This is a fun episode, especially if you know a little bit about chemistry. Maomao’s cousin drops by and invites her to attend a show with him — a show by “The White Lady,” i.e., the purported sorceress. Coincidentally, Jinshi is also in the audience. Immediately, you are served that mysterious yellow bread that the sorceress has been handing out for free. They also give you alcohol to wash it all down. We already know that the bread has something hallucinogenic in it. Maybe the alcohol amplifies the high you get. What follows is a show full of magic tricks, so the sorceress clearly wants her audience to be tripping balls while beholding her “magical powers.” Maomao would later taste it and discern that something salty has been mixed in.

First, the sorceress calls someone onstage. It has to be Maomao, because how else would she figure it out? She needs to be up close and personal with our charlatan. We proceed to see a classic trick: the magician has you write a number on a paper while their back is turned, then they guess what you wrote. In addition, the sorceress has Maomao slip the paper into one of many tubes. The woman would then correctly guess the location that Maomao chose. I couldn’t figure out the trick to this one despite the clues they gave us, something about grainy ink and a strange noise in the background. Maomao would later explain that the ink had salt in it, and the sorceress has hearing that can detect high-pitched noises. Hm, like a dog?

The next few series of magic tricks, however, were more in my wheelhouse. First, the sorceress dips a piece of copper-looking metal into a liquid, which makes it turn silvery in color. I initially thought something like copper into silver nitrate. The sorcereress then puts the new silvery metal to flame, which then made it turn gold-like. Okay, so it can’t be silver nitrate, because the silver would just burn. The solution would need to be zinc, because that combination would then turn into brass under heat. Brass is kinda gold-colored. Maomao understands the gist behind the chemical processes well enough, but her explanation obviously doesn’t involve any of the metals’ actual names. She simply suggests transmutation, referring to the trick as “alchemy” from the West. I guess that works.

Later, the sorceress puts a “rock” on a piece of paper, then pours a liquid over it. The rock would then catch fire, burning the paper along with it. Well, I imagine there’s a lot of minerals out there that would have an exothermic reaction to water. Maybe something like calcium oxide. That should be easy to acquire back in and around the Tang Dynasty.

Last but not least, the sorceress pours out a metallic liquid, then proceeds to drink it. Uh… obviously, mercury comes to mind, but that’s poisonous. This one is a little harder, because even Maomao thinks it’s mercury. The thing that trips me up, however, is that the sorceress does numerous shows. If you drink a tiny bit of mercury, you could survive it. Don’t do it, but you could. But if the woman has to drink it constantly for her shows, then how is she not only alive, but looks able-bodied. Hmmm. Of course, mercury isn’t the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, but I doubt they got their hands on gallium. In fact, I don’t think we would discover gallium for like a thousand years. It could also just be any liquid with a silver solution mixed in, but I dunno…

In the end, Jinshi leaves the show concluding that the woman is dangerous. Maomao is of course intrigued by the mystery. Then all of a sudden, the shows stop, and the sorceress disappears along with them. A bunch of merchants have been poisoned, too. I speculated previously that she wanted to be seen as a goddess, because this might aid her in overthrowing the king once he loses favor with the masses. Y’know, due to the impending locust plague. But why poison the merchants? Because they would have a hard time procuring foodstuffs and other supplies without them? Maybe.

Stray thoughts & observations:

— It looks like a certain level of weirdness runs in the family. Lakan can’t recognize faces, Lahan likes numbers, and… well, Maomao certainly has her fixations.

— Speaking of Lakan, he thinks the sorceress is concerning right off the bat. Gut reaction, perhaps? In any case, he is too occupied at the moment to pay the rumors any attention.

— Is this veil supposed to conceal her face? Jinshi has a hunch that it might be Maomao, but he brushes the thought aside. Maybe the veil is just really translucent for the audience’s sake, but we would know it’s Maomao from her clothes alone, so I dunno.