable of unleashing a localized apocalypse on the Black Ash Market if he was ever pushed into a corner.
"Never use them," he reminded himself sternly, laying down on his bed and staring at the ceiling. "If you use them, you reveal yourself. If you reveal yourself, you become a target. Stay hidden. Stay alive."
The Test of the Turtle
Two years passed.
The seasons cycled through brutal winters and suffocating summers. The population of the Black Ash Market fluctuated as desperate cultivators died in the Ash-Wood Forest or were killed over petty grievances, only to be replaced by a fresh crop of hopeful, doomed souls cast out from the mortal cities.
Wei Chen's public persona had fully matured.
He was no longer the explosive failure. He had "progressed." He was now "Mediocre Wei."
After thousands of intentional failures, he had finally allowed himself to successfully craft the absolute lowest tier of talismans: Fire-starters, weak water-purification tags, and minor cooling runes that barely lowered the temperature of a small room.
His success rate was a carefully maintained three out of ten. He sold them for a fraction of a spirit stone, making just enough to pay his rent and buy Bigu pills, with a tiny, imperceptible margin of profit that he hoarded beneath his floorboards.
He sat in Crafter's Alley, his robes slightly cleaner than his scavenging days, but still frayed and unremarkable. He was thirty-four years old now, though the Ledger's immortality meant his face hadn't aged a single day. To hide this, he had mastered a mundane mortal makeup technique, using crushed ash and certain tree saps to create the subtle illusion of tired, deepening wrinkles around his eyes and a slight sallowness to his skin. He even dusted flour into his hair to simulate premature greying brought on by the stress of his "failures."
It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon. The market was slow. Wei Chen was meticulously drawing a water-purification tag, his posture hunched, his aura tightly suppressed to Stage 4.
"Out of the way, old trash!"
A harsh, arrogant voice shattered the dull murmur of the alley.
Wei Chen didn't look up, but his Stage 9 senses mapped the situation instantly. A young man, barely twenty years old, was marching down the alley. He wore silk robes of deep azure—the uniform of an outer disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect. His cultivation was at Qi Refining Stage 6, radiating an unstable, aggressive aura that spoke of too many pills and not enough solid meditation.
Trailing behind the young disciple were two local thugs from the Black Dog Gang, bowing and scraping like sycophants.
The young disciple wasn't looking where he was going. He was too busy lecturing the thugs about the superiority of sect techniques. His foot clipped the edge of Wei Chen's wooden plank.
The plank tipped. Wei Chen's inkstone slid off, shattering on the ground and splashing cheap red cinnabar all over the disciple's immaculate azure boots.
The alley went dead silent. The one-eyed pill-maker shrank back into his stall. The array-master suddenly found his shoes incredibly fascinating.
The young disciple stopped. He looked down at the red stains on his boots. His face slowly turned a dangerous shade of purple. He slowly raised his gaze to Wei Chen, who had already dropped his brush and thrown himself onto his knees in the dirt.
"My boots," the disciple whispered, his voice trembling with homicidal rage. "These are Cloud-Silk. They cost fifty spirit stones."
Wei Chen pressed his forehead to the dirt. He felt a profound sense of exhaustion, but his acting was flawless. He began to tremble violently.
"D-Daoist Immortal!" Wei Chen stammered, his voice pitched high with terror. "This lowly one has eyes but failed to see Mount Tai! It was an accident! The wind, the... the uneven ground! Please, show mercy to this pathetic junior!"
"Mercy?" The disciple drew his sword. The blade hummed with a faint, icy blue light—a genuine mid-grade magical weapon. "You stain the crest of the Azure Cloud Sect, and you ask for mercy? I should take your hands, you filthy rat."
The two thugs behind the disciple stepped forward. One of them kicked Wei Chen in the side, sending him rolling into the mud. "You blind idiot, Wei! Apologize with your life! This is Junior Brother Han, a rising star of the Outer Peak!"
Wei Chen curled into a ball, protecting his head, whimpering pitifully.
