Chapter 246

Chapter 246

After leaving Seventh Master’s place, I went home.

Meng Yifan and Song Xiaotian were packing their luggage too.

To be honest, it was just a couple changes of clothes. They were planning to head off on vacation tomorrow.

“Two grown men running off to look at the ocean together? Are you guys gay or what?” I teased when I saw how excited they were.

“We agreed a month ago that we’d go together, and then you suddenly backed out.”

Meng Yifan looked at me, clearly annoyed. “What are you doing instead? Going on a date with Anning?”

I glared at him. “Quit talking nonsense. I’m going to Lincheng with Seventh Master.”

Song Xiaotian gave me a strange look. “How respectful of your elders, young man. A perfectly good holiday, and instead of coming with us, you’re going off to have fun with an Old Man. What are you thinking?”

I said, “Seventh Master has an old client who invited him over to look into something. I figured I’d tag along and broaden my horizons.”

Saying we were going to catch ghosts would have been too blunt. In this line of work, no matter how big or small the matter was-Feng Shui Surveying, exorcism, or curing strange illnesses-it was all called “looking into something.”

I also didn’t tell them about the ominous hexagram. Otherwise, they’d be on edge worrying about me and Seventh Master even while they were supposed to be out having fun.

“Then you’re even more alternative,” Song Xiaotian joked. “It’s a holiday, and you’re running off with an Old Man to catch ghosts. Take care of yourself, then. Don’t let us come back to find that you and the living world have gone your separate ways.”

That last line made my face go pale.

I was already scared, and he just had to talk in that direction!

“Go to hell!”

I went back to my room and packed my own luggage.

When a man went on a trip, it was basically just a backpack and two changes of clothes.

After thinking it over, I also packed Mysteries of the Six Yao. On this trip to Lincheng, who knew whether I’d be facing a narrow escape from death or dying several times over? The more I could learn, the more I would learn. Maybe it would even raise my odds of survival.

Once I finished packing, I sat on the bed, held Mysteries of the Six Yao in my hands, and flipped straight to the Fulu section.

The Fulu section was naturally about how to draw Talisman and use Talisman.

But strangely enough, the first part of the Fulu section didn’t talk about drawing Talisman or using Talisman. Instead, it discussed the Nine Palaces and the Eight Trigrams.

But the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams had already been covered in the Divination section, and they were the most fundamental things. Even in the Yi Jing, the Eight Trigrams were the basics.

I skipped that part and turned to the next page.

The contents of the next page immediately startled me.

It said: Drawing Talisman and using Talisman are the basic skills of a practitioner, and Fulu is the most useful thing for restraining Evil Spirits. However, Fulu comes from orthodox Daoism and has all kinds of rules and requirements. The power it can unleash depends on a practitioner’s accumulation and cultivation over many years. We, however, come from the folk tradition, and what we cultivate are folk methods.

Folk methods emphasize quick results. For one, they make it easier to earn a living. For another, they make it easier to travel the world with something to rely on.

Therefore, the Ancestral Master created a unique skill known as the Hexagram Art, which uses the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams as its foundation to cast spells. Even without Fulu, it can catch ghosts and ward off evil.

However, this Hexagram Art was not truly invented by the Ancestral Master. Its original creator was Wild Crane Elder of the Qing dynasty. That said, Wild Crane Elder did not devote much study to spells. He was instead highly proficient in Divination, so at first, the Hexagram Art only had two spells.

The first was “Li: Soul-Reflecting Mirror.” This spell could make a Ghost reveal itself, leaving it nowhere to hide.

The second was “Qian: Eight-Formation Chart.” It was used to trap a Ghost that was attacking people. Wild Crane Elder created this method by referencing Zhuge Liang’s Eight-Formation Chart.

Seeing the names of these two spells, I suddenly remembered a Chinese animated series I’d watched. A character in it seemed to use the Hexagram Art too.

