Broom House

"Enjoy your coffee." Qiu Tian set down a cup of steaming coffee and turned to leave.

"Wait." Chen Miemie quickly stopped her. "What is this?"

"Coffee, of course." Qiu Tian wore the expression of someone who thought you were asking the obvious.

"Why is it green? And why does it give off such a pungent smell? This is basically poison, isn't it?" Chen Miemie was reminded of Chenpi's nutrition-less meals.

Any normal person would have the same doubts as Chen Miemie did.

The coffee before him was a dark, murky green, incredibly thick, like mud mixed with moss, with dangerous little bubbles rising to the surface. Even the steam curling upward looked like green smoke.

"This is my specialty blend — 'Caterpillar-Free, Extra-Spicy Hellfire Coffee.' Please enjoy while it's hot."

"Why is it this color? Chili peppers should be red."

"It's a spice called wasabi. I gave it five times the usual amount. I guarantee it'll move you to tears."

Chen Miemie stared at the green, oily coffee cup as if facing a formidable enemy.

After hesitating for a few seconds, he decided to trust Qiu Tian's craft. He pressed his lips to the rim and took a small sip.

"Eh?!" His expression changed.

The green coffee looked terrifying, but the moment it hit his tongue, it was like pushing open the door to a whole new world.

Behind that door were sunshine, a sandy beach, and the ocean. It felt like diving into the sea, wrapped in countless fiery seaweed tendrils, dragging him down into the endless deep.

Luckily, Chen Miemie was genuinely thirsty, so he drank quickly and snapped back to his senses before being completely pulled under by the seaweed.

"Well, it looks hard to swallow, but it actually tastes pretty good."

"So, you like this flavor?" Qiu Tian was delighted. This was the first time anyone had given her coffee style a positive review.

"Yeah, it's well made. Just don't make it again. By the way, I think I tasted seaweed in there?"

"That's right. Only for you — anyone else, and I wouldn't be so generous. That's not ordinary seaweed. It's the shed skin of a seaweed-type anomaly, left behind after it molts. Very rare."

Chen Miemie tilted his head, feeling like he'd heard something like this before somewhere.

"This shed seaweed — would it become highly toxic if eaten together with pufferfish?"

"Impressive! You even know such obscure trivia. I only found out by accident after searching through tons of data."

"Where did you get this seaweed?"

"About a day's travel east of Sealed Letters Library, there's the sea. Some mystics go 'sea-foraging' there, and if they're lucky, they bring back marine products. I bought it from them. But this type of seaweed has only one way of being produced, and the yield is very small. It can't be preserved for long either. After it appears once, it takes a long time before it shows up again. If you want to buy some, you'll probably have to wait."

"So, this batch of seaweed is only in the hands of a few fixed buyers?"

"Right."

"Do you know who the buyers are?"

"There were three portions in total this time. I got the last one. As for who bought the first two, I have no idea."

"I'd like to buy some too. Can you make an introduction for me?"

"No problem. I'll give you the contact info of my friend, Mermaid, and I'll tell her about you. You can deal with her directly afterward."

With a personal referral, Chen Miemie quickly got in touch with Mermaid and arranged to meet at 3 PM at Qiu Tian's Four Seasons Café.

Since there was still some time before the meeting, Chen Miemie wandered from shop to shop along Fairy Tale Road, as if inspecting his own territory.

"Hmm? This shop — I've never seen it open before." He stopped at No. 3 Fairy Tale Road.

The shop's sign had no words on it, just pictures of various odds and ends. It looked like a store selling everyday household items.

He walked inside. Since the door was only slightly ajar, the interior was dim. The walls were covered with all kinds of cleaning supplies, mostly brooms.

"Private residence. Leave immediately." A voice came from within, though no one was visible.

"Oh? I thought you were open for business."

"This place is not open for business."

Chen Miemie nodded and started to leave. But at the doorway, he stopped in his tracks:

"Your voice sounds familiar. Have we met before?"

The voice didn't answer.

"Something's off. This place is tiny — I can see everything at a glance. There's no one in here. So who was talking?"

Chen Miemie just had a vague impression, but his swarm of wisemen had better memories.

Pure water pulsed through his blood, making a faint sound: "That voice — it's the Rebel Broom we ran into when we first entered the city."

"Oh, Rebel Broom, it's you! Sneaking into someone else's shop — what are you up to?" Chen Miemie instantly switched to his "gotcha" tone.

From among the many brooms hanging on the wall, one of them jumped down:

"I was hiding so well, but you just had to call me out. Are you looking for trouble? And for the record, I'm not sneaking around — this is my shop. You're the one who barged in uninvited. Hmph."

"What?!" Chen Miemie was taken aback. A mere broom anomaly owning its own broom shop?!

The Rebel Broom was indeed rebellious and spoke somewhat arrogantly. But as far as Chen Miemie was concerned, it was pretty weak in terms of strength.

Within moments, spiderwebs wrapped around it tightly, rendering it immobile.

"Hey! I hate spiderwebs. I hate cleaning. Don't think you can act all high and mighty just because you beat me by half a move last time. I wasn't even trying."

"Try me, then."

"Hmph! Think I'm bluffing? Take this — watch me shift and vanish, then eat this move: Ten Thousand Brooms Barrage!"

The broom wrapped in spiderwebs collapsed limply to the ground, while another broom across the room floated up into midair.

Inside the shop, all the brooms shook violently before wobbling into the air, hovering with their bristle ends all pointing at Chen Miemie.

"What is this? Broom sorcery?" Chen Miemie exclaimed.

The Rebel Broom gloated: "I got the idea from a xianxia novel. Scared now?"

"Scared? Not really. These are brooms, not spears. Without a spearhead, you can't stab anyone. Also — you're a broom. Not sweeping properly is bad enough, but who let you read books?"

"Who says you can't stab without a spearhead? Hmph. As for reading, I don't like it much either. It's just that long ago, there was an annoying bookworm who always recited boring stories before bedtime, and I memorized some of them."

Chen Miemie ignored the swarm of flying brooms: "Why do you have a shop that doesn't do business?"

"This isn't a shop. This is Broom Haven."

"Brooms need a home?"

"Hmph. New brooms don't — they still have their use. But some old brooms, used for too long, get abandoned by people. I bring them back and fix them up. How is this not their home?"

Chen Miemie wasn't swayed. There were countless old things in the world — new becomes old, old is replaced by new. That was just the way of things. No need for sentimentality.

Chen Miemie waved his hand, and every single broom in the air was instantly stuck fast in spiderwebs.

[Rebel Broom] saw its "big move" get countered and wasn't surprised—it knew full well that was just a scare tactic, nothing but a fake show.

"So these old brooms, do they have their own consciousness too?"

"No."

"Then where's this 'home' you're talking about? Come clean. What are you really after?"

"Uh, I like collecting all kinds of brooms. This is my storage room."

"This house is yours?"

"Yeah."

"You're a monster. How'd you manage to get a property deed?"

"That I can't. It's not under my name."

"Whose name is it under?"

"In the past, it was... forget it. Right now, it should be under the witch named 'Silence.'"