In his mind, he looked at 'Junior Brother Han.' The young man was Stage 6. His footing was terrible. His grip on the sword was too tight, betraying a lack of actual combat experience. Wei Chen could slip a Shadow-Step talisman, appear behind him, and snap his neck before the boy's brain even registered the movement. He could slaughter all three of them in less than two seconds, erase their bodies with a high-tier fire rune, and be back to drawing talismans before the ash settled.
It would be so easy. It would be so satisfying to wipe that arrogant sneer off the boy's face.
But Wei Chen was an immortal. He was the ultimate turtle. He swallowed his pride, burying it so deep it ceased to exist.
"Please! I have spirit stones!" Wei Chen cried out, scrambling back to his knees and digging frantically into his robes. He pulled out a small leather pouch—his carefully maintained emergency fund. "Twenty stones! It's all I have! Take it, please! And my talismans! Take them all!"
He shoved the pouch and a stack of his mediocre fire-starters toward the disciple's stained boots.
Han looked at the offering with absolute disgust. He used the tip of his glowing sword to flick the pouch open, revealing the dull, low-grade stones.
"Twenty stones," Han scoffed. "You think you can buy my dignity with garbage?" He raised his sword, preparing to bring it down on Wei Chen's shoulder to claim an arm.
"Junior Brother Han," one of the thugs whispered nervously, glancing around the alley. "It's not worth dirtying your blade. The enforcer elders strictly forbid outer disciples from murdering merchants in the market without cause. It... it could affect your promotion to the inner sect next month. If word gets back that you killed a crippled talisman maker over a stained boot..."
Han froze. The sword hovered inches from Wei Chen's neck. The mention of his promotion pierced his rage. He gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw popping.
He lowered the sword, sheathing it with a sharp, angry click.
"Consider yourself blessed by the heavens, trash," Han spat. He kicked the pouch of spirit stones, scattering them into the mud. He didn't even bother taking them. "If I ever see your pathetic face near the sect, I'll use your skull for a chamber pot."
Han turned on his heel and stormed away, the thugs hurrying after him, casting sneering glances at Wei Chen.
The alley remained silent until the trio disappeared around a corner. Then, slowly, the other crafters returned to their work, shaking their heads at Wei Chen's terrible luck.
Wei Chen remained on his knees in the mud. He meticulously, methodically picked up every single scattered spirit stone, wiping the dirt off them with his sleeve. His expression was one of overwhelming relief and lingering terror.
But in the quiet sanctuary of his own mind, he summoned the Ledger. He activated the scanning function, aiming it at the retreating back of Junior Brother Han.
The golden text floated in his vision.
[Target: Han Li]
[Cultivation: Qi Refining Stage 6]
[Lifespan Remaining: 1 Month, 14 Days]
Wei Chen paused, a spirit stone halfway to his pouch.
One month and fourteen days? He blinked. The kid was an outer disciple of a major sect. He was protected, wealthy, and supposedly up for a promotion. Yet, his lifespan was shorter than a diseased street dog's.
Wei Chen lowered his head, hiding the small, entirely genuine smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Ah. The promotion, Wei Chen realized. The inner sect trials. A meat grinder for arrogant, undertrained fools who think expensive boots make them immortal.
He finished collecting his stones, placed them back in his pouch, and righted his wooden plank. He sat back down, picking up his brush and resuming his work on the water-purification tag.
He had lost some ink. He had been kicked into the mud. He had suffered the mockery of fools.
But he was alive. He was hidden. And Han Li, the arrogant genius, would be a corpse in six weeks.
"Patience," Wei Chen hummed a soft, toneless tune as he drew his mediocre runes. "The Dao is a river, and I am the stone. Let the water rage."
[Time until next Binding: 5 Years, 4 Months]
The clock was ticking. He had survived the first phase of his plan. He had normalized his existence as "Mediocre Wei." Now, it was time to start looking toward the Azure Cloud Sect, not as a disciple, but as a shadow. He needed a Foundation Establishment target, and he had five years to find one.
He dipped his brush into the fresh cinnabar. The long con continued.