If Naga-ashi could turn back time to three days ago, she would see that Lin Sanjiu was having some kind of trouble after finishing the tea. During that time, she had still been sitting inside the tent. Her head was still on top of her shoulders, but her brows were knitted tightly. She would sigh from time to time, earning herself several surreptitious gazes from the tea shop owner.
“Can I really trust this thing? It doesn’t look so promising to me though,” Lin Sanjiu mumbled as she flipped through the forms in her hand. “There are so few types of templates…This is so difficult. Just how stingy am I as Party A?”
There were a total of five templates proposed by the [Party B’s Designer], which was respectively divided into “Offensive”, “Dodge & Defense”, “Conceal & Control”, “Non-offensive & Household Goods”, and “Communication, Travel & Searching”.
She picked the “Non-offensive” as this was the one the looked the most promising out of all. However, she just took a glance at the first column and was stumped by the instructions.
[Please describe the shape of the Special Item in the space provided below.]
[The shape of the Special Item is not only related to its performance but will also directly determine the nature of the Special Item and how it works.]
[Please take note that your description of the Special Item must not include the following three forms:
Staring at the instructions, Lin Sanjiu could not come to her senses for a long time.
“Humanoid form is prohibited?” She narrowed her eyes to have a better look, hoping it was not true. Be that as it may, no matter how many times she read through the instructions, it remained the same. “But a humanoid is what I need right now!” she complained exasperatedly.
She put down the template and moved to the next one. Out of the remaining templates, only “Offensive” had the humanoid form under the customization options. No sooner had her eyes glowed up in happiness, then she caught sight of the next line of instructions, and her face scrunched up in disappointment.
[Please take note that the holder will not be able to communicate in any form with an “Offensive” type of Special Item.]
‘This won’t work as well.’ Lin Sanjiu sighed and picked the “Non-offensive” template.
Her plan was simple. She needed a doppelganger to help her attract and lure the personalities out of the dark. It would be best if she could lead the personalities down the road to the intersection as she needed more time to mobilize her plan.
However, nothing could be done without a humanoid Special Item.
‘This Special Item is more useless than Puppeteer’s puppets.’
“Just leave it blank first. Let’s move to the next column,” Mrs. Manas suggested.
The next two instructions were [Please fill in the performance of the Special Item in the space provided below] and [The description of the effect of the Special Item]. As she read further down, her brows furrowed even more.
[Please make sure to conform to the rules as follow before writing down your description:
Amongst the restrictions, the one that made Lin Sanjiu frowned the most was this—[Please take note that after filling in all the columns, depending on the appearance and performance of the Special Item, further restrictions may be enforced].
Lin Sanjiu fell into thought for a moment. She had no idea what kind of restriction might be enforced, so she reckoned that she must be extra careful when filling the column in. Therefore, after a short bout of hesitation, she decided not to write anything first and continued to read further.
Aside from the [Activation method], she had to explain the [Circumstance where the Special Item could not be activated] and make up the [History of the Special Item]. Besides that, she also had to think of every possible raw material in the [List of raw materials] to prevent her Special Item from failing during activation.
Other than the big items, the remaining minor requirements were easy to fulfill.
‘Is there any non-humanoid Special Item that can provide the same result? How about an illusion? I can create an illusion to make people believe that I’m there… No, the target cannot be more than 1 person. This won’t cut it.’
Lin Sanjiu let out a deep sigh and the tea shop owner walked towards her. Lin Sanjiu raised her head and she had no idea why, but she felt that the girl’s face had gotten even redder. Holding a pot, she asked, “Would you like to order something else? If not, there’s another customer waiting for the table.”
“Ah, I’m sorry,” Lin Sanjiu said as she stood up. She had been so engrossed in customizing her Special Item using the [Party B’s Designer] that she had forgotten about the tea. “I’m leaving now.”
Since she needed to wait for two days before she could get her hand on the Special Item, she found a hotel and decided to stay in Black’s Market. Her brows were still tightly creased in the center of her forehead when she threw herself on the bed. She stared at the form for a long while, but she still could not make up her mind.
“Oh my, you can’t force yourself like that. Relax.”
A crisp and sweet voice shattered the silence in the room. Startled, Lin Sanjiu jumped up from the bed and went into her hypersensory state. “Who is that?” she shouted menacingly, glancing around the room.
Soon enough, she felt something small hop onto her bed behind and rustle the sheets.
She spun around, and then, she froze.
A chubby, fingernail-sized, green tea leaf appeared in Lin Sanjiu’s vision. She shouted in disbelief, “A-are you the tea leaf I consumed just now?”
The tea leaf nodded with some difficulty. Like a Japanese Daifuku, it sat obediently on the bed.
“Don’t you know?” It spoke in a low and careful voice as if it was afraid of scaring her again. “I’m the big brother.”
“Hold on. Big brother? That means—”
Lin Sanjiu suddenly realized something before she could finish her sentence. She seemed to have consumed four leaves just now.
“Aren’t you a tea leaf? How can you speak and how did you get out of my stomach?” Lin Sanjiu fired several questions at the tea leaf in front of her.
‘Is it too late for me to spit them out now?’
“Well, we died in your stomach, so we are now what you humans call…a ghost,” another similar voice rang out from the corner of the bed. Lin Sanjiu turned her head to see that another leaf had appeared. Including the two “brothers” behind the second leaf, all four of them looked like mirror images of each other. “But don’t be startled. We are here to accompany you. We are the companion tea leaves, so relieving your loneliness is our mission.”
‘Mission? Companion tea leaves? Am I dreaming?’ Lin Sanjiu began to question her sanity.
“Anyway, we are the smartest amongst the companion tea leaves,” one of the tea leaves said, “If you have something troubling you, you can tell us and we can discuss it together! You know, three…three…What was that phrase already? Ahh, forget about it. You can talk about any of your concerns to us and we will help you out!”
‘Well…that wasn’t helpful at all. Besides, they are called Faint Lights of Wisdom, right?’
Lin Sanjiu let out a sigh and threw the stack of forms on the table. The tea leaf brothers all scattered. They only climbed up the forms and began examining them after the forms had stopped fluttering.
“All right, let’s pool our thoughts together,” Lin Sanjiu said although she did not have much hope of them. “I need a non-humanoid Special Item that can create another version of me. A friendly reminder: no illusions or replicas.”