I couldn’t help feeling stunned. Had Chinese animation gotten this badass now? They were playing with the real stuff.
I remembered that Daoist Priest Wang Ye from that anime could also use Kun: Earth River Cart. Could the screenwriter have read this book too?

I quickly flipped back several pages, but I didn’t see that spell anywhere.

Oh, I got it. Earth River Cart was something the screenwriter made up.

I went back to reading the chapter on the Hexagram Art seriously. Just now, I’d read that Wild Crane Elder had invented the Hexagram Art, but he had only created two spells: Soul-Reflecting Mirror and Eight-Formation Chart. Neither of those spells could subdue a Ghost; they could only force one to reveal itself or trap it.

The Ancestral Master, however, followed Wild Crane Elder’s line of thought and later invented nearly twenty more spells.

And the Ancestral Master’s approach was very different from Wild Crane Elder’s. He incorporated the foundational theory of Six Yao Divination, using the Day Builder to make the spells take effect.

These twenty-some spells didn’t correspond to any one palace in particular. Instead, it depended on that day’s Day Builder.

For example, there was a spell called Heavenly Net Earthly Trap, used specifically to subdue a Ghost by sealing it inside some object that could be closed off, like a bottle.

To cast this spell, you had to look at which of the Earthly Branches governed that day’s Day Builder.

For instance, today was a Mao day. Mao belonged to wood, and among the Eight Trigrams, Zhen was wood. Therefore, if you wanted to cast Heavenly Net Earthly Trap today, it would be Zhen: Heavenly Net Earthly Trap.

This was the basic theory and casting procedure of the Hexagram Art.

As for casting these spells, first, you needed the Ancestral Master’s Register Conferral. Only after receiving the Register Conferral could you obtain the method. Second, you had to train diligently. It was just like practicing martial arts: you might reach minor success one day, but if you wanted major success, you had to practice hard, day after day.

The author wrote in the book that there were no shortcuts to practice, but there was a method. That method was seated meditation: in your mind, you worked hard to visualize the shape of a flame. When the flame in your mind grew larger, even brighter, it represented progress in your cultivation.

I hurriedly set the book down, sat cross-legged on the bed, and followed the author’s instructions. Closing my eyes, I began visualizing the shape of a flame in my mind.

Maybe my heart hadn’t settled down yet. I visualized for a full half hour before a flame the size of a soybean suddenly appeared in my empty mind.

But when I kept trying to visualize further, that soybean-sized flame grew smaller and smaller, shrinking straight down to the size of a sesame seed. In the end, I couldn’t even see a hair of it.

I opened my eyes, suddenly enlightened.

That soybean-sized fire might have been the power the Ancestral Master had lent me.

I had never cultivated before, so naturally, I didn’t have much spiritual power.

Looks like the road of cultivation was an extremely long one.

I continued reading after that, and I became so absorbed I had no idea how long I’d been at it. Eventually, I dozed off. Sitting there, I fell asleep.

This time, I had another dream. But I didn’t dream of the Ancestral Master. I dreamed of Du Ruhai.

In the dream, I was standing outside his front door. I formed a hand seal and cast Zhen: Samadhi True Fire, burning Du Ruhai’s house to the ground.

As I watched the raging flames before me and heard Du Ruhai’s screams of agony, the pain reaching all the way into his soul, a sense of accomplishment welled up inside me. I laughed, utterly pleased with myself.

But as I laughed, a basin of water came pouring down from who knew where, putting out the fire and splashing all over me too.

I jolted awake on the bed. The moment I opened my eyes, I saw Song Xiaotian standing at the foot of my bed, holding a washbasin and staring at me in terror.

“What the hell are you doing!” I wiped the water off my face and glared at him furiously.

He snapped back, “What the hell are you doing! Were you sleepwalking and smoking or something? You almost burned the bed down! Trying to set yourself on fire?”

I froze for a second, then turned to look. Only then did I realize there was actually a hole burned into my bed.

What the hell!

Who burned it!