Six Agarwood Records, Part II · Part Nine: The Erased Line

Six Agarwood Records, Part II · Part Nine: The Erased Line

The capital's autumn was dry — so dry that the paper made sounds of its own accord.

Liu Zhiqiang spread the blood record his father had left behind on the office desk, switched off the overhead light, kept a single desk lamp, and lowered his head until the light fell slantwise across the paper's surface — an old method his mounting teacher had taught him: read the pressed impression, not the ink. Ink can be scraped away; the grooves in the paper cannot.

The three words on the last page were still there — "scatter it clean" — with a brown tint seeping between their lines. Beneath them stretched a patch of coarsely scraped paper, its fibers standing upright like a scar that had not healed well.

He lowered the lamp once more.

The moment the light passed slantwise, words floated up from the grooves. It was not ink, but pressed depressions — before the scraping, the pen tip had pressed too hard; the paper remembered.

The line was seven characters: "What Shennong buried is the name."

Liu Zhiqiang stared at the seven characters and pressed the pad of his finger to them, and could feel the grooves of the strokes. And here he suddenly understood why his grandfather had scraped the paper: it was not a testament — it was a key.

He photographed the page and sent it to Zhou Huaisha. Three minutes later, Zhou Huaisha did not reply with text, but with a voice message, his voice trembling: "Don't touch that page. It matches on my end too."

---

Zhou Huaisha was in Changsha, in a windowless restoration room, with four disassembled Chu bamboo slips before him — excavated last year, and so far no one had dared name them, because a single character repeated on them: its upper half "wheat," its lower half known to no one.

He wrote the seven characters "What Shennong buried is the name" on a sticky note and matched them against the slips one by one.

That sentence in the text he had read for three months without understanding it: "The Emperor buried six woods in the south, and tied a name to each; when the six woods return the names gather, and when they gather—" and then it breaks off. Worms had eaten it.

The "Emperor" was Shennong. The "six woods" were the six aromatics. And the Chu slips meant that Shennong had buried six pieces of wood in the south and attached a name to each; when the six woods return to their places, the names gather.

Zhou Huaisha pushed the sticky note away and suddenly laughed — an ugly laugh.

"We were all wrong," he said to Liu Zhiqiang on the other end of the line. "The six aromatics are not aromatics. What Shennong buried was never fragrance — it was six names. Fragrance is nothing but a box that carries the names. For nine centuries people have fought over the fragrance, presented it, sold it, scattered it, while in truth they were only passing on names." "And the seventh?" Liu Zhiqiang asked.

"The seventh is the gathering," Zhou Huaisha said. "When the six names gather, a seventh is born — not a name, but the person who was named." Both ends of the line fell silent.

Outside the window, Changsha's first rain of the year fell.

---

That same afternoon, Wang Wanshu attended an unsigned appointment.

The text message was a single sentence: "Bring the purple. At dusk, in Changdian, in the courtyard of the old bookshop." No signature, and the number could not be traced — the sender field was empty.

She should not have gone. But the purple rangkanai in her bosom had not cooled since morning; it burned her hands through the embroidered silk box, like a piece of coal that does not sleep.

The courtyard of the old bookshop in Changdian was piled with discarded papers and wooden chairs with broken legs. The dusk light fell slantwise on the gray bricks, where a man stood with his back to her, dressed in gray cloth, very thin of frame.

"You came," the man said without turning.

"Who are you?" "Just like you — one who carries names." The man turned — an unfamiliar face, around thirty, clean features, the tip of his right little finger missing. "So was my grandfather. He carried the yellow." Wang Wanshu clutched the box closer. The six aromatics: white, purple, yellow, green, red, black. And she knew the yellow piece had been sold in Hong Kong twenty years ago for an astronomical price, then vanished.

"What do you want?" "I don't want the fragrance." The man shook his head. "I want one look. One look is enough for me." Wang Wanshu hesitated a long while, and at last lifted the box lid a narrow crack.

The moment the fragrance rose, every discarded paper in the courtyard turned a page at the same time.

The man in gray sank to his knees. Not for her — for that wisp of smoke. He reached out and passed the stump of his finger through the smoke — the smoke parted, then closed again, like water.

"How many are there now?" he asked in a low voice.

"What do you mean?" "Who has seen it." He raised his head, his eyes shining intensely. "I have been searching for the six aromatics since I was eighteen — twelve years now. I have seen three of the white, two of the purple, nothing of the yellow — and today you. You are the second to see the yellow... no, wait." He smiled suddenly: "What is in your bosom now is not the purple." Wang Wanshu froze.

"It is pink now," he said. "In its fragrance there is a floral note, and that means it is about to gather. It is searching for its other five petals." And from afar came a muffled boom — not thunder. In the western part of the city, some brazier had exploded.

Wang Wanshu closed the box, turned, and left at once. The man did not follow, and only said: "Tell Liu Zhiqiang — do not read the next line of those seven characters." "I have read it," she said.

"Then it is bad." The man's voice was very light. "Whoever reads it, his name is recorded."

---

At eleven that night, Liu Zhiqiang, Zhou Huaisha, and Wang Wanshu met in a video call.

Zhou Huaisha held a transcription of the Chu slips up to the lens, Liu Zhiqiang zoomed in on the image of the pressed impressions in the blood record, and Wang Wanshu placed the purple rangkanai under the camera — and in the screen a wisp of exceedingly faint smoke rose from it, without fire.

The three said the same sentence at the same time, then all stopped at the same moment.

Liu Zhiqiang began: "What Shennong buried is the names." Zhou Huaisha said: "When the six names gather, a seventh is born." Wang Wanshu said: "It is searching for its other five petals." And the moment the screen dimmed, the wisp of smoke in the camera gathered into a shape — not a character, but the outline of a person, exceedingly faint, dispersing in a second.

None of the three spoke.

After a long while, Liu Zhiqiang finally opened his mouth, his voice hoarse: "My father probably knew of this. That is why he wrote: scatter it clean. What he scattered was not the fragrance, but the names — and with the names scattered, the seventh is never born." "And your grandfather?" Wang Wanshu asked, "Why did he scrape it?" Liu Zhiqiang looked at the coarsely scraped paper and said slowly: "What he scraped was everything that came after the two words: is the name. The three words my father left are a sword, and what my grandfather scraped is that sword's sheath. One wanted to scatter, the other wanted to conceal — and both agree on one thing:" Then he paused a little.

"That seventh must not be born." Outside the window, the capital's night sky was dry and glittering, without a single star.

And on all three screens, after the wisp of smoke had entirely dispersed, there remained in the camera image an exceedingly faint white line — neither smoke nor light — as if someone inside, behind the lens, had written a character with a finger, then erased it at once.

No one could make out which character it was.

*(Part Two · Part Nine — End)*

> This is a serialized fictional work of "Six Agarwood Records"; the characters and plot are invented. The knowledge of agarwood and aromatics herein is drawn from public sources and does not constitute investment or medical advice.